Hasan Zyko Kamberi

Last updated

Hasan Zyko Kamberi was an Albanian poet of the Bejtexhi genre. [1] [2]

Contents

Life

Kamberi was born in the second half of the 18th century in Starje, a village at the foot of Mount Grammos. [1] [2] The only event known about his life is his participation in the Battle of Smederevo in 1789, as part of an army led by Ali Pasha of Ioannina. [2] [1] He was a dervish, a Bektashi clergyman, and died in Starje in the early 19th century. [1] [2] His tomb there was turned into a shrine which continues to exist to this day, and is known locally as the turbeh of Baba Hasani. [2]

Poetry

Kamberi is one of the most well-known representatives of the Muslim tradition in Albanian literature. [2] He was part of the Bejtexhi, a Muslim Albanian literary movement strongly influenced by Turkish, Arabic and Persian literature. [1] His main work, a 200-page mexhmua (verse collection), is lost. A manuscript of it is believed to have been sent to Monastir (Bitola) sometime in the 1908-1910 period to be published, but what happened with it is unclear. [2] Surviving works of Kamberi include over fifty secular poems, about ten ilâhî, and a short mevlud. The latter is the first Albanian mevlud, and was written in Arabic script. [1] [2]

Kamberi also wrote secular poetry. In his octosyllabic Sefer-i hümâyûn (The king’s campaign) in thirty-three quatrains, he describes his participation in the Battle of Smederevo and the suffering it caused. In Bahti im (My fortune) and Vasijetnameja (The testament), he elaborates on his own misfortunes. Gjerdeku (The bridal chamber) elaborated on contemporary marriage customs. It takes concern with the hardship of young women married off to husbands their families choose for them, and the hardship of young men forced to go abroad to make a living. However, the most famous of his poems is Paraja (Money). It is a satirical treatment of feudal corruption prevailing at the time. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.

Arabic literature is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which comes from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.

Albanian literature stretches back to the Middle Ages and comprises those literary texts and works written in Albanian. It may also refer to literature written by Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian diaspora particularly in Italy. Albanian occupies an independent branch within the Indo-European family and does not have any other closely related language. The origin of Albanian is not entirely known, but it may be a successor of the ancient Illyrian language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuzuli (poet)</span> Azerbaijani poet (1483–1556)

Muhammad bin Suleyman, better known by his pen name Fuzuli, was a 16th-century poet who composed works in his native Azerbaijani, as well as Persian and Arabic. He is regarded as one of the greatest poets of Turkic literature and a prominent figure in both Azerbaijani and Ottoman literature. Fuzuli's work was widely known and admired throughout the Turkic cultural landscape from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with his fame reaching as far as Central Asia and India.

The qaṣīda is an ancient Arabic word and form of poetry, often translated as ode. The qasida originated in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and passed into non-Arabic cultures after the Arab Muslim expansion.

al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi Iraqi lexicographer, philologist and poet (718 – 786 CE)

Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī, known as al-Farāhīdī, or al-Khalīl, was an Arab philologist, lexicographer and leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq. He made the first dictionary of the Arabic language – and the oldest extant dictionary – Kitab al-'Ayn – introduced the now standard harakat system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ, musicology and poetic metre. His linguistic theories influenced the development of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Urdu prosody. The "Shining Star" of the Basran school of Arabic grammar, a polymath and scholar, he was a man of genuinely original thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nezim Frakulla</span> Albanian poet

Nezim Berati, alternatively known as Nezim Frakulla 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 in modern-day western Albania and lived part of his life in Berat. 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 Imam Ali, mufti of Berat. Between 1731 and 1735 he composed a divan and various other poetry in Albanian, including an Albanian-Turkish mini-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.

Mathnawi or masnavi is a kind of poem written in rhyming couplets, or more specifically "a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines". Most mathnawī poems follow a meter of eleven, or occasionally ten, syllables, but had no limit in their length. Typical mathnawi poems consist of an indefinite number of couplets, with the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muhammad in Islam</span>

In Islam, Muhammad is venerated as the Seal of the Prophets and earthly manifestation of primordial light (Nūr) emanated by God, who transmitted the eternal word of God (Qur'ān) from the angel Gabriel (Jibrīl) to humans and jinn. Muslims believe that the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, was revealed to Muhammad by God, and that Muhammad was sent to guide people to Islam, which is believed not to be a separate religion, but the unaltered original faith of mankind (fiṭrah), and believed to have been shared by previous prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The religious, social, and political tenets that Muhammad established with the Quran became the foundation of Islam and the Muslim world.

<i>Utendi wa Tambuka</i> Epic poem in the Swahili language, dated 1728

Utend̠i wa Tambuka, also known as Utenzi wa Tambuka, Utenzi wa Hirqal or Kyuo kya Hereḳali, is an epic poem in the Swahili language by Bwana Mwengo wa Athman, dated 1728. It is one of the earliest known documents in Swahili.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Israʼiliyyat</span> Narratives assumed to be foreign or from the Israelites in Islamic hadith literature

Israʼiliyyat is a sub-genre of tafsīr and Ḥadīth which supplements Quranic narratives. Isra'iliyyat may derive from Jewish, Christian or Zoroastrian sources. In the early years, Isra'iliyyat were widely accepted. Only by the time of Ibn Taimiyya and Ibn Kathir, the term Isra'iliyyat began to denote content considered dubious or as un-Islamic. In modern times, Turkish Quran commentators still allow for usage of Isra'iliyyat, while they are rejected by half of the Arab Quran commentators.

The historicity of Muhammad refers to the study of Muhammad as a historical figure and critical examination of sources upon which traditional accounts are based.

A bejtexhi was a popular bard of the Muslim tradition in Ottoman Albania. The genre of literature created by bejtexhinj in the 18th century prevailed in different cities of what is now Albania, Kosovo, Chameria as well as in religious centers.

Al-Mufaddal ibn Muhammad ibn Ya'la ibn 'Amir ibn Salim ibn ar-Rammal ad-Dabbi, commonly known as al-Mufaḍḍal aḍ-Ḍabbī, died c. 780–787, was an Arabic philologist of the Kufan school. Al-Mufaddal was a contemporary of Hammad ar-Rawiya and Khalaf al-Ahmar, the famous collectors of early and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and tradition, and was somewhat the junior of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', the first scholar who systematically set himself to preserve the poetic literature of the Arabs. He died about fifty years before Abu ʿUbaidah and al-Asma'i, to whose labours posterity is largely indebted for the arrangement, elucidation and criticism of ancient Arabian verse; and his anthology was put together between fifty and sixty years before the compilation by Abu Tammam of the Hamasah.

Sulejman Naibi (Ramazani) was an Albanian early period poet of the bejtexhinj era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Et'hem bey Mollaj</span> Albanian administrator, nobleman and bejtexhi

Haxhi Et'hem Bey also known as Haxhi Et'hem bey Mollaj (1783–1846) was an Ottoman Albanian administrator, nobleman and bejtexhi.

Dalip bey Frashëri, also known with the pen-name Hyxhretiu, was an Albanian Bektashi sheikh and bejtexhi of the 19th century. His poem Kopshti i te mirevet is the first and the longest epic known in the Albanian literature.

Shahin Frashëri was an Albanian bejtexhi of the 19th century. His Mukhtarnameh poem is one of the longest and earliest epics in Albanian literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Safi al-Din al-Hilli</span> 14th-century Arab poet

Abu ’l-Maḥāsin Ṣafī al-Dīn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saraya al-Ḥillī al-Ṭāyyʾī al-Sinbisī, more commonly known as Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī or Ṣafiddīn al-Ḥilli, was a 14th-century Arab warrior poet.

Muhamet Kyçyku also known as Muhamet Çami (1784-1844) was a Cham Albanian author and one of the most famous bejtexhinj, the author of two religious poems. His major work is Erveheja written in 1820 but published in 1888.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bia, Gianfranco (2021). The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam: Volume 2, Heirs of the Prophet: Authority and Power. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East. Brill. p. 271.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Elsie, Robert (1992). Albanian Literature in the Moslem Tradition: Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Albanian Writing in Arabic Script. Brill. pp. 287–306.