KALKANDELEN HARABATİ BABA TEKKESİNİN SOSYO-KÜLTÜREL BAĞLAMI VE MEKÂNSAL GELİŞİMİ
Authors: ÖZKUT DENİZ , ALAS ÇİĞDEM , ÖZDEN PULAT BÜKE 
Published: September 2022

The Harabati Baba Lodge settlement, significant religious center, is located in the province of Tetovo, west of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. The settlement has recognized as the considerable place in the field of culture, arts and crafts thanks to its dervishes as well. Therefore, not only it essentially consists of public spaces with socio-cultural functions but also there are places of worship and for accommodation that require privacy. The Lodge settlement, with high courtyard walls and four monumental gates, emerges as a sample that representing an extensive and fragmented site planning existing in the Bektashi Lodges in the late period in Balkans. In this context, the Shadirvan, as a rarely seen sample in Balkans with a fascinating timber ceiling with its ornaments, the Soup kitchen with a semi-open summer place, the Guesthouse, a mansion with an open sofa on the upper floor, the two-storeyed Hotel building (former Military Hall), and (former Barn) Restaurant can be mentioned as the public spaces of Lodge Settlement. On the other hand, ‘Meydan’ as worship space with a low dome inside, a preparation space, the Fatma House with a hand-drawn decoration similar to Skopje Alaca Mosque, the Dervish House, constructed of rubble stone and mudbrick, and Harabati Baba and Sersem Ali Baba Shrines, similar to Seljuk and Ottoman examples in terms of architectural tradition can be considered as the places that have been privatized. Within the scope of this article, the spatial pattern of the Harabati Baba Lodge settlement and structures has been discussed in the historical context. Periodic socio-cultural divergencies and spatial transformations have been revealed on the basis of information obtained from written records, historical sources and archives, visual materials, old photographs, and traces from the buildings, through applying comparative study and architectural necessity criteria. The Tekke settlement with its landscape was scrutinized in four leading periods based on comparative studies on similar period features, building typologies, and architectural requirements. Harabati Baba Lodge might have been built in 958/1551 by Sersem Ali Baba, who is known to be the Bektashi father. In this period, the population of Tetovo, which was a small town in the second half of the 15th century, and the Muslim population in the town increased with the activities of Bektashi dervishes. This foundation period was continued until the arrival of Harabati Baba, known as the second founder, in the second half of the 18th century. The second period can be considered as the period of Recep Pasha, the administrator in Tetovo, due to renovation and restoration of the structures in the lodge. In the 19th century, it is stated that the dervishes, who were exiled and escaped after the Janissary Corps and the Bektashi convents had been closed, came to Balkans and that the Lodge was used as a military base. The third period covers the period between the death of Recep Pasha in 1822 and the extensive restoration/repair interventions in 1967. The fourth period (1967-present day) comprises the late interventions and the first official restoration.