Albanian Monarch. He received world-wide recognition as the King of the Albanians, reigning from 1928 until 1939, when he was forced from the Albanian throne and into exile when Benito Mussolini's fascist invaded Albania. As a poor country, his subjects were mostly of semi-feudal society of uneducated, peasant farmers. Born Ahmet Muhtar Bej Zogolli, he left his studies to fight as a young hero for Albania's freedom from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. Descending from a large extended family, his father, who was head of the government in Mati, had died in 1909 and his mother was his father's second wife. Using the Albanian-sounding surname of Zogu, he was the President of Albania from 1925 to 1928 before proclaiming himself as the first Muslin king in Europe. He had been a colleague of Mussolini depending on him heavily for a multi-million dollar loan, followed by a treaty of friendship in 1926, and a 20-year defensive military alliance between the two countries in 1927; all this was done before he was forced into exile on the eve of World War II. At the out break of World War I, he had sided with Austrians as a leader of the Populist Political Party and rose to the rank of colonel in the army. From 1920 he held several Albanian ministerial positions. On February 23, 1924, Zog was shot and wounded as he entered Albania’s parliament. A man named Beqir Valteri shot Zog twice, once in the hand and another in the hip. With political unrest in Albania, he had for his protection loyal body guards from his ancestral clan of Mati. After being forced into exile for the first time in June of 1924, he rallied to stage a successful coup. With a mercenary army invading from the north and the south and killing any opposition, he returned to Albania with the support of the Yugoslavian government in December of the same year. Besides having Yugoslavia's support, he was supported by international oil companies along with several wealthy Albanian families. He was elected by parliament to a seven-year term as president on February 1, 1925. He sworn the oath of allegiance on both the Koran and the Bible to maintain the country’s national unity. He proclaimed himself king on September 1, 1928 with more of a dictatorship government than a planned monarchy constitutional government. He ended the post-World War I political upheaval and a period of tranquility began until his dealings with Mussolini. While in Vienna, Austria in 1931, another attempted assassination occurred. He pulled his own gun and shot at the assailants, but missed them. While in Austria he suffered an episode of nicotine poisoning related to smoking hundreds of cigarettes a day. On 27 April 1938, he married the young, beautiful Countess Géraldine Apponyi de Nagyappony, who was half-Hungarian and half-American and a Roman Catholic. The couple and their new-born son left Albania on April 7, 1939 in exile for Paris, France, but leaving Paris before the invasion of the Nazi Army in June of 1941. They traveled around Europe before settling in 1941 on the English estate, St. Katharine's Parmoor House, which was let to him by the Parmoor family. Besides the household furnishings, sources state he had seven crates of gold and jewels along with two million dollars in a bank. He entertained various members of European royalties that were in exile during the war. After World War II, Albania was established as a communist republic in 1945. He formally abdicated the Albanian throne on January 2, 1946. He and his family left the Parmoor House in January of 1946, relocating to Egypt. With plans of being in exile in the west, he traveled to the United States in 1951 and purchased a 60-room estate on Long Island, New York. With the support of several countries from the west, he organized a covert operation against the communist regime to regain Albania in 1954, which failed. In July of 1955 he returned to France, settling in Cannes on French Riviera for the rest of his life and selling his New York estate. During his reign, he survived over fifty assassination attempts. By omitting him from newly published history books, an attempt to removed him from Albania's history was done during the Communist-ruled years. After his death in 1961, his only son, Leka I, was proclaimed “King of Albanians” by the convened Albanian National Assembly-in-Exile in a ceremony in Paris on April 15, 1961 and eventually returned to Albania in March of 2002, but not as a ruler. Originally buried in Thiais Cemetery south of Paris, his body was repatriated from France and re-interred in 2012 in the newly rebuilt Mausoleum of the Albanian Royal Family. Originally built in December 30, 1935 shortly after his mother's death, the mausoleum was destroyed during World War II and the Communist-ruled years. He has a larger-than-life size statue in the capital city of Tirane, Albania. Jason Tomes' 2011 biography, “King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania” gives details of his life.