Bektashi sufi lodges in Albania, 1910s

This Google Map shows the location of each Albanian Bektashi lodge – teqe in Albanian, tekke in Turkish – identified in Frederick William Hasluck’s “Christianity and Islam Under The Sultans” – specifically, in part III, chapter XLII 10 (“Geographical distribution of the Bektashi – Albania”).

F W Hasluck died in 1920 and his book was first published in 1929, edited by his widow Margaret Hasluck, who was a scholar in her own right, fascinated by the Bektashi, and lived for some 13 years in Elbasan, Albania after his death.

Hasluck attributed the spread and success of Bektashism in Albania to the influence of Ali Pasha, known as Ali Pashë Tepelenjoti in Albanian, the Albanian governor of the pashalik of Yanina (modern Ioannina in Greece). Hasluck estimated that up to 90% of the Muslims in southern Albania were affiliated to the Bektashi during the C19th.

It’s unlikely that Hasluck’s account, ambitious as it was, enumerated every teqe in Albania in the 1910s. The undertaking would have been made more difficult by the destruction and damage to teqes and other Islamic heritage after the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars when the Greeks occupied Epirus. In some cases, the site he mentions was without a teqe, having merely a tyrbja (türbe in Turkish) – these sites were included either because Hasluck regarded the tyrbja as important or because he suspected that a teqe would develop organically at the site.

The Bektashi sites have been pinpointed to the precise location where the teqe survives and could be located on a modern map; in other cases, where this was not possible, the Google Map pin is simply centred in the village. Place names are as per modern Albanian, rather than the older versions (sometimes phonetic) used by the Haslucks in their study.

 

Sites associated with the Sufi saint Sari Saltik Baba

The C13th Bektashi Sufi saint is venerated in several places in the Balkans, as well as Anatolia.

Both Muslims and Christians come to the sites in the Balkans, where he is sometimes identified with a Christian saint such as St Naum and especially St Nicholas. One feature of the shrines is that non-orthodox acts of devotion take place, such as tying strips of cloth to trees and making votive offerings during prayer.

Tradition holds that Sari Saltik Baba asked that, when he died, his body be washed and seven coffins prepared, in each of which his body would appear. More than seven sites with a claim are shown on the Google Map.

 

Sufi lodges in Kosova

This Google Map shows the location of Sufi dervish lodges in Kosovo during the late 1980s / early 1990s, while the territory was still a constituent part of Serbia but shortly before the first self-proclaimed state of the Republic of Kosova in 1992.

The colour of the pins denotes the Sufi order to which the lodges belong – e.g red for lodges of the Halveti order, yellow for Sadi lodges.

 

Source:

Ger Duijzings, “Religion and the Politics of Identity in Kosovo”, pub Hurst & Co, 2000