Soon after the constitution was proclaimed once again, twelve Albanian clubs were established and started their activities in the main cities in the Ottoman Empire as follows: Monastir, Salonica, Janina, korça, Elbasan, Gjirokaster, Berat, Vlora, Filat, Starova, Üsküp, and Istanbul. The aims of these clubs were declared not to be for the political goals but to be for the cultural developments of Albanians. At the same time, publishing activities of periodicals written in Albanian, which were connected with clubs, was very active. These periodicals were mouthpieces for the clubs and propagated the ideas of Albanian nationalists. The main periodicals were
Bashkimi i Kombit (
Union of the Nation) in Monastir,
Korça and
Lidhja Orthodhokse (
Orthodox Union) in Korça,
Tomori in Elbasan,
Bashkimi (
Union) in Shkodra,
Lirija (
Freedom) and
Diturija (
Knowledge) in Salonica, and
Besa (
oath) in Istanbul.
Besa, which had two pages in Ottoman and two pages in Albanian, started to be issured in November 18 1908 and ended in No. 10 in January 30 1909. The main writer of this paper was Mehmet Frasheri, the youngest brother of Shemseddin Sami, the editor was H. Frasheri, and the publisher was Leka Tepelena.
The periodical
Besa has not been analized in the study of Albanian national movement (neither
Besa nor other periodicals). The reason is, I suppose, at first, that the periodical was short-lived and then that the writer and publisher were not the prominent figures in the national movements. But for getting hold of the characters of the Albanian national movements which resulted in independence in a short period, we are required to analyze comprehensively the Albanian periodicals issued in every part of the Empire.
For this point, the aim of this paper is just to introduce an Albanian periodical
Besa as a historical material, showing some problems when we use these periodicals.
The titles of articles show that the Ottoman edition and the Albanian edition of the paper had different contents. We can suppose that each editon was for each reader (that is; for Ottomans and for Albanians). There can be seen some different tone in each edition. This paper which collects the publication information of this periodical is just the first step to analyze
Besa. I hope this step will be a preparation for full analysis of
Besa, eventhough there are some difference between Albanian language used in this periodical and Albanian nowadays which make it difficult for us to use periodicals in those days.
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