Vangjel Meksi

Vangjel Meksi was born in the year 1770 and he died in the year 1821. He was a physician, a writer and a translator from Albania. Meksi was born in Labove, a village that is near Gjirokaster. He went after his secondary education in Yanina, which was an important Ottoman provincial center that is in Greece now. The first employement he had was as a folk physician to the court of Ali Pasha, the ruler of the country of the Pashlik Yanina, a position that he occupied till the year 1803. He got admitted into the University of Naples in Italy, and it was there that he studied medicine under Dr.Nicola Acuta and he practiced in a hospital that was administered by the parish of San Giovanni a Carbonara. After he had completed his studies in the university in the year 1808, he went back to Yanina and once again worked in Ali Pasha’s court, as one of the physicians. He worked with the following doctors; Dr. Metaxa, Dr. Saqeralliu and Dr. Loukas Vagias.

source of picture: www.theapricity.com

 He was once the personal physician of Ali Pasha, the Albanian ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina in the 19^th century. He was the man the manufactured the first translation of the New Testament in the Albanian language with the support and sponsorship of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He never lived to see the publication of his work that was supervised by Gregory IV of Athens. As a member of the Filiki Etareia, which is a secret society that had the aim of establishing an independent Greek state, Meksi became part of the Greeks in the Siege of Tripolista at the time of the war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. He died immediately after that.