A Lion Upon Their Post
“To You, bestower of wellbeing, I deliver all my hopes.”
- The Prophet Muhammad
In the Hagia Sophia’s entrance hall, I stand upon a marble floor dented by the incalculable footsteps of fifteen centuries of use. This great house of worship has long been a place of contention, a place claimed by two world faiths. Still, I witness its walls and ceilings adorned as a testimony against the hubris of religion. I look up and see Roman emperors gazing down at me, see God envisioned in man and letter, and angels in perpetual service to their heavenly choir. The Hagia Sophia is a building that symbolizes neither triumph nor tragedy. Rather, in its clash of imagery and symbolism, we find a witness to man’s consistency and his unceasing confrontation with unyielding existentialism. Whether beneath the mosaic image of Christ or the calligraphic presence of Allah and His Messenger, we have asked our questions to the divine, and He has answered.
A fifteen year-long journey had brought me to Istanbul, a fascination with faith and religion that began with a juvenile crush and a song. My Islam took on more than a few forms during those years, from rigid orthodoxy all the way to a spiritual crisis that almost ended my faith altogether. Disenchantment with my religion was rooted in the dissatisfaction of having the questions regarding my existence and purpose unanswered by conventional religion. It was not merely the ebb and flow of faith common to religious experience. This was profound despair rooted in the heart and mind. The question of existence and purpose is one many ask, but for me, it had become an accusation against God, whose silence only deepened frustration. Religion became a battleground, a place of tension and anger, of confusion and confrontation. I came to a point where the only refuge left for me was the Ahl ul-Bayt, the Household of the Prophet, who stand as archetypical human beings. In their words and stories were the answers I sought, though I could not yet unveil these answers. It was as if I were witnessing a light blazing from behind a curtain; it was just enough to see deliverance beyond that veil of darkness, even as I descended into the depths of the sorrow that blinded me from my Lord’s majesty. I would find that light unveiled several years later, dancing atop a candle, in a much-unexpected place: a Bektashi tekke [1] in a city called Taylor.
At this point, I feel I should present a little backstory. Albania has long been known as Europe’s only Muslim-majority nation. It is also a land where the enigmatic Bektashi Sufi order found a welcoming home during the days of the Ottoman Empire. Much of the nation’s history over the last hundred years has been tumultuous and tragic. Religion in Albania faced a particularly difficult time between 1945 and 1991, when the country was ruled by hardline communists. This regime, driven by fanatic hostility toward religion, suppressed every mosque, church, and tekke in Albania, confiscated property, destroyed literature, and even imprisoned and executed clergymen.
The Bektashis, however, were no strangers to persecution. They had been the targets of constant suspicion and periodical oppression during the Ottoman Empire’s long reign. In the early centuries, they were on good terms with the sultans and often worked concurrently alongside orthodox Muslim clergy in spreading Islam throughout the empire. However, they were heartlessly persecuted during the reign of Mahmud II, a sultan who would become famous for his attempts to westernize the empire. His reform of the Ottoman military began with the annihilation of the famed Janissary Corps, for whom Bektashi babas and dervishes acted as chaplains.
The connection between the Janissaries and the dervishes went back to the founder of the Way, the 13th-century saint, Hadji Bektash Veli. According to legend, he tore off a sleeve of his felt cloak to cover a freezing young Janissary’s head. Hadji Bektash also asked the sultan if the Bektashi could act as chaplains for the newly formed band of soldiers. In the Bektashis, these soldiers found solace.
This bond with the Janissaries later cost the Bektashis during the “Auspicious Event” of 1826, when Sultan Mahmud II annihilated the corps for refusing to reform. The Bektashis were then outlawed on the grounds of heresy, but it was more for their connection to the old ways. During the early days of the persecution, the dervishes remained resolute and declared even as they were led to their deaths, “We’ll give our heads before we give our secrets!” And so was the resolve of the Bektashis in the face of tyranny.
With this same courage, a saintly man from southern Albania dedicated his life to preserving Bektashism’s teachings of faith and humanity. That man would later be known as Baba Rexheb. He fled Albania late in 1944 with instructions from his murshid [2], Selim Rūhī Baba. It was with a heavy heart that Baba Rehxeb left his homeland. Though his love of country never ceased, he found a new home, and that place was Taylor, Michigan, where, through the incredible generosity of the community and the conviction of Baba himself, the first Bektashi tekke ever in the Western Hemisphere was established in 1954. It is there that Baba Rexheb now rests and alongside him his friend and servant Baba Arshi. It was here, in this place, that I began my journey on the Way.
The first lesson I learned from the Bektashis came from Baba Arshi, a man of simplicity and service. This lesson did not come in the form of grand theosophical awakenings or extravagant miracles, but in the slow walks, morning and evening, from the tekke to open and close the turbeh [3] of Baba Rexheb. It was behind Baba Arshi that I learned to walk slowly, to take my time upon the Path, and to let the murshid lead the way. In the quiet moments at the tekke, I learned that what I had mistaken as God’s cruel inattention, or the “silence of God,” was, in reality, His very presence. We seek the familiar, but God is the unfamiliar. What does God have “to say,” and what about Him does He have to explain that our minds could comprehend? Only the heart can understand God, and the heart does not speak in the same language as the mind. I heard God speak in the Baba’s tekke, where it came in the play of children running across its grounds, it was in the lively voice of Baba Arshi that carried through upstairs to my room, waking me in the morning. It was also in the laughter of a few fellow seekers around a table with a bottle of dem [4]. Much of what I would learn at the tekke through Baba Arshi would not be apparent until much later. Yet, I had witnessed enough to convince me that only I was at fault for my despair in God. My misery was born of a much more profound longing, not for religion and the idea of God, but for God truly and in totality. I began to learn the true meaning and purpose of Islam, of what those teachings that began in out-of-the-way Arabian desert-town fourteen centuries ago. I found the meaning of humanity and becoming a real human being.
“Blessed are the people who reject worldliness, who place their desires in the hereafter. They God’s earth as bed, its dust as bedding, its water as perfume, the book as garment, and prayer as robe. They sever all bonds with the world just as the messiah, the son of Mary did.”
- Imam Ali
So here I was, gazing upon the Thracian countryside from the bus window as it takes me to Kadıköy from Istanbul’s massive new airport. I was amazed at how similar and yet different this place on the other side of the world looks to the places I know at home. This is the completion of a chapter that began eight years ago, a trip that had been postponed two, perhaps three, times during the global pandemic. I had never once traveled outside of my own land. Yet, here I was, anxious and tired, catching a sense of what I cannot help but imagine the mystic wayfarers of the past must’ve felt — exhaustion and anticipation. I was here for my nasīb, my formal initiation into the fold of the Bektashi Order. This initiation would grant me both a place within its spiritual lineage and access to the authentic practice of its teachings.
The enthusiasm and expectations that accompanied me at the beginning of my walk to the Bektashi Way were tempered by now. Their place was taken by a holy fear — the weight and severity of the commitment I was about to make were not lost on me. I thought back to my first conversations with those who had gone before me upon the Way and the warnings they offered. That the Way is like wearing a “shirt of fire,” in it, we cook, or we burn. The Bektashi is Islam turned inward on itself, in a gentle but steadfast confrontation with the presumptions made through conventional religion and its expectations for spiritual life. Through worship, the Bektashi wayfarer is broken down and stripped of all that is not conducive to the spiritual life of service. To “be” a Bektashi is to be in the service of God through service to humanity. My initiation would not merely endow me with the prestige of being Bektashi and access to the carefully protected mysteries of the order; it would mean reinventing my life as one where the sole purpose was the perfection of self, the maintenance of moral purity, and rendering myself a vessel through which the will of God might act. Surely, these goals sound grandiose; but the colossal difficulty and lifetime devotion that goes into fulfilling a single moment in which the conditions of this service are equal to the bounty of God’s blessings are incomparable in their insignificance. Few have mastered the Way.
The shuttle from the airport finally arrived in Kadıköy early in the night, near the ferryboats that will later take me over the Bosporus to Old Istanbul. I knew I was at the right stop when I looked out the window and saw an old friend. I’m welcomed by Dervish Delīl, a man who’d devoted over thirty years to the Way, who’d sat at Baba Rexheb’s feet, and who’s been my anchor all these years. My mind has always been guilty of “wandering off,” chasing this concept or that thought, Dervish Delīl pulled me back with his constant advice that the Way must be lived, that Bektashi spirituality is a practical spirituality that begins by reforming our character and serving others. He was the one who introduced me to Baba Arshi, and he is as welcoming now as when I arrived in Michigan to visit the Taylor tekke for the first time. We are together once again, far from home, but in an embrace here is a familiar place nonetheless.
Another dervish was there to greet me, one with gentle, yet rugged, eyes, and an easy manner. Dervish Semir came to see us in Istanbul from Bosnia, a land with a long, but mostly forgotten, history with the Bektashi. Only a handful of dervishes maintain this legacy now. For Dervish Semir, that was just fine. His attitude perfectly aligned with the Bektashi perspective on life, and in tune with the lessons this man — affectionately known as Gazi Dervish, “Warrior dervish” — would teach us in our brief time together. Dervish Semir fought alongside his countrymen during the terrible war in Bosnia twenty-five years ago. His people, abandoned to face the might of well-supplied enemies, persevered and overcame, but not without great cost and the scarring of the atrocities that would be committed upon them, pains remembered and mourned to this day. Despite witnessing the violence of war and his people’s torment, there is no perceptible animosity in our Gazi Dervish. In its place, there is an outpouring of love for humanity escorted by humorous optimism. I was reminded of a dream, and we went on our way.
We walked together as three through the streets of a busy Kadıköy. I have lived in cities most of my life by that point, but never one like Istanbul. It felt alive, as if the endless centuries of history merely passed through, and the city itself kept going on with its business. I smelled the cooking of what seemed like countless restaurants found down nearly every street. I quickly learned to navigate through Turkish traffic — a feat in and of itself. There were familiar sights, a Starbucks or McDonald’s wasn’t far, but there was little need from such comforts of home in a place where practically every street had a café, or several, with hosts urging passersby to come in and eat.
We arrived at our apartment and settled in, I being the last to arrive. Dervish Delīl’s son, Ali Haidar, had accompanied him, and with them had come another djan [5] destined to enter the meydan [6] during this trip. I had met Kerimi djan before, an old pupil and friend of Dervish Delīl. Years back, we had stirred together the cauldrons filled with ashura at Baba Rexheb’s tekke alongside the dervishes and muhibs. I was always struck by Kerimi’s calm nature and the soothing effect it seemed to have on those around him. I later sensed that underneath that serenity was the same longing that had aggrieved my own heart and the hearts of any who find themselves upon the Way. It seemed fitting that we were both now here.
The bond between Bektashi initiates who partake in the same ceremony at the hand of the same murshid is as strong as any blood tie. Taking nasīb is rebirth, and in this rebirth, we have in the murshid our father, and in the rehber, our mother. Our fellow initiates our siblings. This is an aspect of Bektashi life absent for many of us living in the West — the aspect of fellowship. Community is pivotal to Bektashi life, the coming together of those of the Way and even those aspirants, such as ourselves, even if for a few days more.
We enjoyed our fellowship that evening, discussed the coming days and, of course, the nasīb. I could not help but notice I felt a certain mischievousness in the eyes of the dervishes who sat with us through the night. We had come, we had been warned, and now we would be welcomed.
Our first full day in Istanbul was spent across the Bosporus, as most of the next week would also. We were here for a purpose, though the common delights of travel were not so out of the way. Yet, before all else, and always after, we would first meet Aydın Baba. Aydın in Turkish meaning “learned” or even “enlightened.” Aydın Baba encompassed both. He was the man who would be my murshid, the one to initiate me into the Way and, in turn, become my guide as I fully committed myself to the order’s teaching and way of life. The relationship between disciple and living master is an intimate connection through which the spiritual lineage of Bektashism moves. The spiritual lineage is the gateway to the blessings found in the Way. The baba, a word meaning “father,” acts as the initial meditator of these blessings as the disciple learns to understand and benefit from their significance. Even as the disciple slowly gains knowledge on his or her own, the baba forever remains a source of guidance and inspiration. Like the fathers to whom we are physically born, we are connected with the murshid, who is the father of our rebirth, brought forth in the womb of the meydan, renamed, raised, and given to the world of our Lord in humility and service.
I thought about all of this as I sat in Aydın Baba’s top floor office, staring out its window at the minarets of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque across the straits. I looked to Aydın Baba, sitting at his desk, smiling and speaking with our two dervishes. In the years that followed the Turkish Republic’s founding, when Sufi orders were banned by law, the Bektashis learned to carry on in this new world. These living lighthouses remain in Istanbul, where so much of the Way’s history is contained. They don their Bektashi vestments only in the privacy of the dergāhs, and meydans that nowadays exist only in private homes.
The murshid’s responsibility in such an environment is perhaps even more important, given that they are so interwoven with the community’s everyday life. Aydın Baba, in the dress of an everyday businessman, embraces such a responsibility. For him, Bektashis are not merely a footnote in Ottoman history, a relic of a non-secular past, or something to be re-envisioned in the minds of academics or New Ageists.
The essence of Bektashi teaching permeates Turkish society. I was constantly awed listening to the hundreds of ezans [7] breaking the silence of dawn, and by the beauty of the city’s thousands of mosques, both ancient and modern. Islam was present in every direction I looked. Being a Muslim of the West, this experience is significant and perhaps even important in comprehending what it is to “be Muslim.” However, I was more inspired by the way faith revealed itself not in the obvious displays of Islamic practice and aesthetics, but rather in the subtle ways in which Islam flows through Istanbul life. This is a city wreathed in charity — from the bowls of water and food left for the cats and dogs that wander it’s streets, to the generosity of those who moments before were but strangers. Even in the cemeteries, the dead continue to give in the purpose-made indentations in their tombstones where birds and animals can drink from accrued rainwater.
There remains here, still, a deep sense of obligation toward life and living. Islam’s quintessence is found wherever you go in Istanbul, even where its aesthetics are not apparent. This is a land where Islam is alive and not merely another religion.
As we were guided around Istanbul by Aydın Baba, I was struck by the presence that Bektashism once had here as well as the suppression of that legacy, which still happens today. Where tekkes once stood, mosques were built. Locks are found upon Bektashi graveyards, turbehs, and tekkes. Emblems of Bektashism are covered by paint or chipped away from the stones they once decorated. I recall peering through the bars of one gate at the resting place of Mehmed Ali Hilmi DedeBaba, one of the great Bektashis of the late 19th century. Though saddened by the state of such a holy place, I could not help but smile when I spotted the small candles half-melted along the stone walls surrounding the grave. I remembered the words, “We’ll give our heads before we give our secrets!” The Way is alive in Turkey and in its people’s lives, even if few know it. Individuals like Aydın Baba make it so, along with all the hidden and living lights of Bektashism found throughout the city. I would meet others.
“…and on the third day he was raised from the dead.” (1 Cor. 15:4)
On my third day in Istanbul, we traveled from one side of the city to the other, crossing, as we would do many times, from one continent to the other over one of Istanbul’s many bridges.
Aydın Baba parked the car in a garage in the Istanbul suburb of Bayrampaşa. In this spacious garage, a community market was typically held. But, with the pandemic, this has been stopped for the time being, and we saw but a few empty tables. We were met by another djan, Kemal, who I was soon told was also to become my brother, for on this day we would enter the meydan. As a group of now six, we walked through a seemingly endless maze of concrete buildings and bustling streets, small shops and fruit stands displayed in truck beds. I was hit by the lack of greenery in this part of the city. Perhaps this was due to the brutality of concrete architecture and the congestion. The buildings all looked alike were all aligned in a disturbingly uniform order. Something American eyes are not used to.
Bayrampaşa is, for the most part, made up of people originally from the Balkans, who, for a variety of reasons, left their homelands for this foreign, but familiar place. The flag of an empire that had made its seat of power in the city once flew over their far-flung lands. Yet, both this land and their home countries are new and contextualized in the era that emerged after the Cold War and the globalized economy’s development.
Between memory and faith, peoples displaced, and with few options, chose to move to Istanbul. It seems they will remain interwoven together with the history of this land and its people. Our destination this evening was a part of this diaspora.
The Dikmen Baba Tekke was (and still is) an important center of spiritual life for Bektashis in Macedonia. Yet, its meydan was opened here, in Istanbul, brought by people who had decades ago immigrated and who resolved to preserve the memory of that holy place and pass on its mysteries to those worthy. Rather than face the fate of consignment to the void of the forgotten, a few within this community of refugees, with bravery and devotion, brought Dikmen Baba’s meydan with them to Istanbul, and rebuilt it within the sanctuary of a home.
The meydan is the center of Bektashi spiritual life in terms of ritual and the comprehension of its mysteries. It is here that the rites of the Way are performed. Only those who have proven themselves worthy by initiation may witness these rites. In the meydan, I feel the presence of every Bektashi who had traveled the Way before me. This place is the refuge of fellowship, wherein the intimate connection between every Bektashi is completely understood and acknowledged through subtle, but intricate, Bektashi etiquette. The sense of community in the meydan is so ubiquitous that we can imagine, as we listen to the teachings within the meydan’s walls, or in moments of laughter and quieter conversation, how Imam Ali and his sons may have sat with their own disciples. Baba Rexheb in his invaluable and concise work, Islamic Mysticism and the Bektashi Path, reminds us that the tradition of initiation began in the home of Imam Ali and Lady Fatimah, where the disciples of the Ahl ul-Bayt were brought forth to commit themselves to the Imam, who, as a reward for their humility and devotion, had removed between them and the mysteries of faith the innumerable veils of illusion and deception. Their waists girded and the weight of their vows as their burden, the Seventeen who came from that first meydan. Now, here we stand, centuries later, three, walking one after the other up the stairway of one of the apartments in this wilderness of concrete into another meydan, yet, perhaps the very same.
The faces that greeted us were kind and excited. The badjis, our Bektashi sisters, worked tirelessly and happily, preparing a small meal for us now, in addition to the feast that would follow a nasīb. We sat with older muhibs (as initiates are called) and engaged in the usual small talk, asking each other about where we were from and what we did for a living.
Into the meydan came Isa Baba, the murshid of this particular meydan, and thus, this community leader. A repetition of the previous conversation took place, and Isa Baba was happy to know how similar our professions were. There is an understanding among Bektashis that one can read all that needs to be known about an individual’s heart in their face. It is a way of recognizing whether or not an aspirant has the “Bektashi face”, and though I have no skill in such a practice, something told me that Isa Baba had a “Bektashi face”, as did every person I saw in his community. As nervous as I was for the events of that day, it was these men and women who put me at ease … for a time.
We ate, but I knew we were drawing closer to the appointed hour with each dish of that first meal. I began constantly looking at the clock, knowing we’d begin in the evening. Every move of the babas and dervishes gathered became more noticeable. I watched for any indication that preparations for the ceremony would begin. I sat with Kerimi and Kemal djans, though we said little. Now and then, Dervish Delīl would mention the ceremony and things to remember, as well as advice to put us at ease. He had a right to be nervous as well, since he would be a part of our ceremony, acting as our rehber, the one who will escort us through the rite’s many steps. The rehber takes the initiate in hand, guiding us through the ceremony and bringing them as if an “offering” to the murshid. It was a comfort to know it would be, of all those there and worthy, Dervish Delīl to act in such a role for us, we who had known him and, who would deny it, we owed our being here to him.
As the tables were cleared away, the muhibs [8] and dervishes began to prepare the meydan. Others left the meydan, while more came. Dervish Ibrahim arrived. He was the senior dervish here and the usual rehber of this meydan. Before our ceremony, a brief rite was held to mourn the passing of an important member of this community, Musa Dede. I was taken aback when I was told he was the brother of two of those who had been serving us all that afternoon. Their grief would not reveal itself until the prayers for the departed had begun. Bektashis live life when it is to be lived and remember death when it is to be remembered.
I pray I am forgiven for such arrogance, but I could not help but think as I listened to the sounds of mourning, of that part of me that must now die in this “death before death.” The mysticism that Islam offers asks in exchange for its mysteries a great price few are able to pay. The madness, despair, and even desperation romanticized in the legends of the Sufi mystics and ascetics are a very real and dangerous aspect of the spiritual life, and they could easily destroy the aspirant. The ego works subtly. When untamed, it will rule an individual’s intentions, working its way into even the most pious of ambitions. This was a path that, once I took a single step upon, I could not turn back. It would be turning my back on God. I was here, and I had no idea why. What worth was I to the Way, to these men and women, to God?
As the prayers stopped and with it the mourning, the babas and dervishes looked at us and, as if reading my thoughts, reminded us once more that if we hesitate now, we should turn back. However, I had learned never to turn my back on the baba, so I sat facing forward and waited for my name to be called. I had gone by this name my entire life, and now I must see that name hanged and flayed, like Nesimi, or Al-Hallaj who had declared “I am the Truth!” and for it gave his life. The mysteries of the order would be my funeral shroud. They called my name…
The initiation ceremony of a Bektashi is a rite that has been carefully guarded and kept secret. Though its details have been mentioned in the writings of numerous academics who’ve studied the order, the mysteries of it remain secure in the knowledge of the Bektashis alone. Thus, the description of my experience is deliberately obscure; nevertheless, I will do my best to share it, so the ceremony’s intimacy and weight won’t be lost.
I stood in darkness, my rehber, Dervish Delīl, beside me. I listened to the sound of distant prayers and my own breath, and I am reminded of another dream. I feel desires bound and upon my head a crown of fire. I burn in this darkness, and in each moment, my anxiety grows more severe. Finally, there is light, and I feel the hand of the rehber take my own as I am led forth through the door of the meydan. It feels like an enormous distance we travel, and I am reminded of Hadji Bektash Veli, who began life as a prince of Khorasan and became the greatest of the mystic dervishes of Anatolia. And every step with bare feet and in a felt cloak that led him to this land where I was now was from a place even more distant, and by means which, perhaps, would have been incomprehensible in that time.
I look down and find myself standing upon a gallows. The noose around my neck tightens. I stand before Muhammad and Ali — but for us, they exist as a single entity — the enactment and fulfillment of the prophetic mission. They stare at me as I gasp for breath, watching for any sign of wavering or doubt. We dance upon the gallows, honoring, in turn, each who has come to attend this funeral. I am let down from this place of execution, and as one, I feel Muhammad, Ali, and I bound together. I am offered a series of vows, of oaths, and without hesitation, I accept them. There it happens, the moment. In religion, we are on the ceaseless and despairing search for tangible evidence of the incomprehensible and assurance beyond theology and metaphysics to confirm the existence of the divine in the same way that the lips of a lover confirm the existence of their affection, God’s caress of the mind through the flesh in the moment of devotion. Here, at this place, on this spot, is the death of all theory and speculation, of all superficial religiosity and reactionary orthodoxies, of new-age inventions and academic revisions. It is indescribable in the most absolute way. The lineage of the Way came alive within my heart, and the gravity of the oaths I had just made hung around my neck as if etched in stone. Finally, chains were placed around my ego, and like reigns, they were entrusted back into my hands.
I was welcomed, a true Bektashi whose name would be added to the Way’s sacred lineage. My fate would be determined by my own ability to maintain and fulfill my vows, or my name would be a dark blot among those illuminated by the light of God.
We returned as we came, and I was sent to my sheepskin post to witness my two brothers having their turn at the gallows and joining me in rebirth. There was joy in every face, and a hope that had kept the Way alive so long and through so much, a hope that there will always be those brave enough to come to the meydan, and know it to be where they belong. Bektashis do not call others to the Way, but merely remain at their sheepskin post [9], waiting for those who come, and though the door of their tekkes and dergāhs are always open to anyone who cares to visit, the doors of the meydan remain closed to all except those of the Way.
“Be a lion upon your post!” I was first told by one of our elder sisters, Hatem anabadji [10], and repeatedly told as we said our farewells. We had feasted, drank of the dem, and listened to the recitation of Bektashi nefes [11] with the purpose to learn. There were laughter and conversation, and I was reminded once more of how this had all begun with sharing dem underneath the gazebo at Baba Rexheb’s tekke, and sitting in its basement late into the night laughing and sharing stories of our experiences as Muslims. It was a healing, and even after that initial romanticism with the Way had faded, it had not succumbed to the typical disillusionment; rather, it had been tempered with a comprehension of God and life’s purpose that transcended any obligation I felt toward religion. I have given up on what it is to be a “good” Muslim by any standard of speculation made over the centuries of those whose concerns seemed more with the validation of piety for its own sake and its function as an element of society and identity. During one of our final nights in Istanbul, Dervish Semir, our Gazi Dervish, reminded us that it is God who will ask us about our religion, and to let this be a matter between us and God. However, our fellow human beings will testify to our humanity. The faith of Bektashis is service to creation, and their religion is one that is obligated toward humanity. Not by what the conventional condones nor condemns, but by what is instinctual to a heart purified of misunderstanding and prejudice. This, perhaps, is what is meant by “Be a lion upon your post”; for the life of a Bektashi is the life of a witness. We stand guard of our own hearts, so to put others at ease, this requires fortitude and the burden of vows. Bektashis may seem to wrap themselves in a cloak of cheerfulness and an easygoing manner, but underneath they wear a shirt of fire, and by it they are annihilated in God. This life is brief and grief-stricken, but human beings have proven their unwavering ability to find joy in even the darkest of moments. The Bektashis are lights within that darkness, guiding upon the path toward a profound salvation.
Eyvallah.
[1] A tekke is a dervish lodge, a house of worship. It is synonymous with dergāh, zāwiyah and khāniḳah.
[2] A murshid is one’s spiritual guide. In most Sufi orders he is referred to as shaykh. In Bektashism he is called baba.
[3] The turbeh is the mausoleum where a saint is buried. Traditionally, the founder of a tekke would have his turbeh built on the property of that tekke.
[4] The pure drink promised to the inhabitants of paradise.
[5] The term by which Bektashi initiates are known. Djan (tr. cân) has multitudinous meanings: “soul”, “life”, “beloved” etc.
[6] The room (or hall) where Bektashi rites are performed. It is normally a special room within a tekke, though in large dergāhs there might be a complete structure set aside for the Meydan.
[7] The call to prayer sung out five times a day from the minarets of the mosques.
[8] The Bektashi community structure is hierarchical. First are the ashiks, who are the uninitiated laity or sympathizers. The come the muhibs, initiated members, dervishes, babas, halife-babas and the dedebaba, who sits on the spiritual post of Hadji Bektash Veli.
[9]The post is the sheepskin upon which a Bektashi sits in the meydan and during worship. It is traditionally received after initiation.
[10] Literally “mother-sister”. The title of Bektashi senior sisters. She is usually the wife of a baba.
[11] Bektashi poems customarily sung in spiritual gatherings.
