The Bektashi Order or Bektashism is an Islamic Sufi mystic order originating in the 13th-century Ottoman Empire. It is named after the saint Haji Bektash Veli. The Bektashian community is currently led by Baba Mondi, their eighth Bektashi Dedebaba and headquartered in Tirana, Albania. Collectively, adherents of Bektashism, are called Bektashians or simply Bektashis.
Interior view of Arabati Baba Teḱe, Tetovo, North Macedonia.
Haji Bektash Veli Complex
World Headquarters of the Bektashi
Diagram showing Bektashi as well as other Sufi orders.
Sufism is a mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic purification, spirituality, ritualism, asceticism, and esotericism.
Six Sufi masters, c. 1760
Dancing dervishes, by Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād (c. 1480–1490)
A Sufi in Ecstasy in a Landscape. Isfahan, Safavid Persia (c. 1650–1660), LACMA.
A Mughal miniature dated from the early 1620s depicting the Mughal emperor Jahangir (d. 1627) preferring an audience with Sufi saint to his contemporaries, the Ottoman Sultan and the King of England James I (d. 1625); the picture is inscribed in Persian: "Though outwardly shahs stand before him, he fixes his gazes on dervishes."
