The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb
Baba Rexheb, a Muslim mystic from the Balkans, founded the first Bektashi community in America. This is his life story and the story of his communities: the traditional Bektashi tekke in Albania where he first served, the displaced persons camps to which he escaped after the war, the centuries-old tekke in Cairo where he waited, and the Bektashi community that he founded in Michigan in 1954 and led until his passing in 1995. Baba Rexheb lived through the twentieth century, its wars, disruptions, and dislocations, but still at a profound level was never displaced. Through Bektashi stories, oral histories, and ethnographic experience, Frances Trix recounts the life and times of this modern Sufi leader. She studied with Baba Rexheb in his community for more than twenty years. As a linguistic anthropologist, she taped twelve years of their weekly meetings in Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic. She draws extensively on Baba's own words, as well as interactions at the Michigan Bektashi center, for a remarkable perspective on our times. You come to know Baba Rexheb and his gentle way of teaching through example and parable, poetry and humor. The book also documents the history of the 700-year-old Bektashi order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans and Egypt and its transposition to America. It attests to the role of Sufi centers in Islamic community life and their interaction with people of other faiths.
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The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb
Baba Rexheb, a Muslim mystic from the Balkans, founded the first Bektashi community in America. This is his life story and the story of his communities: the traditional Bektashi tekke in Albania where he first served, the displaced persons camps to which he escaped after the war, the centuries-old tekke in Cairo where he waited, and the Bektashi community that he founded in Michigan in 1954 and led until his passing in 1995. Baba Rexheb lived through the twentieth century, its wars, disruptions, and dislocations, but still at a profound level was never displaced. Through Bektashi stories, oral histories, and ethnographic experience, Frances Trix recounts the life and times of this modern Sufi leader. She studied with Baba Rexheb in his community for more than twenty years. As a linguistic anthropologist, she taped twelve years of their weekly meetings in Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic. She draws extensively on Baba's own words, as well as interactions at the Michigan Bektashi center, for a remarkable perspective on our times. You come to know Baba Rexheb and his gentle way of teaching through example and parable, poetry and humor. The book also documents the history of the 700-year-old Bektashi order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans and Egypt and its transposition to America. It attests to the role of Sufi centers in Islamic community life and their interaction with people of other faiths.
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The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

by Frances Trix
The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb

by Frances Trix

Hardcover

$55.00 
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Overview

Baba Rexheb, a Muslim mystic from the Balkans, founded the first Bektashi community in America. This is his life story and the story of his communities: the traditional Bektashi tekke in Albania where he first served, the displaced persons camps to which he escaped after the war, the centuries-old tekke in Cairo where he waited, and the Bektashi community that he founded in Michigan in 1954 and led until his passing in 1995. Baba Rexheb lived through the twentieth century, its wars, disruptions, and dislocations, but still at a profound level was never displaced. Through Bektashi stories, oral histories, and ethnographic experience, Frances Trix recounts the life and times of this modern Sufi leader. She studied with Baba Rexheb in his community for more than twenty years. As a linguistic anthropologist, she taped twelve years of their weekly meetings in Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic. She draws extensively on Baba's own words, as well as interactions at the Michigan Bektashi center, for a remarkable perspective on our times. You come to know Baba Rexheb and his gentle way of teaching through example and parable, poetry and humor. The book also documents the history of the 700-year-old Bektashi order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Balkans and Egypt and its transposition to America. It attests to the role of Sufi centers in Islamic community life and their interaction with people of other faiths.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781934536124
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Museum
Publication date: 03/27/2009
Series: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 3.10(d)

About the Author

Frances Trix is an ethnographer of Islam in Balkan immigrant communities. Her books include Spiritual Discourse: Learning with a Muslim Master, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press, and Muslim Voices and Lives in the Contemporary World. She is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Indiana University.
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