Abdyl Frashëri

Abdyl Frashëri ( born August 17, 1839 in Frashër, Albania, † October 11, 1892 in Istanbul) was an activist of the Albanian national movement Rilindja; He was instrumental in the founding of the League of Prizren.

Life

Abdyl Frashëri came from a Bektashi family and was the eldest son of an impoverished Pasha from southern Albania. After the death of his parents he moved in 1865 from his native village to Ioannina and entered the service of the Ottoman state; In 1877 he became head of the customs office of Ioannina.

When, in the course of the Treaty of San Stefano (1878 ) threatened the assignment Albanian populated areas in the Balkan states, Bulgaria and Montenegro, located Frashëri began journalistically with the national question deal. He wrote articles in the Turkish- and Greek-speaking newspapers in which he was the first to the interests of the Albanian population for public discussion.

Together with other Albanian intellectuals he founded in 1877 in Istanbul, the Central Committee to defend the rights of the Albanian people ( Alb. Komiteti qendror për mbrojtjen e të të drejtave kombësisë shqiptare ). Its aim was to achieve a degree of autonomy for the Albanian settlements within the Ottoman Empire. In June 1878 Abdyl Frashëri took in Prizren as a representative of the Istanbul Central Committee to the founding of the League of Prizren in part, in which he played a leading role in the following years. Then he went to southern Albania, where he aim of the League - sought to put into action - preventing the assignment Albanian populated areas in the Balkans. He founded an Albanian Committee of Ioannina and put on troops that should counteract the annexation of Epirus by Greece. A meeting held under his direction in the Bektashi tekke in his native village Assembly of Muslim and Christian landowners agreed an autonomy program, which was adopted in Prizren in November 1878 by the League.

1879 visited Abdyl Frashëri with Mehmed Ali Vrioni Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Rome to look at the big powers support for the Albanian cause, and the local governments to hand over a memorandum with the Albanian demands. These efforts, however, remained completely ineffective.

In October 1879 Frashëri was co-founder of the Istanbul Society for the pressure Albanian literature ( Alb. Shoqëri e të shtypuri shkronja shqip ).

In January 1881, the League of Prizren took over under Frashëris line management of the vilayets of Kosovo. After Abdyl Frashëri also had deposed the Turkish administrative head of Dibra, the Ottoman government reached in April with troops. After the destruction of the League Abdyl Frashëri had to flee. On the run through Albania, he was picked up in Elbasan and first sentenced to death; but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The end of 1885 Frashëri was released and could not be more hereafter reside in the Albanian vilayets. He died on 11 October 1892 in Istanbul.