The saga of the Cakrani dynasty

"One day we will fade away and die, but the country must live, even if it is to show those who will come back, who died and died for it, who loved it with all their heart and who tried to get it out more light!" – Hajredin Bey Cakrani.

By: Anila Ahmataj

The 1000th century, from beginning to end, was shaken by events that were projecting future centuries. A new empire was born from some Islamic tribes without many claims, but which spread over three continents, precisely in the territories of the Byzantine Christian Empire, ending its XNUMX-year life under the name of the Ottoman Empire. The Byzantine emperors themselves, but also its princes, powerless against the rapid spread of war in their territories, rushed to create various alliances with the Ottomans in various agreements, whether these were also with Islamic conversion within the sultanate and the structure of the dynasties that strongly supported it. Ottoman expansion in the East and West. Among the imperial powers and influences, the great Murjusuf dynasty appears strongly since the beginning of the period of Sultan Orhan.

From the beginning of the Tanzimat Reforms, the Albanian insurrectionary spirit appeared significantly, which is widely reflected in the correspondence of the High Gate. Imperial Prime Minister Reshid Mehmet Pasha reports to Sultan Mahmud II: "As I have said many times before, this accursed people cannot be compared in manliness and bravery to any other people... Putting them under zap and under the nizam has been considered by him all as a matter not only difficult, but also impossible" (Basbakanlik Arsivi, Istanbul, Fondi Hatt-i Humayun Defter No. 1, 2, 12, vesika 521518, dt. 23.9.1830). While the Sultan: "It is well known that these Albanians have nothing to do with religion and the Islamic religion... By right, putting this Albania on the rails is of indispensable importance, but how much money does it make, right now is not the time" ( BAI, Fondi Hatt-i Humayun Defter No. 1, 3, 12, 24-31, vesika 21513-1).

It is widely known that the uprising against the Tanzimat reforms in 1847 was the most powerful of the entire 1847th century, but very little is known about who organized and financed it. It was the Albanian feudal class, the opposition of Istanbul, which, considering the imperial punishment against the heads of the Albanian vassals, worked out a completely different strategy from the classical one in order to come to the fore. With this she managed to create, in a short time with popular leaders experienced in wars, the leadership as well as a large number of insurgents determined to face the Ottoman armies. "In the past, people from well-known families were put at the head of the popular movement in Albania, but this time something strange happened. In the uprising of 2603, it was agreed by all that the leadership of the uprising should not be taken by these people, but by those people with experience of war - even though they might not be people heard. The first families were sidelined in taking the leadership and whatever their decision is, it definitely serves the general interest" (report no. 295/1966 of the Greek consul of Ioannina, Clerinxis to his government. "O neos kuvaras" magazine, Athens, 164, pp. 165-XNUMX).

The uprising broke out precisely in the territory of Mallakastra, where the involvement of the representative of the largest family of Veis Bey Cakran broke every established rule.

In the morning before it dawned well / They were coming with chains,
Veis Be, what did you do well?

After the violent suppression of the uprising against the Tanzimat reforms and the imprisonment of hundreds of its leaders with murder, imprisonment and exile in Anatolia by the High Gate, an international crisis broke out in the Slavic Balkans, behind which, as always, the Russian Empire was found. The special danger was that of the Albanian lands, since the Slavic peoples were presenting their movements as liberating and the Albanian territories were being considered as Ottoman. In this fragile situation, Istanbul urgently amnestied the Albanian leaders of the uprising, with the condition that they had to fight in the Montenegrin, Serbian and Bosnian territories. Fighting in an unknown territory was the multiple strike that the High Gate was doing, but this time what would take the warriors beyond the impossible was the sacred duty to the motherland. Kahreman Bey Cakrani, the son of Veis Cakrani, an Ottoman soldier, now sets out not only as a soldier of the homeland, but with a clear task of returning the great name of their family to a rare succession of responsibility. After the battles that did not spare even the most vocal leaders of the previous uprising, such as Zenel Gjoleka, Hodo Ali Nivica, etc. Kahreman Bey Cakrani penetrated through Montenegro, leading victorious wars to Bosnia. Thus he raised the former glory to a new horizon, but took care to expand the territories of his domain, along with the influence.

The Russo-Ottoman War that broke out in 1877 found the Ottoman armies unprepared, and the Russians broke through to the Gates of Istanbul, putting the Ottoman Empire under conditions of capitulation. For this she made - in December 1877 - a truce in Ederne and in March 1878 she kept the infamous Treaty of Saint Stephen a secret. The surrender of the High Gate was complete, leaving almost the entire Balkans in the hands of the Slavs. When it was seen that the Russian tsar was no longer encroaching on the Balkans, but on the East itself, the Great Powers and the newly created Germany urgently requested an international congress on the matter, to mitigate as much as possible the Slavic domination. This was the biggest historical surprise, no longer of the Ottoman Empire, but of the Albanians who were already disappearing as a nation.

But, long ago, Kahreman Bej Cakrani had joined the Istanbul Committee as a soldier, alongside important patriots such as Abdyl Bej Frashëri, Mehmet Ali Pashë Vrioni, Mustafa Pashë Vlora, Vaso Pashë Shkodtrani, etc. that time would bring as the first modern Albanian state-forming factor of the entire history, in the National League of Prizren. This time the unconditional surrender of Istanbul was added to the position of never having encountered Slavic enemies before - which made their mission no more difficult, but bordering on impossible. The League, which began as an initiative of Sultan Abdylhamid II himself, under the name Xhemijeti Itiffaki Islamije (Holy Islamic League) as a failed imperial action for a religious war, quickly turned into a work of service to the nation and the new Albanian state that appeared and sometimes disappeared in the dark horizons of time. The Albanians, realizing that they were in the middle of a hopeless situation, first demanded that the Albanian territories be a single vilayet (Tevihdi Vilajet) which would mean extended autonomy, which thanks to the conditions of developments would quickly return to the Albanian state , whose wind was blowing.

Kahreman Bey Cakrani, with his son Hajred, the future signatory of independence, did not rest together with the chairmanship of the Istanbul Committee in working on this matter. The decision was announced worldwide as news, without the name of the author, on September 27, 1878 in the newspaper "Terjuman-i Shark" that was published under the direction of Sami Frashëri in the imperial capital, where the Albanian League had drafted it as a program of seven points. In the first point, it was said that the sultan's sovereignty would be preserved in Albania, but not a single inch of Albanian land should be given to other states. The second point required the creation of the Province of Albania, that is, the unification of all Albanian lands into a single political-administrative unit. The other points dealt with the autonomist prerogatives and the constitutional principles that the vilayet should have. All the employees would be Albanians. The Albanian language would be used in the administration and in the school. The Sultan did not accept the request, and even went further by announcing that those who are looking for "Tefhidi Villas" are the most dangerous enemies of the Ottoman Empire.

Albanian patriots, and in particular the renaissance Sami Bej Frashëri, selflessly continued the national war, in another direction - seeing that the exit from the Ottoman Empire apart from the war was decisively favored by cultural factors, such as language and religion, the two main pillars of the nation so vital, but that the Albanians had neglected them, if they had not kicked them. After the "Alphabetar of the Albanian Language" and other publications with the Latin alphabet, the written language was reborn. Next to the great revivalist in the absence of his father Kahreman Bej Cakrani, now stands the military student Hajredin, who begins to bring to his homeland from Istanbul the alphabetist and other books from the "Society of Printing Albanian Letters" of the most enlightened Albanian encyclopedic mind in times, Sami Frashërit.

"Since the end of the 19th century, the Beylers of Cakran had itinerant teachers in their guesthouses - sometimes Hamit Lumi and sometimes me. The Beylers of Cakran had paid the itinerant teachers, not only for their village, but also for other villages, such as Gorishovë, Buzmadh and Klos", writes the representative of the Colony of Bucharest, Kristo Karbunara.

The four sons of Kahreman Bey Cakran, Sabriu, Hajredini, Sulejmani and Bektashi become the protagonists of many great and very brave events, always against the Ottoman power and the strong hand of those people who they held as implementers of their denationalization policies - deeply oriental. At the beginning of the 1905th century, Bektash Bey Cakrani, a young lawyer, conflicts with the boy of Berat, killing him and all his guards in the middle of the city, which caused all four brothers to be arrested and even imprisoned in the infamous prison of Ioannina. After many efforts, Kahreman Bey's father managed to convince the court to acquit his sons due to lack of evidence. The Austro-Hungarian consul, Dr. Ranzi clearly reflects the battle with the Ottoman power in the trial against them in a detailed report to the imperial foreign minister in Vienna, Count Goluçovski; "In the spring of XNUMX, there was an assassination attempt on the gendarmerie commander of Berat, who was killed along with all the guards, and the Bejlers of Cakran, the richest and most influential tribe of Mallakastra, who were at enmity with him, were accused as the instigators. . However, the court that tried the incident acquitted them, although the mytesarif (prefect) accused the Bejlers of nationalist activities, charges for which they were arrested."

With the outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 in Istanbul, it was sought to end the authoritarian rule of the Sultan by creating a constitution that required the implementation of the rights of nations within the Ottoman Empire. The Albanian patriots could not pass up the golden opportunity and rushed to create the most powerful cultural-educational movement, that of the Albanian Language, which would eventually enable the language to be written. The dynasty had been moving at full capacity for some time and with the books given by Sami bey Frashëri it was already taught everywhere.

For the first time, the Beylers of Cakran officially opened the school in their own palaces with a grand inauguration and the participation of all patriotic and cultural figures, where Baba Dudë Karbunara was the first to speak.

The representative of the Colony of Bucharest, Kristo Karbunara, writes: "The Society of Bucharest sent me, with the Austro-Hungarian mail at the port of Vlora, a letter envelope and an Albanian notebook in 1909 for the Beylers of Cakran. Mr. Hajredin had a letter of appointment with Jani Vruho, Josif Bagër and Nuçi Naçi, while Bektash Bey and Sulo Bey, along with Azis Vrioni, were associated with the Istanbul Committee. I took these so many times to Cakran tok with Ibrahim Abdullahu". The school could not be closed, but it never got the permit, as the Young Turk administration started the repression. "The permit for the Cakran school came to us here, which is an old school, perhaps one of the oldest in Tuscany, and which has been kept until today without the official permission of the governor", writes the newspaper "Dielli" of Boston.

Enlightenment is a rare noble trait, but it enlightening provinces and an entire people with language and knowledge, can no longer be called a National Renaissance, but a European Renaissance.

The prominence of the representatives of the Cakrani Dynasty was not a competition between them, but a living spirit of light and freedom, a mixture of patriotic feelings and sacrifice of warriors on an emblem with the name of the motherland. Who was really its representative Bektash bey Cakrani that Mallakastra would be personified with? "There is no history of the Albanian Uprising in Tuscany that shows any great brave man, who with all the power of patriotism and with the ardent desire to win freedom, Bektash Bey Cakrani is undoubtedly one of them. He is no more than thirty-five years old, with a slender stature, a robust and magnificent body, he is the fourth son of the late Kahreman Bey Cakran. He is married in Tepelena to the daughter of a noble who comes from Ali Pasha's tribe. Since he was little, Bektashi showed great love for our nation. Every time he got hold of a book by Naim Frashëri, he sang and cried. He graduated from the high school "Sultanie" in Istanbul and the Faculty of Law. He is quite knowledgeable and understanding. His national feelings and the chivalry of theroism for the homeland are quite developed. He speaks and writes very well French and Turkish, Persian, and to a lesser extent Greek and German. The whole of Mallakastra honors and respects him as a savior".

The clash with the Empire out of defiance was becoming an unbearable reality for him.

"There are 13 people among those arrested. The Young Turkish Gendarmerie has issued an announcement for the arrest of Bektash Cakran, Xhemil bey Vlora, Osman Haxhi, Hamza Isa, etc. who are not found in the country", it was said in the report of the Austrian consul Kraus sent to his foreign minister Alois Von Erental, in 1909. As distanced from the Empire, the domain was almost out of its control. "Cakran is located in Lower Mallakastra and we called it the Republic of Cakran, because whatever happened in Fier, or in Vlora, or in Berat, you don't feel it at all in Cakran, which was quiet from all the noise of the Government Ottoman", writes the signatory of independence and the teacher of Cakran's school, Thanas Floqi.

But the Uprising of Toskëria, completely unknown in history, was an initiative of Toscana patriots who sought at all costs coordination with the Uprising of the North, or Gegëria, which was led by MPs Nexhip Bey Draga and Hasan Bey Prishtina.

"In 1911, Bektash Cakrani came to Istanbul with the late Baki Gjebrea. We always got together in the 'Alxbitari' office run by Dervish Hima. We found it reasonable to invite Albanian MPs Nexhip Bej Draga and Hasan Bej Prishtina. This burden was taken over by Bektash Cakrani and Dervish Hima where we gathered at the 'Imperial' hotel. Nexhip Bey Draga and Hasan Bey Prishtina said that for Kosovo they have the greatest hope for a general uprising. For Toscana, the unity of the Gega and the Toscana of this uprising must be achieved. We left for Tuscany, me Bakiu and Bektashi", remembers Mihal Grameno. But the multiple danger from all sides made the uprising focus on the dynasty. "Only an uprising in Tuscany will bring us closer to the Gegs, I will honor us in the eyes of Europe... understand with Bektash Cakran, yes, and Baki of Berat, Tepelena of Gjirokastra, stand up because we are lost", wrote in a letter Fazil Paşë Toptani, Pandeli Cale and Alush Taka from Corfu. But the problem was the weapons. After the attempted abduction of them by the officers Hajredin and Bektash Bey Cakrani themselves in the barracks of Berat, and with the deconspiracy of the action that came from Vlora, the whole dynasty thrown into the war looks for new ways. "Talk to Mr. Bozio about whether we can get a thousand and five hundred mavzera from Italy, even if I borrow one. After two or three days I will come there and I will find this word ready", wrote Bektash Cakrani to his friend, Hamza Isai, but this time after countless risks he managed to buy and bring 1500 Austrian rifles for the uprising.

The battle of Cakran Bazaar is epic not because the Ottoman battalion with 200 troops was captured alive, but because his son Ismail Haki Libohova abandoned him and for this he went to trial. The representatives of his aristocracy, this time the motherland called them for committees. "Towards Berat, there are 400 men under the leadership of Bektash bey Cakran, who has a lot of influence, as well as insurgents from southern Vlora who reach thousands of people, and if security measures are not taken, the population of Berat will accept the insurgents in a friendly manner and carry out their orders. to come with larger forces than the Ottoman ones", it is stated in the relation of the consul Lejhanec to his minister Count Bertold. The product was quickly seen and Sinja's memorandum has the military defense, the compilation in French and the diplomatic interior of Bektash Bey Cakran, where it was the prologue of the fast-coming independence.

According to Austro-Hungarian advice and guidance on the Slavic danger of invasion in the Balkan War, the Albanians urgently seek to declare independence. Bektash Bej Cakrani is located in Vlora, which is completely insecure due to long-standing divisions and divisions, first to create a calm situation between the Vlora residents themselves and the financial and all-round organization of the nearby assembly. As a key character, Ismail Qemali entrusts him with the journey and his nephew Xhemil Bey Vlora with the situation in the city. "Mr. Bektash Cakranit, Vlona. By order of Ismail Qemal Bey, please be at the post office in two hours.telegrafiyou have their own. Luigj Gurakuqi, November 22, 1912". After the two-hour conversation, the telegram starts. "Azis Pashë Vrioni, Berat. Albania's future was secured. Ismail Qemal Bey and his friends have left Budapest for Vlora, to attend the General National Meeting that will be held in Vlora. They have asked for horses or carriages to be sent there, which you must send by tomorrow night. Please let us know as soon as possible. Bektash Cakrani". But even in the darkest moment for him, the empire does not allow the Albanians. "I was informed confidentially that the tax collector received an order yesterday telegrafiis to arrest Ismail Qemal Beu. The order came a little late", reports Consul Rudnai from Durrës, Vienna. A letter is sent to Hajredin bey Cakran, asking him to divert the delegation from the main road to avoid the arrest of Ismail Qemali. "I don't know how and when you should change paths in case of danger and try to get them through your manors. The river will have come out and drowned the world without me, with farmers, horses and oxen, I don't know how you will do it. If there is something that has not been done, the work and the fight have started since the river. Be afraid that this work will come to the rifle, don't open the battery first, because you will do harm to one of us if you tried to do it".

Hajredin Cakrani with his battalion will sharpen the oxen on this trip and will find Ismail Qemali with all the delegates, who will spend the night in his palaces. He brings to Vlora to protect the assembly, his battalion, which is the first guard in modern history, and as a signatory of the declaration, he is declared a senator. And who else like Bektash bey Cakrani could organize and financially cover the first Albanian state? His appointment as Treasury Minister was the seal on the hopeless situation, which only he could solve with his own income and the dynasty's permanent and centuries-old contribution to the nation, officially as the first governor of the new state. "You want it, the state will make a way, if you don't want it, it will give money!" So you, who have never saved for your country, as you said and did, now you will open your bag and put your liras and gold. We don't need you now that we have so much power, let's tell you to increase them and not run out, is the appointment made by Prime Minister Ismail Qemali", writes in his memoirs the undersigned Hajredin, now deputy of the Minister of War Derralla, where with their Malaycastrian armies participated in the most murderous battles of the defense of Ioannina.

The urgency of the Vlora Provisional Government to go to London, where the fate of the borders and the nation itself was being decided, caused the Minister of the Treasury, Bektash bey Cakrani, to come to work for the dynasty in a very short time, to bring the money for London. "I am sending you my trusted man to notify Sulo Beu urgently tonight and you both must bring gold liras, that they are exchanged there, for 10 people who will come to the English and stay there for 20-25 days, that they they must look noble". This event caused the Habsburg court to reprimand the Minister of the Treasury, while expelling the delegation of the provisional government as having no mandate for problems of this magnitude.

But, after July 29, 1913, when Albania's independence was internationally recognized, the Vlora government in August took the next step in a hurry to set up a national bank in a complete lack of finance, with private Viennese and Milanese banks. With the unlimited rights, such as cutting the currency, giving loans by pledging the land, buying and selling abroad, made the Minister of the Treasury, his dynasty knock hard to remind him of the duty that they had for centuries standing by the motherland.

The urgent attitude of the provisional government is confronted by the persistent attitude of a patriot opposition headed by Bektash Bey Cakrani, including some other ministers of the government itself, where in a memorandum addressed to it, it was asked to cancel the concessions to foreigners. "One of the most powerful oppositions is emerging in the Government of Vlora; we are dealing with a serious opposition which did not ask for things of the wind and grudges, but fundamental things. As we learn, in this opposition there are many people proven in national wars", writes Mihal Grameno in the newspaper "Atdheu.

The first opposition in the history of the state was signed by Bektash bey Cakrani and 67 elite leaders, such as Faik Bey Konica, Hasan Bey Prishtina, Pandeli Cale, Dervish bey Hima, Fazil Pasha Toptani, Sotir Kolea, Baki bey Gjebrea, Hamid Bey Toptani, Sami Bey Vrioni, Qemal Bey Vrioni, Hajredin Bey Fratari, Ismail Bey Klosi, etc.

The Minister of the Treasury suddenly saw that the government—sending in early September 1913 a fighting force of hundreds of troops—killed the inhabitants and burned the Bazaar of Cakran. The defensive struggle of the dynasty with the state, already in a difficult position, continues in the diplomatic field and the letters to the Great Powers and the supporters and founders of the Albanian state Austria.

"We have sent a memorandum to the Provisional Government, of which Your Excellency was aware. 300-400 thugs sentenced to death were sent as Ismail Qemal Bey's gendarmes to Cakran, where they burned the bazaar, destroyed mills and the land and cattle, to lower the prestige of a large family and show their power by terrorizing the people. in addition to the damage caused over 40 thousand Napoleons. Albania and their government was created by your great nation to free the Albanians from the foreign yoke and to show them the light of civilization, but not to make us slaves. be replaced", writes Bektash Cakrani to Count Bertold.

The International Control Commission quickly lands in Vlora, followed by a Dutch gendarmerie to investigate the conflict. The French representative, Leon Krajevski, reports to Stephen Pishon, the foreign minister in Paris: "But I cannot stop blaming Ismail Qemal Beu for using his subordinates, who in fact, after receiving his orders, created a state of affairs from the worst. What are the reasons for the conflict? It is, in my opinion, one that sums it all up: Movements in opposition to the interim government of Ismail Qemal Bey by Bektash Bey".

Finally, after numerous international disputes, the Albanian sovereign, a German monarch Wilhelm von Wied, was appointed in the middle of a chaotic situation. He asked the great families to come into the service of the new state, together with their armies which they kept for pay. Bektash Bej Cakran was assigned the Albanian South, already flooded with Andart massacres of civilians and burdened with border problems.

The Orient suddenly erupted with a black hand against the Vid monarch and the supporters of European Albania with the hand of Haxhi Qamili's fanatics. Fear moved faster than light, forcing the Christian farmers of Myzeqe, who knew the country, to fill the ranks of the army of Islamic fanatics, a unique case in religious wars. The greatest stand in the name of the monarchy and the new state was made by the dynasty with a maximum combative reaction with the four Cakrani brothers. But the defender of the south, Colonel Bektash Bey, left over 200 dead with the rebels in Lushnja alone. The rebel invasion stopped at their domain in Cakran, burning the barns, the whole bazaar, where they did not forget to burn the school together with children inside.

These horrors of the Albanian wars would end with the arrival of the Austrian imperial army to the Vjosa Valley. They saw the natural resources and were surprised by the burning of the palaces made by the same people of the Islamic religion, where with their cooperation they built the Fier-Cakran road, the Selenice-Seman railway, and rebuilt according to their model the palaces-castle, the grandeur of deserving of the Dynasty.

In an early interview we find this fact: "Our castle had four towers, dominating the wooded hills and slopes around. Inside the halls were weapons hanging, there were antique furniture, Persian carpets, jewelry of all kinds … which was looked after by a large number of servants … I would return from hunting, where I hunted wild boar, fox, fowl and we would have dinner … Only we had a radio, when people lived like in the Ottoman Empire".

The year 1918 brought for the unfortunate Albania a complex reality of its introduction under Italian rule, but the dynasty must have its eyes and ears there. Hajredin Bej Cakrani, in the Congress of Durrës, lobbies with Namik Bej Delvina, Mehmet Bej Konica, etc. As a pro-American group from the victors of the First World War and in the minority it leaves it. The fate of Albania already had hours, not days of existence left, so the Dynasty first in this vicious situation sends Bektash Bej Cakrani for a solution, as the key man for holding a Congress in Lushnja, for the removal of the Italian yoke, while the three brothers others with their armies and troops for the protection of the Congress. Bektash Bey Cakrani held the great burden of the representatives of Vlora under Italy, a danger equal to the congress itself, until their arrival, and finally promoted the government of the Congress with an election of the Minister of the Interior, the 24-year-old Ahmet Bey Zogolli , the future Albanian monarch.

Senator Bektash Cakrani, with a high risk of bringing official Tirana into conflict where he belonged, with the Italian Government and the occupying army, was the only one who directly participated in the Vlora War together with the forces of Mallakastra, uniting the city of the flag with the Albanian trunk.

The parliamentary path had in its composition intellectual elites who transcended the times in a post-Ottoman Albania, but a social revolution was also needed to clearly show the path lost for years, towards the West, an enlightening task that time assigned to the dynasty and to the representatives of her for the time. "Stand up Mr. Bektash Cakrani; As of now, I renounce the title of Bey. Now we have to call each other here gentlemen, because we are all like that here and as gentlemen we respect ourselves more, and especially the country!", we read in Albanian Parliamentarism '20.

The events of 1924, as an experiment in the fragile body and all the scars of the wars of the homeland, were added by the watchful eye of the brothers Bektash and Hajredin bey Cakrani who met their friend Fan Noli, criticizing him for the Russian Bolshevik help he had received.

The Albanian Republic and Monarchy bear the seal of Ahmet Zogut, the energetic boy that Bektash Cakrani himself had forcefully promoted in the Congress of Lushnja, who did not escape the Albanian trap of power over time, turning it into autocratic power, which in Albanian is translated as submission for anyone. But the old dynasty had once promoted him, and this truth always appeared to the energetic monarch in his dreams as a kind of ghost that followed him wherever he might hide. In the middle were the concessions that had cost people their lives in 1913. From silent hostility, it suddenly appeared in the Uprising of Fier in 1935, where the dynasty, left in the mud and in danger of its very existence, continued the war as always, alone. The leader of the uprising, as always the legend Bektash Bey, appoints his nephew Jashar Cakrani to kill the military leader of the Albanian Kingdom, the Croatian general Leone Gilard in Fier. Of those sentenced to death, almost half had the last name Cakrani, already under torture by the commander of the operation Ali Topalli and the one of the prison Spiro Mojsiu - only that they did not even dare to ask the patriot. He asked the king to ask him himself, which he knew could not happen. International intervention forced King Zog to release them after a while.

With the entry of the Italian army on April 7, 1939, many opponents of the king joined the Italians, but the biggest opponent Bektash Bey Cakrani declared war again. The monarchy had also taken hunting pairs from the Malkastrians insurgents, therefore they received a negative response to the request to wait for the armed invasion. Many leaders who brought the crown of Skanderbeg to the Italian king Victor Emanuel III visited Bektash Bey Cakran, but received this answer: "None of you said a word to our king out of fear! Bektash Bej Cakrani insulted Albanian! You will come to a foreign King and flatter him in His language. You yourself know that you have knocked on the wrong door, that I have been fighting this stranger since I was twenty"!

After the relative well-being that the Albanians were enjoying in the first years of the Italian invasion, the representatives of the dynasty have already passed the responsibility to another generation, their sons. They did not forget that they were the guardian angel, the eternal guard of the nation. New names of this generation have appeared on the scene, where their fathers stand out as before in the field of war: Kadri Hajredin Cakrani who studied in Vienna, Kujtim Bektash Cakrani in Milan in the field of diplomacy and culture, Qani Sabri Cakrani in Budapest, the polyglot Vasfi Hajredin Cakrani and Jashar Sulejman Cakrani in Sorbonne, Suhade Hajredin Cakrani in Florence, etc. And, the war came quickly. A new trend appeared in the wild Mallakastra: communism, the murderous practice for which Bektash BejCakrani had conflicted with Fan Noli as early as 1924, but under great care he kept it under control, as much as possible. Its representative was Mehmet Shehu, the son of the infamous Sheh of Çorrush, who had fought against many patriots by hanging them, but also Bektash Bey Cakranin himself as a colonel of the pro-Western Prince Vid, in the name of Islamic fanaticism and the Orient.

Just to avoid disunity in Mallakastër at this rather complex time, without question, as always, the members of the Dynasty aligned themselves this time with the nation of the motherland, creating numerous nationalist formations in the province. But, in order to avoid any kind of dissension, Bektash Bey Cakrani is unanimously appointed the chairman of the national liberation council of Mallakastra. As always the vanguard in every event, the Cakrans undertake the first combat battle in the second war in Albania, that of Ruzhdia in February 1943, where the desertion of the communist formation cost the life of the Sorbonne student, Jashar Cakran, as well as dozens of Italian soldiers.

Mehmet Shehu with his "old" detachment of Mallakastra, in coordination with that of Vlora after the battle with the carabinieri battalion, as a force to maintain order guarding the Mine of Selenica, sought an agreement in Mallakastra. The aim was to exchange Italian prisoners for communist prisoners, which the Italian army could not accept. Contrary to any law of war, the Mallakastrian communists massacre and execute hundreds of carabinieri held hostage by throwing them into the "Bat Cave" in Kremenar of Mallakastra.

For the tradition of "fighting the enemy under the national flag", the legendary patriot Bektash Bey Cakrani was forced to avoid the split by excluding both warring groups, the nationalists and the communists, which makes both of these warring groups go faster - perhaps uninvited, as they knew the power and charisma of the patriot. But, this time, Lucifer, as a failed angel, was put in the service of the devil secretly. And he did everything secretly! The nationalists accused the communists of bringing two Yugoslav emissaries to Mallakastër. "It is more than true that the National Liberation Party and the Communists in it have with them in Mallakastra the two most ferocious Serbs and boast to them that they have Mallakastra in their hands! Do you know why they are here? The son of Ismail Klos keeps them in the guest house, because they have to teach the son of Ismail Shehu, who hanged his son, how he slaughtered and killed us! This is because he did not learn well in Spain! Therefore, I ask the population, except the Serbs from Mallakastra"! This fact, which brought disagreement, turned into a conflict in an instant between Kadri Cakran and Mehmet Shehu, who took out their weapons. But, in the middle, there was him, the Fatherland, who hindered them rightly, didn't he! "I had immediately taken out the nagant to kill him and died. Whoever I shot from their group, I knew it was the greatest service that could be done to Albania. As soon as Bektash Bey cut my way, he also took out his revolver. I knew he was going to hit my uncle in the head to kill me, but that was a chance that never comes again. The chances of killing the Shehu's son and saving them all fell away, because the uncle approached him too, when Bektash Bey spat loudly between us: Ptu! Will you make Albania?! I was being pulled by the hand again and I said to my uncle, stepping back. - The Serbs will not do it!", writes Kadri Cakrani. Mehmet Shehu left immediately in the direction of Korça, but what started there was already a path of no return.

In Berat, with the capitulation of the Italians and the arrival of the Germans, it became an urgent task to protect the thousands of Jews who had been and had recently arrived. "Uncle, I am writing to you urgently in the midst of the many troubles that plagued you now with the capitulation of the Italians, since you have Mallakastra in your hands. We urgently need to transport a large number of people from Berat to you, who for now we do not even have the means to bring them there. None of these Jews who have been and have come to Berat should fall into the hands of the German army that is coming, for the reason that the attitude of the Germans towards them is known. Also, the Albanians and Berat should not be considered as their protectors, for the reason that a climate of terror will prevail over the population in the future. Another danger that you yourself know is that if it is not known, Mallakastra can burn", he writes. After the impossibility of hiding, after the Germans arrived in Berat, he provided the Jews with documents of the Islamic religion, but also issuing a shooting order for those who show that they are Jews. This is the unique case in the Second World War, that Jews and the German army coexisted in one city for a whole year. "Should I take the Jews to the ovens, because I had Berat in my hand? It took two hours of work, and 20 trucks!", he continues. Adolf Hitler decorated Kadri Cakran as an anti-communist soldier, and the latter unabashedly kicked his anti-Semitic doctrine. The guardian angel had already broken every law. This is no longer human! This is divine!

Having learned the truth of the massacre of the Carabinieri of Kremenari, at this time of the arrival of the Germans, the captain of the cavalry of the Milanese academy, Kujtim Cakrani, went with his forces to Skrapar, from where he rescued 7500 capitulated Italian troops of the "Perugia" division Meanwhile, he set up a camp for the 500 troops of the 151st battalion in Cakran, with a hospital and conditions, as required by the chivalric feeling of the dynastic nobility, and he paid for everything himself. "I saved the lives of 7500 Italian soldiers, who, after the armistice of September 8, 1943, were abandoned by their fate, by the central government of Rome, in Mallakastër and in other parts of Albania. Without remuneration I had also established a hospital for the sick paying the doctors from my own pocket. There are 7500 abandoned Italians, condemned as 'traitors' by the Germans and 'invaders' by the Albanian partisans; the other two wanted to kill them. I saved them"! The description of the Italian military is absolutely shocking. "More than 500 men were fed bread, olive oil, cheese and onions in the morning; for lunch lamb meat and bread (not less than four times a week), for dinner polenta (Arabian)", Colonel Rubino Rubini declares in front of the Italian Senate, while Father Daniele Barbierini Aidinei, head of the Catholic mission in Albania, speaks there: " Our mission worked at the hospital made by Captain Kujtim Cakrani himself, who paid the military doctors, taken from the 146th field hospital to ours, healing many Italians. "After only about a year of charity work, the hospital was looted and destroyed by the communist hordes."

The military commander of the nationalists of the National Front was Kadri Cakrani, who discovered that three American nurses were hiding in Berat in October 1943, dropped by an allied plane that did not reach their group. Together with an English speaker he goes and meets under an unusual risk of German surveillance. "Kadri Cakrani has visited the nurses several times and was worried when the host family told him that they had decided to flee on their own. One night he took them by car and sent them to his house for dinner. By the beginning of March, Cakrani had explained the plan to the nurses. He provided them with Albanian passports. The plan was realized when with two cars from Balli in Berat, the nurses took them disguised to Karaburun, since from there they were going to leave by ship to Italy", says the nurse witnesses in the book "Secret Escape"

In Berat, the German army already asked Kadri Cakran, through a Byzantine officer, for the thousand-year-old codices of the church of St. George. In cooperation with the bishop Father Visarion Xhuvani, he convinced the latter that the church synod made a false testimony before the Germans, but the bishop opposes because the punishment for this comes from God himself. "Bishop! God has gone to war, neither you nor I can call him. You see how the whole world is on fire and that God who created it, set it on fire from above with Communism! You Orthodox held the bridge", answers Cakrani. The responsibilities that the dynasty assigns to its representative, as well as the time for him seven times as a guardian angel, seem among the strangest, but they only show his mission: he himself knew the duty to the homeland!

But the winners of the war, chosen and blessed by the allies, knew very well the power and influence of the Cakrani Dynasty. They had fought relentlessly against it and the great mission, the defense of the homeland, doing everything possible against it, alongside the centuries-old enemies of the Albanians, the Serbs. Mehmet Shehu shot his promoter and benefactor Bektash Bej Cakrani, who stayed in the territory of the first just to show him that his mission was the homeland and time brought him to be the last stander. In the farcical trial, he addressed the prosecutor, his nephew Qemal Klos: "From my tender age until today, at the age of white gray hair, I have devoted everything precious and sacred of my body and mind to the motherland with the principle. Everything for the homeland, and the homeland above all"!

The blind terror of the communist victors was poured without limit on the resistance fighters and the last soldiers of the dynasty, who time decided as the last soldiers and flag bearers of the epochal but also unfortunate events that would happen to Albania. In the bitter epilogue of this war, a long list of ominous people was killed, where only with the family of the signer of independence, Hajredin bey Cakrani, the macabre knew no bounds. It was that hatred for the state maker, but also for the generations that were assigned to enlighten and protect the homeland! His military son Hajdar Cakrani was hanged in Fier, his brothers Hysen and Vasfi Cakrani were sent to prisons at the Sorbonne, their mother died with the poison of the punished children, and her sister Suhade Cakrani, a student of fine arts, died shortly after. time in complete solitude in a madhouse. The homeland, seized by a few bloody hands, would already know the darkness and the most ghastly yoke in history.

Dynasties are cyclical in nature, it is said, but they took care to wipe out the Cakrani Dynasty without leaving a trace. She identified with the homeland itself, which worried the dictatorship immensely, so time reborn her again after a dark time for Albanians. Greatness is distinguished from smallness by mission. Someone robs and mutilates the homeland by selling seas and borders, but the dynasty stands as the eternal standard-bearer, as the guardian angel of the homeland. Sometimes with the cry of a solitary winter bird, and sometimes with the sound of a loud alarm bell, not like the international notes from the Kremlin clocks, it rumbles from time to time to remind Albanians of the eternal oath: Everything for the homeland and the homeland above all !