The Ottomans recruited Dukagjini through the "devşirme" system in his early youth. In addition to being a poet, he was an important Ottoman military figure during the expansion and apogee period of the empire, serving as a "bölükbaşı" (senior captain) and participating in the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran, the 1516–17 Ottoman–Mamluk War, the Baghdad expedition of 1535, and the Siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Because of an elegy that he wrote about Şehzade Mustafa, Suleiman the Magnificent's first-born son, he fell out of favor with the perpetrator of the murder, Grand Vizier, Rüstem Pasha, who exiled Dukagjini back to the Balkans, where he spent his last years.