Tringa Smail Martini

Tringe Smajl Martinit Ivezaj (or, simply, Tringe Smajli) was a girl from the Montenegrin mountains of Gruda who battled the Turks after her father Smajl Martini, the clan leader was kidnapped in 1911 at the battle of Vranje, his body was never recovered. Her legend lives on throughout the Balkans as one of the most heroic woman warriors in the history of the region. She never married, never had children, didn't have any other siblings. She is burried in an unmarked grave covered with ordinary field stones at the ancestral burial grounds of her family in the mountains of Gruda withiin the village of Ksheve, Montenegro.

The New York Times described Tringe Smail as the "Albanian Joan of Arc".

Citation
title=ALBANIAN JOAN OF ARC.; Handsome Heroine Takes Father's Place and Vanquishes Turks.
newspaper=New York Times
Section: PARTS III AND IV
526 words
pages=Page C3
year=1911
date=May 21, 1911
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9400E1DA1431E233A25752C2A9639C946096D6CF