What is "meshari"

Meshari ( Albanian for "Missal") is the oldest published book in Albanian. The book was written by Gjon Buzuku, a Catholic cleric in 1555. The book contains 188 pages and is written in two columns. Meshari is the translation of the main parts of the Catholic Liturgy into Albanian. It contains the liturgies of the main religious holidays of the year, comments from the book of prayers, excerpts from the Bible as well as excerpts from the ritual and catechism. It was written to help Christians pray daily religious services. The only original known copy of this book currently is in the Library of the Vatican.

Meshari is written in the Gheg Albanian dialect and uses Latin alphabet, one letter (ћ) from Cyrillic, with some modified letters. The book has a rich vocabulary and its orthography and grammatical forms seem to be well established, which is indicative of an earlier tradition in the writing of the Albanian language. The dialect used in Meshari was one of the main subjects of Selman Riza's works.