Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2019 doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch08 1 ʿĀshik Chelebi, Meshāʿir al-shuʿarā, fol. 270b. 8. ‘Watching myself in the mirror, I saw ʿAlī in my eyes’: On Sufi Visual and Material Practice in the Balkans Sara Kuehn Abstract After the expansion of the Ottoman Empire during the fifteenth century, sizeable numbers of dervishes emigrated to the newly conquered territories in the Balkan peninsula. Reacting against the increasing institutionalization of Sufi orders, these itinerant antinomian dervishes embraced a variety of unconventional and socially liminal practices, including ascetic acts that are practised to this day. This chapter discusses such Sufi material-visual practices with particular reference to the memori- al services for the Prophet Muḥammad’s grandson Ḥusayn and other members of his family during the sacred days of ʿĀshūrāʾ and Sultan Nawruz. These include special ritual practices such as piercing dervishes’ bodies with swords or iron spikes aimed at taming the base soul (nafs). Keywords: Sufi; dervish; Balkans; ʿĀshūrāʾ; Sultan Nawruz; training the soul Muḥammad is ʿAlī, ʿAlī-Muḥammad, ʿAlī is Muḥammad, ʿAlī-Muḥammad, Allah! ʿAlī is Muḥammad, ʿAlī-Muḥammad. Ilāhī (Devotional song). In his Mashāʿir al-shuʿarāʾ (Biographies of the poets) the sixteenth-century judge and poet ʿĀshik Chelebi (d. 1571–72) from Prizren in Kosovo described a dervish of the Ḥaydarī sect, named Baba ʿAlī Mest as having worn earrings, a collar around his neck and chains on his body, as well as a ‘dragon-headed’ hook under his belt and a sack. 1 Following the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, sizeable numbers of dervishes, mostly of heterodox origin like ʿAlī Mest, emigrated to the