Hacı Bektaş and his Contested Legacy: The Abdals of Rum, the Bektashi Order and the (Proto-) Kizilbash Communities

Abstract

Chapter 3 takes up the issue of the relationship between the Kizilbash/Alevi communities and the Bektashi order, tracing its roots to their common association with the cult of Hacı Bektaş and their shared links to the Abdals of Rum. This chapter challenges Köprülü’s conjecture of an insular Turkish folk Islam transferred under the cover of the Yesevi Sufi order from Central Asia to Anatolia, and inherited in its new home by successive heterodox circles within a linear evolutionary scheme; it was purported to have passed from the Yeseviyye to the Abdals of Rum, an itinerant dervish group active in late medieval Anatolia, and from them onto the better institutionalized Bektashi order. Within this framework, Köprülü treated the Kizilbash/Alevis as lay followers of the Bektashi order. Evidence emerging from Alevi sources complicates this picture. They disclose no evidence of a Yesevi connection. Nor do they validate Köprülü’s view of the Alevis as lay followers of the Bektashi order. While they do confirm the closely intertwined trajectories of the two affiliations, their interactions and eventual partial fusion appear to have involved a much more contested process than presumed by Köprülü, tensions crystallizing especially around the spiritual legacy of Hacı Bektaş.