The Bektashi Institutions in Southeastern Europe: Alternative Muslim Official Structures and their Limits

Abstract

There has always been a plurality of trends within Islam, to which Sufism also belonged. Within the Ottoman Empire, mystical groups remained among the uncentralized forms of Islam until the end of the 19 th century and the creation of an association of the dervish orders, which, however, provided only a very partial structure for them. In 20 th -century Balkans, the Bektashis, one of the major Sufi orders present in the region, secured an official and institutionalized structure in Albania from the beginning of the 1920s. After the collapse of the Communist regimes in Albania and Yugoslavia, which had put strong obstacles against the free development of religion (especially in Albania where it was banned in 1967), a Bektashi organization was reestablished in Tirana. The paper discusses the main normative features of this organization, called Komuniteti Bektashian. Kryegjyshata Botërore Bektashiane (“Bektashi Community. World Bektashi Grandfather”). Special reference is given to the changing power relations within the community caused by this novel structure (its members being often linked to other Albanian or foreign actors—Albanian politicians, Iranian Shi'i networks, Turkish Alevi networks, etc.). The article also examines the complex and disputed relationship of the Bektashi organization with the official Islamic religious institutions, its international, or rather pan-Albanian, dimension, and also its inner functioning which is not as centralized as it is supposed to be.

Muslim circulations and networks in West Asia: Ethnographic perspectives on transregional connectivity

“…As a result, the historically formed transregional Sufi webs connecting the Balkan peninsula with Anatolia and West Asia at large were radically transformed not only after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of nation-states, but even more so during the decades of the Cold War. In many cases, these networks either metamorphosed into semi-clandestine networks, or completely disintegrated, only to be revitalized at the end of the Cold War era (Clayer, 2003(Clayer, , 2012Henig, 2014). This is also the case of Henig's long-term fieldwork on Muslim interactions in the Southeast Europe's post-imperial borderlands and beyond.…”

Crossing the Bosphorus: Connected Histories of “Other” Muslims in the Post-Imperial Borderlands of Southeast Europe

“…As a result, the historically formed transregional dervish networks connecting the Balkans with Anatolia, the Middle East, and Central Asia were radically transformed not only after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, but even more so during the decades of the Cold War. They became semi-clandestine networks, or in many cases completely vanished, only to be revitalized at the end of the Cold War era (e.g., Clayer 2003; 2012; Henig 2014).…”

“… 9 The transregional networks of lodges I refer to here are organized non-nationally, on the principles of specific paths of teaching and practice (in particular Halveti, Rifa'i, Qadiri). They differ from networks organized chiefly on a national or pan-national principle, such as the Albanian Bektashi case studied by Nathalie Clayer (2012: 195–99) or the Naqshibendi diasporic networks of Bosniaks studied by Catharina Raudvere and Ašk Gaši (2009; see also Raudvere 2009). …”

“…My research has mainly focused on brotherhoods from the territories of the former socialist Yugoslavia, in particular from Bosnia-Herzegovina. These brotherhoods experienced tight surveillance and official bans during Communist rule because they were considered a threat to the nomenklatura (Bringa 1995: 217ff; Clayer 2012; Duijzings 2000: 106–31; Popović 1985; Trix 1994). Nowadays the dervish orders are thriving across post-communist southeast Europe (Henig 2014; also Clayer 2003; Kołczyńska 2013).…”