The bi-ritual prayer house of the Muslim saint Akyazala Baba and of his Christian counterpart St. Athanasius is located in the outskirts of the village of Obrochishte near the Black sea resorts Albena and Golden Sands, St. Konstantin and Helena and not far from the towns Balchik and Varna.

The establishment of the house called by the local people the “tekke” which means dervish monastery has dated back since XVI c. The construction of the complex and its formation as economic-religious institution took several decades and coincided with the reign of sultan Suleiman I (1520-1566). Unlike the orthodox Muslim monastery the Akyazala Baba prayer house remained center of unconventional beliefs, concepts and rituals. In the second half of the XIX c. the tekke became a bi-ritual sanctuary, which was visited by both Muslims and Christians.

The patron of the monastery in Obrochishte village is the Muslim saint Akyazala Baba, also called “pole of the poles”, because it was believed he had reached the highest level in the secret mystical doctrine. He succeeded Otman Baba who was a leader of a Muslim order, related to the Abdalaman-I rum group. This was a trend which united the wandering Muslim monks called dervishes and the doctrine of the hurufits. They believed that the divine nature was the speech. Akyazala Baba took the lead of the order in 1496 when the unorthodox sects in the Ottoman Empire suffered persecutions. In order to save the household he accepted the Bektashism and with some of his followers moved to live in the valley of the Batova River far from the center of the Ottoman Empire.Here his monastery started functioning as a peculiar center of one of the branches of the order. The sheikh himself became a spiritual leader to a part of the Bektashi leaders in eastern Bulgarian lands. After his death the dervishes built his tekke and near it the village of Tekiedzhik (today Obrochishte) was set up.

Christians revere St. Athanasius the Great at this place too. They believed that in the past there was a monastery, which was turned by the Muslims into a dervish monastery and St. Athanasius had been killed by the Turks in order to defend his religion. This saint was a real person too. He was a prominent archbishop and theologian who had lived in IV c. in Alexandria. His contribution to the church was the defeat of the Arian heresy, the establishment of the Nicene-Tzarigrad creed and determination of the real collection of books of the Holy Writ.

There are different stories and legends about Akyazala Baba and St. Athanasius that presents the both saints as mythical characters. In these myths they both could build houses only for a night and only with an axe; they could find lost animals and bring them back; they could punish the disbelievers with disease and death, but to heal the faithful and to give them health and prosperity; they could make the calves stop sucking and the dogs stop barking and to make a stick in the ground to sprout in a tree. Most of the rituals that the believers do in the tekke are connected to the cult to the stone, water and wood. Nowadays from the former complex only two buildings have remained: the tyurbe (saint’s tomb) ant the imaret which was a place where the monks had performed their rituals and had sheltered every traveler past by their monastery.

The buildings are different in size but with the same construction. They are regular heptagon with attached to it rectangular anteroom. In the tyurbe is the Akyazala baba’s grave that is oriented northeast-southwest and is covered with green cloth. In the past there were put the saint’s belongings, but now there are the pilgrim’s gifts. The imaret of the tekke is significantly larger and its entrance is in the south. Its roof was destroyed during the Russian-Turkish war in 1768-1774. In the past its main room ended with sophisticated wooden construction lagged with lead sheet iron. In the center of the imaret there was a fountain and in the northern end erected open fire which ended with seven-walled long chimney. The Akyazala baba’s teke is similar to the Demir baba’s prayer home in Sboryanovo village near the town of Isperih , to Otman baba’s home near Trakietz village, Haskovo region and to Kademli baba’s near Grafitovo village, Sliven region. It is a unique monument of the Ottoman cult architecture on Bulgarian lands dated from the first half of the XVI c. The wall-paintings in the tyurbe were painted in XIX c. and they were declared as real cultural values. Nowadays the tekke still gathers pilgrims from short and long places of Bulgaria, who come here to pray for the help and defense by the both saints.