Muslims in the kaza (district) of Bilisht owned tenet farms (baștina) in the late 16th century. Bilisht became an important centre for the Sufi Halveti order and maintained two or three tekkes in the town that were reliant on its tekke in Ohrid. During the Great Eastern Crisis, the Treaty of San Stefano nearly placed Albanian areas such as Bilisht in a proposed large Bulgarian state. Shortly thereafter it was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin that left the town and its surrounding area in the Ottoman Empire. In the late Ottoman period, the nahiya (sub-district) of Bilisht was a centre of revolutionary activity for Albanian and Aromanian cheta groups, whom collectively numbered some 150-200 individuals. Until the early twentieth century, Bilisht experienced population growth from the surrounding rural area, as it was a centre for artisan activities and trade located on important transport lines. It also made the town vulnerable in times of crisis to robberies and war. Following the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), Bilisht became part of Albania. Some Muslim Albanian villages on the Greek side of the border had Bilisht as their market town until their inhabitants were sent to Turkey during the Greco-Turkish exchange of populations (1923), based on religious criteria. Due to the Albanian census of 1923, the urban status of Bilisht was recognised. During the interwar period a tekke of the Rifa`i Sufi Order existed in Bilisht and part of the surrounding Muslim rural population emigrated to Australia. Bilisht was also the centre of the Bilisht district. In the 1960s, the area around Bilisht and neighboring Korçë had the highest densities of population in mountainous districts within the country (500 metres and above). The Albanian communist government constructed many bunkers in the Bilisht area. During the early 1990s, Christianity and later Islam were revived in Albania. As such in Bilisht, the Orthodox church of Saint Veneranda (Shën e Premte) was rebuilt in 1992 followed by a new mosque in 1995. The town in post communist Albania has also been a recipient of in-migration by a small number of people from other parts of the country, due to pre-existing family connections. New shops have opened in Bilisht and it has been one of a number of towns in the wider area that has attracted investment. Old communist era bunkers in Bilisht have been repurposed into cafes and other uses. Built in the late 2010s, the Trans