Sulejman NAIBI
BIOGRAPHY
Sulejman Naibi, also known as Sulejman Ramazani, was a gifted
Albanian poet of the Muslim tradition, a contemporary of Nezim
Frakulla. He was born in Berat where he lived most of his life
and died in 1771 [1185 A.H.]. Little else is known of him except
that he got married in Elbasan and is thought perhaps to have
spent some time in Turkey or the Middle East.
Sulejman Naibi is the author of a 'divan' of poetry in Albanian,
a manuscript of which survived in Fier until 1944, but was then
unfortunately lost. As a result, we know Sulejman Naibi's verse
only from the few poems which have surfaced in other manuscripts
or which have survived orally in central Albanian folk songs,
such as Mahmudeja e stolisurë (Mahmude, Well-Adorned
One). Among the little of this eight and twelve-syllable verse
which has been published, we find delicate lyrics of a certain
metrical precision. Naibi is the first Muslim poet to devote
verse to the beauty of women, most other poetry in the Oriental
tradition being composed by men to the beauty of young men. Naibi's
language is less imbued with orientalisms than that of Nezim
Frakulla. |
Albanian Literature in Translation
Early
Authors (16th - 18th centuries)
