Ismail Qemali

Ismail Qemali, or Ismail Kemal Bey Vlora (1844–1919), was an Albanian politician and statesman regarded as the founder of modern Albania and remembered by the title Babai Kombit, "Father of the Nation". The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, he was elected leader of the Provisional Government by the All-Albanian Congress in November 1912 and served as Albania's first prime minister and foreign minister from December 1912 until his resignation in January 1914. ^{1 2}

Ismail Qemali was born in the city of Vlorë, then part of the Ottoman Empire, on 16 January 1844 — the Albanian and Turkish articles give 24 January — to an Albanian noble family, which the English article describes as an Albanian Muslim family. ^{2 1 3 4 5}

He completed his primary education in his hometown, then attended the Zosimaia School in Ioannina, mastering Ottoman Turkish, Greek, Italian and French, and graduated from the Ottoman law school in Istanbul. ^{1 2}

He married a Greek woman, Kleoniki Sourmeli, and sent his children to be educated in Greece; the Albanian article adds an earlier marriage in 1864, to the widow Nasipe Hanëm of Konica, who died after bearing a daughter, gives the second marriage in 1867 to Kleoniki, daughter of the Greek nobleman Anton Sourmeli of Edirne, and lists their ten children, among them Mahmud Bey, Tahir Bey, Et'hem Bey, Qazim Bey and Qamil Bey. ^{2 3}

Qemali moved to Istanbul in May 1860 and embarked on a career as an Ottoman civil servant, reaching high government positions in the European and Asian parts of the empire; he identified with the reform wing of Midhat Pasha, author of the Ottoman constitution, with whom he was a close collaborator, and became governor of several towns in the Balkans. ^{1 2}

In those years he took part in efforts to standardise the Albanian alphabet, supporting Latin characters for written Albanian and the establishment of an Albanian cultural association, and in 1876 he served on the Philippopolis investigation commissions and the special commission for the newly proclaimed constitution. ^{2 3}

When Sultan Abdulhamid II dismissed Midhat as prime minister in 1877, Qemali was sent into exile in western Anatolia — the Albanian article specifies Kütahya and seven years — though the Sultan later recalled him and made him governor of Beirut, after posts including the governorship of the sanjak of Bolu in 1884. ^{2 3}

In 1892 he presented the Sultan with a plan for a Balkan Confederation binding the Balkan states and the empire in mutual defence and economic development within a unified Great Eastern state with the Ottoman Empire as its centre, in which Albania was not treated as a separate state; in time his liberal recommendations lost him the Sultan's favour again, and he was awarded the governorship (wali) of Tripoli, a high post he viewed as exile. ²

In May 1900 Qemali boarded the British ambassador's yacht, claimed asylum and was conveyed out of the empire, living in exile for the next eight years; from Athens he issued proclamations explaining his abandonment of service to the empire, and worked to promote constitutional rule in it. ²

In Paris he met Faik Konica and the two worked together briefly on Albanian issues through newspaper publications, until the pair fell out; Qemali founded the newspaper Selamet (Salvation), published in Ottoman Turkish, Albanian and Greek, which called for cooperation between Albanians and Greeks on the ground of shared geopolitical interests — views some Albanian activists considered suspicious and an instrument of Greek policy, so that his popularity among Albanians waned for a time. ²

He took part in the Congress of Ottoman Opposition in Paris in 1902, organised by Prince Mehmed Sabahaddin, backed his faction's call for reforms, minority rights, revolution and European intervention, and was installed as chairman of the new central committee, with control of the official CUP newspaper Osmanli given to Sabahaddin and himself. ²

Between 1902 and 1903 he was party to a CUP coup plot against Abdulhamid II, charged with obtaining diplomatic and financial support and buying two ships: he made many visits to London, where — the English article records — he exaggerated the level of British support, which was only moral and ambiguous; Khedive Abbas II placed £4,000 in an English bank for the plot and then halted the funds; the plan collapsed in Athens for want of suitable ships, and the participants blamed one another, Qemali blaming the prolonged negotiations while others from Sabahaddin's circle held that he took the money for his own purposes. ²

In January 1907 a secret agreement was signed between Qemali and the Greek government envisaging an alliance against the Ottoman Empire and a future boundary on the Ceraunian Mountains; the CUP severely criticised him for it, and many Albanian nationalists did not accept it. ²

After the 1908 revolution and the constitutional restoration Qemali returned from exile and became a deputy representing Berat in the restored Ottoman Parliament, leader of the Albanian deputies in it and a contributor to the Young Turk newspaper Tanin; during the 31 March incident he was briefly made President of the Ottoman National Assembly and led it to recognise a new government of Abdulhamid II, then fled to Greece before the CUP Action Army arrived, and a government investigation later cleared him of any wrongdoing. ²

His career thereafter concentrated solely on Albanian nationalism: on 23 June 1911 he joined the leaders of the Albanian revolt at Gerče in Montenegro to draw up the Greçë Memorandum demanding Albanian autonomy, schooling and language rights; in December 1911 he and Hasan Prishtina convened secret meetings in Istanbul that decided to organise a future uprising, and Qemali was tasked with going to Europe to obtain support, finance and funds for 15,000 guns, belonging to the leadership faction that backed Albanian autonomy within the empire during the 1912 negotiations. ²

As the Balkan Wars ended Ottoman rule in the region, Qemali travelled with Luigj Gurakuqi to Bucharest to consult the Albanian community in Romania, then kept in touch with Austro-Hungarian officials in Vienna, whose foreign minister Berchtold placed a boat at his disposal; from Trieste he reached Durrës in mid-November, but Ottoman objections and approaching Serb forces drove him on to Vlorë, arriving on 26 November, where his son Ethem had summoned Albanian representatives from all over Albania. ²

On 28 November 1912 Qemali was the principal figure in Albania's secession from the Ottoman Empire and in the Declaration of Independence that ended more than 400 years of Ottoman rule, and together with Gurakuqi he raised the Albanian flag on the balcony of the two-storey building in Vlorë where the Declaration had just been signed. ²

The establishment of the government was postponed to the fourth session of the Assembly of Vlorë, on 4 December 1912, until representatives of all regions had arrived; Qemali became prime minister and foreign minister, while the Ottoman Council of Ministers, preferring Albanian autonomy, asked him for military assistance to the Ottoman Third Army trapped in southern Albania, and he asked the Great Powers to recognise and support an independent Albania. ²

In 1913 the CUP government sent lieutenant colonel Bekir Fikri to raise Albanian support for Ahmed Izzet Pasha as candidate for the Albanian throne; Fikri presented Qemali with a plan for joint Ottoman, Albanian and Bulgarian military action against Greece and Serbia, with Kosovo and Chameria as Albania's reward, and Qemali assured him of loyalty to Izzet and supported the plan to infiltrate troops and weapons secretly. The Serbs uncovered the plot and reported it to the International Control Commission, whose officers raided Vlorë on 7–8 January 1914, arrested Fikri and had him condemned; Qemali and his cabinet resigned, and he left the country amid ensuing turmoil. ²

During the First World War Qemali lived in exile in Paris, short of funds but with a wide range of contacts, and collaborated with Somerville Story, correspondent of the continental edition of the Daily Mail, on his memoirs — published after his death, the only memoir of a late Ottoman statesman written in English. ²

In 1918 he travelled to Italy to promote support for his movement, but the Italian government prevented him from leaving and he remained its involuntary guest at a hotel in Perugia; there he died of a heart attack at dinner on 26 January 1919 — Wikidata gives 24 January — and after his death his body was brought to Vlorë and buried in the local tekke of the Bektashi Order. ^{2 4 5}

No faith value is recorded for him in the museum's data, because no two independent sources name a school for him: the English article says he was born "to an Albanian Muslim family", which is family background and never counts; the German article calls him an Albanian Muslim politician, a generic description naming no school; and the Wikidata item carries three religion values side by side in the one statement — Islam, Shia Islam and the Bektashi Order — a single structured-data source, internally divergent, on which no value can rest. His burial in the Bektashi tekke at Vlorë is a funeral fact arranged by others after his death; it is reported in his story as such and is not used as an attestation of his own affiliation. ^{2 6 5 4}

Qemali is commemorated in Albania as Babai Kombit, "Father of the Nation"; he is depicted on the obverse of the 200 lekë banknote of 1992–1996 and of the 500 lekë banknote issued since 1996, and on 27 June 2012 President Bamir Topi decorated him posthumously with the Order of the National Flag. ^{2 1}

• English Wikipedia article on Ismail Qemali (revision 1379237897); Arabic Wikipedia article «إسماعيل كمال» (revision 77005081); Urdu Wikipedia article (revision 12094001); Albanian Wikipedia article (revision 3044799); Turkish Wikipedia article (revision 37851181); German Wikipedia article (revision 247236792); Wikidata item Q46932.
• Recorded conflicts: birth day (16 January in the English and Arabic articles and Wikidata; 24 January in the Albanian and Turkish); death day (26 January in the English, Arabic and Albanian articles; 24 January in Wikidata).