Menduh Zavalani (1889–1914) was an Albanian revolutionary and political leader active during the last years of the Albanian National Awakening. He formed his own revolutionary band and was one of the leaders that liberated Përmet and the environs from the Ottoman Empire. Menduh was an appointed delegate from his hometown Korça to the Albanian National Congress that proclaimed the Independence of Albania. In the intellectual level Menduh was noted for the translation of Friedrich Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell into Albanian. He was assassinated at a very young age near Pogradec by a local collaborationist band.
Life
Early life
Menduh Zavalani alias Dume Zavalani was born in Korçë (now southeastern Albania), then Ottoman Empire in 1889. His father, Mehmet Zavalani, was an Albanian Bektashi bey and his mother was Hedije Luarasi. Menduh's father was a first cousin of Abdyl, Naim and Sami Frashëri, three of the main ideologues of the Albanian National Awakening, while their respective mothers Fatime and Emine Myteveli were sisters from Panarit. His parents had moved to Korça from Zavalan of Dangëllia near Përmet, few years before his birth. Members of his family had already taken an active part in the League of Prizren and the Albanian National Awakening. After receiving the elementary education in his native town, in 1905 Menduh went to Manastir (Bitola) to continue the secondary education.
Years in Monastir and the political background
In Monastir, under the influence of his trigonometry teacher and deputy principal of the school, Bajo Topulli, Menduh got soon in contact with the patriotic circles. Though still young, he had developed a personality that won their respect and often attended their private meetings. The leading Albanian nationalists were striving to establish a new political organization that would fight for more cultural and political freedom, in a time when the policies of the declining Ottoman Empire towards the Albanian people were fluctuating between giving more cultural freedom and then restraining it by regarding them as Ottomans, not Albanians, considering that the majority of the population was Muslim. The League of Peja in 1899, the last significant political organization to express the demand for autonomy, had no substantial results; the Ottoman government shut it down and in 1902 its leader Haxhi Zeka was executed. Then the Albanian nationalist movement supported and got a new incentive after the Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising of Macedonia in August 1903. The Mürzsteg Agreement, signed in October between the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was the diplomatic programme intended to reinstall peace while reaching "a more regular grouping of the nationalities" and more rights for the Christian population in Macedonia. Instead it led to ethnical cleansing of the territory and more violence between Bulgaro-Macedonians, Serbians and Greek armed bands. With the raising of nationalism, as well as the religious and ethnic contrasts, Albanians were also repeatedly target of attacks by neighbouring extremist groups. The armed bands continued to have an upper hand in the political battlefield of all these nations.