Faldjey (fałdżej) was one of the most emblematic figures in the social and religious life of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars in the past. However, in the study of Tatars, to faldjeys a relatively little space was devoted, and the available information is primarily of descriptive or historical nature. This research is an attempt of the analysis of the nature of faldjey in comparison with other personalities of this sort (heales, sorceres, etc.) in Slavonic, Arabic, and Turkic traditions. The starting point will be the description of faldjey-initiation from the handwritten khamail of Aleksander Aleksandrowicz from Asmolava (Navahrudak district) (19th century). The copy of the khamail is kept in the library of the University of Warsaw of the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
This study is devoted to faldjeys, also known as “siufkacz”. It was them – both men and sometimes women – who dabbled with “sorcery”, healing or even charlatanry and prophecy. Their first name comes from the Turkey word “fortune-teller” falcı (from arab. fal = [good] prophecy + tur. a prefix indicating an occupation). The second name has an onomatopoeic origin – from a specific type of blowing (“siufkanie”) used in magical practices, often accompanied by spitting. Both should be regarded as complementary, but also as stressing the two most important aspects of their practices. The first function of a faldjey was to make divinations (“otwieranie fału / opening the fal”). Among the most important of the fals is the Holy Script fal, but also seven and twelve planetary fals. Faldjeys also practiced different forms of fals, such as ornitomancy. Hitherto done research regarding faldjeys is limited to valuable descriptions made by Stanisław Kryczyński and Mustafa Aleksandrowicz, dating back to the interwar period. Basing on these records, as well as on the description of the procedure of “how to become a faldjey” from Aleksandrowicz’s khamaił, I will conduct an analysis of this phenomenon from the perspectives of both ethnology and religious studies.
Who was a faldjey? It seems that a straight answer to this question is impossible. As ambiguous as is the literature of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars, and as their Islam and the whole of their culture, the same can be said with regard to the faldjey/siufkacz. He is characterized by the features of “otherworldly” figures that can be found among many cultures connected in various ways with the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars, but he cannot be identified with any of them. His initiating ritual – verified in new cultural circumstances – had its origin among shamans, his fortune-telling abilities, and their connection with symbolic charlatanry came from pre-islamic, Arabic kahins, while the features common to a shaman, kahin, fortune-teller, charlatan and even sorcerer came from the Slav environment. By adding the “prophetic medicine” and “Quranic healing” he assimilated the elements which gave birth to a syncretic character different from all the others, but at the same time virtually indistinguishable from them. He turns out to be, just like other aspects of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatar culture, an original and internally varied local religious and ethnographic phenomenon which is now merely part of the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarussian Islam’s history.
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