Baba Rexheb
| Baba Rexheb | |
|---|---|
| Rexheb Beqiri | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Sect | Bektashism |
| Order | Baba |
| Personal | |
| Nationality | Albanian |
| Born | Rexheb Beqiri August 18, 1901 Gjirokastër, Albania |
| Died | August 10, 1995 (aged 93) Taylor, Michigan, United States |
Rexheb Beqiri (18 August 1901—10 August 1995), better known by the religious name Baba Rexheb, was an Albanian Islamic scholar and Sufi. He was the founder and the head of the Bektashi Sufi lodge (tekke) located in Taylor, Michigan, United States.
Baba Rexheb was born as Rexheb Beqiri, on 18 August 1901, into a family with strong Bektashi ties in Gjirokastër, southern Albania, at a time when Albania was still part of the Ottoman Empire. His father, Refat Beqiri, was a local mullah in the old mahale of Dunavat. Refat’s family had originally migrated to southern Albania from the Kosovar town of Gjakova. His mother was from Elbasan in central Albania as was his murshid, his spiritual guide, Selim Baba Elbasani. He entered the Bektashi Order at the age of sixteen and was promoted to the rank of dervish at the age of twenty. A year later, he took an additional vow as a mücerred (celibate) dervish. For the next twenty-five years he served in the Asim Baba Tekke, under the guidance of his maternal uncle, Baba Selim. During World War II, Dervish Rexheb followed the guidance of his murshid and went from village to village, telling the people that the communists "Din yok, vatan yok," that is, "They have no religion, they have no homeland." Because of this he was forced to flee in 1944 when the communists under Enver Hoxha came to power. He spent four years in a displaced persons camps in Italy. His dream was to serve Bektashis in America, but after World War II, it was very difficult to come to America. So instead he went to the Bektashi Kaygusuz Sultan Tekke in the Mokattam in Cairo, Egypt. He stayed there for four years until his number for the United States finally came up. He traveled to New York City where one of his sisters, Zejnep Cuçi, had preceded him.
In 1954, Baba Rexheb established the First Albanian American Bektashi Monastery outside Detroit, Michigan, where there was a group of Albanian Bektashis who supported him.
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