Zog I of Albania

Biography

Zog was born Ahmed Muhtar Zogolli in 1895 at Burgajet Castle in the Mat region of Ottoman Albania, into a landowning family of beys, and was educated at Galatasaray High School in Constantinople. When his father died in 1911 he became governor of Mat, and in 1912 he represented the district at the proclamation of Albanian independence in Vlorë. During the First World War he volunteered on the Austro-Hungarian side and was held in Vienna and Rome from 1917 to 1919.

Back in Albania he became a leading figure of the young state, serving as governor of Shkodër, minister of the interior and head of the army. He changed his surname to Zogu in 1922 and that December became the country's youngest prime minister. Shot and wounded in parliament in February 1924, he was driven into exile by the June Revolution, but returned later that year with Yugoslav and White Russian backing.

The Constituent Assembly elected him president in January 1925 under a constitution that made him a virtual dictator. On 1 September 1928 he turned Albania into a kingdom and took the throne as Zog I. His rule brought a civil code replacing Islamic law in 1929, but also censorship, a powerful police and growing financial dependence on Fascist Italy, which he resisted only in part.

Italy invaded in April 1939, days after the birth of his son Leka, and Zog fled with his family and much of the state's gold. He spent the Second World War in England and later lived in Egypt and France; the communist government barred his return and formally deposed him in 1946. He died at Suresnes, near Paris, in 1961, and his remains were moved to Tirana in 2012.