Traditionally, the only purpose of learning was religious. Even now villagers say that the great benefit of being able to read is that it enables one to acquire religious knowledge. I was asked why I spent so little time reading works on religion. For religious reasons, learning itself acquired prestige; and thus, paradoxically, modern secular education earns reflected respect as learning although it is considered dangerously irreligious.
One class of expert remains: the man who has special knowledge of Koranic charms. The main forms of magic, rites for a healing, for punishing thieves, for arousing illicit passion, and so forth, are based on what are believed to be Koranic texts written on pieces of paper which are then swallowed or worn on the person, or intoned like spells in incomprehensible recitative. Experts in this field are not highly regarded, but are recognised as knowledgeable, useful, and slightly dangerous.
In some of the villages some of the men were members of the dervish religious orders, normally spoken of as sheyklik by the villagers. These orders are formally illegal, and were not prevalent in either of the villages in which I worked. No clear view of their activities emerged from my questioning. On the whole most people regarded members as specially pious, but tinged with dangerous or foolish heterodoxy. Many regarded the whole business as socially low-grade, and a few as positively wicked.