Albania

Balkan state independent from the Ottomans in 1912; ~5 centuries of Ottoman rule left a Muslim plurality (Sunni + Bektashi), later suppressed under communist atheism (1967–90).

☾ The Coming of Islam

Islamisation under nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule

Albania became a predominantly Muslim land as a legacy of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule (late 14th century to 1912). Conversion to Islam spread unevenly across Albanian society and was later invoked, and resisted, in the 19th-century national movement — whose slogan held that 'the religion of the Albanians is Albanianism'.

☾ Religious Composition

A Muslim plurality: Sunni and Bektashi

By early-21st-century estimates about seven-tenths of Albanians were nominally Muslim — more than half of them Sunni and the next-largest group belonging to the Bektashi Sufi order — alongside Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic minorities. Decades of enforced state atheism (1967–90) left much religious identity nominal.

These are approximate, self-identification estimates; observance is often nominal.

▤ Scholars & Institutions

The world centre of the Bektashi order

Albania is the international spiritual centre of the Bektashi order, a Sufi movement historically linked to the Ottoman Janissaries; its world headquarters moved to Tirana after the order was banned in Turkey in 1925. Bektashi lodges (tekkes) have been a distinctive feature of Albanian Islam.

⌂ Contemporary Muslim Life

Religious revival after state atheism

In 1967 the communist party proclaimed Albania an atheist state and closed all mosques, churches and Sufi lodges; freedom of worship was restored only in 1990. Muslim religious life has since revived within a secular and famously tolerant religious landscape.

At a glance