Albanian nationalism in Ottoman modernity & the figure of Hasan Prishtina

In this Prishtina Talks presentation, Shasivar Kabashi — a doctoral candidate whose thesis is “Albanian nationalism and the figure of Hasan Prishtina” — offers a historiographical reading that challenges the prevailing narratives: Albanian nationalism, he argues, was not born in opposition to the Ottoman world, but as an organic phenomenon inside the nineteenth-century project of “Ottoman modernity”.

Kabashi builds the historical frame by following the great reforms of the Ottoman Empire — from the massacre of the janissaries in 1826 and the military modernisation of Sultan Mahmud II, to the Tanzimat (1839), the Meşrutiyet and the Young Ottomans (Jön Osmanlılar), who wanted an imperial state on the European model. In that context of reform the Albanians, spread across several vilayets, began to organise politically: from the League of Prizren (1878), founded to defend the territories of Kosovo, Manastir and others after the Congress of Berlin, down to the uprisings of the twentieth century.

In the second half, Kabashi concentrates on the figure of Hasan Prishtina — the young Albanian deputy, the chief architect of the 1912 uprising, and the most sophisticated political thinker of the Albanian national movement. He analyses Prishtina's meetings with the Ottoman government, what set him apart from the conservatives, and the part he played in the proclamation of independence. Prishtina's efforts to defend the Albanian lands — those of Kosovo, of Sandžak and of Macedonia — mark one of the most organised attempts to give the Albanian nation a modern political frame, inside the logic of Ottoman modernity but with full autonomy as its aim.

Some of the points covered: 📌 Ottoman modernity: reform and modernisation as a historical period 📌 The massacre of the janissaries (1826) as the start of Ottoman modernism 📌 The Tanzimat, and the social and institutional reforms 📌 The Young Ottomans (Jön Osmanlılar), and the European model 📌 The Congress of Berlin, and the League of Prizren 📌 Albanian nationalism inside the Ottoman frame, not against it 📌 Hasan Prishtina as deputy and strategist of the 1912 uprising 📌 Prishtina's part in the proclamation of independence and the defence of the lands

📍 Prishtina Talks