Bektashi-traditionen – en folkelig sufisme?

One of the central linages in Turkish Sufism was the Ottoman promoted Bektashi Order, closely connected to the Janissary corps. Nowadays the tradition is often labeled as a ‘popular Sufism’, without any discussion of what that concept means and the contradictions between folk religion and Sufism in general. This article concerns the question of what constitutes popular Sufism and how it is expressed within the Bektashi tradition. The first part analyzes the trends and religio-sociological components of Sufism and folk culture in the early Bektashi hagiographic text, Velayetname, and in the younger Bektashi textbook, Makalat. The second part consists of a discussion of what Sufi components the modern Albanian Bektashi Order has preserved and to what extent this Order still is a Sufi order and not just an Islamic folk religion