Ded Gjo Luli

Dedë Gjon Luli Dedvukaj, also referred to as Ded Gjo Luli and Deda (November 1840 – 24 September 1915), was an Albanian guerrilla leader most notable for commanding the Malissori uprising against Ottoman troops. He was posthumously awarded the "Hero of Albania" title. Dedvukaj was the clan chieftain of the Hoti tribe.

By the beginning of 1911, Roman Catholic Albanians were disturbed by the Ottoman situation in the Balkans. Montenegrin king Nikola Petrović encouraged the northern Albanian tribes (Malissori) to revolt against the Ottoman Empire. In the highlands north of Shkodër an uprising broke out by March 1911 and Luli along with his men attacked Ottoman watch-posts on the Ottoman-Montenegrin border. After having led a premature rebellion in the mountains north of Scutari in late March 1911, succeeding in capturing Tuzi, Dedvukaj was compelled by King Nikola to rally the Malissori in April. Albanian rebels and refugees from the Kosovo Vilayet had been given refuge in Montenegro. General Vukotić himself passed out weapons to them, despite the fact that Montenegro was officially neutral.

Legacy

Dedë Gjon Luli is most known for starting the revolution for the Albanians, which eventually led to later actions by Luigj Gurakuqi, Ismail Kemal, and Isa Boletini. In Tirana, Albania's capital city, there is a street named in his honor called "Rruga Ded Gjo Luli". In the village of Bardhaj in Hot, the rubble of his house, that was left in ruins after the war, was converted into a museum which represents his life as a hero to the Albanian people.

An epic poem on his 1910–11 fight against the Ottomans was written by Gjergj Fishta. The canto, titled "Dedë Gjo' Luli," is the twenty-eighth song of the poem's thirty cantos and depicts him addressing his men and refusing an Ottoman pasha's demand for submission. An English translation appears in Gjergj Fishta, The Highland Lute, translated by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).

Death In September 1915, Dedë Gjon Luli, roughly 75 years old, was walking along a road in Orosh, when he was ambushed by Serbian or Montenegrin forces. Although there is another less popular theory of his death. It is said that Ded Gjo Luli went to secretly meet up with Gjonmarkaj's of Mirdita and that Mirdita's captain assassinated him. They say that the Mirditor Gjonmarkaj's along with Esad Pasha were on the Serbian side.