|
Muslim Literature
The Muslim Turks conquered most of Albania in the early years of the fifteenth century.
The mountain fortress of Kruja was taken in 1415 and the equally strategic towns of Vlora, Berat
and Kanina in southern Albania fell in 1417. By 1431, the Turks had incorporated southern
Albania into the Ottoman Empire and set up a ‘sanjak’ administration with its capital in
Gjirokastra, captured in 1419.
The first attempts in the early eighteenth century by Albanian writers, who had been
raised in an Islamic culture to express themselves not in the languages of the Orient, but in their
own native tongue, were just as decisive and momentous as the transition from Latin to Albanian
had been for the creation of early (sixteenth and seventeenth century) Albanian literature.
The literature of the Bejtexhinj, as this period of Albanian writing is called, consists
almost exclusively of verse. The poetry of this period, composed in Arabic script, was strongly
influenced by Turkish, Persian and Arabic literary models in fashion at the time both in Istanbul
and the Middle East. The subject matter was often religious, either meditatively intimate or
openly didactic, serving to spread the faith. The speculative character of much of this verse
derived its inspiration from the currents of Islam: from authoritative Sunnite spirituality to the
intense mystical spheres of Shi’ite Sufism and later, to the more liberal, though equally mystical
reflections of Bektashi pantheism. Some secular verse does occur too: love lyrics, nature poetry
and historical and philosophical verse in which we encounter the occasional ironic pondering on
the vacillations of existence from a world which is easily as exotic to the modern Albanians
themselves as it is to the Western reader.
The first major poet among the Bejtexhinj was Nezim Frakulla (ca. 1680-1760),
alternatively known as Nezim Berati or Ibrahim Nezimi. He was born in the village of Frakull
near Fier and lived a good deal of his life in Berat, a flourishing centre of Muslim culture at the
time. Frakulla studied in Istanbul where he wrote his first poetry in Turkish, Persian and perhaps
Arabic, including two divans. About 1731, he returned to Berat where he is known to have been
involved in literary rivalry with other poets of the period, notably with Mulla Ali, mufti of Berat.
Between 1731 and 1735 he composed a divan and various other poetry in Albanian, including
an Albanian-Turkish dictionary in verse form. Although we do not possess the whole of the
original divan, we do have copies of ca. 110 poems from it. Some of his verse was put to music
and survived the centuries orally. Nezim Frakulla tells us himself that he was the first person to
compose a divan in Albanian.
Frakulla’s divan includes verse ranging from panegyrics on local pashas and military
campaigns, to odes on friends and patrons, poems on separation from and longing for his friends
and (male) lovers, descriptions of nature in the springtime, religious verse and, in particular, love
lyrics. The imagery of the latter ghazal, some of which are devoted to his nephew, is that of
Arabic, Persian and Turkish poetry with many of the classical themes, metaphors and allusions:
love as an illness causing the poet to waste away, the cruel lover whose glance could inflict
mortal wounds, or the cupbearer whose beauty could reduce his master to submission. Frakulla
laid the foundations for a new literary tradition in Albania, one which was to last for two
centuries.
Among other commanding representatives of Albanian literature in the Muslim tradition
are: Hasan Zyko Kamberi, author of the poem Paraja (Money), a caustic condemnation of feudal
corruption and at the same time perhaps the best piece of satirical verse in pre-twentieth century
Albanian literature; Muhamet Kyçyku (1784-1844) whose verse marks the transition between
the classical verse of the early Bejtexhinj and the Rilindja poets of the second half of the
nineteenth century; Dalip Frashëri, a Bektashi leader from the southern Albanian village of
Frashër, who is the author of an as yet unpublished literary epic in Albanian; and his younger
brother Shahin Bey Frashëri, who also tried his hand at a Bektashi epic.
The Albanian Bejtexhinj were, on the whole, not poets of the calibre of the Persian and
Arabic classics, whose literary sophistication sprang from a millennium of refined oriental
civilization. They were, however, inventive and talented minstrels who created both a new
Albanian literature based on the Islamic traditions of the Orient and a new, but as yet unpolished
literary language. Albanian literature was written in Arabic script for over two centuries in all.
It flourished throughout the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century until
it was gradually replaced by the romantic nationalist literature of the Rilindja period, written
primarily in a number of newly devised versions of the Latin alphabet. The Muslim tradition was
kept up in Kosova, however, where verse was still being written in Arabic script as late as 1947.
Courtesy of Albanologist Dr.Robert Elsie from his Article
Albanian literature: an overview of its history and development.
in: Österreichische Osthefte, Vienna, 45, 1-2 (2003), p. 243-276.
Source: http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A2003AlbLitOsthefte.pdf |