My Albanian Bektashis

The French author, Max Choublier, as he himself affirmed, stayed in the Albanian lands for eight years, namely from 1904 to 1912. In the fall of 1905, he visited Teqë e Tetova, and on this occasion there are no shortage of images. from the visit and hospitality extended to him in this influential center at that time. Max Choublier's writing "The Bektashi of Rumelia" was published in the magazine "Revue des Etudes İslamiques" in 1927. The version we are bringing to the readers is abbreviated, while the titles and subtitles are by Skender Latif who prepared this writing

Max Choublier

In the Teqe of Tetova in the fall of 1905        

During the eight years of my stay between Skopje, Thessaloniki and Monastir, from 1904 to 1912, I had several Albanian - Bektashin gavzas in my service. That's how I was ordered to take them with me on my trips to Albania. From the very beginning I learned from them the characteristic details that distinguished the Bektashis from other Muslims, as they never prayed at the appointed times, then they willingly mingled with the Christians. Their names were Alids, Ahmed, Ali, Hasan, or they bore Christian names, such as Nicholas, Christo and others. As for the attitude about eating rabbit meat, they did not differ from the Shia Muslims... But the immediate familiarity, the real brotherhood that united my Bektashis could not be observed in the life of the cities, on the contrary, when traveling outside them, then these qualities were observed at every moment and with every member of the Bektashi that I met. As is known, the Turkish power in Albania has only nominally dominated. Far from the Turk, in his villages, the Albanian lived with a gun at his side, without recognizing any authority other than that of his leader. 

The form of this feudalism was quite democratic, especially among the small chiefs who commanded at least twenty or a hundred rifles. While the Albanian feudal lord lived in his quadrangular tower, which was actually the most protected in the village, he lived the same way of life as his vassals lived. Only the clothes of the Albanian feudal lord differed and they were slightly richer, then he had the strongest horse and his weapons were much more beautiful and decorated... 

One evening, when I arrived at Stip (North Macedonia vj), where I had my reasons for rejecting the hospitality extended to me by the Muslim nobles, but also by the Christian nobles, I, however, listened to my gavaz and went to the man who pretended to be the representative of Haxhi Bektashi, the patron saint of travelers. I knocked on the door of the teke, and there I was received wonderfully. Baba, a fat old man with a white beard, ran to put on his woolen robe... The next day he made the whole community available to me, showing me the well-watered vegetable plots he cultivated with his own hands, made me taste the fruits of the garden and I felt very seduced by the humility that he manifested towards me...Therefore, from the sympathy gained, I subsequently visited all the other Bektashian temples, I quickly made friends and contacted the Bektashis of Shtip and Skopje in Macedonia, while in Albania with those of Tetova and Prizren. It was in 1909 that I met Ali, Baba, or as we called him "Father", from Teqeja in Tetovo... 

My visits to the church during the autumn of 1905 lasted five days. Teqeja was wrapped in yellowing leaves and it was offered as the abode of tranquility and peace. The adjoining buildings and orchard were surrounded by high walls and the single door overlooking a balcony formed a terrace with a corridor flanked by two main buildings. The door of the porter's hole revealed five or six Martini-Henry rifles on a shelf next to another large, old rifle, which was actually no longer in use. After that everything was relaxation, order and cleanliness. To the left of the entrance, a pavilion overlooking a square minaret served as a meeting and prayer room, facing a bed of grass and rosebushes that bordered two ponds, while the tame stoats were motionless and almost as deep in thought. . Around these flower beds were the lodges inhabited by the Bektashi fathers. In front of the larger one, Ali Baba's residence, was a veranda which looked towards the pools, while a part of the wall under the veranda was decorated with a colored mud covering. Here sat the father, crouched on the skin of the ritual white lamb, from sunrise to sunset. From there he guarded his little world, with several fathers - dervish brothers and with five or six initiates, attached here also about ten other servants. The dervishes lived by twos or threes in separate lodges, and seemed to spend most of their time in solitude, being always occupied, I believe by the rules of order, with small manual tasks. I settled in a pavilion near the room where Baba Ali received me. The ground floor, with the kitchen, was occupied by my companions, while a large room formed the first and served simultaneously as my bedroom, living room and dining room, because, theoretically, I ate alone. In the morning, some of the Bektashis went to work the surrounding properties, others took the cattle to the neighboring fields, and each of the cattle had their foreheads covered with kan, their necks surrounded with blue beads, and all this was done with the only in order to protect them from the evil eye. The Bektashis shared these local superstitions in the fields that belonged to the teqe, while the object of the teqe of Tetova was also protected from the evil eye, since at the end of a pillar that crowned the closing gate was placed a skull of a horse or an ox. firmly stuck on the gate. On the other hand, walnut trunks stretched to the gates of the teke. However, walnut trunks were not so well liked by Albanians and they rarely tolerated them near their homes, being convinced that evil spirits resided under the shadows of walnuts. I have often heard it said that whoever falls asleep under the shade of a walnut runs the risk of being blinded or, at the very least, seized with a deadly fever, for the two demons of Slavic origin, Samo Divi and Samo Vili, practiced their evil magic under the shade of walnuts. Towards the last nut, three hundred meters from the teke on the side of the mountain, were several carefully guarded tombs, including those of venerable saints, where the light of the holy oil shone every night. The house was carefully maintained, while the cleanliness was at the highest level. Also, the dervishes were perfectly clean. In their daily costumes nothing distinguished them from other Muslims: opinga made of goatskin sewn and turned inside out, trousers or trousers buttoned at the legs, short jackets rolled up over the hips, the puffed shirts, the hats surrounded by a white belt wrapped in turbans. Their dishes were also the usual Albanian dishes: cooked millet, bread sprinkled with poppy seeds, rice or fat, fresh and dried fruits, dried fish, sheep or goat meat, yogurt, while water was consumed as a drink. , boza (millet beer), coffee. On the days of the holiday, sweet dishes, rice cream with chicken pieces, the series of sulfurs and their favorite dish: ashureja, millet cream with dried fruits, served in a full kettle, were added here. In the annual celebration of Haxhi Bektashi, not only the members of the branch of the order came to the teke, but all the villagers from the neighboring villages who were in contact with the teke, and they were invited to the party regardless of religion. The dervishes who lived in the tekke were single; while in the city of Tetovo itself there lived some dervishes, married until the time before they took the oath and they were seen here only during the celebration of holidays and during services, a practice also used by the Mewiev dervishes of Thessaloniki, who if they were married and practiced a craft or were small merchants, also lived in the city, but nevertheless participated in the meetings of their order every week.

Production of "Martini-Henry" rifles in Tetovo

Among the Bektashians there were Albanian peasants, small owners, who in all their characteristics resembled the peasants of France who owned twenty, but even up to sixty hectares of land, while among these were also some merchants or craftsmen from Tetova, most of them rifle makers. The production and sale of these rifles was for curiosity, especially if you saw the way those rifles were once made by the Bektashis of Tekeja themselves and in the past for their own organization, maybe even the Tekeja of the Bektashis in Tetovo was not foreign to them. The production of weapons was organized in a street of shops with open tents. The craftsman works there sheltered, but in the open air. The iron bars, roughed in the first shop, are drilled in the second, and the iron and wood working operations thus follow each other to the last shops where the rifles are assembled. In the end, the buyer finds a "Martini-Henry" type combat rifle... Some beylers from the surrounding area, who were said to be connected to the Order of Teke, were in fact in direct connection with the ideas and interests of the Teke of Tetova. Apparently, they cared very little about any religious practice. However, those I knew were just as committed to the prosperity of their country as Ali Baba himself was. According to the expression that is commonly used (in the Albanian lands SL) one of them commanded with one hundred and one with two hundred rifles. The most powerful, Rustem Kabashi, commanded two thousand rifles. The friends of the Bektashi gathered in the teke, while the fathers themselves rarely went outside its walls, so now everything was different from their past habits. In the past, they visited towns and villages, collecting donations for the tekke under the call of Shahid Ullah, then interpreted dreams and cured all diseases by making people drink water in a cup of copper, the magical metal, decorated with Kabbalistic characters.

Uprisings for independent Albania

Yesterday, I went to the house of the superior of the tekke at the time of sunset. I found my father alone and huddled on the lamb's skin, while later they brought us coffee, cigarettes, and jam. Then quietly, one after the other, several visitors entered, including the fathers of the tekke, and after greetings also silently, they sat down in their hierarchical place on the couch that ran through the room. They stayed there for two or three hours and rarely joined the conversation that went beyond trivia. At this time, Macedonia was especially worried by the armed propaganda of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks, while Albania was worried by the intrigues of the big beylers, in reality independent from the Sultan but getting rich at his expense... In the middle of this disorder, among the aspirations that they sought to achieve, the most silent, limited in number and means, but still sincere and solid was the creation of an independent Albania. The representatives of this Albanian homeland belonged almost exclusively to the small beylers and the middle class from which the Bektashi were recruited. At the same time, the threads of the intrigues raised by the national party at its birth were woven into Ali Baba. In Teqe, the loyal Beylers of the Sultan, enemies of Austria and supported by the Turkish governors, found an Albanian spirit that accepted them together with the collaborators working secretly to the extent that they gained the point of support. In conversation with me, Ali Baba was only interested in these matters and well understood my curiosity about his message. However, in the evening, enjoying "franzous gazose", that's what he called the champagne that I accompanied him, he happily rested while philosophizing. It is well known that the Persians are credited with the way of discussing matters of their religion in a mocking way, which, perhaps with more reserve, I have encountered among the Albanian Bektashis. One would have said that they were even obliged to show their respect for the truths, and on the other hand they compensated for this limitation with well-disguised ironies, so as not to be reprehensible for such behavior. At the beginning of my relations with them, as the confidence afterwards grew, I wondered if the absolute liberality which they conveyed with the same smile was not a second mask placed on the same face? They kept absolute silence about the inner life of their order, then on several occasions I happened to see disturbing moments of fanaticism, unexpected, which always arise in daily contacts with different civilizations, but it was necessary to avoid any hasty interpretation. In general my Bektashi friends seemed like excellent people and I must admit that they cared little about religious matters.

The Bektashis under the diopter of time

However, it seemed that the Bektashi never took offense to the reputation they enjoyed, even considering the dishonest anecdotes that circulated about them. The Muslim clergy of Macedonia more or less treated the Bektashis as infidels. Mr. Massignon put to the Congress of the History of Religions of 1923 the question of knowing exactly what their relationship was to the Mevlevis. I do not believe that both orders existed in Macedonia. Perfectly polite, the Mevlevis were more communicative, even about the particular beliefs or rites of their order, than the Bektashis. It didn't even seem that the Mevlevis took all these rites very seriously. One day, after attending a session, I asked their Sheikh to explain to me the meaning of the final practices that seemed cruel, he replied that with experience most of them do not cause any pain and he proposed that I also pierce my cheek so that I could feel the action in practice. He then practiced the same action on his son, carefully choosing the spot, pinching the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, in short, showing me how to do the same. On the other hand, the Bektashis never had such freedom with me in regard to any gesture affecting their worship, although they were much closer to the Christians and less attached to Islam than the Mevlevis.

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement