Popular Sufism in Eastern Europe: Sufi Brotherhoods and the Dialogue with Christianity and ‘Heterodoxy

This is an overall description of the various Sufi orders and movements which penetrated into the Balkans, into the Crimean peninsula and other parts of Eastern Europe following the Ottoman conquests. Many of the Sufis came from Christian societies, principally from an Eastern Orthodox background, but others, such as the Bosnians, from churches which were accused or suspected of heterodoxy of belief and of antinomianism. These beliefs, together with pre-Christian beliefs, influenced by Manicheanism, Dualism and pantheism, left their mark on Sufi Islam. The book concentrates on the Bosnians, Bulgarians, Albanians and Tatars. Their Sufism reflects their national aspirations, and their writings fuse their mysticism, national faith and folklore in a Sufism which is quite distinct from that in other regions of the Muslim world.