Today, President Bajram Begaj commemorated the great poet of the National Renaissance, Naim Frashëri, on his 177th birthday.

In a post on social networks, Begaj said that, “the poet Naim Frashëri enlightened a nation, inspired an era and perpetuated the love for the Albanian language. Let’s honor today the 177th anniversary of the birth of the greatest poet of the National Renaissance”.

Naim Frashëri was born in Frashër of Përmet, on May 25, 1846. He received his first lessons in his hometown, where he began to learn Persian near the Bektashi teke. In 1865, his family moved to Janina/Ioannina, where he attended the “Zosimea” high school. After returning to his homeland, he made the first attempts at Albanian poetry under the influence of the Beteshians, but also in Persian, in the collection “Tehajylat” (Dreams) that he published in 1885.

Naim Frashëri participated in the events of the Albanian League of Prizren, in the meeting of the Southern branches of the Albanian League in Frashër (1878).

He devoted himself to the work of national awakening through the cultivation of the Albanian language and national literature and to the establishment of the Albanian school and its equipping with textbooks in the mother tongue. In 1882, he finally settled in Istanbul. With his dedication and intense patriotic and cultural activity, Naim Frashëri became the central figure of the National Renaissance and was forever baptized as the “Apostle of Albanianess”.

For less than 20 years, he published a wide range of works in Albanian and other languages, poems, collections of lyrics, artistic prose, as well as poems and texts for schools and translations. His most notable works are “Cattle and Agriculture” (1886), the collection of patriotic and philosophical lyrics “Summer Flowers” (1890), the epic poem “The History of Skanderbeg” (1898), “The true desire of the Albanians”, 1886, etc.

Naim Frashëri’s work has been and continues to be widely published and has become the subject of scientific studies. Naim Frashëri passed away in Istanbul on October 20, 1900. His remains were brought home in 1937 and rest in the Memorial of the Renaissance in Tirana.

/a.p./