BEKTĀŠIJJAH. — dervishes (v.) whose eponym is the Muslim saint Hāggī Bektāš Vali. According to legendary accounts, he was born in Nišāpūr and was a disciple of Ahmed Jesevi. Under Sultan Örḥān (1326–59), he is said to have converted the Janissaries to Islām. It does not appear that he was the founder of the Order which subsequently took his name. The B. emerge clearly in history from the beginning of the 16th century. The religious movement that, with Bektāšism, found its established form in the western Turkish world dates back to ancient times; the Qizlibāš (red heads) in eastern Asia Minor and Kurdistan, and the ‘Alī lāhī (deifiers of ‘Alī) in Persia, profess doctrines very similar to those of the B.
In B. doctrine, the Sufi idea (v. 50-FISM) of the original equality of all religions and the uselessness of external worship survives. Many Christian, Gnostic, and even pagan (shamanistic) elements make the doctrinal picture of this singular sect still more colorful. Although they often proclaim themselves Sunnis, they are in reality extreme Shiites: they recognize twelve Imāms, and the tombs of the saints are so greatly venerated that devotions performed before them even take the place of ritual prayer. They venerate a sort of trinity (Allāh, Mohammed, ‘Alī), and in the assemblies held in the mejdān (“arena” or meeting hall in the convent) they celebrate a kind of sacred agape in which bread, wine, and cheese are distributed. They confess their sins to their superiors and receive forgiveness from them. The prohibition against drinking wine and the veil worn by women have been abolished. Some of them live in celibacy; indeed, celibacy appears to have been their primitive rule.
The B. have adopted the mysticism of numbers and letters of the alphabet and hold in high esteem the works of Fazlullāh (founder of the cabbalistic sect of the hurūft). They also admit metempsychosis.
The Order was directed by a grand master who resided in the mother house at Hāggī Bektāš (between Kīrşehir and Cesarea). The office was not hereditary, but in later times it was constantly transmitted from father to son. The superior of each convent (tekhīkh) is called Bābā, the ordinary dervish is called mūrid, and the lay brother mūstēšib. The B. also had special garments (a white cloak, a segmented cap, etc.). Their political importance was based on their close union with the Janissaries, so much so that they took part in numerous revolts of this turbulent corps, whose suppression in 1826 by order of Sultan Mahmūd II dealt the B. a severe blow; a great number of convents were destroyed and numerous leaders condemned to death. Gradually, however, the Order recovered and enjoyed a considerable flourishing, until the Turkish Republic dealt it its final blow by abolishing the tekhīkh and the religious Orders (1925).