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.

Life

He was born in

Konispol Konispol ( sq-definite, Konispoli) is the southernmost town in Albania. It sits one kilometer away from the Border crossings of Albania, Albanian-Greek border. The settlement is inhabited by Muslim Cham Albanians. Konispol is the modern centre of t ...

on July 9, 1784, but we do not know much about his early childhood. He attended religious education for eleven years at al-Azhar in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

, then returned to his native village and served as a imam until his death in 1844. Kyçyku has been a more productive author compared to others. He wrote in his Cham dialect and, apparently, was the first Albanian author to deal with the long poem. He is known for two poems with religious subjects and motives: Erveheja and Jusufi and Zylihaja. His major work is the Erveheja written in 1820, the source of which is the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Tûtî-nâme (The Story of a Parrot) by Ziyauddin Nakhshabî, inspired by the original Sanskrit

Śukasaptati Śukasaptati, or ''Seventy tales of the parrot'', is a collection of stories originally written in Sanskrit. The stories are supposed to be narrated to a woman by her pet parrot, at the rate of one story every night, in order to dissuade her from ...

.{{cite book, author1=Elsie, first=Robert, title=Albanian Literature: A Short History, date=2005, publisher=I.B.Taurus, isbn=1-84511-031-5, pages=41–42, language=en, authorlink1=Robert Elsie Another well-known work is the religiously motivated poem "Yusuf and Zylihaja", a moralizing narrative with 2430 verses, based on the story told in Surah Yusuf of the

Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , s ...

, on the attempt of Aziz's wife to seduce and make Yusuf her own. The works written by these religious inspirations in oriental literature and beyond are well known. In Persian, Firdaus (935-1020) wrote about it, in Persian the mystic Ja'ami (1414-1492) and in Turkish Hamdullah Hamdi (1449-1508) and many others. Kyçyk's other works are the poem Bekriu (1824) in which he condemns the drinking of rakia and wine, the historical one around 1826 for Ibrahim Pasha, the glorious campaigns of the Albanian governor of Egypt Mehmet Ali against the Greek rebellion and the poem that deals with the troubles of those who were forced to seek a morsel of bread and profit away from their homeland - the Gurbetlites. In 1888

Jani Vreto Jani Vreto (14 January 1822 – 9 July 1900) was an Albanian writer, printer, publisher and important figure of the Albanian National Awakening. He was responsible for setting up and overseeing the work of the first Albanian printing house in Buc ...

published Ervehena adopted as a fairy tale and sanitized by the oriental lexicon.

References

18th-century Albanian people 19th-century Albanian people Albanian poets