Corresponding member Dragi Gjorgiev was born on 28th of April 1963 in Strumica. In 1986 he graduated from the Department of History on the Faculty of Philosophy at the University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje, and in 1988 joined the Institute of National History as a teaching assistant. The same year he enrolled at the Department of Oriental Languages on the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo, where he graduated in 1991. After returning to Skopje he earned his master’s degree in 1995 at the Department of History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje defending the thesis “Turkish conquest until the end of the XVII century”. That same year he was elected as assistant professor in the Department of Turkish-Ottoman period on the Institute of national history. In 2004 on the University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” he defended his doctoral dissertation “The population of the Macedonian-Albanian border area in the XV and XVI century.” That same year he was elected a Fellow and in 2007 for Senior Fellow, whereas in 2010 he was elected as a scientific adviser at the Department of Turkish-Ottoman period at the Institute for National History. Since 2012 Dragi Gjorgiev is the Director of the Institute of National history.
Research activity of Dragi Gjorgiev is focused on the study of the Ottoman period, and so far he has published 35 monographs and collections of documents, more than 50 articles in various magazines and anthologies and has also participated on several dozen national and international symposia and conferences as well as actively participated in the domestic and international scientific projects and has mentored several doctoral and master’s theses. Regarding his publications especially attracts attention the edition Turkish documents for the history of Macedonia, published by the State Archive of the Republic of Macedonia, which has so far published eight volumes of documents from Ottoman censuses pertaining to Macedonian history from the XVI and XIX century. Besides the data from these censuses which have primarily demographic-economic characteristics, Dragi Gjorgiev, thanks to his excellent knowledge of Ottoman Turkish language, translates and publishes books and individual documents from Ottoman provenience pertaining to the history of Macedonia in the late Ottoman period. To this translation work of corresponding member Dragi Gjorgiev should be added both collections “British documents about the history of Macedonia”, Volume IV and V, (1857-1900). These voluminous collections of over 1000 pages offer a unique picture of the demographic, political and social situation in Macedonia seen through the eyes of British diplomats.
In 2009, Dragi Gjorgiev has published as a monograph his doctoral dissertation “Population Macedonian-Albanian border area in the XV-XVI centuries”. Through years of research on unpublished historical sources of Ottoman provenance here he follows the demographic trends in the respective border areas, thus questioning theses already established in the Balkan historiographies about dramatic and radical demographic changes in this area in that period. This paper, which is the first such research in this scale based on relevant historical sources, is a remarkable contribution to the Macedonian historiography and, undoubtedly, cause attention in the historiographic community. Interest in this topic was confirmed by the publication of an article on Population in Macedonian-Albanian border area in the XV-XVI centuries, in German language in the renowned German journal for the Study of Southeast Europe – Südost – Forschungen (2008). That same year he published in Macedonian and English the text about the history of the Macedonian people in the time of Ottoman rule in the publication of the Institute of National History: “Brief History of the Macedonian people”.
That same year in the collection Balkans between tradition and modernity, which was published in Sofia, he has published an article about the administrative structure of Thessaloniki, Bitola and Kosovo Vilayet in the second half of the XIX century, which is so far the most thorough and comprehensive overview of the history of the formation and organization of these three recesses by which was covered the whole territory of Macedonia. It is important to note that this paper was the result of the international project: administrative, social and cultural institutions in the Balkan Ottoman provinces in the XVIII and XIX century, supported by the Ministries of Education and Science of the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Bulgaria, in cooperation of the Institute of National history and the Institute for Balkan studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where the main carrier of the Macedonian party was corresponding member Dragi Gjorgiev.
In the period from 2010 to 2014, Dragi Gjorgiev has published several monographies, collections and articles in the country and abroad, such as is the monograph of the Ohrid family Ohrizade where again based on original Ottoman documentation, Gjorgiev gives a brief history for this most famous Ohrid Ottoman family, whose descendants still live in Ohrid. By this, Gjorgiev entangles an important question of the process of formation of the Ottoman aristocracy and elite on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula: whether it was authentic Ottoman aristocracy or it is pre-Ottoman Christian aristocracy, which over time become part of the Ottoman world, accepting Islam and becoming part of the Turkish ethnicity. In this paper, without giving absolute and extraordinary conclusions, he develops the thesis about the possibility that by the origin of family Ohrizade it is actually an old Christian family, which belonged to the medieval Christian aristocracy of Ohrid.
Important and actual for this period is his article about the name Macedonia in the Ottoman period, published in Poland in the magazine of the Artes Liberales Faculty at Warsaw University. In this article, based on Ottoman, Slav and sources of other provenance, it is exposed the importance and acceptance of the name Macedonia at different times of Ottoman domination.
Besides scientific research, corresponding member Dragi Gjorgiev has given lectures at several universities abroad, participated in about 50 international and domestic scientific symposia and conferences, where he had presentations and participated in discussions on the history of Southeast Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The results of his appearances at conferences in the last four years he has published in Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul, Ankara, Warsaw, Krakow and others.
From his archival research in Istanbul and Ankara, which began in 1993, to date it has made over 10,000 copies of Ottoman documents pertaining to the history of Macedonia from XV to XX century. The source material is an extraordinary base for studying the entire Ottoman period by original documentation of Ottoman provenance.
Thanks to his serious permeation into the study of the Ottoman world he became a member of several editorial boards of international journals, scientific institutions, such as the Turkish Historical Society and the committees on defense of doctoral dissertations.
For a corresponding member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dragi Gjorgiev was elected in 2015.
