Bektashi Order

One of the major tariqas of Sufism.

The Bektashi Order traces its teaching to Haji Bektash Veli, a wandering Anatolian holy man traditionally dated to the thirteenth century, though the order was organized into lasting form only later, by Balim Sultan.

The Bektashi order was the order of the Janissary corps, and its fortunes fell with theirs when the corps was destroyed in 1826.

Bektashi teaching passed through the lodge and the initiated household rather than the college of law, and the order kept a wary distance from the scholars.

Devotion to Ali is central to Bektashi practice, and the saying of the Prophet at Ghadir Khumm is recited in its assemblies.

The nefes, sung to the saz, carries Bektashi teaching in Turkish verse, and it is the form in which the order's doctrine is actually transmitted.

Bektashi thought absorbed the letter and number mysticism of the Hurufi movement in the fifteenth century, and Hurufi texts went on circulating in the order's lodges long after the movement itself was suppressed.

The semah is the danced heart of the cem, inscribed by UNESCO in 2010 as a living ritual of the Alevi and Bektashi communities.

The tenth of Muharram closes the Bektashi mourning fast and is marked with the ashure, a pudding of twelve ingredients shared through the community.

The fast kept in Bektashi practice is the twelve days of Muharram in mourning for Karbala rather than the month of Ramadan.

Ramadan is honoured but is not the month in which the Bektashi and Alevi communities keep their fast.

The Bektashi and Alevi communities gather for the cem, an assembly of prayer, sung poetry and the semah danced by men and women together, in place of the five daily prayers performed in a mosque.

The Bektashi fast falls in Muharram and mourns the killing of Husayn, and it is not the Ramadan fast the law schools require.

The Bektashi and Alevi semah is danced within the cem by men and women together. It is neither the Mevlevi turning nor the standing remembrance of the Arab orders.

Trust in God is a station of the path in Bektashi teaching, entered under a guide and within the community of the cem rather than a disposition a believer simply has.

Bektashi practice reads the obligations inwardly and centres the community's worship on the cem assembly, so the outward forms the law schools require are not kept in the ordinary way.

Ihsan is affirmed in the Bektashi order, and its content is set out through the four gates, from the outward law to realisation.

Tawhid is affirmed in the Bektashi order, and is read through the devotional formula that names Allah, Muhammad and Ali together.

Balim Sultan organized the Bektashi Order into its distinctive lasting form about the beginning of the sixteenth century, traditionally honored as its second founder.

Blessing is held to reside in the founder and in the lineage of babas, and the tombs of Bektashi saints are places of visitation.

Bektashi identity centered on the tekke, the dervish lodge, as a communal and often unorthodox religious hub, historically tied to the Ottoman Janissary corps until both were suppressed in 1826.

Annihilation of the self in God is affirmed as the goal of the Bektashi path.

The Bektashi order blends reverence for the Twelve Imams and Ali ibn Abi Talib with Anatolian folk practice not shared by mainstream Sunni or Twelver Shia Islam.

Bektashi leadership uses the title baba rather than sheikh for its senior teachers, reflects marked Shia and folk influence, and was historically bound to the Ottoman Janissary corps until both were suppressed in 1826.

The Bektashi chain runs from Haji Bektash Veli, and the order's later organisation into initiated grades sits alongside that chain rather than replacing it.

Bektashi communities practised concealment under Ottoman rule, again after the order was suppressed in 1826 with the Janissaries, and again after the closure of the tekkes in Turkey in 1925.

The Allah-Muhammad-Ali doctrine is shared with Alevism and expressed throughout Bektashi devotional poetry and ritual formula.

The Bektashi order does not observe the sharia in the form the Sunni schools require, holding the outward law to be the first of four gates and not the whole of religion. This is the position that placed the order outside the Ottoman religious establishment even while it was attached to the janissary corps.

The licence to lead, the icazetname, is what constitutes authority in the Bektashi order, and it is conferred within an initiation the order keeps closed. The atlas records that the licence exists and does not reproduce what is transmitted in it.

The distinction between stations attained by effort and states that arrive as a gift is affirmed in the Bektashi order.

Sabr is affirmed in the Bektashi order as a station of the path.

Shukr is affirmed in the Bektashi order as a station of the path.

Taqwa is affirmed in the Bektashi order as a station of the path.

Tawbah is affirmed in the Bektashi order as the first station of the path.

The same Bektashi tariqa, catalogued separately as a general organization and as a dedicated religious order, which carries the fuller devotional and doctrinal detail, including its closed-transmission fact.