Vangjel Meksi

Vangjel Meksi (1770–1823) was an Albanian medical doctor, writer, and translator. One-time personal physician to Ali Pasha, the 19th-century Albanian ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina, Meksi produced the first translation of the New Testament into Albanian with the help and sponsorship of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). Meksi did not live to see his work's publication however, which was supervised by Gregory IV of Athens. As a member of Filiki Etaireia, a secret society whose purpose was to establish an independent Greek state, Meksi joined the Greeks in the Siege of Tripolitsa during their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire and died shortly afterwards.

As well as its value to Albanian Christians, who could for the first time read the Gospels in their own language, Meksi's work advanced the study of written Albanian, and in particular informed the work of 19th-century linguists and philologists such as Joseph Ritter von Xylander, August Schleicher, and Johann Georg von Hahn. Their studies of the Albanian language were significantly influenced by Meksi's Bible translation.

Early life Meksi was born in 1770 in Labovë, a village near Gjirokastër, and pursued secondary studies in Ioannina, then an important Ottoman provincial center (now in Greece). His first employment was as a folk physician to the court of Ali Pasha, the Albanian ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina, a position he held until 1803. Armed with a letter of recommendation from Ali Pasha, Meksi was admitted to the University of Naples in Italy, where he studied medicine under Dr. Nicola Acuto and practiced in a hospital administered by the parish of San Giovanni a Carbonara. After completing his studies in 1808, Meksi returned to Yanina and once again served in Ali Pasha's court, this time as one of his four physicians.

Philological activity After falling out of favor with Ali Pasha, for reasons unknown, Meksi left the court in 1810 to travel around Europe.

Meksi also wrote a grammar of the Albanian language in Albanian. It too has been lost, but it is mentioned in many letters reporting Meksi's work as an Albanian philologist written by Robert Pinkerton to his superiors at the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), which subsequently sponsored the translation of the New Testament into Albanian. employing a mix of Greek and Latin characters. In a letter to his superiors at the BFBS, dated August 28, 1816, Pinkerton wrote that the Albanian nation occupied a large part of the ancient Illyria, that they spoke a language completely different from Slavic, Turkish, Greek, or Latin, and that for the Albanian Orthodox the mass was recited in Greek, a language that believers and even some of the priests did not understand. According to Pinkerton, the translation could be done by one or more Albanians from the Ionian islands under the supervision of an Albanian bishop. in Istanbul. Meksi, who was then a teacher in Serres, had been recommended to Pinkerton because of his Albanian grammar book. ten months earlier than the contract's deadline.

Early in 1821 Mr. Leeves of the BFBS visited Thessaloniki to supervise the translation. On February 8, 1821, he wrote that the work had been completed, and that the only outstanding task was a final review by a competent person, who had already been assigned to the task. In 1822 the revised manuscript was sent to Malta to be printed, and in 1823 Leeves sent from Malta to the representative of the society in Corfu the first copy of a printed New Testament in Albanian.

On March 16, 1824, Mr. Lowndes, the BFBS's secretary in Corfu, sent a letter to the society in which he mentioned that the sum paid to Meksi for his work was 6,000 piastras and that Archimandrite Grigor was paid 60 crowns. In July 1827 the form in which the first 500 copies of the New Testament were to be bound was decided in London. The entire edition amounted to 2,000 copies.

Although Gjirokastriti's edition of the New Testament was written in Albanian, it used the Greek alphabet. It is not known which alphabet Meksi used in his own manuscript. a secret society whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule over the Balkans and to establish an independent Greek state. When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, after his translation had been completed, Meksi joined the Greeks in the Siege of Tripolitsa. an arrangement that helped the Greeks to capture the town from the Turks. A second edition was published in 1858 in Athens, but as it had not been revised by any native speakers of Albanian it was full of errors. and Johann Georg von Hahn an Austrian diplomat, philologist, and specialist in Albanian history, language, and culture, who translated the Bible into Gheg Albanian with the help of Kostandin Kristoforidhi.