The focus of this paper is the rendering of the word deruis in two translations of the Petrine era. Both of them are associated with the name of P.A. Tolstoy, a diplomat who was in the Ottoman Empire in 1702–1714. “The History of the Ottoman Empire Administration”, which was translated from the Italian version of P. Rycaut’s work, has the variant dervish (dervizh). At the same time, in the printed edition of the Quran of 1716, translated from André Du Ryer’s French original, there is a variant drevis, not taken into account in the dictionary of the Russian language of the 18th century. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are considered.