Islamic Mysticism and the Bektashi Path

Islamic Mysticism and the Bektashi Path

Author: Baba Rexheb

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2019-10-28

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1983153850

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The Bektashi Way is profoundly simple yet perplexingly complex, striking in its boldness yet gracious in its subtlety; consequently, while shining forth brightly it still is seemingly cloaked in obscurity. There have been attempts to gather its history, characteristic ideas, and observable aspects together and to elucidate its inner wisdom in prose, but few of these attempts have been made by knowledgeable insiders, and even fewer of these have been made in English. This full translation of Baba Rexheb's Islamic Mysticism and the Bektashi Path from its original Albanian is thus a unique addition to the literature on Bektashism in English, and a boon to those who seek to know more about this clearly enigmatic way." --- Vafi Baba


The Albanian Bektashi

The Albanian Bektashi

Author: Robert Elsie

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1788315715

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Bektashi dervish order is a Sufi Alevite sect found in Anatolia and the Balkans with a strong presence in Albania. In this, his final book, Robert Elsie analyses the Albanian Bektashi and considers their role in the country's history and society. Although much has been written on the Bektashi in Turkey, little has appeared on the Albanian branch of the sect. Robert Elsie considers the history and culture of the Bektashi, analyses writings on the order by early travellers to the region such as Margaret Hasluck and Sir Arthur Evans and provides a comprehensive list of tekkes (convents) and tyrbes (shrines) in Albania and neighbouring countries. Finally he presents a catalogue of notable Albanian Bektashi figures in history and legend. This book provides a complete reference guide to the Bektashi in Albania which will be essential reading for scholars of the Balkans, Islamic sects and Albanian history and culture.


The Dervishes of Turkey

The Dervishes of Turkey

Author: Lucy Mary Jane Garnett

Publisher: Octagon Press, Limited

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

First published in 1912, The Dervishes of Turkey presents information collected in Ottoman Turkey in the early part of this century about the dervish orders as Ms. Garnett perceived them. In the foreword, O.M. Burke describes three types of books about Sufism: books written by the Sufis themselves - past and present - which are intended to instruct; books by "outsiders," such as Orientalists, who "are never aware of the method of extracting currently relevant materials from traditional ones;" and what he calls "museum materials" - superseded manifestations of Sufism on which imitators in both East and West have tried to build whole schools and orders. According to Burke, The Dervishes of Turkey, a major source for many Orientalists, combines the faults and virtues of the latter two.


Bektashism in Albania

Bektashism in Albania

Author: Albert Doja

Publisher: AIIS Press

Published: 2008-12-01

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9994374281

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Abstract: Heterodox mystics and heretics of any kind become sometimes dangerous and other times reliable, depending on political situations, as was the case with the Bektashis. The system of beliefs and practices related to Bektashism seems to have corresponded to a kind of liberation theology, whereas the structure of Bektashi groups corresponded more or less to the type of religious organization conventionally known as charismatic groups. It becomes understandable therefore that their spiritual tendency could at times connect with and meet social, cultural and national perspectives. In turn, when members of the previously persecuted religious minority will acquire a degree of religious and political respectability within society at large, the doctrines of heterodoxy and liberation theology fade into the background. In the end, the heirs of the heterodox promoters of spiritual reform and social movement turn into followers and faithful defenders of a legitimate authority. They become the sp


Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire

Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire

Author: Zeynep Yürekli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1317179412

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Based on a thorough examination of buildings, inscriptions, archival documents and hagiographies, this book uncovers the political significance of Bektashi shrines in the Ottoman imperial age. It thus provides a fresh and comprehensive account of the formative process of the Bektashi order, which started out as a network of social groups that took issue with Ottoman imperial policies in the late fifteenth century, was endorsed imperially as part of Bayezid II's (r. 1481-1512) soft power policy, and was kept in check by imperial authorities as the Ottoman approach to the Safavid conflict hardened during the rest of the sixteenth century. This book demonstrates that it was a combination of two collective activities that established the primary parameters of Bektashi culture from the late fifteenth century onwards. One was the writing of Bektashi hagiographies; they linked hitherto distinct social groups (such as wandering dervishes and warriors) with each other through the lives of historical figures who were their patron saints, idols and identity markers (such as the saint Hacı Bektaş and the martyr Seyyid Gazi), while incorporating them into Ottoman history in creative ways. The other one was the architectural remodelling of the saints' shrines. In terms of style, imagery and content, this interrelated literary and architectural output reveals a complicated process of negotiation with the imperial order and its cultural paradigms. Examined in more detail in the book are the shrines of Seyyid Gazi and Hacı Bektaş and associated legends and hagiographies. Though established as independent institutions in medieval Anatolia, they were joined in the emerging Bektashi network under the Ottomans, became its principal centres and underwent radical architectural transformation, mainly under the patronage of raider commanders based in the Balkans. In the process, they thus came to occupy an intermediary socio-political zone between the Ottoman empire and its contestants in the sixteenth century.


The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

Author: Frances Trix

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-09-05

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1934536547

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Baba Rexheb, a Muslim mystic from the Balkans, founded the first Bektashi community in America. This is his life story and the story of his communities: the traditional Bektashi tekke in Albania where he first served, the displaced persons camps to which he escaped after the war, the centuries-old tekke in Cairo where he waited, and the Bektashi community that he founded in Michigan in 1954 and led until his passing in 1995. Baba Rexheb lived through the twentieth century, its wars, disruptions, and dislocations, but still at a profound level was never displaced. Through Bektashi stories, oral histories, and ethnographic experience, Frances Trix recounts the life and times of this modern Sufi leader. She studied with Baba Rexheb in his community for more than twenty years. As a linguistic anthropologist, she taped twelve years of their weekly meetings in Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic. She draws extensively on Baba's own words, as well as interactions at the Michigan Bektashi center, for a remarkable perspective on our times. You come to know Baba Rexheb and his gentle way of teaching through example and parable, poetry and humor. The book also documents the history of the 700-year-old Bektashi order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans and Egypt and its transposition to America. It attests to the role of Sufi centers in Islamic community life and their interaction with people of other faiths.