The 200-year old Teqeja e Koshtanit Bektashi shrine, in the hills 20km northwest of Memaliaj, consists of a wonderful stone building dedicated to Haxhi Bektash Veliu, with a new shrine recently constructed alongside. The tekke played an important role in the Albanian renaissance when it received permission from the Ottomans to educate pupils in Arabic script, but secretly started teaching the Albanian language, creating theit own Albanian textbooks. It was abandoned after the 1967 atheism campaign, but revived with the arrival of two clerics in the early 1990s. The tekke's festival day is on October 15, when pilgrims from across the region flock here.
