Arabati Baba Tekke: Bektashi Tradition and Religious Landscapes in Tetovo

In the Tekke quarter on the south-western side of Tetovo, a walled garden of plastered lodges, timber galleries, a courtyard fountain and domed tombs holds more than four centuries of a Sufi order’s history in the Balkans. The Arabati Baba Tekke grew up around the memory of a sixteenth-century dervish, was enlarged in the eighteenth century, and since 2002 has been at the centre of a dispute between religious communities that the US State Department’s report for 2023 records as continuing. On Day 12 of our Balkans small group tour through Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, the group leaves Skopje for Tetovo to visit the tekke with a local guide before travelling on towards Ohrid.

Why the Arabati Baba Tekke matters on a Balkans route

A tekke is a lodge where dervishes of a Sufi order lived, prayed and received guests. The one at Tetovo is worth the stop because it shows, within a single set of walls, how a religious community’s place in the landscape has shifted with every change of state: Ottoman patronage, closure, conversion into a hotel and museum, the return of dervishes, and, since 2002, a contest over who should use the buildings. The stop compresses a great deal of the region’s religious history into a garden that can be crossed in a few minutes.

The visit also fits a sequence. Our day-by-day guide to the Balkans history tour sets each stop on the route in order, and North Macedonia brings some of its sharpest contrasts. On Day 10 the group crosses the border and visits the prehistoric site of Kokino, set high in the mountains; on Day 12 the tekke at Tetovo is followed by an Orthodox monastery and then Ohrid. For the political story of how Ottoman rule in the region gave way to modern states, see our history of the Balkans, Albania and North Macedonia. This article stays with the tekke itself.

The Bektashi order in brief

Practice has varied between places and periods, so what follows summarises the order as reference works describe it rather than any single community. Britannica records that the Bektashi order was founded, “according to its own traditions”, in the thirteenth century by Haji Bektash Veli, who came to Anatolia from Khorasan and founded the first Bektashi tekke near Kırşehir. Tradition dates his life to 1248–1337; other sources give 1209–1271. In the sixteenth century the order was given its structure under Balım Sultan, its “second elder”, with grades running from lay follower to initiate, dervish, baba and dede, and a dedebaba at its head.

Britannica describes a tradition that adopted many Shiʿi beliefs, including veneration of the twelve imams and especially of ʿAli, whose birthday the order celebrates at Nowruz. Men and women both take part in its devotional ceremonies, known as cem. Among the practices it notes in the Balkans are the sharing of ritual bread, the confession of sins and celibacy for babas.

The order’s history is tied to the Ottoman state. From the fifteenth century, Britannica notes, it was closely associated with the Janissaries, an elite Ottoman military corps, and its influence waned after the Janissaries were disbanded in 1826 before reviving later in the century. After 1925 the Sufi orders were dissolved in Turkey, and the Bektashi leadership moved to Albania, where, according to Britannica, it established headquarters in Tirana in 1931. That shift matters at Tetovo, whose Bektashi community has looked to Albania for leadership in recent decades.

Sersem Ali Baba and Harabati Baba: two founders

The tekke carries several names. In a 2018 study the sociologist Erdal Aksoy of Gazi University notes that Slavic-language sources call it the Arabati Baba Tekke and Ottoman documents the tekke of Sersem Ali Baba, after its first founder; Aksoy, writing in Turkish, uses Harabati Baba. No founding document survives. Aksoy, drawing on the historian Mehmet İbrahimi (1985), explains that without one, or any trace of the first building, an exact date is impossible. Religioscope’s 2002 report, quoting the Harvard librarian András Riedlmayer, gives 1538; Aksoy places the foundation in the second half of the sixteenth century.

Of Sersem Ali Baba himself, much is tradition. Aksoy reports a story that he was a vizier of Süleyman the Magnificent, or the brother of the sultan’s consort Mahidevran, who left office for the dervish path. Citing the Turkish Encyclopaedia of Islam (1997), Aksoy identifies him with a Sersem Ali Baba who headed the mother lodge at Hacıbektaş in 1551 and died in 1569. Where he died and lies is disputed: accounts place his death at Tetovo or at Najaf in Iraq, and the historian Ali Kozan (2012) argues from archival records that he died at Hacıbektaş. If his grave lies elsewhere, Aksoy suggests, the tomb at Tetovo may be a commemorative one.

The second founder gave the tekke its common name. Harabati Baba, whose gravestone inscription records his death in 1780 (1194 in the Islamic calendar), is said to have come to the Balkans with four companions to spread the Bektashi path. In Tetovo, the legend goes, he saw a lamp burning, took it for the spirit of Sersem Ali Baba and built a tomb for him. According to İbrahimi, as quoted by Aksoy, the tekke gained new life in Harabati Baba’s time, when much of the additional building was carried out by Recep Pasha, then the Ottoman administrator of Tetovo.

Reading the buildings of the tekke

The complex is a garden settlement rather than a single monument. Aksoy gives its area as 26,700 square metres and lists its buildings in two groups. The religious buildings include tombs, a small prayer hall (mescit), a hall for ritual (semahane) and a dervish house. The civil buildings include a guest house, a central courtyard fountain, a public drinking fountain, a house associated with Fatma, a kitchen, a stable and the gates. Religioscope’s 2002 report, again quoting Riedlmayer, notes that the present buildings date from the eighteenth century, the period of Harabati Baba and Recep Pasha.

Two features repay a closer look. At the centre of the courtyard stands the şadırvan, which Aksoy describes as a seven-sided pool with a fountain jet. The tomb associated with Sersem Ali Baba is covered by a dome of twelve segments. The vocabulary is shared with the wider Ottoman world, from the domes of Istanbul to the courtyard fountains of provincial towns, and our guide to Ottoman architecture and the decorative arts traces that tradition at its source. At Tetovo it appears at a domestic scale, in plaster, timber and stone.

The heart of Bektashi ritual at Tetovo is the meydan, or gathering house, together with the tomb. This is the part of the complex the dervishes have used since 1993, and Aksoy noted in 2018 that the community’s Sultan Nevruz celebrations, marking the birthday of ʿAli, were held in the courtyard. The tekke was also a place of learning and hospitality. Aksoy, citing the Turkish Encyclopaedia of Islam, records 216 manuscripts in its library in 1912, probably now held in libraries in Skopje, and notes endowments supporting the tekke in Istanbul, Tirana, Elbasan and Thessaloniki. Guests, he writes, were entitled to three days’ lodging, whatever their background.

Closure, a hotel and a museum: the twentieth century

The tekke’s modern history follows the region’s changes of rule. After the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 the area passed from Ottoman to Serbian rule, and, according to Aksoy, the last sheikhs and dervishes left the tekke in 1920. In communist Yugoslavia the Sufi orders were banned and the tekke was closed; Aksoy dates the ban to 1952, while Religioscope’s 2002 report gives 1945 for the closure.

In 1967, Aksoy records, the Tetovo textile company Teteks restored the complex and opened it for tourism. Three of its six buildings became a hotel, a restaurant and a disco, and the meydan was turned into a small art museum. In 1992 a fire damaged the tomb. On 22 March 1993, the Nowruz festival, Bektashis from Tetovo, Gostivar and Kičevo entered the closed tekke; when police moved to remove them they began a hunger strike, and they were eventually allowed to stay in the part of the complex holding the tomb and the meydan. Baba Tahir Emini led the community there from 1993 until his death in 2006, and was succeeded by Baba Edmond Brahimaj from Albania. Religioscope reported that the tekke was not seriously damaged during the 2001 conflict in the Tetovo area, and Aksoy notes that the tourist facilities closed after the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001.

A contested complex: the dispute since 2002

The tour page notes that the visit includes the tekke’s history, and since 2002 that history has included a dispute over the complex’s ownership and use. What follows sets out what independent sources have reported, with dates, and does not take a side.

On 21 August 2002 the information service Religioscope reported that on 15 August that year between 15 and 20 armed men had entered the tekke. According to sources quoted in the report, they belonged to the country’s Sunni Islamic Religious Community; they claimed the building for their community and announced that they would pray there five times a day. The same report recorded the Bektashi position, that the dervishes who had settled in part of the complex in 1993–94 claimed ownership of the tekke, while the Islamic Religious Community also sought to recover it. NATO and OSCE representatives were reported to have calmed the situation.

A detailed recent account is in the US State Department’s report on religious freedom in North Macedonia for 2023, published on 26 June 2024. It describes two Bektashi bodies, the unregistered Tetovo Bektashi Community, for which the tekke is its traditional headquarters, and the government-registered Bektashi Religious Community. Members of both, the report says, disputed the Islamic Religious Community’s claim to full ownership; the Tetovo Bektashi Community also opposed the Islamic Religious Community’s plans, announced with its 2017 ownership claim, to renovate the complex with Turkish government assistance, which the report says prevented renovation from starting. Tetovo Bektashi representatives said a renovation without their consent would displace them entirely.

The report also records that, for the twelfth year in a row, the Tetovo Bektashi Community reported to police harassment by individuals affiliated with the Islamic Religious Community, who, according to the community, continued to occupy the majority of the compound; the report does not set out the Islamic Religious Community’s own account of these incidents. Ownership has also been before the courts: the registered Bektashi body reportedly appealed a Gostivar court decision granting ownership to a private company, though court staff could not confirm the report. Behind all of this lies registration. In its judgment of 12 April 2018 in Bektashi Community and Others v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the European Court of Human Rights found that the refusal to register the Bektashi Community violated its freedom of association, read in the light of freedom of religion, and the State Department notes that the community submitted a new registration request in September 2023. According to that report, the dispute over the complex was continuing at the end of 2023.

Who leads the visit to the Arabati Baba Tekke?

A local guide. The tour page states that on Day 12 the group visits the Arabati Baba Bektasi Teke with a local guide and learns about the history of the place. The visit is part of a travel day that begins in Skopje and ends in Ohrid.

Can visitors see every building in the complex?

Not necessarily. Aksoy observed in 2017 that many of the buildings were closed, and the State Department’s 2023 report records complaints from the Tetovo Bektashi Community that access to much of the compound was restricted. Which parts are open on a given day can change, so a Tour Specialist can share what is known about the visit as it currently runs.

How much walking does the Day 12 visit involve?

The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate. The tour page states that participants must be able to carry their own luggage, climb and descend stairs, be in good health and mobile, and take part in 3 to 5 hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. The tour page does not give walking details for the tekke itself, so a Tour Specialist can help if you would like to talk through the pace of this day.

Where does the route go after Tetovo?

South through the mountains. The tour page describes the road winding through mountains and forests to the huge complex of the St John Bigorski monastery, which “also claims to hold the forearm of John the Baptist”, before the group reaches Ohrid for three nights. Our article on Lake Ohrid and its churches picks up the story there.

Reading the tekke as a religious landscape

The Arabati Baba Tekke is easy to read as a single building, but it is better understood as a landscape that several communities have shaped. Ottoman patrons endowed it, dervishes lived and taught in it, a socialist enterprise turned it into a hotel and museum, and, as of the State Department’s 2023 report, two Bektashi bodies and the Islamic Religious Community dispute its ownership and use. The plaster walls, the many-sided fountain and the domed tomb record those layers more quietly than any written account, and each source quoted here sees them from its own angle.

Travelling as a small group of up to 16 travellers, mature travellers reach Tetovo on Day 12, between two days in Skopje and three nights in Ohrid. Time with a local guide among the tombs and courtyards of the tekke adds a thread to the journey that is easy to miss: the history of a Sufi order that has outlasted the empire which once sustained it.