page_title: Sami Frashëri
section_title: Contributions to Turkism
hierarchical_section_title: Sami Frashëri / Life / Between Ottomanism, Albanianism and Turkism / Contributions to Turkism
context_page_description: Sami bey Frashëri known in Turkish: Şemseddin Sami Bey was an Albanian writer, philosopher, playwright and a prominent figure of the Rilindja Kombëtare, the National Renaissance movement of Albania, together with his two brothers Abdyl and Naim. He also supported Turkish nationalism against its Ottoman counterpart as well as laicism against theocracy.
  Frashëri was one of the sons of an impoverished Bey from Frashër in the District of Përmet. He gained a place in Ottoman literature as a talented author under the name of Şemseddin Sami Efendi and contributed to the Ottoman Turkish language reforms.
  Frashëri's message, however as declared in his book "Albania - What it was, what it is, and what will become of it" published in 1899, became the manifesto of the Rilindja Kombëtare. He discussed the prospects for a united, free and independent republic of Albania. In this way, beginning with a demand for autonomy and struggle for their own alphabet and education, Frashëri helped the Albanian National Movement develop its claim for independence.
context_section_description: Frashëri was a significant contributor to the development of Turkism. From the early 1880s he had an interest in the imperial Ottoman language as expressed in an article "The Ottoman Turkish Language" on 2 November 1881 where Frashëri argued that it was a Turkish language. These views would appear in articles published during the 1890s where he advocated for the imperial Ottoman language to be simplified and replaced by spoken Turkish, with words and grammatical structures stemming from Arabic and Persian being removed. Frashëri envisaged the emergence of a modern colloquial Turkish language from a disintegration of the imperial Ottoman language that would have benefit wider society. Frashëri published an Ottoman Turkish dictionary Kamus i Türki and in its first two volumes in 1899 he expressed in an introduction that Western Turkish or Ottoman was the same language as its Eastern Turkish counterpart or Cagatay. The differences for him was that Western Turkish had absorbed Persian, Arabic, Italian and Greek words which Frashëri thought was unnecessary. For him the dictionary was the wealth of a language and as other languages possessed their dictionaries Frashëri viewed Turkish as in need of its own dictionary to preserve unique linguistic attributes. Embracing Turkish as "our language", Frashëri stuck to his Albanian heritage by affirming an Albanian identity and commitment to Albanianism in the dictionary. In word entries on Albania and Albanians he included definitions on being Albanian such as the term Albanianism where an example of its use in an sentence was rendered as "He is not denying his Albanianism/Albanianess" (Arnavudluğunu inkur etmiyor). 
  The choice of wording by Frashëri in labeling the language Turkish as opposed to Ottoman assisted to nurture a national identity among Turkish people. For him his idea of the Ottoman Empire was for Abdul Hamid II to emphasize Ottomanism over Islamism and incorporate concepts like Turkism and Albanianism into the state framework allowing cultural pluralism with Albanians and Turks each developing their own languages and teaching them in schools. He considered cultural and ethnic diversity of the Muslim community as factors that would strengthen Ottoman unity. Frashëri, after several years of work published a 500-page Arabic dictionary (Kamus-i Arabi) in 1896 and he also noted that Kurdish lacked a dictionary but was unable to compile it as he lacked linguistic skills in the language. Stories of him working on an Albanian dictionary existed during his lifetime. He failed however to produce one and George Gawrych holds that probably due to the work of his friend Konstantin Kristoforidhi whose Albanian dictionary was published in 1904 he choose to let it be the standard version. 
  Sami Frashëri also played a role in the later developing Turkish nationalist movement, by translating the works of European Turkology into Turkish and transmitting their Western ideas to Turk audiences. These works would serve as a basis for an emerging Turkish identity, and the early Turkish nationalists were grateful for them. He had close relationships with Turkish nationalist intellectuals Veled Çelebi (İzbudak) and Necip Asım (Yazıksız) and maintained friendships with the writers and publisher of the journal İkdam which contributed to the spread of cultural Turkism and promotion of nationalism within Turkey.
caption: Sami Frashëri and his wife Emine, May 1884.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "400", "Image ImageLength": "557", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:01:03 11:16:12", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "382", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10377", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "557"}