The 1907 collection of photographs of Bayazid Doda in Macedonia (Photo)

Bayazid Elmaz Doda was born around 1888, in the mountain village of Shtirovicë in Upper Reka (Macedonia), where he spent his childhood. Like many of Reka's sons, he too took the path of exile and went to Romania to work. On November 20, 1906, in Bucharest, he met the Albanologist Baron Franc Nopça (1877-1933), who accepted the eighteen-year-old as a servant.

From the work relationship was born a love and a long-term coexistence. In the memoirs of his life, published in 2001 with the title "Reisen in den Balkan" (Journeys through the Balkans), Nopça described in a few words the first meeting with his lover, who appeared everywhere as his private secretary.

"On November 20, 1906, in Bucharest, I met Bayazid Doda. Since that time, Bayazid has stood by me, and since the death of Luis Drashkovic, he has remained the only person who truly loved me, and in whom I had complete confidence in all things, without ever thinking of anything doubt that he could abuse my trust. He also had faults, but seeing all his good things, I have ignored them. Out of hatred against everything Austro-Hungarian and because I was especially committed to Albania, out of hatred towards me, the Serbs killed Bayazid's father and brother in Shtirovica in 1913."

Later, Nopça, together with his young servant, traveled to his birthplace, his parents' estate at Sachal near Haceg in Transylvania, and after a few months to London, where Bayazid fell ill with a severe flu. Towards the middle of November, the two left together from Shkodra, where Nopça had a house in the years 1907-1910 and later after October 1913, to Mirdita and Kalis, where they were taken hostage by the notorious looter Mustafa Lita. After their release in Prizren, they traveled to Skopje and, probably, as they had previously planned, also passed through Upper Reka. Then they traveled back to Shkodër, to study the region of the Hoti and Gruda tribes.

Even in the years before and during the Balkan Wars, Nopça and his very temperamental secretary traveled through many areas of Northern Albania, through Kosovo and Macedonia. In the fall of 1913, Nopça wrote: "Once, when Nikollë Gega and Bayazid were flaming against each other in a sudden rage, each of them grabbed a revolver to kill the other, Gjok Prenga and Mehmed Zeneli came in between to to separate them, while I then managed to reconcile the whole issue without harming anyone, even after a while, I managed to reconcile the two. Many Europeans are surprised how I managed to keep together all those different characters, which besides this, like all Albanians, are also burdened with a feeling of resentment and mutual jealousy".

"As soon as I had settled the financial issues, I left Shkodra for the mountains. My goal was to first study the southern side of the Albanian Alps, then the region roughly west of the Bjeshke i Nemuna. But, due to malaria, I was forced to cancel the last part of my program, to then descend through the mountainous but easily passable part of Kastrati. In my country, Bayazid climbed to the top of Veleçik, Kunoren e Keneshdol and several other mountains, where he helped compile the special map of the northern part of the Alps by taking the necessary photographs," he wrote.

Nopça took his own secretary with him in the war of 1915-1916, when he was serving with the Austro-Hungarian troops in Kosovo. After the war, they lived mainly in Vienna, where the scientist Nopça published important studies both in the field of Albanianology, as well as in paleontology and geology, gaining great scientific respect.

On April 25, 1933, after a long suffering from depression, Nopça took his own life with a bullet in his mouth. A few moments earlier, he had already killed his loyal servant and husband Bayazid Doda. In his letter to the police, Nopça wrote: "The cause of my suicide is my nervous system. The reason why I killed my old friend and secretary, Bayazid Elmaz Doda, in his sleep, completely inexplicably, is that I could not leave him sick, desolate and penniless in this world, because that way he would suffered a lot. I want to be burned."

Bazazid Elmaz Doda is the author of the manuscript "Albanisches Bauerleben im oberen Rekatal bei Dibra (Makedonien)" [The life of Albanian peasants in the Upper Reka near Dibra (Macedonia)], preserved in the National Library of Austria. The manuscript was completed by the twenty-six-year-old author in Vienna in April 1914, but was not published. From the author's preface it appears that the text was translated into German by Nopça. Since the text in German is very similar to Nopça's other ethnographic writings, it can be concluded that this had a great influence on the compilation of this study. This becomes even clearer in the many additions and side writings of the manuscript, where Nopca's calligraphy is clearly recognizable. The original Albanian manuscript, if there was one, can now be taken as lost.

This ethnological study, published in Vienna in 2007, after almost a century, contains a wealth of data and information from the most diverse fields, so for this very reason it could arouse interest in many scientific fields and find use everywhere. . Furthermore, this could be the first ethnographic study written in German by an Albanian author. Doda tells us: the purpose of his book:

"My hometown, Upper Reka, during the time of Turkey, as a result of a short-sighted and barbaric policy, was completely separated from the world. During the recent events, it remained under Serbian rule, and the fact that the Albanian population of this region, as a result of the separation from the world, may completely disappear from the face of the earth worries me. In order to fight this evil, to help my fellow villagers to preserve their integrity and at the same time to leave a work to be in Albania, I have written this study on the life of Albanians in Reka e Eperme. What Spiridon Gopčević wrote in his namkeq book on Macedonia (Macedonia and Old Serbia, 1889) about Reka is completely untrue and a tendentious lie, which has been argued by me and other pilgrims.

I did not want to do an ethnographic study, nor any other similar and very challenging work, but simply to describe the life of this part of the world, as I experienced it day by day.

Tevona, the very ones who have destroyed the Albanians of the district of Nish, it seems that they will do the same to my fellow villagers. Then, even the simplest and most authentic descriptions of the daily life of my people will remain as a monument to a former being and at the same time will be an indictment against its annihilators. The translation of the manuscript was done by Dr. Baron Nopça. The illustrations are made from personal photographs.

This study is a rare glimpse into a bygone world due to the fact that Shtirovica, two years after this study was written, was destroyed and razed to the ground by Bulgarian military forces. The Albanian population there was expelled. Later, many of them were forced to move to Turkey. Today, the region is almost uninhabited. An acquired world.

In Doda's original manuscript as well as in the version published in 2007, there are original photographs of the author, taken around 1907, which we are pleased to show here for the first time. For permission to use Doda's photographic collection, we are grateful to the Visual Archive of the Austrian National Library (Bildarchiv, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) in Vienna, where Doda's collection is stored under numbers NB902060B to NB902076B. /Robert Elsie/