Sami Frashëri

Sami Frashëri was born on June 1, 1850, in Frashër, the youngest of the three Frashëri brothers. Moving to Istanbul, he became one of the foremost Ottoman Turkish lexicographers, compiling the first modern Turkish novel (Taaşşuk-ı Talat ve Fitnat), the monumental six-volume historical-geographical encyclopedia Kâmûs-ül A'lâm, and the definitive French-Turkish dictionary.

Simultaneously, Frashëri was the primary political theoretician of Albanian national autonomy. In 1879, he helped design the Istanbul alphabet for the Albanian language. In 1899, he anonymously published in Bucharest the foundational manifesto Shqipëria ç'ka qenë, ç'është e çdo të bëhetë (Albania: What It Was, What It Is, and What It Will Be), laying out the political blueprint for an independent democratic Albanian republic.