For those who have Awareness,
a hint is quite enough.
For the multitudes of heedless
mere knowledge is useless.
- Haji Bektash Veli
The depictions of Bektash with a lion
recall those of Saint Jerome.
Click for a contemporary painting in
Detroit.
The 'heretical' Sufi Bektashi sect offers
the conscientious the nearest to the way
of life that Jesus of Galilee led (and
hoped his followers would lead) that is
institutionally possible for'Christianity' or
Islam in the 21st century.
Like Jesus and his followers, Bektashi are
a celibate,commensal, anti-hierarchical,
anti-dogmatic, anti-hypocritical
Brotherhood who do not exclude women,
but who do stand against those vile
"Family Values" that were the curse of
ancient world as of the modern, and were
reviled by Diogenes of Sinope whose
nihilist tradition Jesus of Galilee -
alongwith scores of other dissidents -
briefly followed and briefly perpetuated
before being betrayed by his own
disciples.
They are closely-connected with the
popular and tolerant Alevisect in Turkey,
who also venerate Haji Bektash Veli.
The history of the Bektashi is curious:
just as 'Christianity' quickly became
associated with Roman imperialism and
ever since then an intolerant instrument
of oppression, the Bektashi were
associated with Turkish imperialism. And
just as Jesus was almost trapped into
becoming a pawn for Jewish nationalism,
Bektash was associated with an anti-
Seljuk movement...
 ORIGINS

The constantly recurring migrations across Central Asia brought

not only Celts and Huns, Mongols and Turkish tribes but
thoughts and artifacts from China and India, and spiritual leaders
in the classic Eastern form of wandering holy mystics. The
tradition of monasticism and Desert Sainthood in the Christian
West owed more to influence from India through Afghanistan than
from ancient Greece. The philosophies of Sufi and heterodox
Christian mystics share basic attitudes with Tao and Zen.
Teaching mystics (such as Jesus of Galilee) often were credited
with miraculous powers amongst Muslims, Christians and
'pagans' of all sorts. Haji Bektash Veli was such a teacher, and
like most, made a stand against hypocrisy, intolerance and
obsession with ancient texts and rules.

Sufism is not a sect, but a tendency. Sufis can be Sunni or Sh'ia.

Sufism is an individual and individualistic path to direct
experience of God (or 'Ultimate Reality', for Sufism has strayed
rather far from orthodox. patriarchal Islam) through love and
integrity, and not through the automatic rituals of the pious (who
are so often impious). This non- or anti-egotistical path usually
involves dissociation or detachment from 'normality', from getting-
and-spending, career and family. The Sufi saint (or Dervish) is
remarkably like Diogenes of Sinope, Jesus of Galilee or Hindu
Sadhus - and indeed orthodox Muslims often accuse the Sufis of
having been infected by Christianity (in its raw rather than Roman
state) on the one hand, and by Hinduism on the other. This
accusation, of course, ignores the fact that there are innumerable
sects in both these religions. Sufis see God not as a remote and
solitary patriarch but as divinely lovable. Love in all its forms is at
the centre, and the love is expressed (as love must be) either in
mystical poetry (such as that by Rumi), or supra-verbally - by
music and dance: anathema to the more frighteningly-
fundamentalist Muslims such as the Wah'habis. Music and dance
easily lead to trance in which Sufis experience ecstasy which they
consider to emanate from God or Perfection. In Pakistan and India
this is modelled on Hindu Kyal and is known as Qawwali.

Many Sufis are wanderers, like Hindu Sadhus, and Bektash Veli
was a fairly typical travelling ascetic or Dervish, held by
hagiographic sources to have been a Turk from Khorasan (or
Qurasan: North-eastern Iran and Western Afghanistan
where Omar Khayyám also came from over a hundred years
earlier). Bektash was a follower of the Sufi Shaikh Ahmet Yesewi
who died in 1166, at a time when the Crusader wars and raids
were occurring far to the West. Tradition has it that, on the
command of his spiritual master, he flew from his native land in
the form of a dove, to Rum (the name then given by Turks and
Persians to formerly-Byzantine Anatolia) in 1281, after the
Mongols had destroyed the Seljuq state and the vestiges of the
Caliphate. He 'landed' at present-day Hajibektash, a village near
Kirsehir in Cappadocia - an area which, in the middle Byzantine
era, was a centre of Paulinians: heterodox mystic Christians who
gave rise to the Bogomils and later the Cathars and
Swedenborgians.

He was one of those who helped to synthesise the pre-lslamic

religious and shamanic elements that still prevailed in Turkic
beliefs with more puritanical, orthodox Islam - which hated what
it saw as primitive magical practices. The Babas' influence was
enormous and rivalled that of the military leaders and the prestige
of the Seljuk rulers. These, although Turkic, had adopted aspects
of Iranian culture. Like many dervishes from the East, Haji
Bektash was evidently a mouthpiece for the social grievances of
the Turkic tribesmen - for he was involved in the social upheaval
against the (Sunni) Seljuk rulers headed by a certain Baba Ilyas
(circa 1240).

Haji Bektash is reputed to have conferred his special protection

on the Janissaries before he died in 738/1337.
 'He rode Lions,

Talked with Birds and Deer,

Walked on the Sea,

Flew to Heaven on a Lion Skin,

Raised the Dead,

Gave sight to the Blind,

And healed the Sick.'

The statue of Haji Bektash Veli

in Hajibektash, Anatolia.

The Bektashi Sect and the Janissaries

The Janissaries ("new soldiers") were élite infantry units originally

formed by Sultan Murad I around 1330 from renegade prisoners
and the non-Islamic (almost-always Christian) children exacted as
tribute by Turkish conquerors. They corresponded to
modern gendarmerie or carabinieri (except that they were not
allowed to take wives or Muslim whores) and wore special white
felt headgear, mounted on a metal headband and hanging down
the back, which was supposed to represent Haji Bektash's sleeve.

. They were sometimes called 'Sons of Haji Bektash', Haci Bektas

Ogullari - and Sultan Selim III, in appealing to the Janissaries to
be loyal and brave in the second year of his reign (1789),
addressed them as the Knights of Haji Bektash, Haci Bektas
Köçekleri. One consequence of the intimate Bektashi association
with the Janissaries and hence with Ottoman authority was that
the Bektashis were rarely attacked on grounds of doctrine or
innovations.

The Bektashis are a syncretic and eclectic (some would say

heretical and egregious) sect, with Christian and oriental
elements, rather as the Sikhs combine elements of Hinduism with
Islam. The 'heretical' Shi'a doctrines and ritual of the Bektashis do
not actually derive from Hajji Bektash, though there is no need to
assume that he was any more orthodox than other babas. The
order grew out of saint-veneration and a monastic, commensual
tradition combining elements from many sources both esoteric
(Eastern) and popular: the Turkish, pre-Turkish/Byzantine and
pre-Christian traditions of Anatolia. Their belief in the
brotherhood of man (and woman) is illustrated by the following
verse by the Turk Yunus Emre (see below) who died before Haji
Bektash:

Let us all be friends for ever

Let us take and make life easy
Let us be lovers and beloved ones -
Nobody owns the earth.

During the fifteenth century when Bektashism was developing

into a comprehensive organization, it incorporated various ideas
and beliefs - from 'Christianity', the qizilbash (redheads) of eastern
Asia Minor and Kurdistan, and folk-ideas from nomadic and
village groups - alevis, takhtajis, etc. Bektashis proper belong to a
lodge or tekke (teqë in Albanian). Probably the first leader of
organised Bektashism was Balim Sultan (died 922/1516), whose
title is Pir Sani, the Second Patron Saint. Pir, a Persian word
meaning 'lord', is a title applied to the heads of Sufi orders. 'Sufi'
itself means 'wool' - after the rough woollen robe that the early
Sufis wore.

Bektashi Babas (celibate spiritual advisers) accompanied the

Janissaries as chaplains. In becoming enrolled as members of the
élite Janissary Corps a vow of faithfulness to the Way of Haji
Bektash was extracted from each soldier. The recognition,
however, of Bektash as Patron Saint and the formal acceptance of
various charitable and ascetic doctrines did not do much to
'spiritualise' the Janissary way of life.
 I tie up greed, and release generosity.
I shackle anger, and liberate meekness.
I bind consumerism, and unbind piety.
I tie up ignorance, and unfetter respect for the
Absolute.
I restrain passion, and release the love of the
Absolute.
I tie up desire, and free fulfilment.
I bind commoditisation, and liberate awareness.

.
 THE DECLINE AND EXILE OF THE BEKTASHIS

In 1808 Selim III's younger cousin Mehmet II, came to the throne. He
understood the danger posed by the highly-conservative Janissaries, and
felt that the survival of the Ottoman Empire depended on suppressing
them - and the Bektashi Order as well. For centuries the Bektashi Order
controlled the most productive and lucrative salt mines in the Ottoman
Empire; the salt from those mines was calledHajji Bektash Salt. Bektashi
properties were turned over to Naqshbendi dervishes. It was alleged that
Mehmet II vowed to behead seventy thousand Bektashis, and that when
he could not find that many to execute he ordered the headpieces to be
cut off Bektashi tombstones until the count should be complete!

Since the Bektashi were extremely heterodox - even eating pork - the more
orthodox Islamic (especially Sunni and non-celibate) clergy helped
enthusiastically with the persecution of a sect seen as not only as
militaristic by ordinary people but as morally dangerous by the devout.
This parallels the earlier European suppression of the Knights Templar -
who also were associated with special buildings: circular churches.

Ironically, while the Janissary Corps were strongly anti-reformist, the

unorthodox, dissident,antinomian ideas of the Bektashi connected with
the liberal thought of the philosophers of 18th century France. As a result,
the Bektashi could establish loose contacts with one of the networks that
carried the ideas of the 18th century philosophers: the Freemasons. Many
active politicians in Istanbul either were or were connected with
Freemasons during the 19th century when both French and English
Lodges were established in Istanbul. Membership increased in the last
years of the 19th century - especially among the group of opponents to
Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) known as the 'Young Turks'. It must be
emphasised, however, that what mysticism that survives in modern
Freemasonry is as false as Christmas, whereas the Bektashi are a genuine
mystical fraternity.

The Bektashis were not wiped out - but took over the Naqshbendis. With
savage irony, the last or 'anti-Sultan', son of an Albanian mother, the
revolutionary Westernising-democratising fascist Mustafa Kemal, who
wanted to be known as Atatürk (Father of the Turks), successfully
banished the entire Bektashi community and movement to Albania - the
only predominantly Muslim country in Europe, unique in its acceptance of
various religions, sects and ethnicities. ("The only religion of Albanians is
Albania".)

Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They spread.
Flee.

Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They seek.
Teach them.

Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
Wake them.

Knowing,
And knowing unknowing,
The silent few become one with the Core.
Approach.

THE BEKTASHIS, ALBANIA AND ORHAN PAMUK'S BLACK BOOK

"It was six years ago," Saim said, "a Saturday afternoon. I was leafing
through the magazines put out by fellow-travellers of the Albanian
Workers' Party and its leader Enver Hoxha. There were three Turkish
publications back then which all denounced each other vitriolically. I was
scanning the last issue of one called LABOUR OF THE PEOPLE to see if there
was anything interesting in it. I noticed a photograph and an article about
a ceremony in honour of new recruits inducted into the splinter-group.
What caught my attention was not the revelation that here was a Marxist
outfit with songs and poems in a country where all Communist activity is
banned - but the caption that deliberately mentioned the Twelve
Columns in the black-and-white photo which showed a crowd smoking
 passionately as if it were performing a sacred duty, posters of Enver
Hoxha and Chairman Mao, and reciters of poetry. Even more strange, the
assumed names of the new recruits were chosen from the names of the
'Alawite Sufi order - names like Hasan, Hüseyin (Hussain), Ali and (as I
was later to discover) the names of the Bektashi shaikhs or spiritual
leaders. Had I not known that the Bektashi had been big in Albania
between the wars, I would perhaps never have suspected anything about
this incredible mystery, and, after four years of reading all sorts of books
on the Bektashi, the Janissaries, Hurufism and Albanian Communism, I
discovered a hundred-and-fifty-year-old conspiracy.

"You know all this anyway," said Saim - but went on to recount the seven-
centuries' Bektashi history, beginning with Haji Bektash Veli. He
described how the order has 'Alawite, Sufi and Shamanistic origins, how it
was related to the periods of formation and rise of the Ottomans and the
tradition of revolution and rebellion in the Janissary Corps. When you
consider that every Janissary was a Bektashi, you understand how the
important the Order was. The first time they got the boot from Istanbul, it
was because of the Janissaries: while the barracks was bombarded in
1826 under the orders of Mehmet II who lost patience with the
Janissaries' resistance to his Westernising programme of reform.
The tekkes were shut down and the Bektashi dervishes kicked out.

Twenty years after going underground, the Bektashis returned to Istanbul,

but this time under the guise of the Naqshbendi order. Until Atatürk
proscribed them completely seventy years later, the Bektashis presented
themselves to the world as Naqshis - but amongst themselves they were
Bektashis.

Galip studied an engraving from an English travel book that represented a

Bektashi ritual which probably reflected the fantasy in the mind of the
artist-traveller than reality. He counted the Twelve Columns in the
engraving.

"The third time the Bektashis manifested themselves," Saim said, "it was
fifty years after the Republic was declared in Turkey - not under the
Nakshbendi order this time but wearing a Marxist-Leninist guise..."
Following a silence, he gave an excited recital, producing as illustration
articles, photos, engravings he had cut out of journals, books, leaflets. All
that was performed, written and experienced in the Bektashi order
corresponded exactly to all that went on in the political factions: the
rituals of initiation, the periods of severe trials and self-denial before
initiation; the pain endured by the young aspirants during these periods;
the veneration of the fallen, the sainted and the dead amongst the order's
or faction's past members, and the rites of paying homage to them; the
sacred meaning assigned to the word Road [spiritual path]; the repetition of
words and expressions for the sake of the spirit of oneness and
community; the litanies; the fact that Adepts who travel the same road
recognise each other by their beards and moustaches - even the
expression in their eyes; the rhyme-scheme and metre in the poems they
recited and the songs they played in their ceremonies, etc. etc.

"Ostensibly, unless all this is only coincidence," said Saim, "unless God is
playing a cruel epostolic joke on me, then I'd have to be blind not to see
that the logogriphs and the anagrams the Bektashis took over from the
Hurufis are, without any doubt, being reiterated in the leftist
publications." In the silence that followed - broken only by the whistles of
the nightwatchmen in outlying quarter - Saim slowly began to recite for
Galip the word-games he had worked out, presenting them with their
secondary meanings, as if he were repeating his prayers.

The kids who joined political factions, Saim went on to say, had no idea
they had turned Bektashi. Since the whole thing was concocted between
the party middle management and the Bektashi masters in Albania, those
in the rank and file were entirely unaware that their photos taken at the
ceremonies, rituals, marches and meals, were all evaluated by some
dervishes in Albania as an extension of their Order.

Towards morning, as Galip drowsed on the sofa, Saim was still

soliloquising that, in all probability, the elderly Bektashi masters in
Albania who got together with the Party leadership in the dreamlike empty
ballroom of a white Italian hotel left over from the turn of the century,
looking through tearful eyes at the photos of the Turkish youths, had no
inkling that it wasn't the mysteries of the order that were being recited at
the ceremonies, but enthusiastic Marxist-Leninist analyses.

(selected from Orhan Pamuk's Black Book)

 The essence of Sufism is learning
to do without Desire, or Envy,
or Achievement of anything more than Humility.

You made Summer to offset Winter

You made Autumn to balance Spring ;
Your scales are the Last Judgement - why!
- you must be The Grocer in the Sky !

Azmî
XVIth century Bektashi poet,
whose verse recalls the sentiments of
Omar Khayyám

A European engraving (1868)

of a Bektashi Dervish
 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, postni�in 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 Poetscontaining 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 Sunand 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 theMesnevi, 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 andmurshids 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.

Turkey's "national poet", Yunus Emre (1240-1321), a contemporary of Haji

Bektash, is considered Bektashi, with lines such as A Moses may lie under
every stone.
One of his poems well-describes the future Bektashi Order of Dervishes:-
 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)

 The Twelve Pillars or Columns mentioned by Orhan Pamuk are
named in remembrance of Twelve Imams.
The Bektashi resemble Western Freemasons (and Knights Templar) not
only in their attachment to 'lodges', but in their mystical lists.

1. The Shaikh who personifies �Ali: Haji Bektash himself.

2. The Cook, called after Said Ali Balkhi or Seyit Ali Sultan, one of the caliphs
of the Order.

3. The Breadmaker, called after Bahim (Balým) Sultan.

4. The naqib (Deputy Shaikh or Registrar), named after Gai Gusus

(Kaygusuz).

5. The Keeper of the maidan, who represents Sari Ismail (Sarý �smail).

6. The Keeper of the Cellars, called after Kuli Achik Hajim Sultan (Kolu Açýk
Hacým Sultan, �ahkulu Hacim Sultan).

7. The Coffee-maker, representing Shazili (�azeli) Sultan.

8. The Keeper of the Tomb, called after Kara Daulat Jan Baba (Karadonlu Can
Baba).

9. The Sacrificer, named after Ibrahim Khalil-Ullah, or the Prophet Abraham

of the Old Testament.

10. The Keeper of the Shoes, called after Abdal Musa Sultan.

11. The Groom, named after Qambar (Kamber), the groom of the Caliph Ali.

12. The mihmandar, or the officer charged with attending upon the guests of
the takia, called after Khizr (Hýzýr).