Daniel of Moscopole or Daniil of Moscopole (1754–1825; rup, Daniil Moscopoleanu or ; el, Δανιήλ Μοσχοπολίτης, Daniil Moschopolitis), also known as Mihali Adami Hagi ( rup, Mihali Adami Hagi), was an Aromanian scholar from

Moscopole Moscopole or Voskopoja ( sq, Voskopojë; rup, Moscopole, with several other variants; el, Μοσχόπολις, Moschopolis) is a village in Korçë County in southeastern Albania. During the 18th century, it was the cultural and commercial ...

and student of Theodoros Kavalliotis, an 18th/19th-century professor and director of

New Academy The Academy (Ancient Greek: Ἀκαδημία) was founded by Plato in c. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic p ...

of Moscopole.

Works

Daniel was an Aromanian. In this period, Moscopole was an important Balkan city, the cultural and commercial center of the Aromanians and the site of the first

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...

working in the Balkans. Daniel, in his work, Εισαγωγική Διδασκαλία ("Introductory Instruction"), compiled a combined dictionary of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

(''Romaika''), Aromanian (''Vlachika''),

Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...

(''Vulgarika'') and

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...

(''Alvanitika''). Daniel invited non-Greek speakers with this dictionary to learn the Greek language: Despite promoting the Greek language, Aromanian was Daniel's mother tongue. Furthermore, according to the Bulgarian scholar Aleksandăr Ničev, he did not know Greek very well. In 1794, he published in Venice a dictionary of four modern Balkan languages (Greek, Albanian, Aromanian and Bulgarian). Many authors published his works in Greek and in Aromanian in the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...

. With his lexicographic work, Daniel hoped to persuade the Albanians, Aromanians and Bulgarians to abandon their "barbaric" tongues and learn Greek, the "mother of knowledge". The book was republished in 1802 in

Dubrovnik Dubrovnik (), historically known as Ragusa (; see notes on naming), is a city on the Adriatic Sea in the region of Dalmatia, in the southeastern semi-exclave of Croatia. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations in the Mediterran ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

.J. Kristophson, Das Lexikon Tetraglosson des Daniil Moschopolitis, in: Zeitschrift für Balkanologie, 10 (1974), pp. 7-128.

External links

Εισαγωγική Διδασκαλία
(Introductory instruction), 1802

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moscopolites, Daniel 1725 births 1825 deaths Aromanian people People from Moscopole Aromanians from the Ottoman Empire Pro-Greek Aromanians Aromanian academics