Iljaz Pasha Dibra (Qoku)President of the League of Prizren

Abstract

Iljaz Qoku continues to be treated, according to the previous schemes, as one of the moderate leaders of the Albanian League of Prizren.
Really, he represents one of the most prominent figures of our national history not only of the period in which he was distinguished. His bust, together with that of Pashko Vasa and Omer Prizreni, has its place in Albanian capital, alongside with that of Abdul Frasheri, the founder of the League.
Iljaz Qoku was a prominent leader of Debar uprising (1862) against the expedition to establish the centralized Ottoman administration, which did not recognize any national right to Albanians. It eliminated even the rights enjoyed by the nobles and people at that time.
Equipped with a new political consciousness, in June 1878, he was at the forefront of the struggle to realize the plans for the implementation of the national administrative autonomy of the Albanian unified vilayets.
With the authority and the prestige he enjoyed, he worked vigorously, regardless of age, to unite all the Albanian territories around the National League Program in the Assemblies of Debar on October 14, 1878 and November 10, 1880, headed by him. This is testified by the programmatic documents to the League of Prizren, in which Iljaz Pasha is the head-signatory and the chairman of the assemblies, where they were adopted and reaffirmed in June and October 1878 and November 1880.
Iljaz Pasha, together with the other signatories of the decisions of these documents, with their determination to prevent the fragmentation of the native lands and to realize the autonomous program, called “The Constitution of the League”, witnessed, rising above religious divisions, the Albanianism and Albanian being of the entire people.
On June 15, 1878 they asked: The creation of an autonomous administration under the name “The United Vilayets” (Tavhid-i Vilayat) with Bitola, as its center, and, the assignment, temporarily, of Gazi Ahmet Muhtar Pasha, as the Chairman of the United Vilayets; the commitment for the creation of the League Councils, with the task of spreading the goals for autonomy in the major centers like Bitola, Skopje, Pristine; the collection of the taxes on behalf of the United Vilayets, engaging for this purpose gendarmerie, too. Finally, it was raised as a task the creation of the military militia for the protection of the territory that would be included in the “United Vilayets”.
On November 10, 1880 in the newly-adopted autonomous program in Debar, organized by Iljaz Pasha for the creation of the Albanian vilayet, adhered also the southern provinces through the Albanian League for Toskëria, represented by Abdul Frashëri, etc.. Their active participation in the Debar Assembly reinforced the character of the League as a pan-Albanian political organization, such as it was scheduled from the first day of its foundation. Under the chairmanship of Iljaz Pasha Dibra in the Assembly, the most of the assembly delegates expressed their determination for the protection of Ulcinj against the order of the sultan for its capitulation. They informed Shkodra about the willingness of the Debar residents for sending voluntary forces from their sanjak. Even by the above outline, it is quite clear that contrary to the often nihilistic assertions and characterizations, ultimately minimizing, which have been and are made about the personality of Iljaz Pasha Dibra as one of the conservative or moderate, even a yielding figure of the leadership of the League of Prizren, have no ground.
Iljaz Pasha stood in the front ranks among the most advanced and the most determined leaders of the struggle of the Albanian people in the years 1878-1881. Together with Pashko Vasa, with Ali Pasha Gucia, his successor at the head of the League, Omer Prizreni, Abdul Bey Frashëri, Daut Boriçi, Hodo Sokoli and dozens and dozens of others at the forefront of the League and its branches, and its military forces, and finally of the government bodies, with Omer Prizreni as the prime minister, set the first and the major stone in foundations of the Independence.