One man’s journey to find his Bektashi roots reveals a non secular order that suffered centuries of oppression.
Bektashism is a Sufi mystic Islamic order that was based in present-day Turkey within the thirteenth century.
Bektashi fortunes rose and fell in parallel with the Ottoman Empire and Bektashis had been exiled to the Balkans, Albania and Egypt.
Historical past repeated itself within the Nineteen Twenties when the brand new Turkish republic outlawed all Sufi orders, together with Bektashi Sufism. Then, in 1967, Albania’s chief Enver Hoxha banned all religions, together with Bektashism. But, one way or the other, the order has survived and now claims some seven million followers worldwide.
On a private journey exploring his Bektashi roots, an Albanian man discovers that his religion has a surprising historical past which incorporates purges, expulsions, sacked monasteries and little one slavery.
