Episode Description
In the chaos of post-Mongol Anatolia, a refugee from Khorasan built a gathering place where the old lists didn't apply. Haji Bektash Veli taught that the fully realized human soul --- the insan-i kamil --- has no gender, no tribe, no sect. Women sat unveiled beside wandering dervishes beside Byzantine Christians beside Turkic nomads, and no one was waiting at the door to check who belonged. His teaching spread across eight centuries, from the high plateau of Cappadocia through the Balkans and into the imagination of a modern nation. Harmonia reflects on why this particular room --- and what happened inside it --- is the very source of her strength, and why the world it pointed toward is not behind us but ahead.