In Albania, the festival commemorates the birthday of Ali ibn Abi Talib (died 661 CE) and simultaneously the advent of spring.
[1][2] Declared a public holiday in 1996,[3] it is prominent amongst the nation's Bektashis (because of their Shia affiliations), but adherents of Sunnism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy also "share in the Nevruz festival to respect the ecumenical spirit of Albania".
[8] According to Gianfranco Bria:[9] The Baktāshis claim to have adopted an ecumenical nationalist rhetoric to achieve a path of accommodation (at most, negotiation) with the secular and multi-confessional roots of Albanian civil religion.
The second is to involve the highest number of believers, especially the young (the majority of the population) who have grown up in a post-secular society and are fascinated by western socio-economic models, by mixing the Baktāshi tradition with progressive scientific and political rationalism.On the occasion of the Nevruz festival of 1991, the Kryegjyshata (Bektashi headquarters) in Tirana was reopened after the Communist period, in a moving ceremony that was attended by Mother Teresa.
[11] Prominent Bektashi figureheads have organized public celebrations of Nevruz and Ashura, in order to "forge a link between creed, nation and progressivism".