Nezim FRAKULLA
BIOGRAPHY
Nezim Frakulla (ca. 1680-1760), alternatively known as Nezim
Berati or Ibrahim Nezimi, was the first major poet
among the Bejtexhinj, popular poets in the Muslim tradition
who wrote in Albanian but used Arabic script. 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 asserts
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. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Early
Authors (16th - 18th centuries)
