In this way, beginning with a demand for autonomy and struggle for their own alphabet and education, Frashëri helped the Albanian National Movement develop its claim for independence.

Sami Frashëri was born in 1850 in the village of Frashër in the Vilayet of Janina, Ottoman Empire (modern Albania) to a distinguished Muslim Albanian family of Bektashi religious affiliations.

While their mother Emine Hanım (1814–1861)[3] was descended from Imrahor Ilyas Bey, a distinguished 15th century Ottoman Albanian commander from the Korçë area (Panarit).

[5] Having received a broad education in a diverse socio-cultural and religious environment at the Zosimea and through private tutors, he gained the linguistic tools to emotionally and intellectually travel between cultures during his lifetime.

[5] In Ottoman Turkish he wrote more than a dozen books like Insan (Human Being), Medeniyet-i Islamiye (Islamic Civilisation) and Kadınlar (Women).

[6] In Istanbul 1874 Frashëri wrote a play named Besâ yâhut Âhde Vefâ (Pledge of Honor or Loyalty to an Oath) in the Albanian language with themes based on an Albanian ethnicity, a bond to an ethnic based territory, ethno-cultural diversity as underlying Ottoman unity, honor, loyalty and self-sacrifice.

[8] Frashëri's reasons for the play were to inform people about the morals, values, customs and traditions of Albanians whom he considered an important part of the empire and to create more local Ottoman theatre which he felt was dominated by foreign influences.

[18][19] On 20 June 1878 Sami was one of ten signatories to a memorandum addressed to Berlin Congress hosts chancellor Bismarck and Count Andrassy calling for reforms and Albanians to remain in the Ottoman state with their rights, desires, interests and traditions being respected.

[20] Amidst this time Frashëri worked for the Ottoman newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat and he reported coverage on the geopolitical situation and events in Albania.

[23] By 2 January 1879 he developed his thoughts further and stressed that the Ottoman constitution of 1876 guaranteed this right to all peoples of the empire to read and write in ones native language.

[25][11] He expressed that the Society had difficulties in its work due to a lack of "liberty" in the empire and for Frashëri the aims of the organisation went further than publishing books but to revive the Albanian language and unify its dialects.

[28] Between 1889 and 1899 Frashëri wrote a six-volume encyclopedia Kâmûsü'l-A'lâm [tr] written in Ottoman Turkish and was a scientific work of 4,380 pages.

[31] The detailed article presented Albanians as an ancient Balkan people, older than Greeks and Latins that preserved in the mountains their customs such as the besa, traditions, language and an identity.

[32] Skanderbeg, a fifteenth century warrior and his revolt against the Ottomans were described in a positive light as were the national and intellectual achievements of the Albanian diaspora in southern Italy.

[31] Tracing their history Frashëri described the Turks "as among Asia's biggest and most famous nations" numbering ten million and the Ottoman Empire as a "Turkish state".

[39] After being involved with the Albanian movement during the League of Prizren period Frashëri increasingly came under suspicion by the Ottoman government over a number of times.

[40] In 1896, the authors of the Ottoman government provincial almanac for Kosovo titled Kosova Salnamesi credited Frashëri and his encyclopedia as the source for most of their information.

[38] These events saw his position with the state change rapidly and according to recollections by his children in later years a palace official had visited Frashëri at his home and restricted his movements while he was still employed by the government until his death.

[38] Publishers from Austro-Hungary printed some of Frashëri's most important works containing nationalist themes with Austro-Hungarian Albanologists Theodor Anton Ippen and Baron Nopcsa financing the translation and distribution of his publications.

[44] After several months passed from his death the identity of Frashëri as author was revealed on 17 November 1904 by Shahin Kolonja who had published the work and later by a German translation of the booklet in 1913.

[47][46] He believed that Albania and the empire could no longer coexist in the same unit, even if there was a new period of prosperity due to a history of Ottoman prohibition on the development of an national Albanian identity and language.

[50] The nationalisation of the various faiths and sects was envisioned where Catholics would have their own archbishop, Muslims their mufti, Orthodox their Exarch, Bektashi their chief Baba with Jews and Protestants also worshiping in freedom.

[52] These views would appear in articles published during the 1890s where he advocated for the imperial Ottoman language to be simplified and replaced by spoken Turkish, with words and grammatical structures stemming from Arabic and Persian being removed.

[53] He failed however to produce one and George Gawrych holds that probably due to the work of his friend Konstantin Kristoforidhi whose Albanian dictionary was published in 1904 he choose to let it be the standard version.

[54] He had close relationships with Turkish nationalist intellectuals Veled Çelebi (İzbudak) and Necip Asım (Yazıksız) and maintained friendships with the writers and publisher of the journal İkdam which contributed to the spread of cultural Turkism and promotion of nationalism within Turkey.

[56] During his lifetime Frashëri admired European culture and its intellectual achievements while he sought respect and dignity for his Albanian background being himself loyal to the Ottoman Empire.

[53] Frashëri moved socially and intellectually through various communities of Istanbul while having an appreciation of Islam and traditions originating from Arabs and the Ottoman sociopolitical and cultural systems.

[53] Among Turkish circles, the Young Turk newspaper Osmanlı published in Geneva described him in their full front-page obituary as a scholar and great humanitarian that "honored Ottomanism (Osmanlılık).

[55] As the works of Frashëri contain nationalistic discourse, following his death they have retained the attention of the public during different time periods and governments in Albania and Turkey.

Şemseddin Sami also did a series of scientific writings in Albanian such as Qielli (Sky), Toka (Earth), Njeriu (Human Being), Gjuha (Language), and many more.