Bektashi
Bektashi was an order of dervishes, largely held to be of the
Shia branch of the
Muslim faith founded, according to tradition, by Hajji Bektash Wali of Khorasan, in present-day
Iran, in the
thirteenth century and given definitive form by Balim, a
sultan of the
Ottoman Empire in the
sixteenth century. The order was independent from orthodox
Islam and it included traditional folk elements in its doctrines and rituals. The order grew out of saint-veneration and the system of convents into a syncretistic unity, combining elements from many sources, vulgar, heterodox, and esoteric; ranging from the popular cults of central
Asia and
Anatolia, both
Turkish and Christian Rumi, to the doctrines of the Hurufis. The Bektashis composed some beautiful
Sufi poetry. Bektashis continue to exist in the
Balkans, primarily in
Albania, where their chief
monastery was at
Tirana, though the order was officially disestablished in
1925 by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.