If you use Bootstrap (v3.x) you would see that clicking on a tab does add anything to the url so if you were to refresh, you wouldn’t go back to the tab you are on. The post below says to get rid of the e.preventDefault() in the tab api and add some code to detect the window href so you can go directly to your tab.
http://www.gsdesign.ro/blog/jquery-ui-bootstrap-tabs-remember-last-selected-tab/