Haji Bektash Veli - Origins

Origins

Hajji Bektash was born in Nishapur, Iran. He was an ethnic Persian

It is reported in some Bektashi legends that Hajji Bektash was a follower and the caliph ("representative") of Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, a Sufi mystic from Central Asia who had great influence on the Turkic nomads of the steppes. However, there are no signs of Yasavi influence in the original teachings of Hajji Bektash and this claim is rejected by modern scholars, since Ahmad Yasavi lived nearly one hundred years before Hajji Bektash.

Modern research connects him to another important religious movement of that time: to the Qalandariyah movement and to Bābā Rasul Ilyās Khorāsānī († 1240), an influential mystic from Eastern Persia who was tortured to death because of his anti-orthodox views on Islam. The original Bektashi teachings in many ways resemble the teachings of the Khorasanian Qalandariyah and that of Rassul-Allāh Eliyās.

See also: Qalandariyah, Sufism, Zawiyya, Kosovo, and Albania

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