Naim Frashėri (May 25, 1846 Frashėr, south Albania October 20, 1900 Kızıl Toprak, Turkey) was an Albanian romantic poet and a prominent figure of the Rilindja Kombėtare, the national renaissance of Albania, together with his two brothers Sami and Abdyl.
His father was an impoverished Bej from Frashėr, District of Pėrmet. Naim studied at the Greek high school "Zosimea" in Ioannina.
He was a Bektashi and a Turkish official in Sarandė, Berat, and Ioannina. In 1882, he was the director of the department of censorship in Constantinople. He participated in the fight for freedom of the Albanian people, and often had to sign his work by his initials because his works were prohibited by Turkish officials. These works had to be smuggled into Albania.
Early on, he started writing poetry. At first he wrote in Persian. He authored twenty-two works: four in Turkish, one in Persian, two in Greek and fifteen in Albanian.
Naim Frashėri wrote patriotic poems and popular lyric poetry, which at first was strongly influenced by Persian poetry, later also by French poetry. He also translated several fables of Jean de la Fontaine.
His poem Herds and tillage describes the activities of the shepherd and the tiller. It also contains exaltations of the nature of Albania and exclamations of longing after the poets homeland.
His poem Skanderbegs story relates the life of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastriot Skanderbeg, adding phantastic episodes.
He translated Homers Iliad. He also wrote didactic and (Islamic) religious articles.
Frashėri exerted a strong influenced on the later Albanian literature.
There is an order, one of the recipiants being Mother Teresa, and a publishing house named after Naim Frashėri.
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