By Ilirjan Agolli. Translation Petrit Latifi

The article presents new evidence concerning the earliest journalistic publications in Albania. Thanks to Turkish historians, the Albanian public is learning that the newspaper İşkodra appeared 11 years earlier than Albanian press bibliographers had previously believed. In other words, İşkodra was first published in 1868 and reappeared in 1879. Moving its date of origin back by a full 11 years makes İşkodra the first newspaper published in Albanian territories, predating the newspaper İşkodra previously known to have appeared in August 1871.

Although it was published only in Ottoman Turkish, İşkodra marks the earliest trace of journalism in Albania. Shkodër thus became the first city in the country to have a printing press that produced publications for the public—an expensive luxury for its educated inhabitants.

THE UNKNOWN NEWSPAPER İŞKODRA (1868)

Until recently, historians and bibliographers of the Albanian press [1] were unaware that the newspaper İşkodra had first been published as early as 1868. Publications issued in Tirana up to that point [2] stated that the newspaper İşkodra was first published in 1879. However, as we shall see below, the discovery made by Turkish researchers is particularly significant news for the history of the Albanian press and journalism. It establishes İşkodra as the first newspaper published in Albania and Shkodër as the country’s first city to have both a newspaper and a printing press.

The first newspaper [3] to appear in the Ottoman Empire was Takvim-i Vekâyi (Calendar of Events). Its first issue was published in 1831, when there were still no regulations [4] governing publications, which were regarded as individual undertakings. As part of the Tanzimat Reforms, it became necessary to draft laws and regulations concerning publishing. For the first time, the Sublime Porte decided to “regulate”—or, more accurately, to bring under legal control—publications of every kind, including newspapers. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, the Ottoman administration began [5] publishing newspapers in the major administrative centres of the empire’s provinces, including those in Albanian regions.

The first regulations were introduced through the adoption of the Press Law and the Copyright Law in 1857. These were followed by the Penal Code in 1858, the Publication Laws in 1864, and the Imperial Decree of 1867. This legal framework gave rise to a large number of publications in the capital and in provincial administrative centres, covering almost the entire territory of the empire.

As part of the Tanzimat Reforms, the Sublime Porte also reorganised the existing provinces [6] under the Provincial Regulations of 1864–1867. The existing Albanian provinces were likewise altered in accordance with these imperial regulations.

In 1867–1868, the Province of Shkodër underwent changes under the Provincial Regulations. These included alterations to its boundaries and geographical extent, as well as to its internal administrative divisions (sanjaks, kazas and nahiyes). In that same year, the newspaper İşkodra appeared in Shkodër for the first time, as did newspapers in most of the empire’s other provinces.

Among the dozens of newspapers published in provincial capitals throughout the empire, Turkish researcher Atilla Girgin [7] listed İşkodra (Shkodër, Ottoman Turkish) and Yanya (Ioannina, Ottoman Turkish and Greek) among the earliest to appear in 1868 in the Albanian provinces. According to Girgin, provincial newspapers contained news about the sultan and the government, appointments of public officials, regional public institutions, road and railway construction, telegraph lines, health, education, the economy and the police. Articles in these publications did not carry the names of their authors or journalists. Another common feature was that newspapers generally took the name of their province, while a second regional language, alongside Ottoman Turkish, occupied part of the newspaper.

According to another Turkish researcher, Hıfzı Topuz [8], most of these publications were announcement bulletins or official newspapers of the Ottoman state. Topuz’s list includes additional titles not mentioned by Girgin: Selanik (Thessaloniki, Ottoman Turkish and Greek, 1869) and Aydın (Izmir, Ottoman Turkish, 1874).

The provincial newspapers serving Albanian regions—in Shkodër, Ioannina, Prizren, and Monastir or Thessaloniki—did not contain pages in the Albanian language, either initially or in later years. This was despite the fact that many other provincial newspapers were bilingual. Nevertheless, these publications reported on the lives of Albanians.

The newspaper Yanya (Ioannina) described [9] in detail graduation ceremonies at the Zosimaia Gymnasium, including statements by school administrators and the province’s military authorities. “Several Greek and Albanian nationalists are known to have emerged from this school,” observes researcher Orhan Koloğlu.

During the Tanzimat period, Ioannina’s Zosimaia Gymnasium became increasingly popular, wrote [10] Eqrem Vlora. By 1860, it was a satisfactory educational institution by the standards of advanced Europe, attended by many Orthodox and Muslim Albanians.

“Although its students did indeed return home with a sympathy for Greece, they left the school as Albanians with a strong national consciousness. Such figures included Naim, Sami and Abdyl Frashëri; Ismail Qemali Vlora; Abedin Dino; Gjergj Çako; Turhan Pasha; and others. Some of these patriotic Albanians founded the first centre for Albanian linguistics in Athens in 1874–1880,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, the Albanian language did not succeed in gaining a dedicated page in the contemporary press as a second regional language, unlike Greek, Serbian and other languages.

THE NEWSPAPER İŞKODRA REAPPEARS (1879)

News of efforts to republish the newspaper İşkodra [11] was reported by the newspaper Sabah and several other newspapers in March 1876. According to these reports, one page was to be in Ottoman Turkish and the other in Italian.

The author of the article, believed to have been Sami Frashëri himself, wrote [12]:

“…The mother tongue of the entire population of Shkodër and its surrounding districts, as well as of the majority of its Muslim population, was Albanian. They wrote and read it using Latin letters, and even conducted their correspondence with one another in Albanian.”

“We believe that the purpose of an official newspaper would be better served if one of its pages were written in the mother tongue of the local population rather than in a foreign language. In this way, it would have a greater influence on the people of those regions,” the article’s author emphasised.

In fact, however, the newspaper did not appear until two and a half years later.

On 24 June 1879, the Province of Shkodër relaunched its official newspaper, İşkodra [13]. It was published weekly, every Thursday, for two years, in Ottoman Turkish and Albanian written in the Arabic script, under the direction of Hysen Pasha.

On 27 June 1879, amid the Albanian national movement led by the League of Prizren, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Shkodër, Friedrich Lippich von Lindburg, informed [14] the Foreign Ministry in Vienna that the newspaper İşkodra had appeared on 24 June 1879 in Albanian and Turkish.

According to the consul, the newspaper’s content was prepared by government officials in the city, while the news published in its Albanian section was taken from European newspapers. He stated that the publication was under the influence of Shkodër’s governor, Hysen Pasha.

The consul reported that the very first issue carried an article about Bosnia, which had been occupied by the Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) the previous year, and included criticism of Austria-Hungary. This brief report was also published [15] in Shkodër’s Leka magazine.

Zef Skiroi likewise wrote [16] about the events in Shkodër in April–May 1880 in his work The Albanians and the Balkan Question:

“On 7 May 1880, the official newspaper İşkodra, which was appearing for the first time in Albanian and Ottoman Turkish, published an appeal signed by Ali Pasha of Gusinje, Hodo Beg Sokoli, Preng Bib Doda, the Mufti Hafiz Efendi (Hafiz Daut Boriçi), Archbishop Karlo Poten and Kol Çoba, on behalf of the local leaders and the people.

“The appeal stated that, ‘…since Albania had ceased to be under the rule of the sultan, all non-Albanian officials would be dismissed and compelled to leave the country. From that point onward, the people would obey no one except the orders of the League and the counsel of the councils of tribal elders, which would continue, as before, to be the sole lawmakers of the new state.’”

In the second year of its existence, in 1880, the newspaper’s publishers openly declared that it was the “organ of the Shkodër branch of the League of Prizren.” This declaration would also mark the publication’s closure, following the suppression and dissolution of the Albanian League of Prizren.

In the years that followed the League’s demise, the newspaper continued to appear irregularly, in Ottoman Turkish only. It was printed at Shkodër’s printing press, opposite the city’s government palace.

Researchers state that, after its closure in 1880, İşkodra appeared again from 1897 to 1903. However, little information is available about this third period of publication.

Reprinted from the latest issue of the cultural magazine Univers, newly off the press, No. 19.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] Kastrati, Jup. Albanian Bibliography of Drama, Narrative Literature and the Press (1750–1946). The final chapter is entitled “Bibliography of the Press (1848–1946).” It is also included in Baliu, Begzad, The Bibliographic Work of Prof. Jup Kastrati, Pristina, 2001, p. 47.

The work, compiled between 1942 and 1946, is preserved in its original manuscript in the Archives of the Institute of History in Tirana. Although completed decades earlier, it was not published under the communist regime for political reasons, as Dr Hamit Boriçi explains.

For 25 years, until 1971, nearly all researchers in this field relied on the manuscript. In that year, Palok Daka began publishing Retrospective Bibliography of the Albanian Periodical Press and Publications about Albania, 1848–1944, in the journal Historical Studies, Tirana, 1971–1974, across ten issues.

“The foundations of a scholarly bibliography of the history of the Albanian press are first found in Dr Jup Kastrati’s manuscript,” wrote Dr Boriçi. “However, the most comprehensive work in this field remains Palok Daka’s bibliography.”

See H. Boriçi, A Century and a Half of Albanian Journalism, 1848–1997, Tirana, 1997, p. 25.

Another bibliographer, Maksim Gjinaj, has prepared a more comprehensive bibliography containing hundreds of additional titles. All three bibliographies of the Albanian press—those of Kastrati, Daka and Gjinaj—remain unpublished.

[2] Daka, Palok. Retrospective Bibliography of the Albanian Press and Publications about Albania, 1848–1944. Published in the journal Historical Studies: 1971, issues 3 and 4; 1972, issues 1, 2 and 4; 1973, issues 1–4; and 1974, issue 1. Collected in one volume by the National Library. Page 8.

[3] Taniş, Cihat. The Voice of the East Rumelian Turks: The Newspaper Emniyet (1896–1897). Konya, 2011, p. IX.

[4] Ceylan, Ayhan. “Legal Regulations Governing Ottoman Printing and Publishing during the Tanzimat Period (1839–1876).” Turkish Legal History Research, No. 1, Istanbul, 2006, pp. 139–155.

[5] Tartari, Alban. Turkophone Media in the Balkans. Tirana, 2015, pp. 38–39.

[6] Gençoğlu, Mustafa. “The Administrative Divisions and Structure of the Province of Shkodër (1867/1868–1908).” CBÜ Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 13, Issue 3, September 2015, pp. 259–290.

[7] Girgin, Atilla. Local Journalism in the History of the Turkish Press. Istanbul, 2001, pp. 86–87.

According to Girgin, the following provincial newspapers appeared between 1860 and 1903:

• 1860: Hadikâtü’l-Ahbar, Beirut (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1865: Tuna, Danube province (Turkish–Bulgarian); a newspaper in Damascus/Syria (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1866: Trablusgarb, Tripolitania (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1867: Gadire’l Firat, Aleppo (Turkish–Arabic); Lübnan, Mount Lebanon (Arabic–French); Girit, Crete (Turkish–Greek).
• 1868: Edirne, Adrianople (Turkish–Greek); İşkodra, Shkodër (Turkish); Yanya, Ioannina (Turkish–Greek).
• 1869: Hüdâvendigâr, Bursa (Turkish–Armenian); Firat, Aleppo (Turkish–Arabic); Konya, Konya (Turkish–Greek); Trabzon, Trebizond (Turkish–Greek); Zevra, Baghdad (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1871: Prizren, Prizren (Turkish–Serbian).
• 1872: Kastamonu, Kastamonu (Turkish); Seyhan, Adana (Turkish–Greek); Yemen, Yemen (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1873: Rumeli, Monastir (Turkish).
• 1874: Ankara, Ankara (Turkish).
• 1876: Neretva, Herzegovina (Turkish–Serbian).
• 1877: Kosova, Pristina (Turkish–Serbian); San’a, Sana’a (Turkish–Arabic).
• 1878: Sivas, Sivas (Turkish).
• 1884: Manastir, Monastir (Turkish); Musul, Mosul (Turkish).
• 1903: Kudüs, Jerusalem (Turkish–Arabic).

[8] Topuz, Hıfzı. The History of the Turkish Press: From Mahmud II to the Holding Companies. Istanbul, 2003, pp. 33–34.

[9] Koloğlu, Orhan. The History of the Press from the Ottoman Era to the 21st Century. Istanbul, 2006, p. 35.

[10] Vlora, Eqrem Bey. Memoirs, Vol. I, 1885–1912. Tirana, 2001, pp. 160–161.

[11] “News from the Provinces.” Sabah, No. 17, 14 (26) March 1876, p. 2. Cited in Prifti, Kristaq, and Vehxhi Buharaja, The Voice of the East: Sami Frashëri, Works, Vol. 14, Pristina and Skopje, 2004, p. 165.

[12] Albanian researchers believe the author of this article was Sami Frashëri.

[13] Daka, Palok. Retrospective Bibliography…, p. 8. Cited from Leka, Shkodër, 1939, Nos. 6–12, p. 236.

[14] Frashëri, Kristo. “Following the Trail of Two Old Albanian Newspapers.” Zëri i Popullit, 22 November 1962, p. 3; also published in Tribuna e Gazetarit, Nos. 3–4, 1967, pp. 13–14.

[15] Leka, Shkodër, Nos. 6–12, 1939, p. 236.

[16] Schiro, Giuseppe. Gli Albanesi e la questione balcanica (The Albanians and the Balkan Question). Naples, 1904, p. 64.