When I was in Baku last summer, I would go to the same Café in the mornings. The Place was called HOMI, Coffee For You. I cannot recall the meaning of Homi, but it may have been something to do with hospitality or kindness or alms. I started going there because it was in walking distance from the school to which I was going, and had coffee. While I know I am only an individual, I tend to think my dollars, or in this case Manatlar, make a difference. For this reason, I like to almost exclusively go to the same places for particular things. So I went to get coffee there three to five times a week. The man behind the register, who always spoke English to me, remembered my order and would ask if I was getting the same thing as last time. Perhaps this good treatment had something to do with the price of coffee in Baku, more than twice the cost of a döner kebab. Perhaps it also had to do with the fact I asked for my coffee black over ice. Most of the Azerbaijanis do not drink coffee. When they do, it is hot, with milk and sugar. I didn’t think much about it then, but looking back on it, the cashier looked different from other people in Azerbaijan. A couple of days before I left Azerbaijan, we met and spoke for a few hours in a slow-time at the café. His name is Said.
It was then that I learned he was an Afghan. He was born in Kabul but had spent the majority of his life in a self-imposed exile. He looked to be a little younger than my father, who is fifty-six. He left the country as a teenager during the war in the 1980’s and went to study in Iran. After the war, he returned to Kabul, but when violence resurged, he left, now with a wife and child. For some reason they could not stay in Iran, so they found themselves in Azerbaijan, a land of so many refugees already, among a newly founded Afghani refugee community. Recently, he had opened the place as a café serving Persian/Afghani foods, but it had changed to meet the market of Baku street food, mainly Döner Kebab. For the conversation we had, it did not seem he thought he would ever return to Kabul. I was not sure he wanted to.
Thinking back to high school, I remembered that I had a friend who is also Afghan. His father was (is?) a famous Dari-language singer in the turn of the century (Farhad Darya). Throughout my friend’s father’s career, Afghanistan has seen little relief. It seems absurd to even raise the question of returning to Afghanistan when it comes to them. My friend’s name is Hejran and he is a student at NYU at present and has lived his entire life in the United States.
With millions of people of Afghan decent living aboard, such as Said, Hejran, and Farhad, I wonder if the diaspora cultures they have created will have a considerable impact on Afghan culture.
Turkic speaking peoples have had a longer history with Sufism than they have had with Sunni or Shiite orthodoxies. Sufis, with their emphasis on spirituality, forged connections with the Ouguz Turks, even before they entered the fractured lands of the former Abbasid Caliphate.
In the region that is Turkey presently there are several sects of Islam and within and across those sects there are different Sufi orders. While Sufism is not unique to Turkey, it has played a considerable social and religious role in the region for almost a millennium.
Most noteworthy among these to non-Muslims and people living outside of Turkey are the Mevlevis. It’s founder, Rumi is perhaps the most well-known of all Sufis, especially for his sayings and poetry, travelled from Xoresan to Anatolia. There he founded a new Sufi order, the Mevlevi order. This order is known today somewhat simplistically as the whirling dervishes to many outsiders. That this order had a strong presence in Konya, the capitol of the small and simple region dominated my Osman the first tied the order to the Ottomans for centuries. It is probable that the duration of the Ottoman Empire has been helped solidify this order in Turkish society and was instrumental in elevating the works of Rumi to the esteem in which they are held.
Other orders such as the Bektaşi, Halveti, Rifai, Qadiri, Naqshbandi and Bayrami also existed in Ottoman times. Different groups in Ottoman society would almost universally adhere to a particular order. The most notable example is the strong hold of the Bektaşi order over the Janissaries. Since people of similar interests would often join the same order (and not join those of their adversaries) the Ottoman government could use these orders against each other. In certain periods, the government would change the orders it supported in order to correct the behavior of a group or to minimalize their impact. When the Mahmut II killed and hunted down the Janissaries, an obstacle to his new army, he also made a point to suppress their Sufi order, the Bektaşis. These moves on the part of the state were more political than religious.
It is also worth noting that the Ottoman Empire expanded the borders of the Islamic world into the Balkans. For that reason, Islam, influenced by Ottoman practices of Sufism caught on and were adapted there also.
It can also be said that many non-institutionalized practices of Islam are Sufi or Sufistic
Since Ottoman times, Sufism has been on the defensive. Under the Kemalist regime, Sufi orders were banned. However, with the breaking for Kemalist hegemony, Sufism resurfaced. I see this as similar to that which happened in Azerbaijan with the break-up of the Soviet Union. Religion was technically banned, but people must have been practicing throughout the period.
Today since the 1970’s Suadi influence and money has also worked to marginalize Sufism. It claims Sufis are either bad Muslims or not Muslims at all, thus putting Sufis in danger by not only Islamophobic non-Muslims, but Salafi-Wahhabi Muslims as well. In Turkey, this threat is less pronounced than elsewhere in the Islamic world.
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