Bajram Curri

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This page is about the Albanian national hero - for the town named after him, see Bajram Curri (town).

Bajram Curri (1862 – March 29, 1925) was an ethnic Albanian nationalist from Kosovo.

Curri was born in Gjakovë. While what is now Albania and Kosovo were under Ottoman control, Curri represented the interests of the Albanians. He successfully fought in 1912 against the Young Turks. During the First World War he started a guerrilla unit, part of the Kachak movement.

When Albania was reconstituted after the war, he held various governments posts as a Minister and as a commander in the army. As an opponent of the later King Ahmed Zogu, to whom the Kosovo issue was less important, he was pursued by the King's troops and encircled in the northern Albanian mountains. He shot himself on 29 March 1925, in order to escape capture. The place where he died, Dragobi in Tropojë District, is today called Bajram Curri, as the Albanian communists revered him as a freedom fighter and nationalist.