THE BEKTASHIS IN ALBANIA

During the 2nd century of the Christian Era, Illyria (part of which is modern Albania) was Christianised. In 732 Pope Gregory III placed the Albanian churches under the leadership of the patriarch of Constantinople. The Christians became part of the Eastern Orthodox church. In 1054, following the Schism between the Eastern and Western churches, there was a split in the Albanian church. Southern Albania remained associated with Constantinople, and northern Albania reunited with Rome.

Then, in the 15th century, the Turks introduced Islam. The Turks viewed Roman Catholics as a threat to their rule. Catholics were required to pay a high tax. Some converted to Islam, but some chose to leave Albania - such as the Arberësh who settled in Southern Italy. A few Catholic "crypto-Christians" pretended to be Muslims in public to escape the taxes, while continuing to practise the Catholic faith in their home. But most Albanians became Muslim.

Before the outlawing of religion in 1967, Albania's population was 75% Muslim, 15% Orthodox Christian and 10% Roman Catholic. An Albanian-American source says that the Muslim population was further divided between the 85% who followed the Hanafi school of the Ahli-Sunnah wal Jama' and the 15% who were Bektashi. Other sources say that most Albanian Muslims were Bektashi, but by this they probably meant Naqshbandi or Haqqani, other Sufic sects with whom they were confused. Since the Bektashi are celibate, lay people with families cannot be Bektashi.

The majority of Albanian urban dwellers were found to be Muslim, and most of central and northeast Albania was populated solely by Muslims. Catholics were found primarily among the inhabitants of the extremely mountainous northwestern region around the city of Shkodër (adjoining Montenegro), and the Orthodox were scattered throughout the towns and villages near the present-day Greek-Albanian border.

Before the Communist period there were 30 teqet in Albania, but most of those outside Tirana are still closed.

Bektashism is said to have been introduced to Albania from the island of Corfu by dervish Sari Sallteku in the late fifteenth century. He founded seven tekkes, (the Albanian term is teqe) including one on the mountains above Krujë, where he was said to have slain a dragon. The sect increased steadily throughout the country, except in the Catholic areas (to the North). Mehmet II's suppression may not have been unconnected with the fact that Ali Pasha Tepelenë, war-lord of Epirus (much of which has since been swallowed up by Greece), had become a convert.

The teqe at Gjirokastër, Southern Albania

Many early leaders of Albanian nationalism were Bektashi, and the Order formed the 'left' end of the Islamic spectrum in the Balkans. Following the destruction of the Janissary Corps and the banning of the tariqat in 1826, many Bektashi babas and dervishes fled to the remote areas of the Balkans far from the reach of the Ottoman government. During this period (especially after the order outlawing of the Bektashis was rescinded in the 1860s), the tariqat had gained a sizeable presence in southern Albania. Their toleration and ability to absorb local custom provided the population with a 'folk' Islam that they could easily relate to - and this allowed Bektashism to spread throughout Greece and modern Macedonia - until Greece's ethno-linguistic-religious cleansing policies abolished it together with Albanian language and culture (which had once spread as far south as Athens).

Likewise, the Kizilbas (qizilbash) now of Bulgaria (who are the progeny of extremist Shi'a Turkoman tribes who were deported from Anatolia and settled in Bulgaria by the Ottomans following their conflicts with the Safavids) quickly and easily assimilated many Bektashi saints and practices into their own religious doctrines.

However, in other areas of the Balkans, such as Bosnia-Hercegovina and in large urban centers (in both where their functioning was limited due the strength of the orthodox Sunni establishment), the Bektashi found restricted appeal and were limited in operation to the Janissary garrisons. These tekkes were established as a result of the Ottoman military presence and disappeared as that crumbled. Several of the more renowned tekkes were found in Budapest (where the tomb of its founder, Gül Baba, still remains and is open for visitation), Eger [now Cheb in the Czech Republic), the building of which still stands), Belgrade and Banja Luka (both of which ceased to exist long ago).

In 1922 an assembly of delegates from the tekkes (teqet in Albanian) of Albania severed connection with the Supreme Bektash (himself Albanian, as were so many luminaries and engineers in the Ottoman Empire) who had moved from Istanbul to the new capital of Ankara before the suppression of the order by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Tirana became the sect's seat, and in 1929 it was recognised as an autonomous Muslim order, with new statutes drawn up at Korçë. There was substantial Bektashi influence on King Zog before Albania's annexation by Mussolini in 1938.

Under Hoxha (whose name ironically means imam or priest - as Zog's means bird) Bektashis were persecuted and most babas were forced to become agricultural labourers. There is now a large community of Albanian Bektashis in Detroit, [founded by the distinguished Gjirocastrian Baba Rexheb (1901-95) who fled Albania in 1944] which is helping to rebuild the teqet in Albania.

For non-Muslims it is worth explaining that a hoxha or imam is the man in charge of a mosque. Next in the hierarchy is a Mufti (myfti), and finally a Khalif. A hoxha can only become a baba if he is unmarried and if he becomes a murshid through the required communal and private instruction, and is elected the head of the teqe or (like Baba Rexheb) founds his own teqe.

Another remarkable Albanian phenomenon is the tradition of
Sworn Virgins (Virgjinesha, Vajze e Betuar).

THE BEKTASHI AND TURKISH IDENTITY
from John Kingsley Birge's THE BEKTASHI ORDER OF DERVISHES, Luzac & Co., 1937

The Bektashis themselves estimate their numbers at about seven million. Ali Turabi Baba, postnisin of the Bektashi tekke on Mount Tomori in Albania writing in his Historija e Bektashinjvet says that before the destruction of the Janissaries in 1826 and the accompanying abolition of the Bektashi Order, annual statistics were kept, and that these figures showed the number Bektashis to be 7,370,000 - seven million being in Anatolia, 100,000 in Albania, 120,000 in Stambul and the remainder scattered through Irak, Crete, Macedonia and other sections especially of the Balkans.

Perhaps the most important justification, however, for studying the Bektashi Order is the fact, generally recognised by all students of Turkish culture to-day, that all down through Ottoman history, when the orthodox religious life of the people was under dominant Arabic influence, when the classic literature in vogue in palace circles was Persian, and when even a great mystic order such as the Mevlevis ['Whirling Dervishes'] based its belief and practice on a book written entirely in Persian, the Bektashis consistently held to the Turkish language and perpetuated in their belief and practice some at least of the pre-Islamic elements of Turkish culture. A Turkish investigator in 1926, writing in the official magazine of the national culture society, makes the claim that the Turkish national ideal never was able to find its expression in the Arab internationalism, but did find it in the tekkes or lodges of the Alevi orders of which the Bektashis and village groups related to them are chief examples. In the secret practices of those religious groups alone was 'national freedom' to be found. The very aim, he says, of the founders of these groups, was to preserve the Turkish tongue and race and blood.

That this point of view, while extreme, is not that of an isolated individual is shown by the fact that in 1930 the Department of the Turkish Republic printed 3,000 copies of a book called Bektashi Poets containing biographical sketches and selections from the religious verse of 180 Bektashi poets. In recent years every history of Turkish literature written from school use has emphasized for each century Bektashi Literature because in that, more than in any other type of writing, the original Turkish language and Turkish literary forms were used and Turkish national customs and points of view reflected...

Bektashi poet-musicians are called ashiq (literally 'lovers'),
and continue to be active in composing lyrics which are often sung to saz (lute) accompaniment. Here is one lyric:

For fourteen-thousand years I have been in love -
loved the poets.
drunk the Wine, known the Rapture.
I have been in communion with the saintly Forty -
and found myself oppressed.
But I am numbered amongst the blessed.

Often I have abandoned and rejected humankind.
I've been a singing bird in a remembered rose-bower.
For fourteen-thousand years as a butterfly
I flitted - and found a little Self
in a state of ecstasy.
At the Gathering of Forty I joined the blessèd band.

[the town of Sarandë in SW Albania
gets its name from Forty Saints]

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BEKTASHISM AND ISLAMIC ORTHODOXY

The religion bestowed by Mohamed very quickly developed in two directions. On the one hand it produced a rigid, scholastic theology with an inflexible religious law ruling the whole society - such as we see today in the Arabian peninsula. At the same time there was the opposite tendency toward a more visionary attitude, developed by individuals and groups who (influenced from the East) emphasized the ascetic life and the mystical approach to direct knowledge of God/Reality.

Orthodox Islam is, of course, monotheistic: there is no God but God and Mohamed is His Prophet. But Shi'ites (and Bektashis especially, clashing from their beginning with official Islam) established a kind of trinity of Allah, Supreme Being, with Mohamed and Ali. The son-in-law of the Prophet, Ali, was of course one of the first Muslims and the one to whom Shiites attribute the revelation of mystic understanding of the Koran (Qur'an). Bektashis put Ali, venerated as a saint, only slightly below (or even equal with) Mohamed. This may or may not have been partly a result of Christian influence.

Sufism is a philosophical offshoot from Shi'a, in the tradition of Diogenes and other early Greek philosophers - influenced of course from the East. Underlying the various Sufi (philsophical) groups is a recognition that orthodox Islam is essentially an authoritarian patriarchal morality for the mindless. Sufis try to square the circle and make Islam mindful, eclectic, profound and subtle - often by turning conventional Islamic teaching and thought upside down in the manner of revolutionary Zen. Thus many Sufis refer to themselves as 'dogs' (as did Diogenes of Sinope) because of the perceived 'impurity' (and horrible treatment) of dogs by most other Muslims. Other 'impure' animals to Muslims and Jews are rats and pigs. All three are creatures of hygiene: eaters of shit. So are many other animals, especially fish, which are not perceived as polluted.

The Bektashis (the most heterodox of Shi'a sects and distinctly antinomian) ignore most conventional Islamic rules, such as abstention from alcohol and pork, the veiling of women and the requirement to face Mecca when praying. They believe that the supreme being is the Divine Spirit of goodness, the life and soul of everything, which manifests itself at different times through different individuals, so that Jesus is revered by Bektashis as a Vessel of the Divine Spirit.

One of the central features of Bektashism, echoing the Athenian Philosophical model, is the spiritual unit of Master and Disciple. The master/teacher is known as a murshid, and the disciple or postulant as a talib (disciple.) A Baba is the man (or, conceivably, woman) who heads the tekke, like an abbot or prior. Every murshid has, of course, been a talib. The intensity of this relationship is illustrated by a story about a pre-Bektashi Sufi mystic, the celebrated poet Jalaluddin Rumi of Balkh (now in Afghanistan) who wrote rhapsodically of his love for his murshid (whose name, incidentally, means Sun and came from a previously-Zoroastrian region):-

Rumi [the talib] went to the house of his murshid, Shams-i-Tabrizi . But when he got there, he found that Shams had just left. Rumi quickly looked down the narrow streets and caught a glimpse of his master's gown as he turned into an alley. He followed. Yet whenever he got near, Shams was just turning another corner in the twisting streets. Finally Shams entered a building, and was duly followed by Rumi. Once inside, however, he coud not see his master anywhere, so he went up on the flat roof. But still he saw him nowhere. So in ecstasy of despair he jumped off the roof - to land in the arms of Shams.

Among Bektashis much importance is also attached to muhabet: verbal communion and chanting or reading nefes, the Bektashi spiritual hymns and poems. In nefes, this 'breath of spirit', the feelings and devotion toward one's particular murshid are endlessly evoked and elaborated. The Bektashis see the power of a nefes as an actualisation of the relationship with the murshid.

Verbal and poetic interaction is highly valued among Bektashis - and among Albanians and other peoples temporarily uncorrupted by modern fear of real communication.

In Anatolia there was a widespread tendency towards communal life in a brotherhood of those seeking a direct knowledge of God. In general, the ideology of such groups came from Arabic and Persian (and Eastern) sources, the more learned among the Dervish teachers being well able to read and to write in these languages. The most important immediate sources of ideas for all the dervish orders have been the Mesnevi, a great poem written in Persian in the thirteenth century by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (the disciple of Shams-i-Tabriz mentioned above), who is the 'patron saint' of the Mevlevi dervish order - and two Arabic works Futuhatý Mekkiye and Fususul Hikâm by Muhyiddini Arabi (1165-1240).

Certain orders, of which the Mevlevis ("Whirling Dervishes") are the outstanding example, grew up chiefly in urban centres, as aristocratic, intellectual fraternities, especially attracting members from the upper classes on grounds largely of æsthetic appeal. Other groups, of which the Bektashis are the notable example, arose from commoner concerns.

Bektashis, remarkably - like early Christians - considered men and women to be equal, the most chaste being closest to perfection. They accepted and initiated women as inner members since the beginning of the Order in central Anatolia. Their refusal to preach dominion over women brought them criticism from the rest of Islam over the centuries - and yet they never wavered. Women are of course talibs and murshids in the Albanian Bektashi tekke of Detroit - but the number of women in Albanian Lodges before World War II is not known.

As mentioned above, Bektashism essentially responded to a need for a religious experience without the ultimately-catastrophic separation between the human and the divine - and indeed between man and Nature - such as exists in the orthodox Sunni (and Jewish) dogma. It responds to the universal yearning for a 'pantheistic' approach and a comforting faith: religion of the heart rather than the book; religion of collectivity; religion of miracle-working saints. In this respect it parallels Greek Orthodox 'Christianity'.

The other central feature of Bektashism is an emphasis on progressive initiation into secret mysteries - like the Gnostic Christian sects. Bektashis have also taken over elements of animism, finding God on mountain-tops, in streams and in caves. The teachings of the babas emphasise tolerance, humility, simplicity and practical kindness.

Being a Sufi Order, there is a direct philosophical link back to the anti-hypocritical, anti-property, anti-familial Diogenes ("The Dog") from Sinope.

Bektashis also believe that charisma, or divine grace, touches them without the help of any intermediary, and is in no way affected by any ritual performed by mediating priests, hoxhas or imams. Insight being more important than dogma, life for a Bektashi is a personal induction into wisdom through teaching and communion, rather than a distant relationship with some supernal grace-dispensing agency. In this they resemble both the more thoughtful of the Christian Pentecostals, and the more challenging Buddhist sects.

Our laws are different from other laws.
Our religion is like no other:

Different from the seventy-two Islamic sects.
We are guided by different signs,
And a Hereafter only before our deaths. We worship without ritual or cleansing,
Without positioning our bodies or facing Mecca.

Whether at the Ka'aba, in the mosque,
or in domestic prayer,
We all bear our own defects and handicaps.

Which religious sect is true, no one in truth can say.
Only the future can reveal 'the truth' - too late.

Yunus, renew your soul, be remembered as a Friend of Love,
Connect with the power of your integrity
and listen with compassionate ears.

Further Reading:

TRIX, Frances: Spiritual Discourse - learning with an Islamic Master.
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. ISBN: 0 8122 31651
[Ms Trix was a talib for many years at the Detroit Lodge of Albanian Bektashis]

related pages: Omar Khayyám of Nishapúr

The Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám

Diogenes of Sinope

The Maxims of Swami Vrkha Baba

A modern Indian Dervish

The Official Bektashi Web Page

Albanian Bektashis in America (with photos)