Luigj Gurakuqi · Islam Museum

Depth

At a glance

Roles: writer · Politician
Region: Anatolia
Identifiers: Wikidata

Life in time

The Colonial Era · The Contemporary Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: A. K. Fazlul Huq · Abbas Hilmi II · Abd al-Hafid of Morocco · Caliph Abd al-Majid II · Abd al-Qadir al-Iskandarani

In space

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Place in the story

Christian (documented)

Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

Summary

Luigj Gurakuqi (19 February 1879 – 2 March 1925), who wrote under the pen names Jakin Shkodra and Lekë Gruda, was an Albanian writer and statesman from Shkodër.¹ Baptized the day after his birth into a Catholic family, he was educated by the Jesuits at the Saverian College and as a young man published verse in the Jesuit periodical of religious culture, The Messenger of the Sacred Heart.²³ In 1909 he became director of Albania's first teacher-training school at Elbasan; in November 1912 he travelled with Ismail Qemal to Vlorë, signed the declaration of independence and became minister of education in the first Albanian government.¹³

In 1924 he backed the June Revolution and served as minister of finance in Fan Noli's government; after its fall he fled to Italy, where he was shot dead in a Bari café on 2 March 1925.¹ The university founded at Shkodër in 1991 now bears his name.³