Sari Saltuk’s traces in the Balkans
Relics, Remains, and Traces in Islam
Ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, and the Dobruja, Romania. June 2012 – September 2015 | Conducted within the framework of the research project ‘The Visual and Material Culture of Sufism in Central and Southeastern Europe’ | Outcome: 2 conference papers, 1 peer-reviewed book chapter
On the rugged coastline where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet to the northwest of Saranda in Albania, towering above the water on a high cliff of sedimentary rock, lies the most recent Bektashi place of worship (tekke). Named after the late leader of the Albanian Bektashi order of dervishes, Reshat Bardhi (d. 2011), it contains a striking, saintly trace that has only recently been discovered. Miraculously, the imprint of the right foot of perhaps the most important saint in the Balkans, Sari Saltuk (whom the Bektashi claim as their own), was found next to the (likewise newly discovered) imprint of the right foot of the 16th-century grand master Balim Sultan, the Second Pir of the Bektashi order.
In March 2012, the tekke opened fully and – as was to be expected – the footprints became objects of pilgrimage and ritual activity, visited by those seeking access to charismatic power. Material reminders that the site had previously been sacralized by the saints’ presence during their visit to Saranda, the blessed traces were apparently forgotten until they were ‘rediscovered’ and identified at a decisive moment. The saints’ footprints provide not only a proof that they were there, but also ‘reconnect’ them to the Bektashi devotional tradition. For the leaders of the order and their followers, the miracle of rediscovering the physical vestiges of these two important figures is seen as a blessing upon their community. It allows members of the order not only to memorialize the traces, but also to ritually re-present and re-enact them, thereby renewing their faith.
Located about eighty-five kilometers west of Sarajevo at the Ajvatovica plateau (the Šuljaga mountain) near the towns of Donji Vakuf and Bugojno, northwest of the small town of Prusac, the pilgrimage is an annual event. Taking place at the end of June with a two-week cultural, religious, and tourist program, it culminates in a two-day procession to the holy sites in the remote mountains. In 1947 the practice was banned in Communist Yugoslavia. In a post-Yugoslav context, the ritualization of the national history and heritage is inextricably connected with the formation of national identity and the re-Islamization process, with ramifications both on the secular and the religious level.
Another footprint, which Sari Saltuk left behind during his miraculous crossing to Corfu, is preserved today in a small forest between Kruja and Fushkruja in northcentral Albania. A shrine was erected at the sacred site to honor the trace (Albanian Gjurma e-shenjtë). In religious terms, the material object of veneration, the stone bearing the impression of the right foot of the saint, has become a relic because it bears the imprint of the saint’s baraka and is thus endowed with an indisputably beneficent power. It must, therefore, be protected, carefully encased and contained in a special receptacle that is visible through a glass cover. In his travel account of 1928, Franz Babinger recorded his visit to the sacred footprint, housed in a small ‘chapel.’ Like most Bektashi structures, the site was destroyed during the Hoxhaist period, but a simple structure to shelter the imprint relic was reconstructed by Asllan Hasan Sula in August 1992. Its construction plaque reads, “We ask from the Master kindness and light for us and you” (kerkojme prej zoti miresi e drite per ne e ju).
Excerpt from “A Saint ‘on the Move’: Traces in the Evolution of a Landscape of Religious Memory in the Balkans,” in: Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes: Emplacements of Spiritual Power across Time and Place, eds. D. Ephrat, E.S. Wolper, P.G. Pinto, Brill Handbook of Oriental Studies (Leiden: Brill 2021), 117–148, here 117–118, 135, 137