Batzaria was trained at the University of Bucharest, where he became a disciple of historian Nicolae Iorga, and established his reputation as a journalist before 1908—the string of publications he founded, sometimes with financial support from the Kingdom of Romania, includes Românul de la Pind and Lumina.

His turn toward the latter was signaled by the Romanian far-right as the adoption of antisemitism, and, by 1937, he had become explicit in his sympathy for the fascist Iron Guard; during World War II, he supported the Ion Antonescu regime, and was enthusiastically anti-Soviet in his articles and children's prose.

[2] The future politician and author was raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and later affiliated with its Romanian branch, being an occasional contributor to its program of catechesis;[3] he grew up in Kruševo, where he studied under renowned Aromanian teacher Sterie Cosmescu.

[5] Literary critic and memoirist Barbu Cioculescu, who befriended Batzaria as a child, recalls that the Aromanian journalist "spoke all Balkan languages", and "perfect Romanian" with a "brittle" accent.

[22] In 1899, Batzaria and his colleagues notably persuaded Take Ionescu, the Romanian Education Minister, to allocate some 724,000 lei as a grant to Macedonian schools, and virulently protested when later governments halved this annual income.

[29] Following a ban on political activities by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Batzaria was arrested by local Ottoman officials, an experience which later served him in writing the memoir În închisorile turcești ("In Turkish Prisons").

[35] On May 10 (Romania's first national holiday), Aromanian students at Thessaloniki's School of Commerce, where Batzaria was then teaching Romanian,[36] staged La Farce de maître Pathelin, adapted by him from Molière's version.

[9][44] According to his own statements, he was acquainted with figures at the forefront of the Young Turks organizations: Ahmed Djemal (one of the future "Three Pashas", alongside Enver and Talat), Mehmet Cavit Bey, Hafiz Hakki and others.

"[46] Batzaria himself claimed to have been initiated into the society by Djemal and following a ritual similar to that of "nihilists" in the Russian Empire: an oath on a revolver placed inside a poorly lit room, while guarded by men dressed in black and red cloth.

[47] Zbuchea passed a similar judgment, concluding: "Balkan Romanians actively supported the actions of the Young Turks, believing that they provided good opportunities for modernization and perhaps guarantees regarding their future.

Proposing that Aromanian activists, like their Albanian counterparts, "supported the preservation of Ottoman rule in Macedonia" primarily for fear of the Greeks, Hanioğlu highlights the part played by British mediators in fostering the Ottoman–Aromanian entente.

[55] A regular contributor to Le Jeune Turc and other newspapers based in Constantinople, the Aromanian campaigner was also appointed vice-president of the Turkish Red Crescent, a humanitarian society, which provided him with close insight into the social contribution of Muslim women volunteers, and, through extension, an understanding of Islamic feminism.

[56] The next few years were a period of maximal autonomy for Mehmed's Aromanian subjects, who could elect their own local government, eagerly learned Turkish, and, still committed to Ottomanism, were promoted within the bureaucratic corps.

[93] Around the same time, the Viața Romînească publishers issued his booklet România văzută de departe ("Romania Seen from a Distance"), a book of essays which sought to revive confidence and self-respect among Romanian citizens.

A nationalist newspaper, Țara Noastră, argued that Batzaria's political columns were effectively coaching the public to vote PNȚ, and mocked their author as "a former Young Turk and ministerial colleague of that famous [İsmail] Enver-bey".

The National-Christian Defense League, an antisemitic political faction, reacted strongly against his arguments, accusing Batzaria of having "sold his soul" to the Jewish owners of Adevărul, and to "kike interests" in general.

[116] Other characters created by Batzaria in various literary genres include Haplina (the female version and regular companion of Haplea), Hăplișor (their child), Lir and Tibișir (known together as doi isteți nătăfleți, "two clever gawks"), and Uitucilă (from a uita, "to forget").

[147] Ahead of the student congress, held at Târgu Mureș in September 1937, Batzaria contended that Transylvania was at the mercy of non-Romanian industrialists, arguing: "Attempts to create a [native] middle class cannot succeed as long as Romania fights against foreigners only in theory, while embracing them in fact, by buying from their institutions and companies.

[160][161] With its comics and its editorial content, the magazine spearheaded a xenophobic campaign, targeting the Frenchified culture of the upper class, ridiculing the Hungarians of Northern Transylvania, and portraying the Soviets as savages.

[162] The party organ, Scînteia, identified Universul Copiilor as a "fascist and anti-Soviet" publication, noting: "The traitor Batzaria, aka Moș Nae, should be aware that there is no longer a place for him in today's Romanian media.

"[160] Panning Lacrimile mamei for the same newspaper in November 1944, novelist Ion Călugăru assessed that Batzaria had combined "an obvious lack of talent, a false sentimentality, an artificial composition, [and] reactionary tendencies."

The Povești de aur series thus includes fairy tales from European folklore and Asian folktales: Indian (Savitri and Satyavan), Spanish (The Bird of Truth), German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Scandinavian and Serbian.

[115] The scripts were not entirely original creations: according to translator and critic Adrian Solomon, one Haplea episode retold a grotesque theme with some tradition in the Romanian folklore (the story of Păcală), that in which the protagonist murders people for no apparent reason.

Karpat, according to whom such writings displayed the attributes of "a great storyteller" influenced by both Romanian classic Ion Creangă and the Ottoman meddahs, notes that they often fail to comply with orthodox attested timelines and accuracy checks.

[92] Overall, Batzaria gave voice to an anticlerical agenda targeting the more conservative ulema, but also the more ignorant of Christian priests, and discussed the impact of religious change, noting that the Young Turks eventually chose a secular identity over obeying their Caliphate.

He traces psychological sketches of İsmail Enver (who, although supportive of a "bankrupt" Pan-Turkic agenda, displayed "an insane courage and an ambition that kept growing and solidifying with every step"), Ahmed Djemal (an uncultured chauvinist), and Mehmed Talat ("the most sympathetic and influential" of the Young Turk leaders, "never bitten by the snake of vanity").

România văzută de departe, described by Cucu as a "balm" for patriotic feeling, illustrated with specific examples the hopes and aspirations of philo-Romanians abroad: a Romanian-Bulgarian priest, a Timok Romanian mayor, an Aromanian schoolteacher, etc.

[19] In tandem with this official recovery, Batzaria's work became an inspiration for the dissident poet Mircea Dinescu, the author of a clandestinely circulated satire which compared Ceaușescu to Haplea and referred to both as figures of destruction.

The character of this inclusion produced some controversy: taking Batzaria's entry as a study case, critics argued that the book gave too much exposure to marginal authors, at the detriment of writers from the Optzeciști generation (whose respective articles were comparatively shorter).

[202] Fragments of his writings, alongside those of Cândroveanu, George Murnu, and Teohar Mihadaș, were included in the Romanian Academy's standard textbook for learning Aromanian (Manual de aromână-Carti trâ învițari armâneaști, edited by Matilda Caragiu Marioțeanu and printed in 2006).