Kosovo: Albanian Anti-Ottoman revolt (1690)

[1337]

Bogdani being referred to as 'Patriarch of Clemente/Kelmendi' can also maybe be explained that it was a name for Albanians,
not neccessarily because he came from that tribe or led it.

Kelmendi is mentioned as early as the 14th century and as a territorial tribe it developed in the 15th century. In the Balkans, it is widely known historically for its longtime resistance to the Ottoman Empire and its extensive battles and raids against the Ottomans which reached as far north as Bosnia and as far east as Bulgaria. By the 17th century, they had grown so much in numbers and strength that their name was sometimes used for all tribes of northern Albania and Montenegro. The Ottomans tried several times to expel them completely from their home territory and forcefully settle them elsewhere, but the community returned to its ancestral lands again and again.

They were quite the 'loyal Servants' as you can see

[1337]

As for me playing the victim once again, I don't know if you meant me or in general. I am trying to show here that a lot of this Kosovo thing is based on false history which some historians such as Noel Malcolm also agree with. Therefor they should be quiet about their whole historical narrative as it is completely nonsense not backed up by any kind of historical evidence. Although their version has become famous. If they wanna still go to war over it of course be my guest but at least they should shut up.

They are claiming that the Albanian Catholic Bogdani who led a resistance against the Ottomans was supposedly Arsenije Crnojevic III. It is completely nonsense. Hilarious!

'Great Migration of Serbs' , sounds like some complete fairytale

[1337]

For example Albanians in Kosovo are constantly depicted as Ottoman transplants be it before 1690, at the start of the Ottoman period or after, yet when we look at events before 1690 for example the Albanian Catholic Mazreku writing in the early 1600's regarding the Catholics in Kosovo reported:

the Shulla or Has region, where as Mazrreku reported in 1634, there had previously been 50 Catholic parishes but were now only five. Mazrreku also noted that the conversion to Islam was quite superficial; in 1671 another report on this area stated that '28 years ago there were many Christians[sc.Catholics]: now there remain 300 women and very few men, the rest having abjured their faith in order to escape impositions and taxes.

Opoja also had a Catholic population, majority Albanian in 1591. They do not speak of any kind of Ottoman transplants.

[1337]

Here is regarding even earlier in the Ottoman period, from the book 'Kosovo: A Short History' ,

Serbian historians explain the growth of an Albanian population in Kosovo during the early Ottoman period in terms of physical immigration: it is suggested that Albanians from the Malesi were encouraged by the Ottomans to settle in Kosovo, that many of these turned to Islam to gain the advantages of superior status, and that those Slavs who became Muslims were not merely Islamicized but, sooner or later, Albanianized as well.

The Ottoman officials usually noted which heads of family were new arrivals in their places of residence; out of 121 new arrivals in the nahiye of Pec in 1485, the majority had Slav names. In the sancak of Prizren in 1591, only five new arrivals out of forty-one bore Albanian names; and in a group of Kosovo towns in the 1580's and 1590's there were twenty five new Albanian immigrants and 133 with Slav names - several of them described as coming from Bosnia. This evidence counts strongly against the idea of mass immigration from northern Albania. Other more general arguments against that idea are based on relative population sizes and rates of growth. The population of Kosovo during this period was much bigger than that of northern and central Albania, and its rate of growth was actually lower. This is not what one would expect if a large overflow from the Albanian Malesi were flooding into Kosovo.

By the time the Patriarchate was re-established at Pec, the town of Pec itself may already have gained an absolute majority of Muslims. At the same time, there is an increasing evidence that parts of Western Kosovo had a significant ethnic Albanian population, evidence which goes beyond anything that can be demonstrated for the medieval period.

For example Opoja in 1591 in Prizren area which also recorded almost no immigrants already had a majority Christian Albanian population in 1591. Some towns in Kosovo in the early 1600's had Albanian majority also. These were about btw the only immigrants that were recorded more or less. Yet they claim there was a mass immigration.

[1337]

Certainly, a tabulation of all the personal names mentioned by these medieval charters shows a majority of Slav Orthodox names. In the earliest charters, the majority is strong, but not overwhelming: Stefan the First-crowned's charter for Zica, of c.1210, gives 154 Serb names and fifty-four non-Serb, most of which are clearly either Albanian or Vlach (such as Mik, Doda, Bukor and Sarban). This ratio gradually changes: in the Banjska charter of 1313-14, for example, it is 444 Serb to 117 non-Serb names. The scholar who first presented this evidence drew the natural conclusion that it represented a steady process of Serbianization

In the grant (around 1280) by his wife and queen, Helen of Anjou, which confirmed the grant given by Stefan Vladislav to the Vranjina monastery, the Vlachs are separately mentioned, along with Arbanasi (Albanians), Latins and Serbs.

Many Vlachs interesting enough seem to of migrated out before the Ottoman period.

An article provides that in the case of conflict between villagers it is punishable with a fine of 50 perper, while among Vlachs and Arbanasi of 100 perpers.^[11] Another article, on the Vlachs and Arbanasi, prohibits the overnight stay by other shepherds in villages of Vlachs or Arbanasi, and in case they did, have to pay for the amount their herds graze.^[11] The protection of Slav peasants by the Dušan's Code forced many Vlachs to migrate from Serbia.^[5] Dušan's charters of the Monastery of the Holy Archangels and Hilandar mention duties of Vlachs regarding shepherding and annual giving away of either sheep, two horses for the purpose of transporting salt and other monastery needs, mowing hay, compensation in 30 perpers or construction workers.^[11]

The first mention of "Vlachs" in Serbian historical sources is the Hilandar founding charter (1198–99) by Stefan Nemanja. 170 Vlach families were mentioned in the Prizren area,

According to Croatian-Albanian historian Zef Mirdita, despite the fact that the "Vlach" exonym partially meant shepherds as a socio-professional category (regardless of ethnos), the individuality and identity of the Vlachs are seen in the Banjska and Dečani charters, as well as in Dušan's Code (1349).^[11] Therein is included a prohibition of intermarriage between Serbs and Vlachs

In 1330, King Stefan Dečanski granted the Visoki Dečani monastery with pasture land along with Vlach and Albanian katuns around Drim and Lim rivers of whom had to carry salt and provide serf labour for the monastery.^[11][12][13]

[1337]

Here is regarding even earlier in the Ottoman period, from the book 'Kosovo: A Short History' ,





For example Opoja in 1591 in Prizren area which also recorded almost no immigrants already had a majority Christian Albanian population in 1591. Some towns in Kosovo in the early 1600's had Albanian majority also. These were about btw the only immigrants that were recorded more or less. Yet they claim there was a mass immigration.

Sure, some of these new Albanian immigrants might of contributed to a demographic growth, with the group of Albanians that were already there. But it still counts strongly against the idea of mass immigration or Ottoman transplants which is the whole Serbian narrative. Not to mention there were a bunch of Slavic immigrants. Vlachs disappear entirely out of the records. They were recored as tax payers in 1480's and eventually Serbianized, the Islamised ones were Albanised eventually.

It's interesting because before the Ottoman period they do not speak of Serbianisation of Vlachs.

[1337]

For a tribal population with a fairly low level of material culture, reaching the line of the Danube and looking south was the equivalent of a hungry man pressing his face against the window of a grocery. The Balkans, fully restored to Byzantine control under the energetic Emperor Justinian (527-65), contained many flourishing towns and cities, supported by productive agriculture and active trading routes. The Slavs were not the first to cross the Danube in search of better things. Germanic Goths had done so (with Byzantine permission, at first) in the fourth century, and had gone raiding as far as Greece and the Albanian coast thereafter; Huns, under Attila, had attacked in the 440s, and Bulgars (a Turkic tribe) had started raiding at the end of that century. [2] But none of these earlier invaders left any imprint on the Balkans comparable to that of the Slavs. Indeed, by the time that the Turkic-speaking Bulgars came to settle permanently in the Balkans in the seventh century, the Slav element was already so well established there that the conquering Bulgars were eventually to lose their own language and be absorbed by their Slav-speaking subjects. [3]


The first major Slav raids took place in the middle of Justinian's reign. In 547 and 548 they invaded the territory of modern Kosovo, and then (probably via Macedonia and the Via Egnatia across central Albania) got as far as Durres on the northern Albanian coast. [4] More substantial invasions took place in the 580s, bringing Slavs deep into Greece. Historians used to think that it was only these later invasions that involved any permanent settlement; but there is evidence of Slav place-names in the Balkans - particularly along the river Morava - by the 550s, which suggests a more continuous process of infiltration. [5] One factor which may have turned the southward movement of Slavs from a trickle to a flood was the arrival, in the north-western part of the Balkans, of an especially warlike Turkic tribe, the Avars, who subjugated or coopted some Slavic tribes but drove many others away. By the early seventh century the Avar armies were raiding as far as the walls of Constantinople, and threatening the very existence of the Byzantine Empire.


It was at this point, in the 610s or 620s, that the Emperor of the day (according to a detailed but somewhat confused account by a later Emperor-cum-historian, Constantine Porphyrogenitus) invited the Croats to come down from central Europe and deal with the Avar threat. [6] This they did, bringing with them their neighbours, the Serbs. Both populations then settled in the territories abandoned by the Avars: the Croats in modern Croatia and western Bosnia, and the Serbs in the Rascia area on the north-western side of Kosovo, and in the region of modern Montenegro. In some of these areas they supervened on an already existing Slav population, which, as a result, must gradually have taken on a 'Croat' or 'Serb' identity. The Serbs did not have anything like a state at this stage, but they developed several small tribal territories, each called a zupa and ruled by a tribal chief known as the zupan. [7]


By the mid-seventh century, Serbs (or Serb-led Slavs) were penetrating from the coastal lands of Montenegro into northern Albania. Major ports and towns such as Durres and Shkodra held out against them, but much of the countryside was Slavicized, and some Slav settlers moved up the valleys into the Malesi. By the ninth century, Slav-speaking people were an important element of the population in much of northern Albania, excluding the towns and the higher mountainous areas (especially the mountains in the eastern part of the Malesi, towards Kosovo). [8] Slav-speaking people lived in the lowlands of this area, gradually becoming a major component of the urban population too, until the end of the Middle Ages. [9]


What had happened to the local populations of the western and central Balkans during and after the Slav invasions? Something is known about the urban inhabitants, but much less about the people in the countryside. Despite the apocalyptic tone of early Byzantine writers, who give the impression that all civilization came to an end here in about 600, there is good evidence that the main cities survived (or were revived), just as they had done after earlier sackings. Refugees from central Balkan towns such as Nis and Sofia fled to the safety of Salonica at first, but many must have gone back home later. [10] The main towns on the Dalmatian and northern Albanian coastline, too, retained their Latin-speaking populations and stayed under Byzantine rule. (For naval and commercial reasons, Durres was the most important Byzantine possession on the entire Adriatic coast of the Balkans.) [11] But outside the major cities there are signs of decline and contraction; typical of the seventh to ninth centuries are the remains of small townships based on hill-forts, such as the one at Koman in the mountains of north-central Albania, where a Christian and probably Romanized (Latin-speaking) population must have led a rather limited existence. [12]


As for the rural population, which was also mainly Latin-speaking in most of the territory of Yugoslavia and north-western Bulgaria, it is assumed that large numbers of people were driven southwards by the Avars, Croats and Serbs. Some evidence from place-names suggests a flow of such refugees down the Dalmatian coast into northern Albania; and a folk tradition set down by a later Byzantine writer referred to a large movement of native people southwards and eastwards away from the area of the Danube and the Sava - that is, from northern Bulgaria, northern Serbia and Croatia. [13] No doubt Latin-speaking peasants and farmers continued to live in many of these areas, especially where they were in contact with a large town or city. But sooner or later the majority of them were Slavicized, and the towns in the interior of the Balkans filled up with Slav-speakers too.


Only the remnants of a Latin-speaking population survived in parts of the central and west-central Balkans; when it re-emerges into the historical record in the tenth and eleventh centuries, we find its members leading a semi-nomadic life as shepherds, horse-breeders and travelling muleteers. These were the Vlachs, who can still be seen tending their flocks in the mountains of northern Greece, Macedonia and Albania today. [14] The name 'Vlach' was a word used by the Slavs for those they encountered who spoke a strange, usually Latinate, language; the Vlachs' own name for themselves is 'Aromanians' (Aromani). As this name suggests, the Vlachs are closely linked to the Romanians: their two languages (which, with a little practice, are mutually intelligible) diverged only in the ninth or tenth century. [15] While Romanian historians have tried to argue that the Romanian-speakers have always lived in the territory of Romania (originating, it is claimed, from Romanized Dacian tribes and/or Roman legionaries), there is compelling evidence to show that the Romanian-speakers were originally part of the same population as the Vlachs, whose language and way of life were developed somewhere to the south of the Danube. Only in the twelfth century did the early Romanian-speakers move northwards into Romanian territory. [16]


Finally, before turning to the most mysterious problem of all - the origin of the Albanians - it is worth looking once more at the pattern of settlement in the Kosovo area during the early Slav centuries. Kosovo did not fall within the Serb territory of Rascia, which was further to the north-west: the Serbian expansion into Kosovo began in earnest only in the late twelfth century. About the other early Slav settlers in this part of the Balkans we have much less information. Byzantine sources just referred generally to 'Sklaviniai', Slav territories, in the Macedonian region; in the few cases when they made more localized references they often used names derived from rivers, so that it is not clear whether these were the names of Slav tribes or just geographical labels. The 'Moravoi' or 'Moravlians', for example, who are first mentioned in the ninth century, lived somewhere near the river Morava, but that is all we know about them. Historical map-makers, who do not like leaving too many blank spaces, place these Moravlians over much of south-eastern Serbia from as early as the sixth century, with arrows showing them passing into Kosovo; real evidence for this is lacking. [17]
Obviously some Slavs did spread through all these areas sooner or later. But there is one intriguing line of argument to suggest that the Slav presence in Kosovo and the southernmost part of the Morava valley may have been quite weak in the first one or two centuries of Slav settlement. If Slavs had been evenly spread across this part of the Balkans, it would be hard to explain why such a clear linguistic division emerged between the Serbo-Croat language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian one. The scholar who first developed this argument also noted that, in the area dividing the early Serbs from the Bulgarians, many Latin place-names survived long enough to be adapted eventually into Slav ones, from Naissus (Nish), down through the Kosovo town of Lypenion (Lipljan) to Scupi (Skopje): this contrasts strongly with most of northern Serbia, Bosnia and the Dalmatian hinterland, where the old town names were completely swept aside. His conclusion was that the Latin-speaking population, far from withering away immediately, may actually have been strengthened here (and in a western strip of modern Bulgaria), its numbers swelled, no doubt, by refugees from further north. These Latin-speakers would have thus formed 'a wide border-zone between the Bulgarians and the Serbs'. [18]


Kosovo's protective ring of mountains would have been useful to them; and the Roman mountain-road from Kosovo to the Albanian coast - along which several Latin place-names also survive, such as Puka, from 'via publica' - might also have connected them with other parts of the Latin-speaking world. (The hill-top town of Koman, mentioned earlier, is only a few miles from Puka, and may well have had a Latin-speaking population too.) If this argument is correct, we might expect many of the ancestors of the Vlachs to have been present in the Kosovo region and the mountains of western Bulgaria; it may have been in these uplands that they developed their pastoral skills.


Only in the ninth century do we see the expansion of a strong Slav (or quasi-Slav) power into this region. Under a series of ambitious rulers, the Bulgarians - a Slav population which absorbed, linguistically and culturally, its ruling elite of Turkic Bulgars - pushed westwards across modern Macedonia and eastern Serbia, until by the 850s they had taken over Kosovo and were pressing on the borders of Rascia. Soon afterwards they took the western Macedonian town of Ohrid; having recently converted to Christianity, the Bulgar rulers helped to set up a bishopric in Ohrid, which thus became an important centre of Slav culture for the whole region. And at the same time the Bulgarians were pushing on into southern and central Albania, which became thoroughly settled by Bulgarian Slavs during the course of the following century. [19]


Kosovo was to remain under Bulgarian or Macedonian rulers until 1014-18, when the army of the Macedonian-based Tsar Samuel died, his empire broke up, and Byzantine power was fully re-established by a strong and decisive Emperor, Basil 'the Bulgar-killer'. For nearly two centuries after that, Kosovo would stay under Byzantine rule. [20]

http://macedonia.kroraina.com/en/nm/kosovo.html ..........

[td120]

It has been established that the territory of nowadays Republic of Northern Macedonia presented zero interest for the invading Slavs (they just rushed through it "transit", plundering and scorching).The steady settlement of Slavs began rather late,in the IXc . Whatever of the populace survived was hiding behind castle walls or somewhere uphill). The "Slavicization" of the said territory was a result of the deliberate (!) policy of Pliska and Preslav (transfer of people in the beginning, strenghtened linguistically and confessionaly after the adoption of Christianity and the implementation of the newly forged literary Slavonic language ). I guess Kosovo in the beginning was equally non-appealing to them fussy Slavs... This policy (of Slavicization) will continue after the Christianization, St.Clement wanted to rest after so many years of proselytising and teaching...the answer from Preslav was rather blunt : "Sorry, we still need you there". He was transferred a bit east from Macedonia, to what is now Western Rhodopes.
Linguistically there is some sort of a "wedge" covering the territory of Macedonia...as in Albania among the Slavophones one would find many characteristics of the Eastern Bulgarian dialects which today cover the vast territory from the Thessalonica plain up to the Black Sea, while N.Macedonia speech exhibits the traits of the W.Bulgarian ones.

[Pashai Janinës]

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Kosova-Albani.../dp/0961360100
K O S O V A
The Albanians in Yugoslavia in light of historical documents

By Dr. S.S. Juka

edited in New York in 1984

Part: One | Two | Three
Footnotes

Part One

At present, nobody would think of considering the Slavs as the descendants of the Illyrians. Nonetheless, in the first half of the 19th century, when the nationalities problem - which before Napoleon was practically nonexistent - acquired a preeminent importance, the belief that the Illyrians were the ancestors of the Slavs was very strong.1 This conviction, which persisted in some circles until the turn of the century and even beyond, evoked at that time much fervor and exaltation. These feelings may be conveyed by a passage taken from Edmund Spencer's "Turkey, Russia, the Black Sea, and Circassia" (London, 1854):

How flattering must it have been to a people (i.e. the Slavs) so long the bondsmen of the Tatar and the Turk, the German and the Magyar, to be told in their own language (by the preachers of panslavism) and in their own journals, that they were the descendants of those illustrious Illyrians, who won by their valor the glorious epithet of the Slavon (men of renown)2 from the great Macedonian chief - the conqueror of the world. But all this was necessary - and much more that is fabulous and fanciful in their history - to inspirit, to awaken a pride of race among a people who had been long sunk in abject slavery ... (p.43).

In "Travels in European Turkey" (London, 1850): E. Spencer gives an account of the Illyrian Empire:

...The Illyrians founded an immense empire extending from Epirus ... to the Danube and the Black Sea and comprehending the whole of the maritime coast of Hungary to Venice and Triest, with Istria, Carnolia, Carinthia, Styria, and Friuli... History and tradition affords us many interesting details of the battles of the Illyrians with the ancient Greeks and the Romans... Napoleon was well versed in the history of these people when he flattered their national pride...(Vol. I, pp. 93-94)

* * *

As indicated by E. Spencer, the Illyrians fought, in fact, for a long time against the Romans, who eventually conquered the whole of Illyria in A.D. 9. Many Illyrian soldiers, who susbsequently served in the Roman army rose to high positions. Some became emperors and viceroys: Claudius II, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Maximilian, Constantius, Valens, and Valentinian. Mention should also be made of Saint Jerome, one of the greatest scholars of his time. The Illyrians gave to Byzantium three of its greatest emperors: Constantine, who officially accepted Christianity; Justinius, who built Saint Sophia; and Justinianus, famous for his Code of Laws. The philologist Paul Kretschmer went so far as to maintain that the Illyrians actually founded Byzantium.

* * *

Proud of what they considered their heritage (see E. Spencer, Travels... I, p. 94), the South Slavs became eager to recreate ancient Illyria by forming a union among themselves. Napoleon, who following the Franco-Austrian War had formed the short-lived (1809-1814) Illyrian Provinces, inspired in them the idea of calling their state-to-be Illyria. This state was to comprehend Croatia, Slovenia, the Dalmatian coast with its hinterland Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Thrace.

However, by the time the dream of the South Slavs came true, i.e., by the time two great Empires were overthrown and the South Slavic state was created on the ancient Illyrian soil, it was evident that the country could no longer be called Illyria. For, by that time, it had become obvious that the descendance of the Slavs from the Illyrians was but a myth. Irrefutable historical documents demonstrated clearly that the Slavs were latecomers in the region inhabited by them.

With the myth that had connected the Slavs with the Illyrians withered and died also the legend of the mighty huntress Illyria who had given birth to three sons: Tcheck, Leh, and Rouss (see E. Spencer, Travels... I, p.92). Yet the fact remains that the Illyrian myth had kindled among the South Slavs the national idea by inspiring in them self-confidence and pride.

* * *

Illyrism originated in Croatia. The Austro-Hungarians used to consider it as a movement inspired and supported by the Russians. The latter, however, often regarded its propagators as Austrian agents.3

Russia, who was planning to exercise her own influence in the Balkans was brought, at various occasions, into conflict with Austria. Owing to this fact, she could not fully accept Illyria as the dynamic symbol for the unification of the South Slavs. Instead, she found it more appropriate to make use of another term; she coined Great Serbia.4

Great Serbia was to comprise roughly the same territories as Illyria, but to these was to be added North Albania.

Russia's role in the formation of the Balkan states is paramount. It has been rightly remarked that without Russis's aid none of the Balkan nations would have probably achieved independence. Albania is the only nation to have stood desperately alone in her struggle for freedom.

When considering the problem of the Albanian borders, it is essential to be aware of the dominant role played quite early by the Russians relative to the Balkan nations. For it is a very common error to think that the unification of the South Slavs is an idea that emerged after World War I and that the Albanian borders would probably not have been quite what they presently are, had they been discussed with respect to Yugoslavia and not in regard to Serbia and Montenegro, as was the case.

* * *

In 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, the idea of Great Serbia, which goes as far back as the 18th century, served as a guideline relative to territorial claims, but it could not, of course, be disclosed and openly discussed; it would have been premature. Indeed, even for the sake of the future unification, it was much more appropriate to be first concerned with the revindication of the South Slavs as single states and not as a group.

At the Congress, it was thus merely insisted that Serbia be aggrandized and that a seaport be given to Montenegro, which was very poor.

In fact, when the French savant Ami Boue visited Montenegro in 1836, he was struck by its poverty, claiming that it would be doomed to remain for a long time without resources because neither Turkey nor Austria would be willing to conquer rocks; adding, however, that Russia could have used her influence to induce Austria to ceding to Montenegro the seaport Cattaro which was of no great importance to herself.5

Yet, forty years later, at the Congress of Berlin, there was no question of allotting Cattaro (Kotor) to Montenegro. She was awarded, instead, Antebari (Tivar) and, a little later, Dulcigno (Ulqin), a harbor which from 877 to 1560 had been the see of a Catholic bishopric. It had practically never been under Slav rule. Moreover, its population was 95% Albanian.
But the Principality of Montenegro, which was made up of rocks, did not merely need a seaport; it also lacked pasture land. It was thus awarded Podgorica (recently Titograd), Shpuza, the rich valleys of Plava and Gusigne, Hoti, Gruda, and Triepshi, which were Albanian strongholds. As pointed out by Justin Godard, after the Treaty of Berlin, Montenegro's territory doubled (L'Albanie en 1921, Paris, 1922, p.9.). Montenegro, on account of her small size, was in an excellent position to extend her territory at Albania's expense and at the same time come closer to Serbia, i.e., toward achieving her goal of unification. As for Serbia, who was much pitied for her lack of access to the sea, she received, in compensation, Kuršumlija, Leskovac, Vranja and Niš, a region whose population was mainly Albanian.

These important acquisitions made by Serbia and Montenegro were to be added later to the greater nation that tese single states were planing to form.

* * *

The Albanians became alarmed when the preliminary Peace Treaty of San Stefano had created a huge Bulgaria, which was to include territory nominally under Turkish rule, but inhabited by Albanians. Since 1330, when the Bulgarians lost their independence, there had been no noticeable uprising in the Balkan nation. In all probability, Bulgaria's independence would not have come about without Russia's assistance.

Although the Albanians did not have anybody to back their claims, they reacted very rapidly. In the fall of 1877, they formed a committee - Le Comite central pour la defense des droits de la nation albanaise - whose purpose was to denounce the states that were planning to expand their territory at Albania's expense.

The committee invited the neighboring countries to a peaceful coexistence, but added that it was determined to defend Albania's national rights.

Albania was at that time a domain of the Turkish Empire comprising four vilayets or provinces: Shkodra - which included the Dukagjini Plateau (Metohija), Monastir (presently Bitolja), Janina, and Shkup (Skopje), presently in Macedonia. This latter province was more readily called Kosova by the Turks in memory of the victory of a battle on the Plain of Kossovo, the "Campo dei Merli" of old Venetian maps. The capital of this province had at times been Priština.6

* * *

Owing to the efforts of the committee headed by A. Frasheri,7 80 delegates representing all four provinces convened at the city of Prizren, in the Vilayet of Shkup (Kosova) in June 1878, three days prior to the opening of the Congress of Berlin, whose purpose was to reconsider the decision reached by San Stefano's preliminary Peace Treaty. The assembly of these delegates was henceforth called The League of Prizren. Its task was to defend Albania's rights.

Kosova became thus for the Albanians the center of their resistance and they have ever since regarded this territory as a symbol of their struggle for independence.

* * *

Various letters, telegrams, petitions, and memoranda signed by Albanians inhabiting all four provinces were dispatched to heads of state and ambassadors. Their reading reveals the exasperation and bitterness of the Albanians, who, judging by their messages, preferred to be annihilated rather than to be included in a Slav state.

Below are excerpts of a long memorandum; they convey some of the feelings experienced by the Albanians:

...To annex to Montenegro or to any other Slav state, countries inhabited ab antiquo by Albanians who differ essentially in their language, in their origin, in their customs, in their traditions, and in their religion, would be not only a crying injustice, but further an impolitic act, which cannot fail to cause complaints, discontent and sanguinary conflicts...

...notwithstanding their longing to escape the misfortunes which Turkish rule has inflicted on them for five centuries, the Albanians will never submit themselves to any Slav State which Russia may attempt to put forward; race, language, customs (...) national pride, everything, in a word, is opposed to such a state of things; and it is neither just nor prudent to free them from a yoke only to place them under another, which would in no way ameliorate their social position.8

Yet despite all the requests sent to heads of state by so many Albanians, Albania was not granted autonomy. Similar to Metternich who once claimed that Italy was merely a geographic expression, but that there was no Italian nation, Bismarck declared that "Albania is merely a geographic expression; there is no Albanian nation.9

* * *

Whereas Moslem Bosnia was assigned to Austria, Serbia (proclaimed an independent kingdom by the Congress) and Montenegro were allotted regions whose population was purely Albanian.

As soon as the Serbs occupied the ceded territories, the Albanians were asked to evacuate them. With respect to the Albanians inhabiting those areas, Mr. Gould, Consul of Great Britain in Belgrade, wrote to the Marquis of Salisbury, Secretary of the Foreign Office of Great Britain, on Nov. 26, 1878:

I hear that the Servian Government has behaved with great and unnecessary harshness, not to say cruelty, toward the Albanians in the recently ceded districts. If my information is correct, and I have every reason to believe it to be so, the peaceful and industrious inhabitants of over 100 Albanian villages in the Toplitza and Vranja Valley were ruthlessly driven forth from their homesteads by the Servians in the early part of this year. These wretched people have ever since been wandering about in a starving condition in the wild country beyond the Servian frontier. They have not been allowed to gather in their crops on their own lands, which were reaped by the Servian soldiery... I ... casually stated to his Excellency (Ristic) that these facts had come to my knowledge, and that should they be confirmed I felt certain Her Majesty's Government and the majority of the Great Powers would call the Servian Government to account, and insist upon strict justice being done to these unfortunate people, whose only crime was their belonging to an alien race and another creed...10

Yet the Serbs did not stop their harsh measures against the Albanians. Tens of thousands were brutally forced to evacuate these areas inhabited by them from time immemorial without receiving any compensation for their losses.

The Servian government confiscated all property owned by the Albanians despite the articles 35 and 39 of the "Berlin Negotiations" stipulating that the Albanians living in the regions ceded to Serbia would have the same civil rights as the Serbs.

As to the number of the Albanians inhabiting those territories, various statistics and extant documents give contradictory figures. According to a note of the administrative divisions dating from 1873, the district of the Sandjak of Niš had about 100 000 Albanians. As regards the number of refugees, the figures given by Prof. J. Cvijic for those who settled in Kosova is 30 000, that furnished by English documents, 100 000. According to Turkish sources, the number of the Albanians who were forced to leave the region amounted to 300 000.

On June 3, 1978, Rilindja (p.7), published a letter addressed by these miserable people (who were deprived of all means and many of whom were sick) to the European Powers requesting that at least a commission be set up to look into their serious problem.11

Leaving these helpless refugees to their sad fate, the Serbs colonized the region with astounding rapidity. Referring to the colonization of the area by the Serbs, V. Cubrilovic stated in his "Memorandum" (about which more will be told later) that "Toplica and Kosanica, once Albanian regions of ill-repute, gave Serbia the finest regiment in the wars of 1912-1918".
* * *

Since these territories forcibly annexed to Serbia belonged nominally to Turkey, the Albanians could not oppose a marked resistance on account of the fact that they did not have a state of their own and, consequently, were not provided with an organized army. However, realizing that after the disintegration of the Turkish Empire, which was imminent, land that had been theirs would remain under Slav domination, they felt very bitter. They were thus quickly organized and armed by the League and despite every difficulty defended heroically the districts that had been adjudged to Montenegro. As a result, the latter failed to take them by force. These territories were to be ceded by the Great Powers to Montenegro in 1913.

As for Ulqin (Dulcigno), it was quickly occupied by Albanian troops (which the League had managed to organize in the meantime) as soon as the Turks evacuated it. The resistance of these troops in that city was so fierce, that the Great Powers had to send seventeen war vessels in order to compel the Albanians to yield, giving them a delay of three days. Paying no heed to this naval threat, the Albanians resisted for more than two months. The Turks dispatched, then, their own troops numbering eight battalions. As a result, the Albanians found themselves encircled on all sides. After a desperate battle, they surrendered to the Turks, who, after taking possession of Ulqin, handed it over to the Montenegrins in June 1880.

In regard to Ulqin, M.E. Durham wrote: "The naval demonstration was instigated by Gladstone. Dulcigno remains a monument of diplomatic blunder...it is a constant reminder to the Albanians that they may expect no justice from Europe, and it has enhanced their hatred for the Slav". (High Albania, London, 1909, p.9).

Owing to the passionate and tenacious resistance of the Albanians, the battle of Ulqin received much attention in Europe and elsewhere. Some of the numerous reports published in French newspapers as well as in the New York Times in 1880 are interesting to read. Below are merely two passages picked at random:

...There are said to be 8 400 Mohammedans and 4 000 Catholic Albanians in the district with a sprinkling of Slavs and Gypsies. These people are not on the friendliest terms with their Montenegrin neighbors, but they hate the Turks quite as much...The Albanian League declares ... that the territory of Albania is sacred... (NYT, Sept. 13,4:3).

Dulcigno12 humorously described...

... That sweetly named town, as is well known, belongs to Albania, which in turn belongs to Turkey. The Great Powers of Europe, after a pleasant consultation in Berlin, in Prince Bismarck's back parlor, decided that it should be a good thing if Montenegro, an independent principality which from lack of seaport has hitherto been compelled to restrict itself to brigandage instead of piracy, were to have a convenient seaport like Dulcigno... (NYT, Sept, 4:5).13

* * *

The Catholics resented their annexation to Montenegro just as much as did the Moslems, if not more. The loss of Ulqin inspired the Franciscan Father Ndue Shllaku to address the population of that town in terms the reading of which still moves Albanians to tears.

The other fights with Montenegro were sung by Father Gjergj Fishta, a Franciscan, in his Epic The Lute of the Highlanders, one of the great masterpieces of Albanian literature. In this strong and moving work, Fishta shows the Albanian Catholics side by side with their Moslem brothers in their fight against the Montenegrins.14

Yet the admirable contribution of the Catholics to the national cause was completely ignored by the West, as had been the numerous petitions sent to the Powers by Catholic tribes, who begged not to be annexed to Montenegro.

The Albanians, who had reacted in a most courageous and dignified way were to find out that their heroic fights for the national cause were described as a resistance of Moslem fanatics to Christianity and to Christian civilization and that the League of Prizren was presented as being supported by the Turks. For propaganda purposes, Slav Orthodoxy, chauvinistically national in character, was equated with Christianity and its universal values.15

Whether the Albanians had any premonition that the decisions of the Berlin Congress would constitute for them only the beginning of a series of other iniquities and humiliations, is hard to say. The admirable activity they displayed in the years that followed, suggest that they kept believing in human justice.16

* * *

To be sure, there were, among foreigners, individuals who considered the plight of the Albanians in an objective way and who tried to assist them. Thus Lord Goschen, British Ambassador to Constantinople, wrote to Earl Granville, Secretary of the Foreign Office of Great Britain, on July 26, 1880:

... I venture to submit to your Lordship, as I have done before, that the Albanian excitement cannot be passed over as a mere maneuver conducted by the Turks in order to mislead Europe, and evade its will. Nor can it be denied that the Albanian movement is perfectly natural. As ancient and distinct a race, as any by whom they are surrounded, they have seen the nationality of these neighboring races taken under the protection of various European Powers, and gratified in their aspirations for a more independent existence. They have seen the Bulgarians completely emancipated... They have seen the ardent desire of Europe to liberate territory inhabited by Greeks from Turkish rule. They have seen the Slavs in Montenegro protected by the great Slav Empire of the North with enthusiastic pertinence. They see the Eastern question being solved on the principle of nationality and the Balkan Peninsula being gradually divided, as it were, among various races on that principle. Meanwhile, they see that they themselves do not receive similar treatment. Their nationality is ignored, and territory inhabited by Albanians is handed over in the north to the Montenegrins, to satisfy Montenegro, the protege of Russia, and in the south to Greece, the protege of England and France. Exchanges of territory are proposed, other difficulties arise, but it is still at the expense of the Albanians, and the Albanians are handed over to Slavs and Greeks without reference to the principle of nationality. (Public Record Office, London, F.O. 424/100 pp.31-34).

This is but a brief passage of a long letter which shows Lord Goschen's admirable insight relating to the Albanian question and hence to the Balkan problem. In this letter Lord Goschen points out that the Turks were using, in regard to Albanians, "cajolery" and "every other means but the promise of independence" because, as he remarks, "if the Turks lose Albania, they lose their cause in Europe". Lord Goschen adds that on account of this fact and since the Albanians are very eager to detach themselves from Turkey, it would be a blunder on the part of the Western Powers to overlook the Albanian nationality. In his opinion, a large Albania would "facilitate the future settlement of the Eastern question in Europe". Lord Goschen feels sorry that Kirby Green, Consul of Great Britain in Shkoder, failed to understand the Albanian problem. Above all, he is indignant as to a ruthless plan worked out by Captain Sale who proposed to tell the Albanians that if they rebelled against the decisions of the Great Powers, "their villages would be uprooted and they would incur a further penalty in the contraction of their boundary". Lord Goschen is convinced that the Albanians do not deserve such treatment "because, after all, in their attitude of resistance, and in their deep-rooted objection to a portion of their countrymen being handed over to an alien rule, they are simply acting on the same principle of nationality as have formed the basis of the recent treatment of the Eastern question".

Referring to Captain Sale's memorandum relative to the plan already mentioned, Lord Goschen remarks in the same letter:

...as the memorandum contained the suggestion that a British agent should be employed to influence the Albanians by fear as to the private and not only the political consequences of resistance, and as this memorandum will remain on record amongst the Archives of the Embassy, I have thought it my duty to record my strong protest against the plan it contains.

Similar to Lord Goschen, others were equally disturbed by the iniquities to which the Albanians were subjected, but their efforts to assist them were thwarted. With respect to Kosova's population, Lord Fitzmaurice (British representative on the Eastern Rumelian Commission created by the Treaty of Berlin to work out an agreement with the Porte) wrote to Earl Grey:

The extension of the Albanian population in the north-easterly direction toward Prishtina and Vranja is especially marked, and is fully acknowledged even upon maps such as that of Kiepert, generally regarded as unduly favorable to the Slav element, and that published by Messrs. Stanford in the interest of the claims of the Greek Christian population... the recent Albanian movement has a more vigorous hold on this eastern district than perhaps upon any other ... The vilayet of Kosova with the exception of a Serb district extending eastward from Mitrovitza, may be said to be Albanian. (May 26, 1880).17

The iniquities committed in regard to the Albanians are occasionally acknowledged even by Slavs. Thus N. Todorov writes:

The Albanian people who had also risen in armed struggle, were denied the right to self-determination and were abandoned to their fate against the vast human and material resources of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the encroachments of their neighboring Balkan states". (Todorov, The 0Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and the Liberation of Bulgaria", East-European Quarterly, 1980, Vol. 14, No. 1, p.15).

* * *

The Great Powers eventually left the Balkans in the hands of Austria and Russia. The influence of the latter, however, grew stronger as time went by.

In regard to Kosova, Russia sent priests to Serbian monasteries situated in the region exalting, together with the Orthodox faith, heroes and deeds pertaining to Serbian legends.18 They opened schools which were hotbeds of Slav propaganda. Clearly, her purpose was to colonize the province where the Serbs were but an insignificant minority.

The West knew little at that time about the Balkan states. In fact, the ignorance was such that some missionaries who went to Macedonia to support the Bulgarian cause confessed that formerly they had been ignorant of the fact that there were Bulgarians in the Peninsula; they had thought that only Greeks lived there. Practically nothing was known, of course, relative to the Albanians; those unfamiliar with the question could be told anything. Thus, when two Russian consuls in Kosova and Monastir were killed by Albanians (who acted in self-defense), these acts were described as being committed by 'Moslem fanatics'. The two propaganda agents were presented as martyrs; their funerals were grandiose. Since Christianity was equated with civilization and Islam with backwardness, the Christians were regarded as the allies of the Great Powers. Thus the Catholic Albanians who are animated by patriotic feelings were ignored by design. The Albanians were depicted merely as backward Moslems and as allies of the Turks.

* * *

Many books and articles were published by the South Slavs for the purpose of showing the ferocity of the Albanians, their backwardness, their despicable behavior, their lack of discipline, etc. Vladan Djordjevic, former Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbia, went even so far as to claim that until "as late as the 19th century", there had been Albanians with tail in their rear! Djordjevic even referred the reader to J.G. Von Hahn's scholarly work, Albanesische Studien, where, he asserted, he had found the information.19

The purpose of all these writings was, of course, to draw a picture that gives to the non-specialist a very poor idea of the Albanians so that these, by dint of being despised by others may, in their innermost soul, start to despise themselves.20

* * *

To be sure, there are established scholars - be they geographers, historians, anthropologists, or serious travelers and explorers - who have expressed opinions of a very different kind: H.N. Brailsford went even so far as to maintain that "from Byron's day downward it would be hard to find a Western European who has learned to know the Albanians without admiring them" (The New Republic, March 1, 1919). In fact those who had nice words on behalf of the Albanians were so numerous that the Serb S. Protic (Balkanicus) considered the tendency to praise the Albanians as highly ethical individuals and to describe them as "unusually gifted", to have become a fashion.21 The fact remains, however, that the latter writings were not accessible to many. The influential French daily Le Temps, published merely articles favoring the Slavs and Greeks, for France was then Russia's ally.22

Unknown or misunderstood by the outside world, the Albanians had to fight, under the most difficult conditions, both their neighbors and the Turks without being supported by any great power.

* * *

In order to achieve national unity with a delimited territory, the League had requested the Porte, in July 1878, to turn Albania into one vilayet. The request had not been granted. As a consequence, the Albanians, under their gallant leader Isa Boletini, a native of Kosova, openly took a stand against the Turks. All their activities were centered in the Kosova region, which became the cradle of their national struggle and thus acquired a special meaning for them.23

In 1912, when the Albanians seized Shkup (Skopje) and were about to enter Monastir (Bitolja), the Turks called a truce and granted them autonomy uniting the vilayets of Shkodra, Janina, Kosova, and part of Monastir. As a result of this Albanian victory, the government of the chauvinistic Young Turks Party was overthrown. The weakness of Turkey became thus evident.

The Albanians had administered a heavy blow to the Turks and rightly hoped for approval and sympathy, for, as Lord Goschen had rightly pointed out back in 1880, if the Turks lost Albania, they would lose their cause in Europe. Instead, the Albanian victory triggered the Balkan wars, the purpose of which was the annexation of Albanian-inhabited territories that were under Turkish rule.

At that time, Montenegro had been free from Ottoman rule for over forty years; Serbia and Greece for over eighty. These states, being independent, had their regular armies. When attacked on all sides (by the Greeks, the Montenegrins, and, of course, by the Serbs, who entered Kosova), the Albanians, aware of the great danger, hastened to raise their flag and declared their neutrality.

* * *

The atrocities perpetrated by the Serbo-Montenegrins during the Balkan wars on the Albanian population were acknowledged by the Serbian socialist Dimitrije Tucovic (1881-1914) in his book Srbija i Albanija (published in 1946):

The bourgeois clamored for a merciless extermination and the army executed the orders. The Albanian villages, from which the people had made a timely flight, were burned down. There were at the same time barbaric crematoria in which hundreds of women and children were burned alive...24

Brutalities committed by the Serbo-Montenegrins are also described in the Carnegie report. They may be best summed up in two short paragraphs taken from Mary Edith Durham's Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle (1920):

No Turks ever treated Armenians worse than did the two Serb peoples treat the Albanians in the name of the Holy Orthodox Church (p.235).25

As for the Balkan Slav and his vaunted Christianity, it seems to me all civilization should rise and restrain him from further brutality (p.238).26

It should be reiterated that the unbelievable massacres were in no way committed as a result of a struggle between Christians and Moslems, as it was at that time believed by Gladstone and stressed in his speeches.27 They were solely motivated by the desire to decimate the Albanian race. Not only Kosova was coveted, but all of North Albania.

During World War I, Albania's neutrality was not respected and mass massacres continued.

At the turn of the century, the reports of the Ohio journalist J.A.Mac Cahan concerning the Bulgarian uprising, had shocked the West; as known, Russia used these accounts as a pretext to march against the Turks. By contrast, the Albanian cause did not benefit from the Carnegie report, nor by the frequent and moving declarations of philanthropists and journalists who, like M.E. Durham, were eyewitnesses to
mass massacres of women and children, simply because it was not in the interest of the Great Powers to take Albania's defense.28

* * *

The well-known Swiss geographer H. Hauser, rightly pointed out that the principle of nationality, like all other principles, cannot be applied in a strict and equitable manner given the fact that most places constitute, with respect to the population inhabiting them, a mosaic.29

This mosaic of nationalities was particularly striking in the Balkans. Here, more than anywhere else, there was need for what H. Hauser suggested, namely: good will, compromise, and a fair system of guaranties. It is an undeniable fact that relative to Albania no appeal was ever made to compromises and good will; and no system of guarantees was ever applied to her. The expediency of her neighbors prevailed. No matter what the problem at stake Albania was always the loser.

In 1878, Lord Goschen and Lord Fitzmaurice had been in favor of a large Albania comprising the Albanian-inhabited territories of the four vilayets.30 But, at the Congress of Berlin it was decided -as already pointed out - that territories indisputably Albanian be handed over to Montenegro and to Serbia. Places connected with Albanian history and national pride, like Janina, Arta, Preveza, were allotted to the Greeks, who within a relatively short period of time were to exterminate the overwhelming Albanian population inhabiting them. No system of guarantees was applied. Albanians, numbering hundreds of thousands were to be forcibly sent to Turkey.

The manner in which Albanian territories were ceded to neighboring states clearly indicates how arbitrary decisions that make history may be. And one cannot but agree with Mircea Eliade (The Myth of the Eternal Return), who, with respect to the theory that valorizes historical events, to which the 19th century attached so much importance, pertinently remarked that such a theory could have been established only by thinkers who know nothing about injustices and miseries caused by history.

Also, in 1913, those in charge of assigning to Albania her borders gave no consideration to the very problem of her survival. The fertile pasture lands, the regions rich in minerals and other resources, where nearly two-thirds of the Albanian population lived, remained outside the borders assigned to her.31 As Lord Fitzsimmons rightly remarked, "Albania was to start her career as a state mutilated from her birth". Indeed, as a nation humiliated in her pride, she had no place among her sister nations. She was doomed to poverty, bitterness, and complete isolation.

In regard to Kosova, a territory where Albanians displayed their most important activities for the independence of their nation and a region which, as some scholars contend, is the cradle of the Albanian people, the principles of ethnicity and self determination were not observed. Nor had they been taken into account when districts indisputably Albanian had been allotted to Montenegro and Serbia by the Treaty of Berlin. At that time, the principle of history had been ignored as well.

* * *

When, following World War I, the Dalmatian question was discussed, the fact that the West Adriatic coast had previously belonged to the Venetians, Austrians, Hungarians, and - in parts - to the Turks, and that, moreover, Slav colonization of the Coast was a relatively recent event in history (for, although the Slavs had settled in some parts of the Coast already in the 7th century, colonization was still going on as late as the beginning of the 20th century),32 did not have an adverse effect relating to the claims of the South Slavs. According to M.R. Vesnic, ...except for historical arguments... no present day consideration would authorize Italy to spell out such pretentions. Economically, geographically, and from the point of view of morale, these shores are inseparable from the hinterland which is Yugoslavia.33

Thus, disregarding historical considerations, Yugoslavia was allotted territories that were vast beyond her wildest dreams: to her devolved the beautiful Dalmatian Coast, where the Slavs had not ruled before, except for brief periods of time (a claim contested by the Hungarians) on some portions of it; to her was ceded Macedonia where the Serb population was insignificant and to which the Serbs had no claims before 1885;34 to her was allotted the Vojvodina (Banat) where a certain number of Serbs had been hospitably allowed to settle in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The newly created state of Yugoslavia also retained territories which, regardless of the principles of ethnicity and self-determination had been previously granted to Serbia and Montenegro by the Treaty of Berlin and forcibly annexed by them.

* * *

Yet when the Albanian borders were delimited in London in 1913, problems pertaining to economy, geography, ethnicity, morale - in short, to all those important factors to which so much attention was to be accorded after World War I with respect to Yugoslavia - were not taken into account. The problem of Albania's survival as an independent state was thus completely ignored by those in charge of tracing her frontier.

Relating to Kosova, history - that very factor which in regard to the Dalmatian Coast was not to be considered weighty - eventually acquired such decisive import as to make it seemingly compelling for the Great Powers to disregard completely the principles of ethnicity and self-determination.

With respect to the principle of history, the term Stara Srbija (Old Serbia), employed by the Slavs toto designate "Kossovo", proved very effective.

* * *

Faust, when translating the New Testament into his mother tongue, rendered with "action" the meaning of "logos", thus writing: "at the beginning was action".35 As prototype of modern man, Faust did not believe in the fascination and power of the word, as traditional doctrines do. Since then, however, sociologists and anthropologists, especially Frazer, have pointed out the magic that not merely traditional doctrines, but also the so-called primitive peoples attach to certain words and names, the use they make of them in myths, and how these myths affect them. In his turn, Freud has rightly remarked that the primitive mind is contained in all of us. We are impressed by words. Indeed, the suggestive power emanating from some particular words and names that affect our unconscious, especially when used in myths, surpasses action. More exactly, words may become dynamic symbols; they automatically generate action owing to the very magic contained in them.

In fact, Old Serbia acquired for the Serbs a magic power similar to that contained in Illyria.

a. It was asserted that Stara Srbija was the cradle of the Nemanjis, the Serbian kings. Special emphasis, in this regard, was laid on the Glorious Empire of Stefan Dušan.

b. Of foremost importance was considered the Battle of 1389 against the Turks on the Field of Kosova. It was somehow implied in various writings that Czar Dušan's Empire was sacrificed on that battle which was said to have been fought by the Serbs alone to protect Europe.

c. The Serbs who wanted to prove that the Albanian-inhabited region had formerly been ethnically Serb, underscored and proclaimed widely what it became known as the Serbian Exodus or the Emigration of the Serbs to Hungary. It was stressed that the Serbs, as a result of the Austro-Turkish wars of 1690 and 1735, had been obliged to evacuate the region and emigrate to Hungary under the leadership of their bishop, Arsenije III Crnojevic. And that, subsequently, the land, once vacant, had been colonized by the ferocious Albanians assisted by the Turks. The Albanians inhabiting Kosova were thus considered as recent settlers who had no right to be there.

These important issues which played a paramount role in the delimitation of the Albanian borders shall be discussed in PartII.

[voloh]

Actually I am not even interested in being a nationalist. I am interested in nationalistic myths and the Serbian-Kosovo thing is a nationalistic myth. According to Croatian historian Ivo Banac and British historian Noel Malcolm, Kosovo being central part of Serbian nationalism is a 19th century nationalist invention.

During Serbian national awakening in the 19th century etc Serbs were claimed as the chosen people, that constantly had fought for 500 years to throw off Ottoman rule, the Albanians were accused all of having been Ottoman collaborators therefore. Albanians were turned into arche enemies. Historical facts were manipulated. The Serbian version of Kosovo has become internationally accepted. You see this repeated all over Western media and by Western Historians, Kosovo is claimed as the cradle of the Serbs where the Serbs had constantly fought to fight off the Ottomans until it was settled by 'Alien' Albanians that murdered and plundered the Serbs. Some of these western historians have adopted the narrative of a ethno-nationalist conflict going back to the ancient period.

Restoring the former Serb medieval empire became central to Serbian imperialist dreams in the 19th century where Kosovo would serve as a center therefore the Serbian 'Colonization of Kosovo' was seen as justified in what they claimed they were taking back what was rightfully theirs.

I'm sure those historians aren't biased at all

the modern Serb identitiy formed in the 1400s, centered around the Kosovo myth and anti-Ottomanism.

this is recorded in many historical sources. for example, Benedikt Kuripečič noted the widespread Kosovo myth among the Serbs in his itinerary from 1530.

Danilo I in his letter from 1714. calls upon Montenegrins to sacrifice their lives "like prince Lazar did in Kosovo", and claims the Montenegrin tribes originate from Serbs who had to flee Kosovo because of the Ottomans.

etc.

[Pashai Janinës]

PART TWO

That the imagination is, indeed, impressed and excited by certain names, is suggested by the fact that in 1912-1913, only Serbian theories were taken into consideration.
The recent finds in the domain of linguistics, archeology and history have shown that these theories, as they were formulated in the 19th century were based on myths. But myths, on account of their suggestive power, do not die easily. Some of them may prove extremely tenacious. Such had been, for example, the myth mentioned before, connecting the South Slavs with the Illyrians.
* * *
It had been clearly indicated by J.E. Thunmann, back in 1774, that the Albanians alone could possibly be considered as the descendants of the Illyrians. Their origin had been suggested even before (in a letter) by the philosopher Leibniz.
Aside from pointing out historical data, Thunmann also remarked that certain Illyrian names are still used by Albanians: Dasios = Dash; Dida = Dede; Bardhylis = Bardhe, etc. A. Boue, who from 1836 to 1838 journeyed across the Balkans accompanied by various experts, subscribed to Thunmann's theory. J.G. von Hahn exposed the same view in his learned work Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1853) basing his research on ethnography, history and linguistics.³⁶
* * *
That the Albanians have been living in the coastal areas since ancient times is evidenced by the fact that the Albanian language is greatly influenced by Latin; not merely Balkan Latin, but also Latin in its archaic form, missing not only in Rumanian, but sometimes even in other Romance languages. Latin also affects the vocabulary dealing with the intellectual and spiritual domain. Scholars have explained this influence through long-lasting relations between the Romans and the ancestors of the Albanians. Had the latter not been living since ancient times on the Adriatic coast, these relations would not have been possible.³⁷
On the other hand, some Greek words in Albanian show the sound pattern of ancient Greek, an indication that the words were transmitted in an ancient epoch and that the Albanians must have been living in the vicinity of Greece for the past 3 000 years.
As regards Slavonic, from which the Albanians, like the Rumanians, borrowed many words, it has in no way affected the structure of their language, an indication that the borrowing must have taken place at a date when the Albanian language was already formed. Moreover, its influence is dialectical and concerns vocabulary dealing with material things rather than with spiritual matters. In Albanian, the terminology of the church, both Catholic and Orthodox, is not Slavonic, but overwhelmingly Latin with some Greek.³⁸
Yet the ancestors of the Albanians did not merely inhabit the coastal areas. As attested also by the Halstatt culture, the domain of the Illyrians was vast; it extended to the east and to the north. Some words, still used in a few Swiss dialects, denote an Illyrian origin. Thus, for example, in the Berner Oberland, the cow is still called lobe as in Albanian. Noteworthy also are the Illyrian finds on the left bank of Lake Neuchatel, connected with a culture known as La Tene culture (500 B.C. to 1 A.D.) and the recent
discoveries in Zurich ascribed to a much older civilization.
However, North Illyria was sparsely populated. The North Illyrian tribes eventually mixed with Celts and other invaders and little by little lost their identity. Only Southern Illyria, more densely peopled, survived. Appian, who wrote in the second century AD, maintained, citing the Greeks, that Illyria at that time stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Danube. This included the important province Dardania, i.e., the region of Shkup (Skopje), Niš and Priština. Ancient authors (Pliny) used to call the Southern Illyrians "Illyrii proprie dicti". They were divided into tribes, some of which managed to form small kingdoms. With its capital Scodra (Shkodra, Scutari) and its main seaport Ulqin, Illyria constituted, in the 3rd century B.C., a powerful federal state.
Fanula Papazoglu, professor of ancient history at the University of Belgrade, who has written extensively on the Illyrians (see among others, Les origines et la destinee de l'Etat illyrien - Illyrii proprie dicti, in Historia, Wiesbaden, 14, 1965, Heft 2), has also devoted a long chapter to the Dardanians in her work The Central Balkan Tribes in Pre-Roman Times...(Engl. Transl. from the Serbo-Croatian, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1978, 664 p.). In this latter work she indicates that
Not one of the peoples with whom we have to deal in this book has such a claim to the epithet "Balkan" as the Dardanians... because they appear as the most stable and the most conservative ethnic element in the area where everything was exposed to constant change, and also because they, with their roots in the distant prehomeric age, and living in the frontiers of the Illyrian and the Thracian worlds retained their individuality and, alone among the peoples of that region succeeded in maintaining themselves as an ethnic unity even when they were militarily and politically subjected by the Roman arms...and when at the end of the ancient world, the Balkans were involved in far-reaching ethnic perturbations, the Dardanians, of all the Central Balkan tribes, played the greatest part in the genesis of the new peoples who took the
place of the old (p.131).
After pointing out that the Dardanians had founded Troy, that Dardanelles is a name derived from them, that Dardanians were also encountered in Italy, Prof. Papazoglu adds that when the Dardanians reappear in our sources as a historically documented people in the central part of the Balkans, they are related to the Illyrians. Illyrian elements have also been noted among the Dardanians in Asia Minor. This all increases the probability of the theory that the Illyrians belonged to the oldest Indo-European element in the Balkan Peninsula (see pp.131-134).
The Albanian scholar, Zef Mirdita, of the University of Priština, who, like his colleague of the University of Belgrade, has devoted much time to the study of the Dardanians, has also arrived at the same conclusions (see among others, Studime Dardane, Prishtine, 1980).³⁹
The Dardanians resisted the Roman invasions as much as did the rest of the Illyrians and after the Roman conquest were not annihilated or absorbed as were not annihilated or absorbed the Illyrians of the coastal areas (See Mirdita, "A propos de la romanisation des Dardaniens" St.Alb., 1972 II pp. 287-298).⁴⁰
* * *
The extent of the territory inhabited by the Illyro-Albanians at the time of the arrival of the Slavs is suggested by place name. The well known Albanian linguist, E. Cabej, has remarked in "Die aelteren Wohnsitze der Albaner auf der Balkanhalbinsel im Lichte der Sprache und Ortsnamen" (Atti e memorie del VII Congresso internationale di scienze onomastiche, Firenze-Pisa 1961 I, pp.246-251) and in various other articles that names of small localities change in the course of years (thus many place names in present-day Albania, in Kosova and elsewhere in the Balkans are Slav),⁴¹ but not so those of cities, mountains and rivers:⁴² Various toponyms prove that at least since Roman times the Albanians have between living as well on the Adriatic and Ionian coasts as in the Western Macedonia - Kosova region, formerly called Dardania, for many geographical names, be they of Illyrian, Ancient Greek, or Roman origin - were transmitted with changes characteristic of Albanian phonetic rules. Such names are, for example, Nish (Naissos), Shkupi (Scupi), Oher,Ochrid (Oricium = Lychnos), Drisht (Drivastum), Shar (Scardus), Shkodra (Scodra), Mati (Amatia), Buna (Barbena), Ulqin (Ulcinium), Lesh (Lissus), Tcham (Thyamis), Ishm (Ismus), Durres (Durachium), Drin (Drillion), Zara (Zadar), Triest (Tregest), Tomor (Tomarus), Shtip (Astibos), Shtiponje (Stoponion).
* * *
J. Cvijic described the Albanians as "the most expansive race in the Balkans", and G. Jakšic compared the expansion of the Albanians to a "devastating river". G. Stadtmueller contended that originally they were confined to the Mati area and to the mountains of the north.⁴³ Yet the Albanian scholars maintain that in the light of the data cited above it becomes evident that far from expanding the territory of their ancestors, the Albanians have constantly been restricted to smaller areas.
* * *
However, until very recently, there had been no archeological finds to invest the assumption of the Illyro-Albanian continuity with firm and concrete support.
Before World War II, there were in Albania very few archeological discoveries connected with the Illyrians. Leon Rey, head of the French archeological mission in Albania, expressed doubts as to the possibility of finding any vestiges linked to prehelenic times. Prehistoric objects, numerous in Macedonia, were at that time completely lacking in Albania (L. Rey, "Lettre d'Albanie", Revue internationale des Etudes Bakaniques, 1937, 301-304). In L. Rey's time, among 25 excavation sites, only two were Illyrian and the finds - insignificant ones - were related merely to the Iron age (1 000-450 B.C.).

Things have changed since then. At the present time there are over 200 excavation sites connected with the Illyrians. In the past 25 years, archeology has acquired in Albania considerable significance. Various meetings have taken place in Tirana and much has been published on the subject by Albanian and foreign scholars.
Among the numerous publications, one may mention:
a) Les Illyriens et la genese des Albanais, Tirana 1972.
b) Actes du Congres des Etudes Illyrienns (two volumes), 1974.
- a) and b) contain the acts of the two important meetings held in Tirana in 1969 and 1972 which were attended by a considerable number of Albanian and foreign scholars).
c) Iliria (in Albanian, with abstracts in French), first volume published in 1971; Vol 10, 1980. Vol. 2, entirely in French, is devoted to Illyrian cities.
d) Two Albanian academic journals, Studia Albanica, and Studime Historike (see especially 1972, nos 2,3,4) also contain articles dealing with the Illyrians and the Albanian genesis.⁴⁴
* * *
Tumuli from the Iron Age were found in Mat (north Albania), Dropull (south Albania), Vajze (southeast Albania) and other localities. The archeological finds of these places chow links with the Illyrian necropolia of Glasinac in Bosnia and of Trebnište in Macedonia. This culture, known in archeological literature as Glasinac Culture, is encountered in a region stretching from Epirus to the Drin (Drina) and Morava, comprising Montenegro, Kosova and Bosnia.
* * *
Other discoveries made are connected with a more ancient epoch, the Bronze Age. On account of the unifying elements between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, Albanian archeologists have concluded that the Illyrians as an indigenous population and that their ethos was formed during the Neolithic or Bronze Age - i.e., prior to 1 000 B.C. - and not during the Iron Age as it had been formerly assumed.
Noteworthy is the fact that inventory objects pertaining to the Bronze Age (around 1 500 B.C.), such as the double axe, etc., leave no doubts as to relations between Illyria and Crete, thus confirming what had previously been asserted by F. Nopcza and M.E. Durham by reason of ethnographical data. As regards archeological inventory, the unifying traits linking the Bronze Age to the Iron Age were also noticed relative to finds outside the borders of present-day Albania: at Zocavi near Prijedor, Ptuj. The Yugoslav
scholars Josip Korošec, Frane Stare and Alojz Benac, when studying these finds, concluded - prior to the Albanian archeologists - that since there is no cultural interruption between the two layers representing the two different epochs, it becomes evident that one has to deal with one and the same ethnos (see A. Stipcevic, op. cit., pp.17-18).
Considerable prehistoric agglomerations dating from the Eneolithic Age (1 600 B.C.) were also unearthed in various locations. Albania may now compare with any other European country considered rich in prehistoric finds.
* * *
Of special interest is the inventory connected with a more recent age, namely, the early medieval epoch for which historical data are wanting. Noteworthy, relating to this epoch, is the necropolis of Kalaja Dalmaces in north Albania.
Although more finds have been made recently at this locality, the necropolis was discovered at the end of the 19th century and much had been written about it at that time and later by well-known foreign archeologists: S. Reinach, Th. Ippen, P. Traeger, F.Nopcza, L.M. Ugolini, L. Rey, D. Mustilli and also by A. Degrand, French consul in Scutari, who discovered it. For the history of this necropolis see especially Hena Spahiu, "Gjetje te vjetra nga varezza mesjetare e Kalase se Dalmaces", (Ancient finds from the medieval necropolis of Kalaja e Dalmaces") Iliria I, Tirana, 1971, pp. 227-260; and S. Anamali, "De la civilisation hautemedievale albanaise", Les Illyriens et la genese des Albanais, pp. 184-187.
The finds - most of which are at the Museum St. Germain-en-Laye - were formerly attributed to the Illyrians. Yet archeologists connected them with the Illyrian culture of the Iron Age. At the present time, however, there is incontrovertible evidence that the inventory objects belong to an epoch that stretches from the 6th century to the 8th century A.D.
Similar finds, linked to the same epoch, were made recently in Shurdha, near Shkoder, Bukel (Mirdita), Kruje, Lesh and, not too long ago, also in south Albania. This culture, known in archeological literature as Koman culture (from a village near Kalaja e Dalmaces), shows striking ties with the ancient Illyrian civilization. Despite the differences inherent to each epoch, one can easily recognize the unifying traits: funerary rites, orientation of graves, building methods, etc. They indicate that the Koman culture is the continuation of the ancient Illyrian civilization and not a culture introduced by recent settlers. In certain areas, such as Tren and Maliq, different layers show a continuity stretching from the Neolithic to the medieval epoch.
Despite ethnological and archeological data suggesting that the Illyrian ethnos was formed on Albanian soil prior to the Iron Age, it might perhaps still be premature to maintain a categorical stand as to problems relating to such a distant past. Therefore, Prof. Cabej without opposing the assertion expressed by Albanian archeologists, kept a cautious attitude in its regard. He argued, however, that the Illyro-Albanian continuity from the Classical period to the Middle Ages, both in present-day Albania and in Dardania, is indubitable.⁴⁵
* * *
Although in Kosova there have been no systematic excavations similar to those undertaken in Albania in the past twenty five years, the archeological material that is available leads to the conclusion that the ethnos of Kosova's inhabitants belonged to the Illyrian family. Burial tumuli, characteristic of the Illyrian culture, unearthed in Albania at various localities were also found in Kosova (near Priština and in Lastica near Gjilan); in the district of Kukes which has territorial links with Kosova; in the Dukagjini Plateau (Metohija), in Mjele (near Virpazar), Montenegro, and in the region of Ochrida.
The cultural heritage in Kosova shows the same unity of materials and building methods as in present-day Albania. These finds, which denote an advanced urban culture, also indicate the extent of the territory occupied by the Albanians at the time when the Slavs began to settle in the Balkans; they corroborate the claim made by Cabey on linguistic grounds.
* * *
As reported by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Emp. from 913-919), the Slavs Started to come to the Balkans from the Ural and the Caspian Sea during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (610-641). They were often led by nomadic Turks.⁴⁶ The region, called at that time Illyria, was inhabited by the aborigine population, the Illyrians, the ancestors of the Albanians.
It is generally admitted that the Slavs settled in the Danube area along the Dalmatian coast, and in Greece. But the question as to the exact territories occupied by them has not been elucidated as yet. From various sources - historical as well as linguistic - the conclusion may, however, be drawn that if the greatest part of the vast Illyrian territories was by the end of the 9th century already colonized by the Slavs, some areas were spared. These were Dardania, New Epirus, the southern part of Prevalitania and North Epirus.⁴⁷ These territories correspond exactly to the region which before the Treaty of Berlin were inhabited by Albanians.
The Slavs emerge as a strong population in the 10th century. But these Slavs are Bulgarians, not Serbs. It is they who in the 11th century named Belgrade⁴⁸ the city that at present is Serbia's capital. The Slav toponyms that replaced the Illyrian and the Roman toponyms are also in many areas Bulgarian and not Serb.
It is now time to discuss the three issues mentioned in Part I:
* * *
a) Practically nothing was known about the Serbs before 1136 when Tihomir, who was merely a shepherd, became Grand Zupan.
In the 12th century, according to a contemporary chronicler, W. of Tyre, the Serbs were "an uncultured and undisciplined people inhabiting the mountains and the forests" and who "sometimes ...
quit their mountains and forests... to ravage the surrounding countries", (cited by W. Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient, 1921, p. 446).
The Serbs began to gain strength in the 13th century when Stefan Simon Nemanjic - previously Zupan - started using, in 1217, the title of king.⁴⁹ At that time the Serbs had already taken much land from the Albanians. In 1217, they conquered Peja (Pec) which was to become in 1346 the see of the Serbian Patriarch. The greater part of Kosova, however, was not yet in their power.⁵⁰ It was afterward that they got hold of it little by little. But the Serbian kingdom, within the short span of its existence was not marked by fixity. Its precarious stability is indicated by a striking array of capitals: Raška, Priština, Belgrade, Kruševac, Smederevo, Belgrade again, Prizren, Banjska, Shkup (Skopje), Prilep, Smederovo, Kruševac again, Kragujevac.⁵¹ The names of these short-lived capitals suggest that the Serbs invaded and conquered, but then retreated and lost, because of some kind of opposition that they found. In this regard, it is interesting to note an observation made by V. Cubrilovic in his rather inhumane memorandum:⁵² "The Albanians are the only people during the last millennium that managed not only to resist the nucleus of our state, but also to harm us". This remark indicates that the Serbs were opposed by the aboriginal population.

When Stefan Dušan was killed in 1355, the Serbian Empire included not merely Kosova; it encompassed practically all of present Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, and part of Hungary. Yet the Empire had no fixity and lasted merely nine years. It had been built up with the help of mercenaries and it disintegrated immediately after Dušan's death because of the heterogeneous elements of which it was composed: Vlachs, Greeks, Albanians, etc.
* * *
Considering the fact that in the 12th century the Serbs were regarded as an uncultured and undisciplined people, that they began to gain strength in the 13th century; that their kingdom lasted a little over 100 years, and Czar Dušan's Empire merely nine, it is reasonable to assume that during this very short span of time the aboriginal population could not have been annihilated no matter how difficult the living conditions might have been for them.
As for Kosova - which is incorrectly designated as the cradle of the Nemanjic, for the Serbian nucleus did not start in Kosova, but in Raška, i.e., north of the site of present-day Novipasar⁵³ - the very names of the capitals of that short-lived Serbian state suggest that Kosova was not even abidingly its center. That state, as pointed out by many historians, does not seem to have had any permanence or center.
Neither was Stefan Dušan's Empire lost to the Turks. When the Battle of Kosova took place, Serbia was insignificant and divided among various petty lords. Lazar Hrebljanovic, to whose share had fallen the Kosova Plain was merely a Knez, i.e., a prince or a simple count.⁵⁴ His capital was Kruševac.
* * *
b) Some nations show restraint, shyness, or reluctance when it comes to exalting historical events and national heroes. India, for example, a country where thousands of myths originated, has refrained from underscoring the deeds of her national heroes.⁵⁵ Conversely, it has become the characteristic of the Serb nation - as various scholars have observed - to glorify personages and events associated with nationalists pride. For imaginative, sentimental, or other reasons which shall not be examined here, the Serbs have created nationalistic myths as India has created religious ones.⁵⁶ In so doing, however, they have insisted to the extreme upon the rights of their own nation which clash with those of other nations.
True, for instance, the Battle of Kosova, so greatly exalted by the Serbo-Montenegrins since Karadzic's time, was an important and sad event for the Slavs. However, when viewed objectively, one must concede that this battle, as specialist have not failed to remark - was not fought by the Serbs alone, but by a coalition of Balkan nations: Bulgarians, Greeks, Vlachs, and Albanians⁵⁷ (including 10 000 Croats). As a consequence, these nations should be imparted the merit due to them. Various sources suggest that the most numerous troops were the Albanian and that they were placed in the front rows.⁵⁷ Besides, the victory of the Turks in that battle is said to have been occasioned by the treason of Lazar Brankovic, Knez Lazar's son-in-law, who deserted to the Turks at the critical point of the battle with a large number of Serbs.⁵⁸
The important role of myths becomes evident when one thinks that the Battle of Nikopolis on the Danube, where the army of Sigismond of Hungary fought in 1395 against Beyazit, was just as decisive as that of Kosova, and perhaps as important, according to some scholars, as the very capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Yet we are heedless of its importance because of lack of myths. The Turkish victory on this battle is also due to the Serb troops fighting on the Turkish side, Beyazid being married to the sister of Stefan Lazarevic.⁵⁹
As to the hero of Kosova Battle, widely sung by the Serbs in the 19th century, most people will perhaps show surprise at learning that in all likelihood he was Albanian. His name, which was not recorded in Serbian church documents - perhaps for the simple reason that he might have been Catholic, perhaps also for other motives - became known to us thanks to a casual traveler and through Turkish documents: originally Copal - which is Albanian - it was Serbized, as were at that time other Albanian names, thus becoming Kopilic. In the 18th century, Kopil, Kopilic, underwent another modification and at present is merely known as Obilic.⁶⁰
* * *
c) The Serbs did not merely make, by way of myths, the most of Stefan Dušan's short lived Empire as well as of the Kosova Battle. Their purpose was also to prove that prior to the Turkish occupation, state and nationality coincided and that the Albanians in Kosova were but an adventitious population having colonized the region as a result of the Austro-Turkish Wars when the Serbs had to seek refuge in Hungary in order to safeguard their dignity.
Thus it was, and still is, repeatedly underscored that the Serbs who emigrated to Hungary were chiefly from the areas bordering on present-day Albania, i.e., from the region of Prizren, Djakova and Peja (Pec); the area which the Albanians call the Dukagjini Plateau and the Serbs Metohija.
J.G. von Hahn, who believed in the Illyro-Albanian continuity, had no doubts, when he visited Kosova that the Albanians had been living there since ancient times. He regarded the region of Sitnica as constituting a pure Albanian link between Dardania and Albania.⁶¹
As for A. Boue, although the Serbian exodus, which started to receive publicity at the beginning of the 19th century, was by the middle of that same century accepted as an indubitable fact, he was sure, when journeying in Kosova (1836-1838), that at the time of the Emigration the Albanians might have occupied certain districts evacuated by the Serbs in Novipazar and in the Dukagjini Plateau, but in doing so, they were merely recuperating their ancient territory, for, he pointed out, the Albanians are the descendants of the Illyrians and these used to inhabit the territory presently occupied by the South Slavs.⁶²
In his turn C.E.N. Eliot argued that
The Turks are usually thought of as a destructive force, and rightly; they have destroyed a great deal and constructed nothing. But in another sense, they have proved an eminently conservative force for they have perpetuated and conserved as if in a museum, the strange meddling which existed in South-Eastern Europe during the last years of the Byzantine Empire (Turkey in Europe, 1965 ed., p. 16).
* * *
That some people followed the Austrian army and were allowed to settle in Hungary is a historical fact that cannot be denied. Yet no historical documents are available regarding the number of people who emigrated, nor the exact areas affected by this emigration. The figure of 37 000 families,i.e., about 350 000 people, claimed by some historians, cannot be supported by any indisputable nor plausible evidence. This figure is, as it seems, the result of the arbitrary interpretation of the word void mentioned in some church document.
* * *
Despite the lack of historical proof in support of the Serbian assertion, the exodus, widely and abundantly advertised throughout the 19th century, was unquestionably accepted even by very critical minds. The event was so frequently mentioned and the publicity it received was such that it eventually became a commonplace: it has been mechanically repeated by all those who in various capacities have had to deal with the question. Newspapermen did not fail to refer to it again when reporting on the recent events that took place in Kosova.
Prof. A. Hadri of the University of Priština pointed out that the appeal to the Balkan peoples to rise against the Turks was not merely made by the Patriarch Arsenije Crnojevic, but jointly by him and the Albanian Archbishop of Skup (Skopje), Pjeter Bogdani. According to Hadri, there were about 20 000 rebels, Serbs and Albanians, some of whom emigrated north of the Danube. This figure does not tally with that claimed by the Serbs.
The historical error concerning various aspects of this emigration and the faulty interpretation of the word void used in church documents were already pointed out by a Serb himself - the well-known historian J. Tomic, in a passage which, surprisingly, has not received the attention it deserves considering the fact that it dates from 1913. It is contained in Les Albanais en Vieille-Serbie et dans le Sandjak de Novi-bazar, Paris, Hachette, 1913.
"This retreat of the southern and south-eastern population toward the north is known in Serbian history as the emigration of the Serbian people to Hungary under the Patriarch Arsenije Crnojevic. This event has lead in some instances to a few errors which for more than a century and a half, have been repeated from one book to another. One of those errors concerns the very regions that were hit by this emigration. If one opens at random any history book of the Serbian people one never fails to read everywhere as if it were a firmly established fact that during this emigration the Serbian regions of the Southwest - i.e., the regions of Prizren, Djakovo, Ipek - were the ones that suffered the most and remained vacant. This claim is incorrect and must be amended once and forever. Indeed, when presented in this manner the facts do not correspond to the reality. If this historical error has persisted for so long it is because the question has not been sufficiently studied. One has relied on notes and chronicles written by Orthodox priests and the 'void' mentioned in them has been identified with the ruin of the Serbian people; in reality, it refers to Orthodoxy.

[Pashai Janinës]

It is an established fact that in the Turkish Empire the Serbian people were equated with the Orthodox element. The Serbs were always inseparable from the Orthodox Church; thus, their interests coalesced with those of Orthodoxy See: Dix ans, etc.)...
During the epoch with which we are concerned, Orthodoxy in those regions was very hardly hit. A void was created in the Orthodox Church. Never was any Serbian region diminished by so many priests, dignitaries, and simple ministers as that particular area at that time. Neither had ever such a conjunction of circumstances occurred that rendered the situation of the Serbs as distressful as it was then. As a consequence, deprived of its best defenders and supporters in the battle against Islam, the population of Orthodox Serbia found itself more than ever subjected to the double process of Islamization and Albanization. This population did not evacuate the territories bordering on Albania proper; however, after being subdued, it was forced to an accelerated Islamization and Albanization. In terms of the Serbian national idea, this process may be equated with the disappearance of Serbian life, since it is this Islamized and Albanized population that has produced the worst enemies of the Orthodox faith with which the Serbian people and the national idea are identified. We have sufficient proofs confirming the fact that the stream of the Orthodox Serb emigration did not, indeed, affect the neighboring territories of Albnia proper and that, consequently, the way the facts were presented by priests in their notes and chronicles does not correspond to the reality. The decline of Serbian life in the regions of Prizren, Djakovo, and Ipek must therefore not be interpreted as the result of an emigration, but should more readily be considered as the subjection of the Serbian people to Islamization and Albanization which, owing to the circumstances, had become at that time particularly intense giving rise to the gravest violence on the part of the Moslems.
A direct proof that the Serbian land was not evacuated by the Orthodox population is the very existence of this same population until now. Still another proof is the steady decline of Serbian life which may be noticed starting with the beginning of the 18th century. However, aside from this fact of foremost importance, these events can also be confirmed by extant information dating back to that very epoch. Indeed, as it was indicated before,⁶³ the Orthodox Serbs of Luma declared themselves against Austria. It goes without saying that these Serbs did not need to emigrate and even less to flee with the Austrian troops, for their attitude gave them the right to remain where they were. In fact, they did not move. Moreover, it is well known to us from extant documents of that era that in this region numerous Serbs as well as Catholic Albanians withdrew from the Austrian Army as a consequence of some unfortunate proceedings on the part of the Duke of Hollstein. These people joined the Turks even before the latter had driven back the invader. Those Serbs did not feel any need, either, to flee from the Turks. Nor could they possibly place themselves under the protection of Austria. A man sent to Ipek during the first half of January 1690 came back with a monk of the patriarchy. Upon his return to Kutchi, this man recounted the looting of the churches and monasteries as well as the slaughters of priests and monks by the Turks, but he did not report any emigration of the people. On the other hand it was indeed not at all easy for the patriarch and his suite to flee because the Austrians were followed very closely by detachments of Turkish soldiers. As a consequence, there could, of course, be no question of any exodus of a slowly moving crowd. After this region was again occupied by the Turks who continued their chase, any flight became impossible for the people. If a mass emigration had taken place, how was it then possible for the same patriarch, Arsenije III, to work the following year, as he did with the Serbs of Brda and Montenegro in order to organize another uprising of the people on behalf of Austria?
On the other hand, one should again stress the fact that it was physically impossible for the people of that geographic area to emigrate en masse because the Turks, streaming into the region behind the Austrians, already occupied the greatest part of it even before the secret departure of the patriarch. Lastly, it was in the middle of the winter at a time when the roads are impossible to find.
As a consequence, there was no mass emigration of Orthodox Serbs from those regions at that time although this has been repeatedly asserted until now. Emigration and flight took place only whenever it was possible, i.e., wherever the Turks did not appear suddenly and the people could leave the area before their arrival. This was the case in the Sandjak, in Kosova, Upper Morava and Serbia within its former boundaries. These regions where the Austrians had made a longer halt were abandoned by the Orthodox Serb population that crossed the Danube and the Save. These emigrants were joined by a flow of people, a progressive migration, still headed for the north. As for the areas bordering on Albania proper, only a few single individuals and those who remained in the army as volunteers were able to flee immediately following the withdrawal of the Austrian army. The others left to side with the Turks. This is established by three facts:
a) Among the emigrants with fairly well-known names surrounding the patriarch there is not a single one from the region bordering on Albania proper.
b) The absence of an ancient population in the Sandjak may be explained solely by a migration that started out from a distant zone.
c) The traditions among the Serbs who became Moslem and Albanian, is proof that this population is old ...⁶⁴(see pp. 35-41).
* * *
The recent examination of Turkish catastral registers has revealed that, in fact, J. Tomic was right: the area bordering on present-day Albania could not have been evacuated. In the 16th century, the number of people inhabiting the mountainous areas around Dukadjini Plateau (Metohija) was too insignificant. According to Albanian scholars, even assuming - without any valid reason - that the population had doubled in the 17th century and that all of the highlanders had departed from the mountaineous region, their number would not have sufficed to fill the area, nor to affect the population of Kosova-Metohija (Kosmet) had that population been previously Slav. But Turkish catastral registers clearly indicate that in addition to being small, the population of the mountains was also stable.⁶⁵
J. Tomic argued, besides, that following the Austro-Turkish wars, the population of the region was forcibly Albanized and Islamized.
To this claim, one may reply that:
1) The region of Prizren, Djakova, and Peja is marked by the tribal⁶⁶ system as North Albania. Aside from the fact that this system constitutes a link between the two units, it must be borne in mind that no outside man can belong to the tribe, least of all Albanized Serbs. Therefore Tomic's remark at the end of the passage that "the tradition among the Serbs who became Moslem and Albanian is proof that this population is old", does not seem to make much sense.
2) At present, there are two million Moslem Slavs, the Bosnians. In 1974 they have inaugurated a Moslem university, which is the only one of its kind in Europe. Since these Slavs were merely Islamized, the question, of course, arises as to why the other Slavs were, as maintained by Tomic, Albanized in addition to being Islamized.
3) Contrary to the Vilayet of Kosova which was 90% Albanian, that of the Sandjak of Novipazar was, at the turn of the century, mixed. Whether those Albanians are recent settlers in that region, as claimed by Tomic, has, to my knowledge, not been established. Be it as it may, the fact remains that the two populations did not mix. Although both Moslem, they kept their individuality.
4) Kosova was not Islamized in the 18th century following the Austro-Turkish Wars. According to the Turkish registers, Kosova as a whole was already 65% Islamized back in 1520.⁶⁷ In certain areas Islamization seems to have been particularly strong; thus Prizren (which in addition to the Orthodox population also had a Catholic minority) was 80% Moslem (see M. Ternava's article in Fjala, Prishtine, Spring 1980); the population of Shkup (Skopje) in Macedonia, was 74% Islamized.⁶⁸
It is significant that Peja's population, still mostly Christian in 1483 (105 hearths Christian; 33 Moslem) had turned overwhelmingly Moslem (90%) by 1582 (142 hearths Islamized, 15 Orthodox, the latter mostly with Albanian names).⁶⁹ This happened at a time when the Patriarch of Peja (Pec) was granted power by the Porte (1557) thanks to the efforts of the Serbian Grand Vizir Sokolovic whose brother - or uncle - was
an Orthodox ecclesiastic.⁷⁰
* * *
At this point it is opportune to give some consideration to the problem of religion:
Although there have been conversions also in Bulgaria and Cyprus, the fact, nonetheless, remains that the most significant ones occurred among the Bosnians and the Albanians. In 1520, i.e., eighty years after Bosnia's conquest by the Turks, Sarajevo was 100% Moslem.⁷¹
The Bosnians admit that they did not regard the Turks as oppressors, that on the contrary, they welcomed them as liberators.⁷²

The Albanians cannot say the same thing about themselves, for their numerous fights against the Turks are an undeniable historical fact. The Albanian national hero who distinguished himself in these combats was compared to Charles Martel⁷³ who in 732 halted the Moorish invasions at Poitiers, thus saving western Europe from the Moslem peril.⁷⁴
Voltaire asserted that if the Greek emperors had been comparable to Skanderbeg, the Eastern Empire would have been preserved.⁷⁵ The French savant Ami Boue, drawing a parallel between the Albanian leader and Stefan Dušan, portrayed the latter as a mere conqueror but pointed out that Skanderbeg is remembered as one of the bravest soldiers that has ever existed.⁷⁶
During the 25-year span that preceded the Turkish invasion, the Albanians were at the height of their power; as regards moral prestige, they had plenty of it. Relating to territories, according to the Byzantine chronicler L. Chalcocondiles, the land of Gjon Castriota, Skanderbeg's father, extended between the kingdom of Sandalj, king of Bosnia, and Epirus.⁷⁷ N. Iorga mentions a document from the archives of Venice, dating from 1413 which calls Gjon Castriota "dominum partium Bosniae";⁷⁸ this presupposes that the territories northeast of Shkodra (Scutari) were under Castriota's sway.⁷⁹ Also, in 1420, Gjon Castriota granted to the inhabitants of Ragusa the privilege to exercise trade in his territories until Prizren,⁸⁰ an indication that this latter town was under Gjon Castriota's rule. Besides, according to Ami Boue (who points out that between the Greeks and the Albanians the differences are very slight), the Albanians inhabiting Greece were so excited about Skanderbeg's deeds that in 1454, they would have easily subdued the two despots, Demetrios and Thomas, and Greece would have come under their sway.⁸¹
It becomes evident that under these circumstances the Turks would not have been welcomed by them. In fact, the Albanians who fled to Italy following the Turkish invasion of their land were very numerous. They are said to have made up one-fourth of the nation's population.⁸²
When thinking of these facts and considering that the fights of the Albanians against the Turks constitute a glorious episode in the history of the Albanian nation, the question, of course, arises as to why so many of these firm opponents of the Ottomans gave up Christianity.
There is no doubt that in the Balkans the Turks used pressure at times, especially perhaps in regard to the Albanians because they resisted them longer than other Balkan nations, but also on account of their links with the Pope, i,.e., with the West, which were suspect to the Porte. On general, however, the Turks strike as having been extremely tolerant in matters of religion. In fact, various data lead to the assumption that practically all conversions were in a way, voluntary. At the present time, it seems therefore simplistic to think that "after the Battle of Kosova whole populations were butchered or compelled to adopt Islam.⁸³ Neither may those who remained Christian be regarded as angels and martyrs, nor should those who embraced Islam be depicted as opportunists.
The religious problem is, as are most problems, more complicated than it seems at first sight. Up to now, scholars have not been able to study it properly on account of insufficient documents. Therefore, in many respects, there have been conjectures of a controversial order rather than definite conclusions drawn from objective historical evidence. The conversions of the Bosnians, for example, have often been attributed to the eagerness of the Bosnian nobles to secure their feudal rights. Yet the Bosnians themselves consider their acceptance of Islam as a means to preserve their identity for they do not identify themselves with the Serbs.⁸⁴
As far as the Albanians are concerned, since they provided Turkey with numerous energetic and most able statesmen and reformers, various scholars, contending that they had a privileged position in the Turkish Empire, have imputed these conversions to utilitarian motives, such as the desire to have access to high positions,⁸⁵ if not simply to avoid taxes.
As regards Islamization, the role played by the Balkan Churches has received very little attention although the pressure wielded by these churches against one another has often been stressed with respect to other matters. It is in connection to these churches that this problem shall be considered in this essay. * * *
The corruption of the Greek church has already been pointed out by different scholars.
In this regard, a passage from Sir C.N.E. Eliot's Turkey in Europe (first published in 1900) is illuminating:
"There was a strong party for the reelection of Jeremias, who, finding that the Porte refused to accept his candidature, offered 40 000 ducats if his brother Nicephorus could be elected. Metrophanes, by unheard of efforts, collected a like sum and laid it at the Sultan's feet. "The man is worthy of his office", said his Majesty; "let him alone". In 1620, the Grand Vizier demanded from Timotheus 100 000 ducats, on the ground that he had named 300 Metropolitans during his 10 years tenure of office. Cyrillus Lucaris, the successor of Timotheus, was deposed by the Jesuits and their party for 40 000 ducats and reinstated for 180 000 more.
"Naturally, these enormous sums did not come from the pockets of the Patriarch. As the Turks treated him, so he treated his own subordinates. The tribute of the Patriarchate was paid from the money received from consecrating bishops, the bishop paid his money from consecrating priests, who in their turn found the wherewithal by insisting on payments from their flocks for the performance of the simplest religious rite. The visitations of Metropolitans were dreaded almost as much as those of Pashas, and the whole fabric of the Church seemed converted into a vast mechanism of extorting money from the unhappy Christians for the most shameful purposes" (pp. 246-347 - 1965 ed.).
Not only ecclesiastical, but also educational matters were in the hands of the Greeks. "Their object was to Hellenise the Christian races of the Ottoman Empire, which meant that those unfortunate populations had to submit to a double yoke: Turkish and Greek".⁸⁶ Eliot also adds that under these conditions, "It is hardly surprising to find that this dark period was characterized by numerous conversions" (op. cit., p. 50).
These conversions become, indeed, understandable when one thinks that the non-Greek populations had to pay huge sums to keep in Constantinople a patriarch whose aim was to prevent the development of their own cultures and to suppress their own languages. In fact, according to Turkish catastral registers, at the beginning of the 16th century, Gjirokastra's and Vlora's populations were overwhelmingly Christian (53 hearths Moslem as against 12 257 hearths Christian for the former city; 1 200 Moslem
against 14 304 Christian for the latter).⁸⁷ At the beginning of the 20th century, the Christian population of these two cities had dwindled; they were overwhelmingly Moslem.
C.and B. Jelavich have remarked that the Greeks who had high positions in the Turkish Empire⁸⁸ used their authority to oppress the rights of other nations in the Balkans, especially those of the Serbs.
Also, when examining the Bosnian problem, C. and B. Jelavich have pertinently indicated that the Bosnians, situated as they are, between Orthodox Serbia and Catholic Croatia, found themselves torn by disputes between the two churches and they were compelled first to have recourse to the Bogomil heresy and after the Turkish conquest to embrace Islam.⁸⁹
These two remarks by C. and B. Jelavich are relevant. The first about the Greeks in regard to other nations may apply also to the Serbs with respect to the Albanians. When reflecting on the second remark pertaining to the conversions of the Bosnians, who first turned Bogomil, then Moslem in order to keep their identity, the question arises as to what were the Albanians before embracing Islam.
Of late, the Albanian scholar Dhimiter S. Shuteriqi has expressed the opinion that the Albanians also, like the Bosnians, might have been Bogomil^.90 There are, however, no extant documents to support this conjecture with incontrovertible evidence.
It is assumed that Skanderbeg was Catholic on account of his close connections with four different popes. Yet, one of his brothers, Reposh, was a monk in an Orthodox monastery as were other north Albanians. These data do not simplify the religious problem as regards the Albanians.


* * *

The Albanians, we are told, were under the jurisdiction of Rome until 731 when Leo the Isaurian placed Illyricum under the Patriarchate of Constantinople (K. Jirecek, Geschichte der Serben, p. 47). However, as pointed out by N. Iorga, Illyricum had received its first missionaries from Rome quite early,⁹¹ which meant that it adhered to Western civilization. The Albanians, on account of the geographical position of their country and for various other reasons, found themselves obliged, in the course of years, to vacillate between the two churches. Yet they managed to keep alive their Western background. Perhaps they never severed completely their ties with Rome. According to A. Cabej, of all the Balkan nations - including even Rumania - Albania sided more with the West than with the East. It is also interesting to indicate that the Albanians who settled in Italy following the Turkish invasion, many of whom still use the
eastern rite, were never required to sign any document proclaiming their union with the Vatican as is the case with other Eastern communities. Nor did they abjure Orthodoxy. This presupposes that their links with Rome had never been broken.⁹²
The Serbs, evangelized many centuries after the Albanians, did not receive their missionaries from Rome. In Stefan Dušan's Code of Laws, there are indications that those who had links with Rome were persecuted.
According to Law no. 6, "The ecclesiastical authority must strive to convert such (i.e., Catholics) to the true faith. If such a one will not be converted..., he shall be punished by death. The Orthodox Tsar must eradicate all heresy from his state. The property of all such as refuse conversions shall be confiscated... Heretical churches will be consecrated and open to priests of Orthodox faith".
According to Law no. 8, "If a Latin priest be found trying to convert a Christian to the Latin faith, he shall be punished by death".
According to Law no. 10, "If a heretic be found dwelling with the Christian he shall be marked on the face and expelled. Any sheltering him be treated the same way".⁹³
It is evident that under such rigid laws it must not have been easy for the Kosovars to keep their ties with Rome. In fact, the recent examination of Turkish catastral registers has revealed that in the 15th and 16th centuries many Albanians in Kosova were Orthodox.⁹⁴
It goes without saying that the Albanians were not persecuted merely on religious grounds. In fact, in 1332, Father Brocardus (Gulielmus Adae, a French Dominican, Archbishop of Antebari) remarked that "The Albanoi are oppressed under the intolerable and very hard servitude of the most hateful and abominable lordship of the Slavs because they are overburdened with taxes, their clergy is lowered and humbled, their bishops and abbots often imprisoned, their monastery and priests lost and destroyed, their nobles deprived of their possessions".⁹⁵
These persecutions against the Catholic Albanians continued during the Turkish occupation.
The Yugoslav scholar Jovan Radonic (Rimska Kurija i Juznoslavenske zemlje XVI-XIX veka, Beograd 1950,pp. 269, 473, 511-512) has revealed that the Patriarch of Peja had the authorization of the Porte to place the Catholics under his jurisdiction, threatening to impale the Albanians who would dare to address themselves to the Pope.
In 1664, Andre Bogdani, Archbishop of Shkup (Skopje), informed his congregation in Rome that the Albanians were more persecuted by the Orthodox Church than by the Turks (see Mark Krasniqi "Les Albanais dans l'oevre d'un diplomate russe", "Gjurme e Gjurmine, Prishtine, 1979, pp. 291-391).
The question of religion is, indeed, closely related to that dealing with national identity.
Being evangelized by Roman missionaries, the Albanians did not have a national church of their own similar to that of the Slavs. Pressed by the Greeks in the south and by the Slavs elsewhere their conversion to Islam seems to have been a means to preserve their national identity.
* * *
The conversions have been detrimental to the Albanians in more than one way: during Ottoman rule, they had to serve as mercenaries in the Turkish army. Sent to far away countries, they were decimated in wars or succumbed to climates to which they were not used while the other nations of the Balkans cultivated their land and grew in population.
In the 19th century, their desperate efforts to shake off Ottoman rule were ignored by the West and whereas the other Balkan nations were not merely allowed but also aided to constitute themselves as states, the Albanians, the oldest nation in the Balkans, were denied the right to do so.
It is because of their conversions that they lost the greatest part of their territories to neighboring states for Gladstone favored the Christians whom he considered as the allies of the Western Powers whilst he regarded Moslems as inferior; civilization being - according to him - equated with Christianity.
Religion was also taken as a pretext for plans made by neighboring states to transplant to Turkey the Albanians who as a result of peace treatise had remained in the territories ceded by the Great Powers to neighboring states.
The Albanian scholar and diplomat, F. Konitza, pointed out that the Albanians are fully aware that the conversions are cause of many of their grievances and misfortunes while remaining at the same time perfectly conscious that if they had remained Christians, they would have been absorbed by their neighbors. Konitza implies thereby that between the two alternatives, the Albanians had no choice.
* * *
Giving further consideration to the Turkish registers pertaining to Kosova - which to this date may be regarded as the most reliable source of information relating to religion and ethnicity - the Albanian scholars have pointed out that in the light of the various data contained in these registers, the conclusion must be drawn that many Albanians had become Orthodox and were in the process of being Slavized. One may notice, for example, that many of them had added Slavic suffixes to their Albanian names. Thus, one encounters names such as Gjon Leshovich, Mark Bushatovich, Gjin Progonovich (Albanian names except for the suffix). Sometimes even the first names are Slavic: Radoslav, Jovan, Bogdan, Radislav, Bozhidar, Petko, etc. There are cases when both names are purely Slavic as to make it impossible to tell that one has to deal with Albanians were it not for certain remarks added to them such as 'son of Gjin', 'son of Tanush', 'son of Arben', (which are indisputably Albanian names) or simply Arbanas, i.e., Albanian. Sometimes, the only indication as to the ethnos is the village which has an Albanian name or the section of the city marked 'Albanian'.⁹⁶
These names have not failed to become the subject of a controversy. In fact, the Albanians consider as Albanian, despite their Slavic names, all those for whom some indication was found as to their Albanian ethnicity.
The Yugoslav scholars did not observe the same guideline. A. Handzic,⁹⁷ for example, who has published various foreign documents attesting that the Albanians were present in Kosova prior to the 17th century and who was also the first to point out that many of the individuals who had Slavic names were in reality Albanians on account of the indications mentioned above, when it came to statistics, he listed as "Slavs" all those who had Slavic names regardless of other data. Therefore the conclusion he reached was that in the 15th century, the Albanians, although present everywhere in Kosova, did not constitute the majority of the population. Conversely, the Albanian scholars maintain that the population was overwhelmingly Albanian, because of the fact that Slavic names - given the political situation - may not be considered as a criterion of ethnicity without taking into account other data.
Be as it may, the fact remains that in the 15th century, according to the registers, the Albanians were, contrary to the opinion that had prevailed until recently, everywhere present in Kosova.


* * *

With regard to the Turkish registers relative to Peja, the Albanian scholars content that, if the population of that city had been Slav, the numerous conversions at the very epoch when the patriarch was granted power by the Porte, would be unfounded and incomprehensible. These scholars regard the conversions as a clear indication that Peja's population was Albanian; they maintain, furthermore, that these conversions were, for their co-nationals, a means to keep their national identity.⁹⁸
That the Albanians in Kosova are an aboriginal population is attested by the very Serbian Chrysobulls of the 13th and the 14th centuries. On the other hand, Turkish chroniclers mention Albanian uprisings in Kosova in the 15th century.⁹⁹ The archives of Dubrovnik also testify for the same epoch. As for 17th century, important are, among others, the writings of the Turkish chronicle Evlija Celebi which clearly indicate that prior to the Austro-Turkish Wars the Albanian population was overwhelmingly present in Western Macedonia, in Montenegro and in the Vilayet of Kosova (E. Celebi, Putopis, Sarajevo, 1973, pp. 136-137). Mention should also be made, for the same epoch, of pastoral reports - that of the Papal Envoy, Pietro Massarechi (Mazreku, born in Prizren who succeeded M. Bizzi) dating from 1623 specifies that at that time, the population of Prizren was made up of 12 000 Moslem Albanians, 200 Catholic Albanians and 600 Serbs and that the population of Shkup (Skopje) was also mainly Albanian.¹⁰⁰ Likewise, the Austrian documents pertaining to the Austro-Turkish Wars give evidence that the Austrian army was continuously in touch with an Albanian population. These documents refer to Prizren as the Capital of Albania and to Pjeter Bogdani, Archbishop od Shkup, as Archbishop of Albania.¹⁰¹ Various incidents linked to the Austro-Turkish Wars, as related by T. Ippen (in Novibazar und Kossovo,(das Alte Rascien) eine Studie, Vienna, 1892), who used Austrian War documents - as did J. Tomic - make it obvious that in Kosova the Austrian army had to deal with an Albanian population.
The fact that Shkup (Skopje) had an Albanian Archbishop, implies that that city had an Albanian population. Also, it is well known that among those who followed the Austrian army was an Albanian tribe, the Kelmendi (Clementi), from the region of Niš, which suggests that the area was inhabited by Albanians.
* * *
The recent study of catastral registers has not only indicated that in the 15th century the Albanians were overwhelmingly present in Kosova and Western Macedonia; it has also shown that they were not merely shepherds, as they were often said to have been, but held all kind of positions and practiced professions which are not normally characteristic of a nomadic population. That study has also revealed that in contrast to the Albanians who were sedentary, the Serbs appear as a nomadic population.¹⁰²
Objective research has therefore established that what has been called Old Serbia, a term suggesting Serbian tradition and permanence, is in reality a region inhabited ab antiquo by Albanians which was only for a period of time under Serb rule.
* * *
It is undeniable fact that until recently (but especially so during the Middle Ages) state and nationality seldom coincided. The desire to invade and conquer is, indeed, a characteristic of many peoples and races. England was invaded by the Normans and ruled by them; the Arabs held sway in Spain from 756 to 1492; Calais was for two centuries under the domination of the British; Poland stayed for a long time divided between Russia, Germany and Austria. Needless to say that many more examples may be cited. There are places that remained, in fact, for centuries under the nominal rule of various invaders, alien to the population inhabiting them. The South Slavs, who were themselves, as a race and as a nation, under the domination of Turkey, Hungary, and Austria, should be in a better position than most people to feel and admit that in the past state and nationality were very seldom identical and that the transient power over something does not give claim to a permanent possession.
Indeed, temporary conquerors do not normally use the adjective "old" to describe territories which they once held under their sway. The French do not find it appropriate to call "Old France" territories once occupied by the short-lived Napoleon's Empire. Nor do the Turks name "Old Turkey" the Balkans where they ruled for over five centuries. The Bulgarians do not refer to Belgrade as "Old Bulgaria", despite the fact that that city belonged to them from the 9th century until the 11th; neither is this city called "Old Hungary" although Belgrade, which was Serbia's capital only briefly in the 12th century, fell under Hungarian control before being captured by the Turks in 1521. As for Ragusa, recently Dubrovnik, it was founded in the 7th century by the Romans and the Illyrians fleeing the incursions of the Slavs. Later, it fell under the rule of Byzantium, then under that of Venice, and finally of Hungary. The Turks held it from 1526 until 1806. Only since 1918 do the Slavs have control of it.
* * *
The term "Old Serbia", which, like all expression that are well chosen, has a tremendous suggestive power, was employed for the first time by Vuk Karadzic at the beginning of the 19th century. Yet Karadzic applied it practically to the whole Balkan peninsula. "Old Serbia" at that time was synonymous with what was also called "Great Serbia". But the chances to annex Bulgaria and Thessaly waned. The term was thus no longer applied to those regions and at present nobody considers these places any longer as "Old Serbia". Curiously on John Bugarsky's map, published in Belgrade in 1845, there is one area marked "Old Serbia or Present-day Albania". It is the region of Bielopolje separating Montenegro from Serbia - a clear indication that the term was used to designate various areas depending on the possibilities regarding territorial claims offered by political circumstances. Thus the limits traced by Prof. Cvijic for "Old Serbia" in 1909 differed considerably from those used by the same scholar in 1911. Since there was nobody to protect Albania's rights, the term was eventually used to designate merely the region that at present is identified with Kosova-Metohija (Kosmet). As for the Albanians, they call "Old Serbia", Serbia before 1878.
* * *
According to Theodor Ippen, if the term "Old Serbia" should be used at all, it should apply solely to that district which is situated between Ibar and Sitnica, whose southern border is the river Lab, i.e., to the area once called "Old Rascia" (Rascia = Serbia) whose capital was Ras located north of present Novipazar. Ippen remarks that this region too used to be Albanian (even the name Ras, he points out, goes back to an Albanian etymology), but it was there that the Southern Slavs formed their first nucleus in the 12th century under Nemanjic; it should in no way be applied to the territory of Kossovo:
The use of the expression 'Old Serbia' would be, if applied to a limited territory, after all justified, in as much as here (in Raška) the old Serbian state, which in its early stage may be identified with Rascia, originated. But he term 'Old Serbia' is used by chauvinistic Serbs to designate regions, such as Prizren, Gjakova, Ipek on the one hand and, on the other, Iskup, which geographically and ethnographically belong to Albania and Macedonia. 'Old Serbia' is therefore applied, for political purposes, to regions which ethnically speaking were never Serb (Ippen, op.cit., p.4).¹⁰³
* * *
In the sight of these facts, the Albanians maintain that the principle of history invoked by the Serbs in support to territorial claims, is not based on any solid facts.


Serbian Churches in Kosova


It is an undeniable fact that people feel the need to build whatever they establish themselves. It is therefore normal that when they move away, they leave monuments behind. Suffice it to mention in this regard the famous mosques of Spain where the Arabs ruled for more than seven centuries. Some nations inherit monuments found by them in conquered territories. Thus Istanbul contains, aside from Hagia Sophia, many other Byzantine churches. These Christian places of worship stand amidst a Moslem population. Their fate is - mutatis mutandis - comparable to the Moslem monuments of Spain.
Similar to other nations, the Yugoslavs inherited from those who had previously ruled over the territories presently inhabited by them, various monuments associated with different civilizations that flourished in those areas throughout the centuries - for instance, on the Dalmatian coast, works of art built by the Romans and the Venetians add charm to the beautiful coast attracting a great number of tourists.¹⁰⁴ These monuments are well preserved by the Yugoslavs. Conversely, the Serbo-Montenegrins thought it appropriate to destroy practically all Turkish works of art. The beautiful 17th century mosque of Podgorica, recently Titograd, was thus demolished despite the loud protests of the Bosnians. In Belgrade and its surroundings alone over 260 mosques, some of which were of undeniable artistic value, were razed.¹⁰⁵ The Serbs have also demolished or damaged Albanian Catholic Churches.¹⁰⁶
It is evident that places of worship as well as works of art represent the very spirit of a nation; to destroy them is tantamount to ruining the nation itself. The urge to conquer is more often than not accompanied by the need to annihilate the very spirit of the enemy. In this regard, it is perhaps not inappropriate to point out that the Greeks, who in 1766 eliminated the autocephalous Church of Peja and the following year, the Bulgarian Church of Ochrida, also destroyed Serbian manuscripts and monuments. In 1825, the Metropolitan Ilarion is said to have burned publicly all the Slavonic books in the old library of Trnovo Patriarchate.¹⁰⁷
One could also point out the fact that during the Balkan Wars, the Bulgarian army, responsible for many other destructions, turned into a stable the monastery of Gracanica, damaging the frescoes on the walls.¹⁰⁸
Many Catholic churches were damaged or demolished by the Serbs.
In the light of these facts, one appreciates more fully the attitude of the Albanians with regard to Serbian places of worship situated in a region where the population is overwhelmingly Albanian and Moslem. But before giving any details a few words about these churches become compelling.
In the region bordering on present-day Albania, there are three important monasteries (restored at high cost between the two World Wars):
1) The Patriarchate of Peja, built in the 13th century and aggrandized in the 14th. Its religious importance is well known, but from the point of view of architecture it is not important.
2) The monastery of Decani, built in 1325-1335. Its architect was Vita of Cattaro, a Catholic brother. It is the most beautiful of the three monasteries.
3) The Church of Devica in Drenica, built by the Despot Georg Brankovic, mentioned in documents only in 1578. From the point of view of architecture, this church is less important than the two others.
All three of them are situated in isolated areas. According to A. Slijepcevic, these monasteries were not so much intended to be places of worship; rather, they constituted landmarks either in conquered territories or away from from state rule. In the latter case, they were like attempts to "rapprochments".¹⁰⁹
Medieval Serbian documents clearly indicate that the villages surrounding the Serbian monasteries were inhabited by Albanians, who contributed to their maintenance.¹¹⁰
It is now time to point out that these places of worship would have been destroyed in the course of years had it not been for the Albanians. It is to them that they owe their existence. For centuries, the guardians of these churches - the vojvods, as they are called - have always been Moslem Albanians, elected by the neighboring villages of these churches. There were times when the Albanians experienced bitter and inimical feelings in regard to the Serbs, especially following the Berlin Congress, when tens of thousands of their co-nationals inhabiting the regions ceded to Serbia and Montenegro were brutally driven out of their homes and forced to leave the region. There were also times, especially at the turn of the century, when the Albanians, disobeying the Turks, held sway in those territories, where they constituted over 90% of the population. It was thus in their power to reduce to ashes those places of worship. But they did not do so despite the fact that they were fighting the Serbs. This surprising attitude is due to the Albanian Code of Laws (the Code of Laws of Lek Dukagjini, rightly regarded as the bible of the North Albania), which penalizes those who do not show respect for churches even if they are not their own. Numerous were the vojvods killed while defending one or the other of these monasteries. Orthodox priests sent to their families letters of praise and gratitude.¹¹¹
Considering these facts, Serb propaganda that depicts the Albanians as vandals who damage Serbian churches seems both mean-spirited and undignified, especially when one thinks that even poets have put their talents to the service of a defaming propaganda by describing the Albanians as destroyers. In this regard, mention should be made of a widely advertised poem by the well-known Serb poet, Rakic, where an Albanian is described as having damaged the eyes of one of the frescoes at Gracanica¹¹² representing Simonida.¹¹³ Since there is irrefutable proof that this act was not committed by any Albanian and owing to the fact that Rakic - who at the turn of the century was consul of the Kingdom of Serbia in Priština - must have been fully aware of the truth, his poem is more than objectionable.¹¹⁴
Regarding these churches, those who cause damage are Serb school children, who put their signature wherever they can. Mark Krasniqi in one of his two illuminating essays devoted to these churches has even reproduced the signature of the Serbian Consul in Monastir, which he found in Gracanica. Using the Cyrillic alphabet, the Consul had written clearly and in a conspicuous place: "D.Bodi, Srpski Konsul u Bitolju, 1893".¹¹⁵
A leap shall now be made into the present time to point out that the unjust attitude of the Serbs has not changed.
On March 16, 1981, a fire broke out at the convent of the sisters at Peja, a fairly recent construction without architectural value. Although the convent is at a good distance from the patriarchate, which was in no way touched by fire, the casualty was presented to the press in such a manner as to suggest that the patriarchate itself had suffered damages. Accused were the Albanian "irredentists".
As a result of a court investigation, Judge Hoti, a Kosovar, declared that the casualty was due to inadequate electrical installation. Although damages had been minimal, the Fedral Government allotted for the restoration of the convent sums that were surprisingly high. The case, however, seemed closed. It has been reopened of late.
It is understandable that, hurt in their pride, the Albanians have come to view these churches, which they have so magnanimously defended, as symbols of injustice.

[Pashai Janinës]

Part Three
Kosova Between The Two World Wars
At the outbreak of World War I, the illiteracy of the Serbs was over 83%.¹¹⁶ However, the South Slavs, who had been under Austrian rule and subsequently served in the administration of the newly created state of Yugoslavia, enabled Serbia to progress between the two wars. As for the Albanians who remained under Slav rule, the period that began in 1913 and ended in 1941 was one of regression and mourning. Progress was completely denied to them. The few Albanian schools that had finally been permitted by Turkey shortly before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, were closed by the Yugoslav Government. No education in the Albanian language was tolerated. Unprecedented pressures of all kinds were wielded on the impoverished population. New settlers - non-Albanians - were established in the region. Under a so-called Agrarian Reform, the Albanians were deprived of their land and compelled to cede it to the Serbo-Mongtenegrins, who little by little set out to colonize the whole area. The man responsible for this colonization, which was not performed in a very humane manner, was Djordje Kristic, the head of the agrarian commission that had its headquarters in Shkup (Skopje). In his book The Colonization of South Serbia, published in Sarajevo in 1928, he tells how rapidly the ethnic composition was changing in a region which before 1913 "did not have a single Serbian inhabitant".¹¹⁷
Yet soon, the Yugoslavs decided upon means even more cruel in order to eradicate Albanian element faster and more efficiently. It was thus resolved that tens of thousands should be removed to Turkey or to the State of Albania.
There was some concern that obstacles of international import might arise, but in a memorandum to the Royal Government on March 7, 1937, Dr. Vaso Cubrilovic had this to say:
At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can shift tens of millions of people from one point of the continent to another, the shifting of few hundred thousand Albanians will not lead to the outbreak of a World War.
The Albanians intended to be expatriated were not to be allowed compensation for their loss of property.
The means that were to be used for this removal are explicitly mentioned by V. Cubrilovic. Below are picked at random and transcribed some recommendations contained in his memorandum:
...agitators to advocate the removal by describing the beauties of the new territories in Turkey; refusal to recognize the old land deeds; ruthless collection of taxes; threats; withdrawal of permits to exercise a profession; dismissal from state, private and communal office; destruction of cemeteries; ill-treatment of clergy. Conflicts between Albanians and Montenegrins should be prepared and encouraged and should be either presented as conflicts between clans or attributed to economical reasons. These will be bloodily suppressed with the most efficacious means. In the colonization process, the role of the police should be of foremost importance; settles should be mostly Montenegrins because they are arrogant and merciless and would drive the Albanians away with their behavior; from the ethnic standpoint, the Macedonians will unite with us only when they enjoy true ethnic support from the Serbian motherland, which they have lacked to this day; this they will achieve only through the destruction of the Albanian block. Settlement should begin in villages, then in towns.¹¹⁸
The plan to begin colonization first in villages was based on previous experience and had worked out well; namely, along the Dalmatian coast. In fact, Austria, thinking that the Italians, on account of their advanced culture, were more of a threat to them than the Slavs, had allowed and encouraged Slav settlements in the rural areas. As a result, Fiume and Triest, whose population had remained Italian, eventually looked like islands immersed in the rural Slavic population surrounding them.
Despite the strong opposition of the Kosovars to the plan for their settlement in Turkey, the agreement with the Turkish government was made. Yugoslavia was prevented from carrying out the plan because of the outbreak of World War II.¹¹⁹
+ + + + + +
Kosova During World War II
As a result of Yugoslavia' capitulation in 1941, Kosova - except for some districts ceded to Bulgaria - was annexed to Albania. It was a great relief for the Kosovars to be able to breathe freely after so many years of humiliation, and unspeakable misery. Albanian schools were founded everywhere, books and newspapers started being published and an Albanian radio station was established.
The joy was, however, short-lived, for Albania was at that time engaged in anti-fascist guerilla war and the inhabitants of Kosova joined them in their struggle for freedom. There were several political parties in Albania during the war. As time went on, however, the non-communist parties received less and less support from the West; as a result, the Communist Party eventually grew stronger owing to the ties existing between the communists in Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.
The Montenegrin writer, Mark Miljan (1833-1901) who, having lived a long time among the Albanians subsequently wrote about them, pointed out their qualities and their shortcomings. He remarked, among other things, that they are quick-tempered but that they would never betray anyone even if it were in their own interest to do so. Trust, he asserted, characterizes them and it is thus quite easy to take advantage of them.
This trait of their personality is reflected in their attitude toward the Yugoslavs during the war years. The communist Albanians were convinced that the spirit of the Yugoslav communists was totally opposed to that of the former Royal Government of Yugoslavia. They saw in Communism true brotherhood among men and sincerely believed that the miseries of the Kosovars were a thing of the past since they were due solely to the greed of a selfish bourgeois society. Thus, the Communist Albanians helped the Yugoslavs in a selfless manner. The Kosovars, erasing from their minds the atrocious memories of their great sufferings, formed various guerilla bands and fought side by side with the people of the nation which had been toward them most cruel and unjust. Here is what E. Hoxha said with respect to Kosova.
Our aim is to continue the joint struggle (i.e., the resistance movements in Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece) and to forget the past, because we are fighting our common enemy; at the conclusion of the struggle we who have fought shoulder to shoulder with the greatest understanding will settle any misunderstandings. The national liberation movement has the task of making the Kosova people conscious of their aspirations... We must see that the people of Kosova decide for themselves which side to join, Albania or Yugoslavia, and to oppose the Yugoslav regime which would attempt to oppress them.¹²⁰
+ + + + + +
Kosova After World War II
It was agreed that the Albanians of Yugoslavia should be able to chose their destiny with the right to self determination, including secession.¹²¹ The Kosovars had fought the Nazis and the Fascists hoping that Kosova would become one with the motherland only to realize that the Yugoslavs did not intend to keep their promise. Bitter and resentful, they rose in protest. But their uprising was bloodily suppressed. Thousands of Albanians were placed in a concentration camp near Priština where they endured unspeakable tortures.
In 1945, when the province of Kosova was officially restored to Yugoslavia by the force of arms, the principle of self-determination was not applied. Kosova was not even annexed with the status of a republic; it was attached to Serbia, first as a "Region" and then as an "Autonomous Province". Yet the question for the Yugoslavs was again how to deal with the Kosovars, since it was no longer possible to do away with them. In order to destroy any hopes that the Kosovars might have to join the rest of their countrymen, Serbia's ambition had always been the partition of Albania between Yugoslavia and Greece. The Serbian Nobel prize winner, Ivo Andric, who admitted this view, expressed his thoughts in a memoir addressed to the Government of the kingdom of Yugoslavia in January 1939. In his opinion it was the only way to solve the problems pertaining to the Kosovars.
Communist Yugoslavia thought of doing better: she strived to annex the whole of Albania. Her efforts were thwarted.

As for the Kosovars, they found themselves in a very difficult plight because of the partition of the territory inhabited by them into three republics: Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Thus, for example, Shkup (Skopje = Uskup), once the capital of the Vilayet of Kosova, was ceded to the Republic of Macedonia. The splitting was done in an arbitrary way, most detrimental to the interests of the Albanian population, for if the Albanians were granted some rights in the recently created Autonomous Province of Kosova, these rights were denied to the other Albanians inhabiting the Republics of Macedonia and Montenegro.
As regards education, the Albanian schools that had been opened during World War II were not closed. However, they deteriorated rapidly for lack of financial governmental support. Little by little, the teaching of the Albanian language, as well as courses in Albanian history were not tolerated. Although the Albanian population is larger than that of Macedonia, Macedonian is an official language in the SFRY, whereas the Albanian language has no status.
Also, the Albanians started to be harassed by the secret police and to be subjected to discriminations that manifested themselves in all aspects of life. Colonization by Serbs and Montenegrins resumed again, whereas reports were released that the Slavs were leaving the area. Thousands were imprisoned, especially intellectuals. Those who were arrested were not allowed lawyers and were sentenced to several years in jail, where they had to endure the most painful and humiliating tortures. Over 200 000 Kosovars were forced to emigrate.¹²²
* * *
Recently, there has been much talk about the alleged growth of the Kosovars. The ignorance of many journalists concerning an area where not too long ago the Slav population did not exceed 15% is reflected in many of their remarks. One of them wrote that "the birth rate of the Albanians in Kosova is so high that the Albanians will soon outnumber the Serbs". According to Steven Erlager (Globe, June 18, 1981, p.3) the birthrate of the Kosovars is 26 per 1000 (sic), whereas other Yugoslavs average only 3 per 1000 (sic). He adds that on account of this prodigious birthrate, the Kosovars have become in Yugoslavia a butt of jokes.
Yet figures speak for themselves: After World War I, the Albanians in Yugoslavia were almost as numerous as those within the borders assigned to the state of Albania. At present, according to statistics, the SAR had, as of ten years ago, nearly three million inhabitants, whereas the Albanians in Yugoslavia are, at present, according to 1981 statistics, a little over one million and a half. Considering the alleged high birthrate, the question, of course, arises as to why the number of the Albanians does not match their birthrate.
Noteworthy also is the fact that in 1840, the Serbian state had less than 900 000 inhabitants; Montenegro numbered merely 80000. At that time the Albanians were over 1 600 000. At the present time Serbia's population is more than three times larger than Albania's.¹²³
* * *
In 1966, the Yugoslav Communist Party was shaken by disturbing events that took place within the party. As a result, Tito suddenly realized that the rights and the interests of the Kosovars had been neglected and that there had been arbitrary and impermissible actions taken against them. Although the whole truth was not disclosed, the plight of the Kosovars was - albeit partially - openly admitted. Responsible for the crimes, Tito argued, were Rankovic and his agents.
As a result of several uprisings in Kosova, the Yugoslav constitution was revised and in 1969, the Kosovars, notwithstanding the fact that they were not allowed to form their own republic, were allegedly granted full equality with the other ethnic groups.
The Institute for Albanology was then reopened and in 1970 even an Albanian University was founded in Priština. The Albanians displayed great energy, new magazines and journals started being published and considerable research was undertaken. Despite the fact that professors were very poorly paid, as compared to those teaching outside Kosova, the University of Priština grew so fast that within a very
short period of time it became the third largest university in Yugoslavia. As of April 1981, it had over 35 000 students.
The situation in Kosova seemed greatly improved. In reality, it had changed only on the surface. The Serbian conservative circles were working hard underground to repress progress as regards education and culture. In the mid-seventies courses in Albanian language, history and literature were reduced and sometimes abolished in elementary and high schools.
On other hand, Yugoslav police had been continuously arresting Kosovars much before the mass demonstrations of March 1981.
Among the Kosovars in Yugoslav prisons are some very promising writers and poets. A Kosovar poet who had been living abroad for 15 years was arrested and imprisoned when he went back to visit his native town. After months in jail, he was freed thanks to the intervention of the League of Writers and because the German and the Austrian press took his defense. A prisoner much bewailed by all Albanians is the brilliant writer, Adam Demaci. His novel Serpents of Blood, published in 1958 was an overnight success. Demaci, 48 years old, is almost blind. He has been incarcerated for 20 years. Presently, he is in a prison 500 miles far away from his family.
* * *
Of great concern became also the problem dealing with economy. In articles published abroad, Kosova is described as poor. The Yugoslavs call attention to the alleged resentment of richer republics to the financial contributions they are obliged to make to the fund for the development of backward provinces and republics. This claim is granted credibility. Elizabeth pond, staff correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor wrote from Belgrade that the local press and television reports emphasize the ingratitude of the Kosovars for all the money and efforts the more developed parts of Yugoslavia have lavished in trying to modernize Kosova. As a result, those who are unfamiliar with the question may conceive admiration and even pity for the charitable attitude of the Yugoslav government with respect to the Kosovars. However, the Autonomous Province of Kossovo is one of Yugoslavia's richest region, perhaps the richest, in mineral as well as other resources. In fact, the Albanians argue that if the region had not been so rich, the Serbian legends originating in the 18th and 19th centuries would not have been created. The exploitation of Kosova's mines by the Serbs, the billions of kilowatts generated from its thermal power stations, and the selling of Kosova's meat and wheat on European markets bring millions to Yugoslavia. The poverty of the Kosovars is due to the fact that only the most exploitative investments are made in the region.
* * *
In The Burden of the Balkans, 1905, M.E. Durham quotes an Albanian newspaper saying: "The Slavs are a brave people; they may have all sorts of other qualities too. That is not the question. Our hatred does not extend to individuals, not even to national groups, but to the spirit of aggression..." (p.56). Also, Justin Godard of the Carnegie Commission who witnessed the ill-treatment of the Albanians by the Serbs praised the Albanians for not blaming the Serbian people, but merely "La Serbie officielle", adding that all nations in their relations with one another should be able to make this distinction between the people and the government (op.cit., p. 234).
The Albanians in the People's Republic of Albania seem to have maintained toward the South Slavs an attitude reminiscent of that spirit pointed out by M.E. Durham and J. Godart. In an article published in Albania (Paris, 1981), the Albanian novelist, I. Kadare, remarks that the Albanian people, although perfectly conscious of the inequalities, have chosen not to react in a chauvinistic way in regard to the chauvinism of the Serbs, i.e., not to use eel against evil, but to maintain an attitude of restrain characteristic of the Albanian spirit.
Yet whereas the Government of Albania, in an effort to maintain good relations with Yugoslavia, has kept purposely in the background illuminating personalities, both national and foreign (such as for example, Father Gjergj Fishta, the greatest of all Albanian poets, and M.E. Durham), on account of the unfriendly sentiments toward the Serbs exposed in their works, the Yugoslavs have not made gesture of a similar order toward the Albanians. Of late, various new books have been published in Yugoslavia, which - mutatis mutandis - are not different from those that were published by the Serbs at the turn of the century. In this regard mention should be made especially of a novel, Zatocnici, in which its author, Mihailo Lalic, uses a language that is most insulting to the Albanians, calling them 'garbage', and using on their behalf various disgraceful epithets. Far from being criticized, Lalic received, instead, recognition and praise. He is the recipient of a national award. The purpose of all these writings is, of course, to humiliate the Albanians and not let them take pride in their identity.
In the light of all these facts, there is no doubt that the Kosovars were harassed. When thinking of the demonstrations that took place in Kosova in 1981 and calling to mind the brutality of the police and the means used on an unarmed population demonstrating in a peaceful manner, one feels particularly disturbed by some of the recommendations contained in V. Cubrilovic's memorandum, such as "conflicts should be prepared and encouraged...attributed to economic reasons" and then "bloodily suppressed with the most efficacious means...the role of the police should be of foremost importance". The Macedonians should enjoy "ethnic support...through the destruction of the Albanian block".

The parallel between the recommendations and the recent events in Kosova is, indeed striking. The Albanians maintain that the details worked out in 1939 are still finding their application at the present time: the Kosovars seem to have been provoked by design. After the bloody suppression of their demonstrations and killing of thousands of their co-nationals, the Kosovars are now being deprived, bit by bit, of that relative freedom granted to them by Tito in 1968.
This time the target of the repression has been the Kosovar intelligentsia: writers, poets, students, and especially professors of the University of Priština, who by their intensive research in Albanology have revealed the true facts of history in the light of which it has become evident that the Albanians are not an adventitious population in Kosova but indeed have their roots there.
* * *
F. Piy Margall proposed back in 1876 the principle of Federation as a solution to the nationalities problem, expressing the opinion that national minorities included in a foreign state would eventually accept willingly what they would have instinctively rejected, provided they are granted equality of rights and conditions.
Under the SFRY (Socialist Fefederal Republic Yugoslavia) government, the Kosovars have been treated as harshly as they were under the government of the Kingdoms of Serbia and Yugoslavia, despite the fact that the principle of nationality is supposed to constitute its basis.
Very little has been written about the Kosovars, their fate may be described by what a statesman is supposed to have said with respect to oppressed population, "The death of a person is a tragedy; deaths of thousands of people are merely a matter of statistics".


Our comment:
The Berlin Congress in 1878, committed an incalculable blunder, by "empowering the thief to guard the bank". It allowed Serbia to massacre Albanians and destroy their land. As if the Balkan wars were not sufficient, the Serbs started the First World War; the Second World War was the child of the First War. After the abominable savagery in Bosnia, the Serbs are slaughtering the Albanians in Kosova again. The permanent peace in Balkans can be secured only, if the Berlin's blunder is reversed: Serbia must be returned to its pre-Berlin Congress borders, i.e., into its real historical and national Serbia of Belgrade Pashalic.

Note: The above material can be FREELY distributed.
In fact, it is expressly encouraged by Dr. Juka.

[Pashai Janinës]

The Albanians in Yugoslavia in light of historical documents - Some argumented Facts
[B]
K O S O V A
The Albanians in Yugoslavia in light of historical documents
By Dr. S.S. Juka edited in New York in 1984
FAKTET E ARGUMENTUARA NGA HISTORIAN TONE DHE TE HUAJ


1. The initiators of the Illyrian movement were G. Krizanic (1618-1683) and P. Ritter —Vitesovic (1652-17 13). The latter identified the ancient Illyrians with the Slays and wanted to create Croatia rediviva, Croatia resuscitated, which was to comprise territories once inhabited by the Illyrians. But he acted in the interest of Austria who, following her victory over the Turks in 1699, had claims over the Balkans. Illyrism was revived in the 19th century by L. Gaj, 1809-1872 (see E.M. Despalatovi~,Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement, East European Monographs, Boulder, 1975, dif. Columbia U.P.). In 1935 the 100th anniversary of "lIlyrism" was celebrated (see M. Radojkovic, [and others] "Le centenaire de lIllyrisme," Le Monde Slave,June, 1935, pp. 32 1-457 and F. Sisic, "Genese et caractere general du mouvement illyrien," Le Monde Slave, Feb. 1936, pp. 266-288).

P. Ritter-Vitezovic was not the first to identify the Slavs with the Illyrians; this had already been the opinion of L. Chalkokondylis.

Although Emperor Ferdinand prohibited, in 1843, the use of the terms "Illyrism" and "Illyria," these continued, nonetheless, to be employed.

Noteworthy is the fact that the descendants of those Serbs who settled in Hungary following the Austro-Turkish wars were, later, also called "Illyrians" (see P. Adler, "Nations and Nationalism among the Serbs of Hungary in 1790-1870," East European Quarterly, 1979, no. 3, pp. 272; 273).

2. "Friends of the Slays have derived the word from a root signifying ‘glorious’, enemies, from the roots or terms indicating slavery. Schafarik has proved that the original form of the word was Slovene derived from a locality" (H.W.V. Temperley, History of Serbia, London, 1917, p. 17).

3. See Sisic, art. cit. p. 281. — "Illyrism", as a political movement, should not be confused with the language and literary movement by the same name although links exist between the two.

4. The plan to realize "Great Serbia" goes at least as far back as 1773. In this regard mention should he made of a document published by Vladan Djordjevic in 1913 inExtractsfrom the Vienna Archives about Montenegro: "The following which was told me by a Montenegrin monk is worthy of further consideration: A little after the Russian war was ended in 1773, a plan was made to reconstruct the Old Serbian Kingdom and to include in it, besides Bulgaria, Serbia, Upper Albania, Dalmatia, and Bosnia, also the Banat of Karlstadt and Slavonia. The Turks in all the provinces were to befallen upon at a given moment by the schismatics, and it was resolved that foreign officers should be cleared out of the lands within the Imperial frontier. The late Orthodox Bishop, Jakshitch of Karlstadt, is said to have agreed, and to have carried on a correspondence with the Metropolitan of Montenegro by means of priests. Though the carrying out of such plan is very difficult, yet the project should not be left out of consideration" (Letter of the Austrian Envoy in Montenegro, cited by ME. Durham in The Serajevo Crime, London, 1925, p. 15).

5. A. Bouc, La Turquie d’Europe, 1840, IV, p. 130.

6. According to A. Boue, the "battles" that took place were not fought on the plain, but on its "plates-formes" at Gasimestan, "one and a half hours north of Pristina;" the name of Kossovo, he explained, was applied later to the Plain of Sitnica and the surrounding territory (A. Boue, op. cit., I, p. 142).

7. An Albanian patriot of broad culture (1839-1894). His younger brother, Sami, wrote in Turkish as well as in Albanian. Greatly admired for his Universal Dictionary of History and Geography (a six-volume encyclopedia) and for other writings, he is considered in Turkey as one of its most prominent poets. Having fought for Albania’s rights, he spent five years in prison. The sec.ond of the three brothers, Naim, is the most popular South Albanian poet.

8. "Public Record Office," London, FO., 78/2784; The British Museum, "Accounts and Papers" (38) 1878, LXXXIII 83, 298-30 1; reproduced by S. Rizaj in The Albanian League of Prizren in English Documents, Prishtina, 1978, pp. 189-192. Other English documents are published by Rizaj in "Three English Diplomats on the Albanian Question (1879-1880)," GjurmimeAlbanologjike IX, 1979, Prishtina 1980, pp. 337-353. English documents relating to the League of Prizren are quite numerous. They are available in the Foreign Office Archives (Public Record Office), London and in the British Museum (Accounts and Papers), London. Most documents used in this essay are reproduced either by S. Rizaj in op. or art. cit., or by L. Skendo in Albanais et Slaves, Lausanne, 1919.

9. Later, Bismarck is said to have admitted his error.

10. EM., Accounts and Papers (38); 1878-9; LXXIX 79, 574-575. Letter reproduced by Rizaj in op. cit. pp. 24 1-242.

11. For the data concerning the Albanians of these territories, see E. PlIana, "Les raisons et Ia maniere de Ia migration des refugies albanais du territoire du Sandjak de Nish a Kosova (1877-1878)," Gjurmime Albanologjike IX 1979, Prishtine, 1980, pp. 129-156. Cf. also R. MarmullakuAlbania and the Albanians , London, 1975, p. 24 (does not contain details).

12. Dulcigno (Lat. Olcinium, Gr. Oulkinion, AIb. Ulqin) is made up of the preposition "de" and the Albanian ujk-ulk wolf, as noted byJ.G. von Hahn (Albanesische Studien I, pp. 239, 242). Ulcisa Castra goes back to the same Illyro-Albanian etymology.

13. Archeological finds indicate that the present territory of Montenegro was inhabited by Illyrians. In the Middle Ages, the rulers of the debatable Zeta, the Crnojevics, were Skanderbeg’s allies and connected to him by marriage. Venetian sources suggest that their name is the Slav translation of the Albanian Gurazi. Sometimes, they are referred to merely as Juras. Noteworthy is a passage in Marino Sanudo (4.325): "13 June, 1774.— Drivasto e Alessio tolse Zuan Zernovitch, alhanese.. ." (cited by F. Miklosic, Die Serbischen Dynasten Crnojevic, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte von Montenegro, Vienna, 1886, p. 42). Cf. also: "1435 Jurasevitsch

....wollte sich weder den Serbischen Despoten noch den Venetianern unterwerfen" —"1435 Jurasevic did not want to surrender to the Serbian Despot nor to the Venetians" (GIasnik XIV 14, cited by F. Miklosic, op. cit., p.152). As for the Balshas (Balsic’s), the predecessors of the Crnojevic’s, the concensus among scholars is not to connect their name with the locality of Les Baux, near Marseilles, France, as had been suggested by Du Cange, but to agree with von Hahn who had pointed Out (op. cit. I p. 324) that Balsha is without any doubt an Albanian name (Hahn rightly indicated that it is a first name, not a family name). The Balshas were Catholic and they fought the Serbs. Cf. also M. von Suff1ay, "Ungarisch-alhanische Berubrungen im Mittelalter," in L. von Thall6czy, Illyrisch-Atbanische Forschungen, Munchen und Leipzig, 1916, 1, p. 298: "Der Herr von Nordalbanien, der Katholische Albaner Georg II Balsha

According to F. Miklosic, the name Zeta, employed to designate ancient Doclea (part of present-day Montenegro), is most probably of Albanian origin (F. Miklosic, op. cit., p. 29). As for Montenegro, which may not be strictly equated with the Zeta, it is a geographical name used for the first time in the 15th century, after the Turkish conquest. It is not included in maps until the 17th century.

M.E. Durham (1863-1944), who travelled widely in Albania and Montenegro and devoted much time to the study of Montenegrin and Albanian tribes, came to the conclusion that the Montenegrin is not so much a Slav as a Slavized descendant of the older inhabitants, i.e., of Vlachs, and Albanians (see Some Tribal Origins, Laws, and Customs in the Balkans, London, 1928, PP. 13-59).

That the Montenegrin tribes were originally Albanian tribes was already indicated by K. Jirecek, "Albanien in der Vergangenheit," Illyrisch-Albanische Forschungen, (Munchen und Leipzig 1916, p. 69).

The marked distinction between the Serbs and the Montenegrins was pointed out by Prof. Savo Birkovic in a recent work: 0 postanku i rasvoju Crnogorske nacje, Graficki Zavod, Titograd, 1980.

14. Relating to the Catholics, the French envoy in Shkodra, L.H. (Louis Hecquart?) wrote to his government on 24 July, 1880: "M. Corti a cru de boone foi que les catholiques Albanais accepteraient Ia domination montenegrine plus facilement que les musulmas, et c’est le contraire qui est vrai" — Mr. Corti sincerely believed that it would be easier for the Catholic Albanians than for the Moslems to accept the Montenegrin domination; but it has been the opposite (Letter contained in "Inventaire sommaire des archives de Ia guerre," serie N. 1872-1919, Archives de Ia defense, Chateau de Vincennes. Unpublished document, hand written).


15. The West erroneously believed that the battle was between the Crescent and the Cross which meant between barbarism and civilization. Cf. E. Noel-Buxton: "We are in the field of a great battle between East and West, between barbarism and civilization," (Europe and the Turks, London, 1907, p. 19). Westerners seemed to be completely ignorant of the fact that the fights had purely material causes. M.E. Durham has repeatedly pointed out the barbarism of the acts committed under the cover of Christianity against the Albanians be they Moslems or Christians.

16. As many as 30 Albanian newspapers and magazines were published abroad. This epoch produced a great variety of excellent writers and poets.

17. Reproduced by L. Skendo, op. cit., pp. 42-43.

18. "It seemed sheer folly to make a large and costly Serb theological school in a Moslem Albanian town and to import masters and students, when funds are so urgently needed to develop free Serb land" (ME. Durham,High Albania, London,
1909, p. 275). Even E. Noel-Buxton, of the Balkan Committee, whose attitude was pro-Slav, had to admit that "The spirit of chauvinism is but thinly veiled under the garb of churchmanship. Religion is degraded to the level of pretext for exciting national zeal" (Noel-Buxton, op. cit. p. 50).

19. V. Djordjevic,Les Albanais et les Grandes Puissances, 1913 p. 8. No information of this kind is contained in von Hahn’s work.

20. According to Felix Adler, "The vice of vices is when we are held cheap by others sod then in our innermost soul start to think cheaply of ourselves." Protic, Gopcevic, Zupanic, Tomic, Djordjevic are some of the Slav authors who criticized the Albanians in a particularly uncivil way. Many others may be cited.

21. 5. Protic,Das Albanesische Problem und die Beziehungen zwischen Oestereich- Ungarn, Leipzig, 1913, p. 19.

22. "Le journal parisien Le Temps avait mis ses colonnes a Ia disposition de ces detracteurs comme il les avait ouvertes pour les Grecs.. .," — "The Parisian daily Le Temps was at the disposal of these calumniators [i.e., of the Slays] as it was also at the disposal of the Greeks (Lumo Skendo, Albanais et Slaves, Lausanne, 1919, p. 3).

23. SeeR. Marmullaku Albania and the Albanians, Hurst and Co., London, 1975, pp. 23-24.

24. Cited by R. Marmullaku, op. cit., p. 137.

25. Cf. also Aubrey Herbert, M.P.: "Very little was known about Albania. The general opinion was that the Albanians were another branch of the Armenian family, and indeed, as far as massacres were concerned, this was most understandable . . ." (A. Herbert, Ben Kenilim,
London, 1924, P. 24). According to ME. Durham, the slaughters of the Armenians were nothing compared to those of the Albanians: "The massacres of Adana and the resultant misery pale before the scarlet horrors committed wholesale in cold blood by the so-called followers of Christ" (Durham, Struggle for Scutari, London, 1914, p. 303).
About these slaughters see 1. Albaniens Golgotha, Anklageacten gegen die Vernichter des Albanervolkes, gesammelt und herausgegeben von L. Freundlich, Vienna, 1913. — 2. Enquete dans les Balkans, Rapport de Ia Commission d’enquete de Ia Dotation Carnegie pour Ia Paix internationale, Paris, 1914.

26. What surprised ME. Durham quite specially was the religious fanaticism of the Serbs:
"It was not astonishing that the Serbs hated Islam, but that they should fiercely hate every other Christian church, I had not expected. The Catholic was hated the most." According to Durham, the Moslem was to the Serbs "a lesser evil than the Catholic," (Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle, London, 1920, p. 52). "The hatred of the Serb Orthodox for the Catholics was shown in 1913 in the Balkan war, when the Montenegrin troops, whose object was said to be to liberate Christians, fell upon the little church of Mazreku, trampled the Host underfoot, dressed up in the priestly vestments, danced about, and amused themselves by cutting noses from images of the saints and firing bullets into the crufix" (Some Tribal Origins ... p. 28).
In 1913, a number of soldiers led by a bandit clad as an Orthodox priest stripped and bayonetted to death Luigj Palici, an Albanian Franciscan from Gjakova, because he refused to cross himself in the Orthodox manner. "Austria intervened sharply. Had she not done so, in the words of a Catholic refugee, there would not have been a Catholic left" (E.C. Helmreich, The Diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, Harvard U.P., 1938, p. 317).
In 1919, a treaty concerning minorities was signed at Saint-Germain-en- Laye whereby the Yugoslav Government pledged to protect all citizens without discrimination as to race, nationality, and creed. Yet the persecutions against the Catholic Kosovars continued. Mother Teresa’s father, a native of Shkup (Skopje), and a noted Albanian patriot, was poisoned by the Serbs, as reported by his son Lazer Bojaxhiu in an interview published in Gente (Dec. 1979 andJan. 1980). Mother Teresa’s family was obliged to move to Tirana, where her mother and sister died (the former in 1974; the latter in 1976).
In 1929, was executed Father Shtjefen Gjecovi, a Franciscan, greatly respected by all the Albanians for his erudition and his righteousness. As a result, on May 5, 1930, three Catholic priests, obliged to leave the region, addressed the "League of Nations" a memorandum concerning the tragic plight of the Albanians in Yugoslavia (see H. Kokalari, Kosova, Rome, 1962, p. 165).

27. Cf. E. Noel-Buxton: "Mr. Gladstone said, the Christian, who retained his faith at the price of slavery, when by recanting he could obtain every favour, is entitled to the name of martyr and to him Europe owes the gratitude" (op. cit., p. 27).— That the conversions of the Albanians would be taken as a pretext to expand territory was already pointed out by A. Boue who was for the freedom of all nations and had little respect for those who "for sheer purposes of invasion consider themselves chosen by God to exterminate the Moslems and make people happy." (". . . chez ceux, qui s’intitulent, par pure politique d’envahissement, les elus du Tres-Haut pour l’extermination des Musulmans et le bonheur du genre humain," Boue, Recueil d’itineraires dans Ia Torquie dEurope, 1854, I, "Avant-Propos."

28. No study is available on ME. Durham, except for that of Sh. Shaqiri, "ME. Durham dhe Shqiptar&,"Nentori, Oct. 1981, pp. 149-164. A talented painter and writer,a good historian and an excellent anthropologist (her diaries and other papers are available at the "Royal Anthropological Institute of Gr. Br. and Ireland," London, of which she was a member and to whose journal, Man, she contributed many articles), she also worked as a volunteer in Montenegrin hospitals as well as for the "Macedonia Relief Fund." Her first book was devoted to the Serbs (Through the Land of the Serbs, London, 1904). But, as pointed out by Aubrey Herbert, it was only their revolting cruelty that turned her affection into dislike" (A. Herbert, Ben Kendim , p. 220). Her later attitude toward the Serbo-Montenegrins is conveyed by a passage contained in Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle: "On arriving in London I packed up the Gold Medal given me by King Nikola and returned it to him stating that I had often expressed surprise at persons, who accepted decorations from Abdul Hamid, and that now I knew that he and his subjects were even more cruel than the Turk, I would not keep his blood-stained medal any longer. I communicated this to the English and Austrian press. The order of Saint Sava given me by King Petar of Serbia, I decided to keep a little longer till some pecularly flagrant case" (p. 25).

29. H. Hauser, "Le principe des nationalites," (30-page pamphlet, reprint fromRevuepolitique internationale, March-April, 1916). See also A. van Gennep,Traite des nationalites, 1922, p. 24.

30. A. Herbert, op. cit., p. 216 and M.E. Durham, Twenty-Years p. 83.

31. The tragic fate of many of these Albanians, who remained outside the borders assigned to the state of Albania, was to populate Asia Minor. As indicated (p. 10), the guarantees stipulated by the Treaty of Berlin were not honored by Serbia. Likewise, over 300,000 Albanians inhabiting the regions ceded to Greece were expelled by the Greek Government and obliged to settle in Turkey as a result of an exchange treaty of the Turkish and the Greek Governments (see, among others, A.A. Pallis, "The exchange of populations in the Balkans," Nineteenth Century, March, 1925, pp. 376-387). Pallis begins his article by saying that ‘the exchanges of populations, as a method of settling the problems of minorities, has been condemned in many quarters as a barbarous and dangerous innovation in internal politics." The Greek delegate at the Lausanne Conference had, in fact, declared that ‘Greece agrees that the compulsory exchanges shall not be applicable to her Moslem subjects of Albanian origin." However, the Greeks declared the Moslems of Tchameria as being "merely Albanophones," but in reality Greeks, and on this basis forced them to emigrate (Pallis art. cit.). Pallis argued that they emigrated of their own accord and that they were pleased in Turkey. This, however, is not the opinion of Ruth Pennington who returned to England in 1927 after ten months of work with the immigrants, ‘In Turkey the are 300,000 Albanian-speaking immigrants. Of these at least 10% would willingly shift their quarters and move again seeking for better land, to rejoin cousins and friends, who have already moved. Turkey does not wish for any further depopulation, but in spite of official prohibition, for the next 10 to 20 years there will be a constant leakage . . ." (Near East and India, Sept. 15, 1927, p. 333).
Although in 1913, the population of the south Albanian region ceded to Greece was over 90% Albanian, no Albanian schools or newspapers were ever allowed. This population has been almost extirpated on account of the harsh treatment to which it was subjected.

32. Austria supported the Slavs against the Italians. Cf. M.E. Durham: "The Slavizing process in Dalmatia visibly progressed until the German-Austrians began to realize that they were warming a viper and feel nervous" (Twenty Years p. 13); cC. also U. Biscottini, Sull italianita della Dalmazia, 1930, p. 55.

33. MR. Vesnic, Les aspirations nationales de Ia Serbie (no date) p. 16.

34. In 1880, the French consul in Scutari, when describing Macedonia in an "Aperiu geographique" of Albania, prepared by him for the French Government, did not even mention the Serbs: ‘La Macedonie est en effet partagee entre les Albanais, les Grecs, les KutzoValaques et les Bulgares," — Macedonia is divided between Albanians, Greeks, Vlachs, and Bulgarians," (unpublished document contained in Albanie, Dossier I, "Archives de la Defense," Chateau de Vincennes, Paris). Cf. also M.E. Durham, The Serajevo Crime (London, 1925): "When I was living in Ochrida in the winter of 1903-4, a Serb schoolmaster had but just arrived. The largest school in town was the Bulgar one. The Greeks made a bad second. In spite of all his efforts, the Serb only succeeded in scraping up about 50 persons including his own family, the Greek priest and myself, to celebrate Saint Sava’s day. The majority were poor school children picked up in the town. In those days anyone who said that the Serbs would one day own Ochrida would have been thought insane" (p. 27). II ‘Dr. Milovanovich admitted in 1898 that the Serbs did not begin to think about Macedonia till 1885" (E. Noel-Buxton, Balkan Problems and European Peace, London, 1919, P. 27). /1 In regard to Macedonia, A. van Gennep, citing the Carnegie Report, criticized the Serb scholars Belic and Cvijic, attributing no scientific value to their research, because their sole purpose, according to the Carnegie report, was "to support the political claims of Serbia" (Van Gennep, Traitet· &s nationalites, Paris, ed. Payot, 1922, P. 202).

35. Goethe, Faust I.

36. On account of the paucity of documents, the problem concerning the origin of the Albanians has long been debated. This problem is closely related to that regarding the place of origin of the Rumanians.
J. Thunmann maintained that the Albanians must be indigenous to the areas inhabited by them since there are no historical sources mentioning an Albanian immigration ("Ich habe in ihrer Geschichte keine Spur von einer spaten Finwanderung gefunden," Untersuchungen iiber die Geschichte der iistlichen europaischen Volker, 1774, p. 244). Because these areas were formerly inhabited by Illyrians, Thunmann came to the conclusion that the Albanians must be their descendants. His opinion was shared by Malte-Brun (1809), W. M. Leake (1814), Ami Boue (1 840),J. G. von Hahn (1853),J. Ph. Fallmerayer (1857-1860) and later by P. Kretschmer, H. Pedersen, F. Nopcza, F. Miklosic, G. Meyer, M. E. Durham, among others.
Hahn, who studied the Illyrians from the point of view of various disciplines, regarded the Albanians as aborigines in Kosova, Epirus and Macedonia ("Wir sind zum Schlusse gekommen, dass die unter sich verwandten Epiroten und Makedoner einen selbstandigen Zweig des grossen Illyrischen Volkstammes zu bilden scheinen," — "I have come to the conclusion that the Epirotes and the Macedonians. . . form an independent branch of the Illyrian family." (AIb. St., I, p. 219).
Hahn underscored the Illyro-Albanian linguistic analogies with regard to onomastics and toponomy.
Others — especially M. E. Durham and F. Nopcza — stressed, later, ethnographical elements. They considered the survival among the Albanians of Illyrian beliefs, customs, art motifs, and other traditions, as evidence of the Illyro-Albanian continuity. F. Nopeza linked to prehistoric times some shapes and motifs relating to Albanian costumes, etc., denoting the Illyro-Albanian affiliation (Nopcza, Albanien; Bauten, Trachten und Gerate Nordalbanien.s, Berlin und Leipzig, 1925.
In her turn, M.E. Durham pointed out that the serpent and the dove used as embroidery motifs for certain costumes worn by Shkodra women, were symbols of the mother goddess worshipped at Knossos (M.E. Durham, Some Tribal Origins ... p. 127). She also remarked the use made by North Albanian mountaneers of the rayed sun for decorative purposes (jewelry, grave stones, tatooing, etc.-), indicating that the sun, a special God to the military, was sacred to the Illyrians (Durham, ibidem)
Hahn seemed to have definitely solved the problem concerning the origin of the Albanians. As already indicated, he was seconded by ethnologists. Yet the question was raised again at the turn of the century:
Since the Illyrians are referred to for the last time as an ethnic group in Miracula Sancti Demetri (7th century AD.), some scholars maintain that after the arrival of the Slays the Illyrians were extinct.
N. Iorga had no doubts that the Albanians are the descendants of the Illyrians (lorga, Breve histoire de l’Albanie et du peuple albanais, 1919, p. 3), but the Rumanian archeologist Vasile Parvan contended in 1910 that the Albanians emigrated from Transylvania and the Carpathian mountains between the 3rd and the 6th centuries AD. According to Philippide (1859-1933), the Albanians came from Panonnia, i.e., present-day Hungary. In short, some Serbian and some Rumanian scholars regard the Albanians as an adventitious population.
Yet there are no historical documents mentioning an immigration of Albanians into the areas where they presently live. The Illyrian tribe of the Albanoi, from which the Albanians
derive their name, was already mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria as living in the city of Albanopolis (central Albania) in the second century A.D. When the Albanoi are mentioned again in the 11th century (by Anna Comnena, Joban Skylitzes, and Attaleiates), they are referred to as living in the same locality previously mentioned by Ptolemy. They also appear in Byzantine sources, in contrast to the Vlachs, as a sedentary population with high standing and not as a nomadic people (see A. Ducellier, "L’Arbanon et les Albanais au XIC siecle," Centre de Ia Recherche d’Histoire et de Ia Civilisation Byzantines, Travaux et Memoires, III, 1968, pp. 354-368; see esp. pp. 356-7; see also A.D. "Les Albanais du XIe au XIIIe siecle: nomades ou sedentaires," Byzantinische Forschungen, 1979, pp. 23-36).
The stability of the Albanians is also attested by Western documents: It has been the merit of H. Gregoire to point out that in La Chanson de Roland (11th cent.), Albeigne, Albanie, designate the coastal areas of present-day Albania (H. Gregoire, "La Chanson de Roland de l’an 1085," BARB, 1939, pp. 211-273 and H. Gregoire et R. De Keyser, "La Chanson de Roland et Byzance.. ." Byzantion, Bruxelles 1939, vol. 14, pp. 265-351. See also Kole Luka, "Le nom d’Albeigne-Albanie et l’extension de l’Arbanon du lie au 12e sihcles," Deuxieme Conference des Etudes Albanologiques, II, Tirana, 1970 pp. 199-207 and K.L., "La toponomie albanaise dansLa Chan.son deRoland concernant quelques evenements de 1081-1085,"Stu-dime Historike, I, 1967. pp. 127-144.
Until the 14th century — an epoch which marks the height of the Serbian state — when they started to be encountered as shepherds, the Albanians strike as a sedentary, urban population. K.Jirecek describes them as "ein altebristliches Volk von mehr stadtischer kultur" —"an old Christian people of urban culture" (Jirecek, "Albanien in der Vergangenheit", Illyrisch-Albanische Forschungen, 1916, I p. 70). About Albanian cities see also M. Sufflay, Stadte und Burgen Albaniens hauptsachlich wahrend des Mittelalters, Vienna, 1924.
The urban organization was also important among the Illyrians. The pre-Roman cities of Scodra, Lissius, Dimalium, Bylis, Amanthia, etc. were of high standing (see Frano Prendi, "Urbanisation en Illyrie du Sud ~ Ia lumiere des donnees archhologiques," — "Urbanisation in South Illyria in the light of archeological data," Studime historike, 1972 III, pp. 29-69). According to N.G.L. Hammond, Albania was wealthy and refined even during the neolithic epoch, as attested by archeological finds (See N.G.L. Hammond, "Sepulture ~ tumuli en Albanie et problemes de l’ethnogenese" (Studime Historike, 1972 IV pp. 117-124).

37. E. Cabej, "Das Albanische und seine Nachbarsprachen," Die Sprache XIII, 1976, pp. 39-5 1.
"Albanian, although on the basis of its structure and some of its most common words it is called an independent branch of the Indo-European family, has borrowed so much Latin that it has to be included in comparative grammars of the Romance Languages." "It is usual to reckon Albanian as an independent member of the Indo-European family, but its Romance element is far more important than the Romance element in English" (E.H. Sturtevant, Linguistic change, G.E. Stechert Co., N.Y. 1942 p. 123, 154 or 194). Although Latin plays an important role, linguists in the past 60 years have been realizing more and more the importance in the Albanian language of the pre-Latin substratum.

38. E. Cabej, Die Sprache XIII 1967, art. cit. N. JokI pointed out (in art. cit. in Indogerm. Forsch, p<4l) that when the Serbs arrived in the Balkans the Albanians were already considered as an old Christian population. He remarked that the terminology of the church is derived from Dalmatian Latin, the church center being Salono. See also M. von Sufflay, "Die Kirchenzustande im vorturkischen Albanien ..." Illyr-Aib. Forsch., pp. 188-293.

39. Z. Mirdita’s most recent book isAntraponimia e Dardanise nekohen romake (Die Anthroponymie Dardaniens zur Romerzeit); illustr. with introduct: in Albanian and German, Prishtine, 1981.

40. By reason of the analogies between Rumanian and Albanian, G. Weigand maintained that the cradle of the Albanians is actually Dardania, the region of Nis, north of which, according to him, lived as close neighbors, the ancestors of the Rumanians (see G. Weigand,
"Sind die Albaner die Nachkommen der Illyrier oder der Thraker," Balkan Archiv, 3, 1927 pp. 227-251). To this theory subscribed N.Jokl. These scholars considered the Dardanians as Thracians. They contended that the Dardanians had subsequently moved to the coastal areas where they found an Illyrian population. In their opinion, the Albanians are Thracians mixed with Illyrians. As to when the Dardanians moved to the coastal regions, the opinions differ: according to Weigand, in the Middle Ages; according to Jokl, before the Slav invasions, for the Slays found them there when they reached the Buna (Bojana) river. Jokl argues that the name of the river, Buna, is Albanian. In his opinion, the fact that later its name was transmitted to the Venetians in its Slavic form, Bojana, is due to political circumstances of that particular era. In his later years, JokI was convinced that the Albanians have been living in the Scutari (Shkoder) area at least since the late Roman epoch (see N. JokI, "Zur Geschichte des alb. Diphtongs — ua-ue —," Indogerm Forsch., vol. 50, 1932, pp. 4 1-42). According to V. Georgiev, they started moving to the region in the 2nd mill. B.C. (V.G., "The earliest ethnolog. situation of the Balkan Pen, as evidenced by linguistic and onomastic data" H. Birobaum — S. Vryonis Aspects of the Balkans, p. 64).
The striking analogies between Albanian and Rumanian were already pointed out by Thunmann without prompting him to attribute the Albanians a Thracian origin. Special attention was accorded to these analogies by E. Cabej (see in particular "Rumanischalbanische Lehnbeziehungen," Revue Internationale des Etudes Balkaniques, II 1936, pp. 172-184 and "Betrachtungen uber die rumanisch — albanisehen Sprachbeziehungen," Revue de linguistique, 1965 X pp. 101-115).
These links do not concern merely various linguistic aspects; they also pertain to ethnology. Noticeably numerous, they leave no doubt that these two peoples must have lived, in fact, for a long time as neighhors.
Aside from the Albano-Rumanian analogies, Kosova’s toponomy is another indication that the ancestors of the Albanians must have inhabited Dardania:
Whether Shkiptar, the name of the Albanians in their own language, comes from Shkype (eagle), as it has been claimed by many; may be traced back to other etymologies, as various savants have suggested; or is derived from the city of Shkup (Skopje) in Macedonia as other scholars are inclined to believe (see I. Popovic, Geschichte der Serbo-Crostisclien Sprache, Wiesbaden, 1960, pp. 84-84) has not been as yet convincingly evidenced. A possible connection between Shkype, Shkup, Shkop, Skepter was suggested by von Hahn (AIb. St., I, p. 229).
There seems to be, however, no doubt that the ancient name of Kosova, namely Dardania, is Albanian. A Boue and von Hahn have indicated that it comes from the word Dardhe = pear. And it has been remarked that in the area pear-trees abound. M.E. Durham pointed out that Bertius, mapmaker of Louis XIII of France, who marked the region "Pirustae" added to it "albanese". She also remarked that the name Dardania was used as late as 1770, as attested by a map published in Nuremberg (see Durham, Some Tribal Origins... pp.
236-237). She indicated, furthermore, that Krusevac, which is situated in the very heart of Dardania, may well be the translation of the Illyro-Albanian Dardhe. Dardhe — used also in compounds — is a toponym frequently encountered in present-day Albania.
Relating to place names in Kosova, ME. Durham was struck by the derivation of a large number of them from plants and trees which seems to have been an Illyro-Albanian tradition on account of the fact that such names are quite common in Albania.
That toponyms which strike one as being Slav, might, in reality, be traced back to an Albanian origin, was also the opinion of A. Boue. Impressed by the frequency of toponyms similar to that of Lioubetan, near Kacanik, he contended that their etymology might lead to the Albanian lope, rather than to the Slav Ljuba = love or lub bark, for the cow, he remarked, is in this region of great importance (A. Bouh, Recuejl.. ., pp. 205-206; 245,248).
Various sources (historical documents, chrysobulls, cadastral registers, etc.) point out that in the 14th and 15th centuries many toponyms in Montenegro, Hercegovina, the Dukagjini Plateau, and Kosova in general, were Albanian. Thejuridical sources of the Medieval Serbian state (S. Novakovk, Zakonshi Spomenici . 1912) contain Albanian toponyms. Of late, the toponymy of Kosova has been the object of various studies, especially by Profs. I. Ajeti and A. Hadri of the University of Pristina.
At present, on account of various data pertaining to history, linguistics, and ethnology, the concensus among scholars, with a few exceptions, seems to be: a. to consider the Albanians as the descendants of the Illyrians and not of the Thracians. b. to admit that the Dardanians were considered also by ancient authors as Illyrians, linked ethnically, linguistically and culturally to the Illyrian tribes of the coast. c. to recognize, however, that the Thracians and the Illyrians were populations akin to each other, having started to be differentiated from each other perhaps around 1500 B.C.

41. Slavic place names are encountered in Rumania, in present-day Albania, and in Greece. Konitza (Korca), the name of the south Albanian town, which is unjustly regarded as being Greek, is actually Slavonic; so is Konitza in northern Greece; so was Morea, employed for a long time to designate the Peloponnesus. How easily place names may change is evidenced by the enormous proportions assumed by the Grecianization of Slavic, Albanian, and Turkish toponyms in Greece.

42. Non-Slavic and pre-Roman are the most important rivers in Yugoslavia: the Danube, Sava, Drava, Mura, Tisza, Kupla, Una, Vrbas, Bosna, Drina, Neretva, Zeta, Ibar, Iskur, Maritsa (see Edgar Hosch, The Balkans, EngI. transl. publ. 1968, p. 23).

43. G. Stadtmuller, Forschungen zur Albanzschen Friihgeschichte, 2nd ed., "Albanische Forschungen," Wiesbaden, Harrassovitz, 1966, pp. 95-96.

44. Among numerous other publications on the Illyrians, see also the three volumes containing the publications of the three Sarajevo Symposia on the Illyrians, held in 1964 and in 1966 (see Sympozpum .. . Akademija Nauka i Umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, 1964 Knj. 4 and 1967 Knj. 5). Of interest for French readers isArcheologia,Jan. 1975, a special number issued on the occasion of the Albanian exhibit in the "Petit Palais" in Paris that same year (Dec. 1974-Feb 1975) as well as the illustrated catalogue of the exhibit (Presses artistiques, Paris). For English speaking readers, aside from the works of Prof. F. Papazoglu, already mentioned, an interesting book is The Illyrians, History and Culture by A. Stipcevic (EngI. trans. Park Ridge, N.J. Noyes Press, 1977); a scholarly work, yet easy to read, it contains an excellent bibliography. Stipcevic has also publishedArte degli Iliri (Ed. del Milione, Milan, 1963) and two Bibliographia Illyrica (the second one being a ‘Suplementum’ of the years 1973-1977; both were publ. in Sarajevo. Akademija nauka umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine (1967 Knj. 6; 1978, Knj. 42).

45. The evidence of this continuity is having a great impact on various disciplines: music, dance, folklore.
E.g., the guzla, formerly considered a Slavonic instrument, is now being regarded as Illyrian and merely borrowed by the Slavs. The Bosnian ethnologist, Cvjetko Rihtman, having done considerable research relating to Balkan musical instruments, attributes them to the Illyrians (see C. Rihtman, "0 ilirskom porijeklu polifonik oblika narodne muzike Bosne Hercegovine."Rad kongresafolkloristaJugoslavije na Bjelafnici 1955 inPuli 1952, Zagreb, 1958, pp. 99-105). The Illyrian origin of the guzla was already pointed out by M.E. Durham (Durham, Man, March 1923 p. 41 and Some Tribal ... p. 236).
ME. Durham held that of Illyrian origin is the Montenegrin dance which consists of jumping over fire. At present, there seems to be no doubt that the dance performed to the sound of rattling swords without any musical accompaniement, is of Illyrian origin (see F. Sako, "De Ia genese de Ia danse pyrrihique," StudiaAlbanica, 1972 pp. 307-10. Of interest is also R. Sokoli’s book Dances and Music of our Ancestors, Tirana 1971 — in Albanian —).
Various tales, folksongs, cults and superstitions, previously regarded as vaguely Balkan, are now said to be Illyro-Albanian. ME. Durham had already suggested the Illyrian origin of some traditional songs and tales of the South Slays (Durham, "A Bird Tradition in the West of the Balkan Peninsula," Man, April 1923 pp. 55-58). She also believed that the cult for Marco Kraljevic may be traced back to the Illyrian God Medaurus (Some Tribal . . . p. 108).
With respect to folklore, Ciro Truhelka (1865-1942) noticed among the South Slavs many Illyrian elements (C. Truhelka, Les restes illyriens en Basnie, Paris 1900)
In his turn, E. Cabej pointed out, citing A. Meyer (Die Sprache derAlten Illyrier, 1116), that the Illyrian name Thana, found in four votive inscriptions at Topusko, may be the older form of the Albanian folkore character Zana — Diana (Serb. Majka Jana). E. Cabej also remarked that Vila, of the South Slav folklore, which has common traits with the Albanian Zana, is hardly known among the Slavic populations outside the Balkans (see F. Cabej, "Disa figura te besimere popullore shqiptare," Studime Gjuhisore, V, Prishtine, 1975 P. 160. About Zana—Diana, see also E. Cabej, "Kult und Fortleben der Gottin Diana auf dem Balkan," Leipziger Vierteljahrschrtft fiir Sudeurapa, V, 1941 pp. 229-240; the AIb. version of this article was published in Hylli i Dritis, Shkoder 1942, pp. 1-2; 3-4, 5-10).
Also, Cabej attributes an Illyrian origin to the two brothers, Muji and Halili, the two main characters of the Albanian and Croatian heroic songs, identifying them with the Greek Dioscuri, who have their counterparts among the Germans, Armenians, Indians, and other ancient peoples, but are unknown among other Slav populations aside from the Bosnians (Cabej, art. cit. in Studime Gjuhisore, p. 160).

46. G. Stadtmflller, Geschichte Siidosteuropa.s, Munchen, Verlag Oldenbourg, 1950, p. 88.

47. 5. PolIo—A. Puto, op. cit. pp. 37-38.

48. "... Belgrade, the white city, whose medieval name, Alba Bulgarica, shows that it was essentially a non-Serbian city (Temperley, op. cit., p. 49-50).

49. Mas-Latrie, "Zupans et Rois de Rascie on Serbie," Tresors de chronolagie, d’histoire et de geographie ... Paris, 1889.

50. See A. Ducellier,"LesAlbanais ont-ils envahi le Kossovo,"Albanie, Paris,June, 198l,pp. 10-14.

[Pashai Janinës]

51. Cf. K. Jirecek: "Quand on fait une comparaison avec Ia Bulgarie et la Russie, on est frappe par l’absence en Serbie d’une residence royale fixe," — "If one compares Bulgaria and Russia with Serbia, the absence among this latter nation of a stable royal residence is striking," (La civilisatian serbe an Moyen Age, I, p.331, French transl., Paris 1920); cf. also N. Jorga: "Cet Empire [lEmpire byzantin] representait Ia centralisation romaine... tandis que l’Etat serbe du 14e s., tel quil resulte des conquetes de l’empereur, n’avait qu’un chef militaire, a peine entoure de quelques dignitaires sans capitale fixe — "The Byzantine Empire represented the Roman centralization . . . whereas the 14th-century Serbian state, originating from the conquests of the Emperor, had merely a military leader surrounded by just a few dignitaries. There was no fixed capital (N. lorga, Petite histoire de l’Albanie et du peuple albanais, p. 41).

52. This memorandum, titled "The expulsion of the Albanians" is kept in the files of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Lately, the memorandum has circulated in the U.S. in English translation (20 pages, no date). Parts of the text have appeared in French translation inAlbanie, Paris,June 1981, pp.24-25. Dr. Vaso Cubrilovic, born 1897, taught for many years at the University of Belgrade. After World War II, he served in the Government of the FSRY. He is the author of the chapter on Kosova in Istorija narodna]ugoslavije (Knida 2, Beograd, 1960), the official history book of Yugoslavia.

53. According to Anna Comnena, in 1080, the river Lab was the southern border of the Serbian territories. The center of the Serbian state was Raska. "It is from Stephan Nemanya, the Grand Zupan of Rashka that modern Serbia has always dated the rise of Serbian national greatness in the Middle Ages" (Temperley, op. cit., p. 38).

54. N. Lorga prefers to render Knez with ‘count,’ despite the fact that it is a Western title of nobility, probably to indicate the limited power of the ruler. Central power had disappeared.

55. Sylvain, Levy, India: "India does not have that worship of great men so important to us ... India has given birth to an exceptional genious, Asvaghosha ... Asvaghosha belongs entirely to Western learning" (cited by J. Grenier, "Imaginary India," Les lIes, Gallimard, 1959).

56. Illustrative of this conception are a few examples picked at random from various books:
"Dusan’s achievement became more than a historical memory. It was to constitute a political programme for the Serbs who, early in the nineteenth century, were liberated from over five centuries of Turkish rule" (H.C. Darby [and others] ,A short history of Yugoslavia from early times to 1966, London, Cambridge U.P. 1966, p. 87) II "Nineteenth-century British statesmen did not use the affairs of Plantagenet England as an argument in forming their policy, but the memory of Dusan’s Empire, kept alive by folk-tales and ballads, was an important factor in the "Eastern Question" and the "Macedonia Problem" (ibidem). // "Urosh III who was murdered by his son Stefan Dushan was regarded as a saint although he had revolted against his own father, murdered his own brother and sought to murder his own son" (Temperley, op. cit., p. 63-64) II "Czar Stefan was named "Dushan" because he strangled his father, but his name is interpreted as ‘victorious’, (K. Jirecek, Geschichte derSerben, p. 365-366). II Plusieurs de leurs rois ont ete eleves au rang des saints de cette eglise sans l’avoir toujours merite par leur conduite" — "In this Church, several of their kings were elevated to the rank of saints without always deserving it through their conduct" (A. Boue, La Turquie d’Europe, II p. 65). II "Historically, Marko Kraljevich is a petty Serbian chieftain who served under the Turks against his Christian brethern when it paid him to do so... but popular imagination had attached to him the attributes of the ancient war-God" (Durham, Some Tribal . . . p. 108).

57. The important role of the Albanians in this battle is attested by Greek and Turkish sources: Hierax, Chronique sur l’Empire des Turcs, Sathas, Bibliotheca Graeca, I, p. 247. See also S. Pulaha, The Albano-Turkish War in Ottoman sources (in Albanian), Tirana, 1968 and Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, knj. 4, Zagreb, 1960, p. 467.

58. At the turn of the century, an attempt was made by the Serbian intelligentzia to deny the betrayal (see A. Arnautovic, La poesie kossovienne, Paris (pamphlet, reprint from Revue You goslave, 1919).

59. .... . This victory of Islam was to no small degree due to the Servian troops fighting on the Turkish side. The Servians recovered Belgrade, but in the long run this gain hardly compensated them for the disaster which they prepared by strengthening the Ottoman Empire," (C.N. E. Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 1965 ed. p. 41).

60. Dragutin, Kostic, "Milos Kopilic — Kobilic — Obilic," Revue Internationale des etudes balkaniques, 1935, I, pp. 232-254. According to Kostic, the absence of the hero’s name from Serbian docments may be attributed to the chroniclers’ habit of mentioning merely names of well-known nobles. Evidently, Milos did not come from a prominent family.
The Balkan word Kopil (non-Slavic) is considered by F. Miklosic (Etym Worterb. d. Slav. Spr.) and by Skok (Juznoslav Fil XII p. 142) as being of Albanian origin. In Albanian it also has the meaning of smart, skilled. Kostic has indicated two localities by that name.
Surprisingly, Kostic attributes also to the first name of the hero an Illyro-Albanian ongin. Duje Rendic-Miosevic has shown clear evidence that some old Croatian names have an Illyrian origin: e.g. Licca, Pleto (Illyr. = Liccavus, Pletor), among many others (see D. Rendk-Miocevic, "Prilog proucavanju nase ranosredovjecne onomastike," Starohrvatska pros vj eta, ser. III, 1949, 1, pp.9-21). Considering that the Illyrians inhabited the Dalmatian coast before the coming of the Slavs, this fact might seem perfectly normal—the very name of Dalmatia is of Illyrian origin. But to attribute to Milos, which has eventually become so popular a name among the Slavs seems curious. Yet Kostic remarks that the name does not appear in Serbian documents before the 13th century and even then is not used by people of high rank. Kostic argues that Milos may be the Slavized form of the Albanian mir and osh. Kostic links the suffix osh (and ush) to Albanian. He points out that it is added to adjectives; thus bardb-bardbosh; kuq-kuqalosh; vogel-voglush, voglosh. The suffix is also used with names; thus Belush, Tanush, Mirush, etc.
Obilic’s hypersensitiveness to suspicions expressed by others as to his word of honor (besa), also reveals, in Kostic’s opinion, his Albanian origin. Finally, Kosticc refers to Elezovic who has pointed out the cult professed by the Albanians for Obilic.
According to Prof. S. Skendi (Balkan Cultural Studies, East European Monographs, Boulder, dif. Columbia Univ., 1980, p. 147, no. 13), M. Budimir has expressed a similar opinion in "Digenis und Marko Kraljevic," Extrait des Actes de 4e Congres international des etudes byzantines (Bul. de l’irist. archeol. bulgare, tome 10, 1936, Sofia, 1936, p. 17. — I have not been able to consult this study.).

61. "Samtliche im Bereiche dieser Bache liegenden Dorfer wurden uns als rein Albanesisch bezeichnet. Da nun auch die Dorfer des Sitniza Thales um die Mundung des Lab grossten Teils albanesisch sind, und in der Metohija Ebene die albanesische Bevolkerung die serbische uberwiegen soll, so durfte sich hochst wahrscheinlich eine ununterbrochene, reine albanesische Verbindungslinie zwischen Dardanien und Albanien durch das Gebiet der Dreniza herstellen lassen" (Reise von Belgrad nach Salonik, Kais Akad, d. Wissenschaft, Phil. hist. Classe. Denksch. Bd. 1111 Wien 1861 p. 55).

62. "Les Serbes n’ont fait que disloquer les anciens Illyriens dont les descendants sont les Albanais actuels.""... les Albanais ne sont que les restes des anciens Illyriens auxquels les Slaves ont pris tant de pays et qu’ils ont accules ca et Ia dans les montagnes eleves.""... ils ne faut jamais perdre de vue que les Albanais sont les restes dune population qui occupait une bonne partie des pays slaves de Ia Turquie surtout occidentale avant l’arrivee des Slaves du midi Recueji d’Itineraies 1854 I p. 205-206 II 332.
63. In a paragraph not contained in this passage.
64. Trans. by S. Juka, published in Dielli, Sept. 1st, 1982, p. 4,8.
65. 5. Pulaha, "Qytetet e Rrafshit te Dukagjinit gjate gjysmes se dyte te shekullit XVI ne driten etc dhenave te reja te regjistrimevc kadastrale" ("The Cities of the Dukagjini Plateau in the second Half of the 16th century in the Light of Turkish Cadastral Registers"), Gjurmime Albanologjike, IX, 1979, publ. 1980, Prishtine, pp. 11-43.
66. Prof. S. Skendi has rightly pointed out that the Albanian fis is closer to "gens" which for convenience we translate as tribe (op. cit., p. 99).
67. 5. Pulaha, art. cit. in footnote 65.
68. 5. Vryonis, Jr., "Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans, l4th-l6th centuries," Aspects of the Balkans (Contributions to the National Conference held at UCLA in 1969 edited by H. Birnbaum and S. Vryonis, Jr.), Mouton, The Hague, 1972, p. 163; P.F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, Hist. of East Central Europe Ser., Vol. V, Wash. U.P., p. 51.
69. See M. Ternava, "Perhapja e Islamizmit ne territorin e sotem te Kosoves," (The spread of Islam in the territory of present day Kosova),GjurmimeAlbanologjike, IX, 1979, publ. 1980, p. 60.
70. The Serbs had succeeded in forming an autocephalous church. Its center was Zica in the north. This center was moved to Peja after the Serbs conquered the city in 1217. The church was raised to the dignity of Patriarchate in 1346. Excommunicated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Patriarch of Peja was recognized in 1374. In 1459, i.e., following the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, Peja was subordinated to the Archbishop of Ochrid. Thanks to Sokolovic, it became again the see of the Patriarchate. It was eliminated by the Greeks in 1766.
71. According to statistics based on Turkish cadastral registers. See S. Vryonis, Jr., "Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans, 14th- 16th centuries,’ Aspects of the Balkans (Contributions to the National Conference held at UCLA in 1969, edited by H. Birnbaum and S. Vryonis), Mouton, The Hague, 1972 p. 163. See also P.F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule (History of East Central Europe Series, Vol. 5) Wash. U.P., 1977, p. 51.
72. Dr. Mahmud Kermal Muftic, "Hundred Years of Mistakes in Croatian National Politics," Balkania, vol. 5, no. 1, 1971, p. 26
73. The comparison between Charles Martel and Skanderbeg was made especially by the . . . . . . .. ..
French historian Camille Paganel in Histoire de Scanderbeg ou Turcs et Chretiens au 15th siecle, 1855.
74. As known, the decisive battle is called Battle of Tours by the British; Bataille de Poitiers by the French. The chances are that the Saracens were defeated somewhere between Tours and Poitiers. Be it as it may, it must have been for the purpose of pointing out the similarities between Charles Martel and Skanderbeg that on 24 May 1868, on the occasion of the 4th centenary of Skanderbeg’s death "l’Academie d’Humanite" of Poitiers gave a "seance litteraire" followed by the performance of a play entitled Scanderbeg by an anonymous author. See G.T. Petrovitch, Scanderbeg. Essai de bibliographie raisonnde, Paris, E. Leroux, ed. 1881; 2nd ed. with an introduction by F. Babinger, R. Trofenik, Munchen 1967, p. 146-147.
75. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprzt des nations XCI (may be found in any "Recucil des oeuvres completes" by Voltaire). The statement is contained in the very first two lines of the chapter in question (the previous chapter is devoted to Skanderbeg). Voltaire alludes here to the controversy between the two Christian churches — the Catholic and the Orthodox —which was detrimental to the Christian populations and eventually benefited the Turks.
76. A. Boue, La Turquze d’Europe, 1840, vol. IV, p. 418.
77. L. Chalcocondiles, Histoire . . . (Paris ed. 1650, IV p. 132) cited by A. Gegaj, L’Albanie et linvasion turque au 15~ si&le, Louvain, Bibliot~que de l’Universite, 1937, p. 37.
78. A. Gegaj, op. cit p. 37.
79. Ibidem, p. 37.
80. J. Radonic,Djuradj Kastriot SkenderbegiArbanqa u XV veku, Istoriska gradja — (Spomenik XCV Beograd 1942, p. 2).
81. A. Boue, La Turquie dEurope 1840, IV p. 143.
82. The wretchedness of the Albanian refugees is described by Pope Paul II in a letter addressed by him to the Duke of Burgundy: "It is impossible not to shed tears when watching these refugees who fill the Italian harbors. Torn away from their homes, they walk . . . in rags and hungry .. . bewailing their lot ... (Epistola Pauli II and Philippum Burgundiae ducem apud Cardinalis Papiensis Epostolas, reproduced in French by C. Paganel, op. cit. p. 417).
83. E. Noel-Buxton, Europe and the Turks, p. 21.
84. Cf. Dr. Mahmud Kemal Muftic: "A. Starcevic has recognized that Bosnian Muslims are Croatian, but ‘he excused them for becoming Muslims because they wanted to preserve their property after Turkish occupation.’ He forgets that. . . the Bosnians felt crushed by Catholic Croatia yet did not want to remain under the rule of Serbia (the traditional oppressors of the Croatian people).’ art. cit. p. 27.
85. Yet the high positions held in Turkey by Greeks, Armenians, Christian Albanians, etc. clearly suggest that the high positions were accessible to all and that there was no need to recant in order to obtain them. Cf. footnote 88.
86. "In the introduction of his work, written in poetry and in Greek, Master Dhanil made clear that his aim was to Hellenize the Vlakh, Bulgarian and Albanian populations’ (see the text in E. Legrand, Bibliographie albanaise complet~e et publiec pas H. Guys, Paris and Athens, 1912, entry 121, pp. 50-51; cited by S. Skendi in "The History of the Albanian Alphabet . ., .~ Balkan Cultural Studies, East European Monographs, Boulder, distributed by Columbia NP., N.Y., 1980, p. 213 and p. 229, no. 9).
87. See H. Inalcik, "Timariotes Chretiens en Albanie au l5e s. d’apres un registre de timars ottomans, Mitteilungen des Oesterreichischen Staatsarchievs IV 1952 p. 120, 123, cited by S. Skendi in "The Millet System and Its Contribution to the Blurring of Orthodox National Identity in Albania," op. cit. p. 187 and p. 202 no. 3.
88. "By the beginning of the nineteenth century they had come to hold traditionally three high offices: grand dragoman, a quasi-minister of foreign affairs; the governorship (hospodarship) of the Danubian Principalities, the dragoman of the fleet. These positions were administered with extreme corruption and some, like hospodarships, were used as vehicles of Greek political and cultural domination." C. and B. Jelavich, The EslabI i.shment of the Balkan States, 1804-1920 Wash. U.P. 1977, P. 10.
89. C. and B. Jelavich, The Balkans, Prentice Hall 1965, p.22.
90. Dh. Shuteriqi,Gjurmime letrare (Literary research), Tirana 1974 pp. 24-26. Nor are there documents to inform us as to the proportions — small or large — of the Bosnian population itself affected by the Bogomil heresy. See Vryonis art. cit.
91. N. Lorga, Brave histoire de l’Albanie, Bucharest, 1919, pp. 8-9.
92. According to Soffron Prence of the Grottaferrata Monastery in Sicily, the Albanians of Italy should, on account of this fact, not he called uniates (see his article in Dielli, Sept. I, 1978).
93. Reproduced by ME. Durham in High Albania, 1909 pp. 295- 296.
94. 5. Pulaha, "Lautochtoneite des Albanais a Kosove ...,‘ Studime historike 1982 I pp. 139- 166.
95. See Burchardus de Monte Sion in Ch. Kohler, Recueil des historien.s des croisades. Documents armeniens, v. 2,1906, p. 483; reproduced also in M.E. Durham, Some Tribal ... p. 16.
96. 5. Pulaha, "L’autochtoneite des Albanais h Kosove StudimeHistorike, 1982, no. l,pp. 154-155.
97. 5. Pulaha, ibidem, p. 156.
98. The Turkish registers of Kosova, excluding the Dukagjini Plateau, were published by H. Hadzibegic, E. Kovacevic, Oblast Brankovica, III Sarajevo, 1972. About A. Handzic’s statistics, see A. Handzic, Nekoliko vijesti a Arbanasima na Kosovu i Metohiji . . . pp. 201-209 (cited by S. Pulaha in art. cit. in St. Hist., p. 149, no. 47). The registers for Macedonia, were examined by A. Stojanovski, Eren I, Kratovskata nahija bo XVI vek, Glasnik Nacional-novo Instituta, Skopje, XV-1971, no. I (cited by S. Pulaha ibidem, p. 149 footnote 45).
99. Kemalpashazade, Chronique, p. 254 (cited by S. Pulaha in Lufta Shqiptaro-Tarke ne Shekullin XV, Burime Osmane — The Albano-Turkish War in the 15th cent. Ottoman sources, Tirana, 1968, p. 191).
100. I. Zamputi, Relacjone mbi gjendjen e Shqiperise’ veriore dhe te mesme ne shekullin XVII (Reports concerning the Situation of North and Center Albania in the 17th century), Tirana, 1963, I p. 337, 339. Most of 17th-century pastoral reports, including those of M. Bolizza, G. Gaspri, G. Massarechi, M. Bizzi, were previously published in Starine (see esp. vols. XII, XX, XXV, XXXIX).
101. H. Gerba, Die Kaiserlichen in Albanien, 1689, Mitteilungen des K.K. Kriegs Archiev, Wienna, 1888, p. 136, 148, 340. M. Kostic, "Iz istorije narodnog srbsko-arbanskog ustanka protiv turaka uz austrijsku vojsku 1689-1690," Istoriki Glasnik, 1-2, 1960, Zavrisni bilans polemike o srpsko-arbanskom ustanku protiv turaka iz. . ., Beograd, 1962 pp. 3-5, 8. Contarini, Storia della Guerra di Leopoldo Prima imperatore e de principi collegati contra il Turco dall’anno 1683 fino alla pace, Venezia, 1710. I have not been able to consult Gerba and Contarini; I have relied for information contained in these works on S. Pulaha, "Autochtonia. . .," St. Hist., no. 1, 1980, p. 166.
102. 5. Pulaha, art. cit. in St. Hist. no. 1,1980, p. 164.
103. Die Bezeichnung "Alt-Serbien" ware schliesslich, wenn sie sich auf das abgegrenzte Gebiet beschranken wurde, insoferne richtig, als hier (in Raska) der Ausgangspunkt des alten serbischen Reiches war, welches sohin in semen Anfangen mit Rascien identificiert werden kann. Der Begriff’Alt-Serbien’ wird jedoch von den serbischen Chauvinisten auf Gebiete ausgedehnt, welche wie Prizren, Gjakova, Ipek einerseits und Uskup andererseits geographisch und ethnographiscb zu Albanien und Macedonien angehoren, allein wabrend der Bluteperiode des serbischen Reiches demselben, allerdings durch einige Zeit, als eroberte Provinzen angehorten. Es heisse daher gewissen politischen Bestrebungen Vorschub leisten, wollte man die Bezeichnung "Alt-Serbien’ fur Gebiete gelten lassen, welche in ethuographisehen Beziehungen niemals als serbisch angesehen werden konnten. Der unparteische Fachman wird ihnen daher ihre ethnographisch begrondeten Bennenung Albanien und Macedonien lassen und das wirkliche Alt-Serbien mit der eingangs angefuhrten Begrenzung richtiger Rascien nennen" (Th. Ippen, op. cit. p. 4).
104. About the Italian works of art on the Dalmatian coast, inherited by the South Slavs, see among others, A. Dudan, ‘Dalmazia Italiana," Emporium, 1918, PP. 180-195 (illustrated).
105. H. Kaleshi, "Pocetoci na socialistickiot pecatvo Osmansko Carstvo," GIasnik na institutiot za nacjonalna istaria, br. 2, Skopje, 1973.
106. ME. Durham, Some Tribal p. 28.
107. C.N.E. Eliot, op. cit., p. 251.
108. Mark Krasniqi, "Les yeux de Simonide," Gjurme e Gjurmime, p. 160.
109. P. Slijepcevic, Stare Srpske zadubzine, Beograd, 1934, pp. 92-94 (cited by M. Krasniqi, "Les yeux de Simonide," Gjurme e Gjurmime, Prishtine, 1979, p. 155).
110. Glasnik srpskog ucenag drustva XV, Beograd, 1862, p. 276; Zakonik Stefana Dugana, Beograd, 1870, p. 180; S. Novakovic, Zakonski Spomenici, Beograd, 1912, p. 688, 620, 660; see also M. Ternava, "Shqiptaret ne feudin e Decanit ne vitet 30 te shekullit XIV sipas krisobules Decanit," Zbornik Filosofiskag Fakulteta u Pristini, XI, 1974, pp.255-27 l. The villages given to Serbian monasteries have Albanian names.
111. The Vojvod of Peja, Muk Elezi, lost his life while defending the monastery. This was also the fate of his son Vesel and his grand son Sub. The three sons of Sub died while defending the church. During World War II nobody dared to attack the church because the whole region would have stood up to defend it. For more information concerning the attitude of the Albanians in regard to these churches see Arhimandrit Leontije Ninkovic, Srpska Lavra Visokh Decana, Pec, 1923, pp. 45-46.
112. According to guide books (Nagel), the monastery of Gracanica near Pristina, considered as the most beautiful Serbian monastery, was built by Milutin. In reality, according to Slijepvevic, (op. cit.), this monastery existed, as did other sanctuaries, before the coming of the Slavs. Milutin merely aggrandized and redecorated it. Slijepcevic pointed out that the Serbs had no tradition of their own in the domain of architecture and painting (art. cit., pp. 97, 115. See also V. Petkovic, Pregled crkvenih spomenika, Beograd, 1950, p. 263).
113. Simonida became King Milutin’s fourth wife when she was eight years old.
114. That the fresco was not mutilated by Albanians was pointed out by MiloradJankovic (see M. Krasniqi, art. cit., p. 159). Krasniqi remarked that Rakic’s purpose was merely to describe the Albanians as vandals; he was not able to substantiate his assertions with any plausible evidence.
115. "Les yeux de Simonide," (p. 164). Most of the information contained in this chapter concerning Serbian churches was taken from "Les yeux de Simonide," Gjurme e Gjurmime, Prishtina, 1979, pp. 155-166 and "Les voivodes des monasteres de Kosova," ibidem, pp. 129-154 (in Albanian with abstracts in French). M. Krasniqi’s second study was first published in Glasnik Muzeja Kosova i Metohije, III, Prishtina, 1958. Krasniqi pointed out (Gjurme ... p. 153, no. 36) that the information contained in this study was used from his manuscript by the author of the article on the vojvods, "Poslednji vojvoda Pecka patriarsije," published in Borba, Beograd, May first, 1958.
116. ‘...the illiteracy of new recruits in the Greek army was 30%; in Rumania 41%; in Bulgaria 5%. Serbian statistics were not given, but illiteracy of the whole Serhian nation was 83%" (ER. Huskell, ‘The Truth about Bulgaria," (Reprint from the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, 1918).
117. R. Marmullaku, op. cit. pp. 138-9.
The most complete and the best documented work relative to Kosova’s colonization by the Slavs during the years 1918-1941, is that of Milovan Obradovic,Agrarna Reforma I Kolonizacija Na Kosova (1918-194 1). It was presented as a doctoral dissertaton at the University of Pristina and was published there by Institut za Istoriju Kosova, 1981. This long and painstaking work is based on statistics and other data contained in the archives of the Kingdom of Serbia. In the pages 235-350, Obradovic gives information regarding the origin of all the Slavic families established in the area from 1918-1941, be they of Serb, Montenegrin, Bosnian or Macedonian origin.
118. See footnote 52.
119. The plan to transplant the Albanians to Turkey goes at least as far back as the first half of the 19th cetury; it is mentioned by A. Boue who did not fail to denounce this plan as ruthless, the Albanians having lived in these regions since very ancient times (Recueil d’itineraires dans la Turquie d’Europe, II, p. 331).
120. E. Hoxha, Works I, pp. 357-358 (cited by Marmullaku, op. cit pp. 142-143).
121. See Marm., op. cit. pp. 143-144. Between the two World Wars the Yug. Communist Party denounced the ill-treatment of the Kosovars. In 1940, at the fifth Congress of the Party, held in Zagreb, it was resolved that Kosova be returned to Albania (P. Lendvai,Eagles in cobwebs: Nationalism and Communism in the Balkans (N.Y., Doubleday, 1969, p. 183). In 1943, a letter was sent by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to the Central Committee of the Albanian Communist Party, saying that it was not opportune to discuss the Kosova question at that particular time, because of the German occupation, adding, however, that in the new state of Yugoslavia there would be no "place for the national oppression of the Albanian minorities," and that Kosova would not constitute a problem (see V. Dedijer, YugoslovenskoAlbanski odnosi 1939-1948 (Yugosl.-ALb. relations 1939-1948), Beograd, 1949, p. 134, cited by Marmullaku, op. cii. pp. 143, 152 note 16.
122. HaIfa million Albanians are said to have emigrated between the two World Wars (see H. Islami, "Kerkimet Anthropogjeografike ne Kosovo," Gjurmime Albanologjike, Prishtine, I, 1971, pp. 115-162).
123. "La Serbie actuelle compterait d’apres les derniers recensements, un peu plus de 900,000 ames... neanmoins, d’autres personnes doutent que Ia population serbe soit si elevee et ne voudraient voir dans les rapports officiels qu’une exageration calculee ou accidenrelle ... Dans le Montenegro, quelques personnes voudraient a present admettre 100,000 Ames ...d’autres 80,000.. . Les Albanais sont estimes par les statiticiens a 1,600,000, estimation plutot au dessous de Ia realite, quand on pense qu’ils s’etendent depuis l’Epire jusque dans Ia partie occidentale de Ia Moesie. . . (A. Boue, la Turquie d’Europe, 1840, II, pp. 3-6). Les statiticiens ne voudraient compter que 200,000 Grecs A Constantinople, 300,000 en Macedoine et 400,000 dans les autres provinces. Nous croyons. . . qu’un million de Grecs seraient encore sous Ia sceptre du Sultan (ibidem, p. 21).

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Serbian historians claim Anna Komnea describes Kosovo as 'Rascian' in the 11th century when it is actually a vague description, which they admit and even they seem to mainly suggest the Western part, and seems to describe an area close to Dalmatia. In this case, at best Western Kosova or 'Rrafshi Dukagjinit' as known in Albanian, part of it was touched by Serbs until it fell under Byzantine rule again, or some Serbs spread out around there when they invaded Northern Albania in 900 AD. It is interesting how they ignore the whole Bulgarian invasion and focuses mainly on the Serbian aspect even if some Serbs did live there before Dusans Empire.

The previous chapter brought the political history (if such it may be called) of Kosovo up to the final period of Bulgarian-Macedonian rule, before the territory of Tsar Samuel was reconquered by the Byzantine Emperor Basil the Bulgar-slayer. Medieval Kosovo is often referred to in general terms as 'the cradle of the Serbs', as if it had been a Serb heartland from the outset; but the reality was rather different. Just over 800 years separate the arrival of the Serbs in the Balkans in the seventh century from the final Ottoman conquest in the 1450s: out of those eight centuries, kosovo was Serb-ruled for only the last two-and-a-half - less that on-ethird of the entire period. Bulgarian khans or tsars held Kosovo from the 850s until the early eleventh century, and Byzantine Emperors until the final decades of the twelfth. Unfortunately there is very little direct evidence about conditions in Kosovo during those earlier centuries of Bulgarian and Byzantine rule. We can assume that the Slav population that had settled in Kosovo was brought within the cultural realm of the Bulgarian empire, which means that it would have been included in the Bulgarian dioceses of the Orthodox church. Thanks to the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius (and their followers) in the ninth century, the Slavs had a liturgy and other texts in their own language, written in either of two newly invented alphabets: Cyrillic and Glagolitic. The western macedonian town of Ohrid developed strongly as a cultural and religious centre in the ninth and tenth centuries, and by the end of Tsar Samuel's reign the archbishopric of Ohrid included bishoprics in Skopje, Lipljan (Alb.: Lipjan; a town just south of Pristina) and Prizren. [1] Although the formal division of the Christian Church into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox did not occur until 1054, it would not be anachronistic to describe this Bulgarian Christianity as Eastern in the ninth and tenth centuries; the roots of the conflict between East and West went back a long way. (The Slav liturgy was at first violently rejected by the Roman Church, on the grounds that God spoke only three languages: Hebrew, Greek and Latin).

Point is that they did not rule it until the 12th yet claim it has always been Serb, Even if a Serb population spread out there, how can Bulgarian rule be credited to Serbs ? They were either pushed out or fused into Bulgarians or Bulgarian rule

This text here which I quoted in this thread before seem to suggest a division between the Serbian and Bulgarian language which means they did not spread out in those areas at first:

Obviously some Slavs did spread through all these areas sooner or later. But there is one intriguing line of argument to suggest that the Slav presence in Kosovo and the southernmost part of the Morava valley may have been quite weak in the first one or two centuries of Slav settlement. If Slavs had been evenly spread across this part of the Balkans, it would be hard to explain why such a clear linguistic division emerged between the Serbo-Croat language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian one. The scholar who first developed this argument also noted that, in the area dividing the early Serbs from the Bulgarians, many Latin place-names survived long enough to be adapted eventually into Slav ones, from Naissus (Nish), down through the Kosovo town of Lypenion (Lipljan) to Scupi (Skopje): this contrasts strongly with most of northern Serbia, Bosnia and the Dalmatian hinterland, where the old town names were completely swept aside. His conclusion was that the Latin-speaking population, far from withering away immediately, may actually have been strengthened here (and in a western strip of modern Bulgaria), its numbers swelled, no doubt, by refugees from further north. These Latin-speakers would have thus formed 'a wide border-zone between the Bulgarians and the Serbs'.

Some of the Serbian dialects that have Bulgarian influence seem to of developed later and they are mainly few dialects.
Had Serbs entirely spread out in those areas it would be totally different.


Yet they seem to argue Serbs dominated the Kosovo area since 600 AD yet absolutely no evidence.

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Here is some more from the Bulgarian text from 11th century which I mentioned in another thread:

This fragment of a legend from the time
of Tsar Samuel endeavours, in a catechismal question and answer
form, to explain the origins of peoples and languages.
It divides the world into seventy-two languages
and three religious categories: Orthodox, half-believers (i.e non-orthodox Christians)
and non-believers. Though the Serbs go unmentioned, the Albanians,
still a small conglomeration of nomadic mountain tribes at this time,
find their place among the nation of half-believers

The Serbs claim they dominated the Kosovo area since 600 AD. At best the Serbs expanded into it's Western parts earliest when they battled the Byzantine after the Bulgarian period or during Byzantine rule which is when Anna Komnea's description dates back to, she does also not really describe the Kosovo area. They did not fully conquer it until later. So it is completely rubbish.


Also interesting how the Balkan Slavs claim people who converted to Islam were traitors, the Bosniaks as Muslims are deeme as traitors, yet the Slavs were supposedly good ? In order to legitimize their presence their Slavs claim they are mixed with indigenous Balkan people but that's like people converting to Islam, being Turkified, Romanized etc so why are Islamised people in the Balkans demonized while the Slavs are claimed as legitimate and Slavicization is claimed as something good and legitimate ? How does that change that the Slavs were still a bunch of invaders if the Ottomans or any other population were invaders regardless of how many people the Slavs Slavicized ?

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Some more from Wiki

After arranging for the publication of the Cuneus Prophetarum, Bogdani returned to the Balkans in March 1686 and spent the next years promoting resistance to the armies of the Ottoman Empire, in particular in Kosovo^[a] . He and his vicar Toma Raspasani played a leading role in the pro-Austrian movement in Kosovo during the Great Turkish War.^[9] He contributed a force of 6,000 Albanian soldiers to the Austrian army which had arrived in Pristina and accompanied it to capture Prizren. There, however, he and much of his army were met by another equally formidable adversary, the plague. Bogdani returned to Pristina but succumbed to the disease there in 6 December 1689.^[10] His nephew, Gjergj Bogdani, reported in 1698 that his uncle's remains were later exhumed by Turkish and Tatar soldiers and fed to the dogs in the middle of the square in Pristina. So ended one of the great figures of early Albanian culture, the writer often referred to as the father of Albanian prose.

Toma Raspasani (Italian: Tomasso Raspassani, c. 1648-17??) was an Albanian Franciscan friar and vicar, subordinate Pjetër Bogdani, Archbishop of Skopje, with whom he organized an Albanian pro-Austrian movement that would fight in the Great Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire.

With the outbreak of the Great Turkish War, the Austrian Empire sought allies in Southeastern Europe. On November 1,^[5] or November 6, General Enea Silvio Piccolomini reached Prizren, where he according to sources was received by "an archbishop and a patriarch".^[6] This has been interpreted by some Yugoslav historians as being Albanian Catholic Pjetër Bogdani, Archbishop of Skopje, and Arsenije III Čarnojević, the Serbian Patriarch.^[5][7][8] Those sources claim that Piccolomini consulted with Patriarch Arsenije and Archbishop Bogdani about the organization of newly recruited rebels and providing food for them, and Raspasani helped Piccolomini a lot, as the negotiations went through him as he knew Latin and Italian.^[9] However the patriarch could not have been the Serbian Patriarch, since "he was absent from the region at that time".^[6] Pjetër Bogdani seemed to have played the leading role in organizing the Albanian pro-Austrian movement in the region, while Raspasani was also prominent.^[3] According to some sources, Raspasani was the one who gathered the Albanians by himself.^[8]

Raspasani wrote in 1693 that many of the Catholics of Kosovo had left for Budapest, "where most of them died, some of hunger, others of disease"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pjetër_Bogdani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toma_Raspasani

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Another response to Tim Judah and his so called claim about 'Loyal Servants from Northern Albania' , this is 1621 from Northern Albania:

There are certain other peoples on the plain of Shkodra, the people of Drivasto (Drisht), Pieterspani (Pjetërspan), Zapatensi (Sapa), Sardanensi (Sarda), Lezha, Kruja, Durrës, Issemi (Ishëm), Pretia (Preza), Andronichi (Ndroq), Albassani (Elbasan) and many other places and castles, great in number and all Catholic. Although there are Muslims among them, they are Catholic in the majority. They are all armed and amount to eight thousand fighters most desirous to receive a bit of aid in order to be freed. This is true not only of the Christians, but also of the leaders of the Muslims and of those who deny the faith because they too cannot put up with the tyranny of the Turks. As such, they all want to be liberated once and for all from such great suffering, or to die arms in hand.

1621
Pjetër Budi:
An Albanian Bishop
Calls for an Uprising

http://albanianhistory.net/1621_Budi/index.html

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Austrian rule in Kosovo was, in any case, extremely short-lived.
After the disastrous defeat at Kacanik on 2 January 1690 (which is atrributed by some early
account to disaffection among the 'Arnauts' on the Austrian side-though the most direct evidence we have
makes no mention of this), the Austrians withdrew in confusion,
and a joint Tatar-Ottoman force entered the region.
Arsenije fled northwards from Peje; also making a rapid retreat
to the north where the Austrian troops, plus some 'Rascians' and Arnauts,
who had been stationed in Prizren together with the Catholic priest Toma Raspasani.
As he later explained, the rest of the population stayed behind:
'Nobody was able to get out of Prizren or Peje they all remained prey to the barbarian'.
The popular idea promoted by nineteenth-century writers and still encountered in the modern historical
literature, that Arsenije led a great 'exodus' of his people out of Kosovo
is thus simply false. He travelled to Belgrade, and spent most of the summer there;
this strong-hold, still under Austrian control, was a natural destination for many Serb refugees,
and those who gathered there during 1690 presumably
included people from those parts of Kosovo (mainly the eastern half) from which it had been possible to escape
from the Ottoman-Tatar incursion; but the majority of the refugees were probably from other areas.


(In the record of a meeting of Serb dignitaries helf in Belgrade in June, the names of people from many parts
of the Serb lands are specified, but, as it happens, no one from Kosovo apart from the Patriarch himself.)

Once we accept that 30-40,000 individuals came to Hungary with Arsenije, however, it is still neccessary to ask
what proportion of those may have come Kosovo. As has already been noted, there was no single, continuous collective journey
beginning in Kosovo and ending at Buda; the starting point of the final journey
of those 30-40,000 was probably in or near Belgrade, and we know that people had been gathering there from most parts of the Serbian lands.

One might expect people to have fled above all from those areas where the Austrian presence had been longest established
(and where, therefore, the degree of local cooperation had been greatest) - in other words, an area stretching from Belgrade to Nish.


On such grounds I previously suggested offering a very rough estimate, that it was unlikely that more than one quarter of the Serbs who arrived in Hungary had come from Kosovo. Since then I have looked more closely at accounts of the Serb population in central Hungary after 1690. Lists survive of the heads of household of the Serb community in Buda in 1702
and 1720, which in some cases give the person's place of origin. An analysis of these by Dusan Popovic gives the following totals:
70 from Serbia (excluding Kosovo); c.30 from Kosovo; c.20 from Montenegro; 11 from Bosnia; 4 from Macedonia; 1 from Bulgaria.
In this sample therefore, the Serbs from Kosovo make up 22 percent of the total.
Among these people (But not included in the figures just mentioned) there were also a few individuals described as 'Arnauts'; Popovic claims that this term just refers
to Vlachs but in view of the evidence already cited of Albanian support for the Austrians in Kosovo (and, indeed, much other evidence of Arnauts continuing to serve in the Austrian military after the withdrawal from
Kosovo in January 1690), it seems much more likely that these were indeed Albanians, some of whom may also have been Muslims.

- ''Great Migration of the Serbs from Kosovo 1690''


So the claim that all the refugees came from there is obviously false, another claim, which the essay I quoted mentions is that it was hundreds of thousands of people that came from Kosovo as refugees because one author later changed it to 30k-40k families instead of souls, claiming they also all came from Kosovo.

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Pulaha in 1984 noted that most Christians in Opolje in 1591 had Albanian names

Opoja/Opolje was part of Sanjak of Prizren

The Ottoman officials noted which heads of families were new arrivals in their places of residence; in the Sanjak of Prizren in 1591 only five new arrivals out of forty-one bore Albanian names

18 timars were recorded in the 23 villages of Opoja in 1571, and 13 timars in 1591. At the end of the 16th century, in the Nahiya of Opoja, of the 27 newly-Islamised households spread across 9 villages, 24 had Albanian last names and only 3 had Slavic last names. Of the 37 Christian households spread across 8 villages, 36 had Albanian or Albanian-Slav anthroponomy whereas only 1 had Slavic anthroponomy. Of the 23 field owners of the Nahiya, 18 had Albanian names and 5 had Slavic names

In the nahiye of Pec in 1485, majority of new arrivals had Slavic names

Seems to be no evidence of any kind of ''mass immigration'' during this period or even for most of the 1600's and 1500's.

And the evidence also suggests that, while there was a steady flow of Albanians from Northern Albania into Kosovo, a major component of the Albanians demographic growth there was the expansion of an indigenous Albanian population within Kosovo itself.

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Yet Dumbrowski and some Serb seem to suggest the demographic growth there happened from immigration yet provides not a single evidence. At the same time admits there are Vlach/Aromanian toponyms in the area which he treats as a ''pre-Slavic'' population''

The study the Serb did on Opoja in the 1950's found at least half of the Albanian inhabitants there belonged to no tribes from Northern Albania which the Serb concluded they must be ''Albanized Serbs'' , his argument was Slavic influence in costumes, of course this could just be Slavic influence in general.

Of course by 1591 the shift had already happened into Albanian but I am just using what I have of records from 1400's and 1500's that claim this demographic shift happened from a mass immigration as it does not seem to be the case since these are most of the Ottoman records. If there was supposedly a mass immigration into Opoja which led to a shift shouldn't there be Ottoman records of it since they noted what families came ?

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Here in the wiki page regarding the History of Kosovo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...Ottoman_Period
I have added some information regarding these events, I will add more later, I think it can be done better, I am not an expert in writing on wiki, but lets make sure this information does not get removed.

In 1689 during the Austrian-Ottoman wars, the Albanian Catholic Pjeter Bogdani organized a pro-Austrian movement and a resistance against the Ottomans in Kosovo together with the Albanian Catholic Toma Raspasani that included both Muslims and Christians.^[62] Count Veterani wrote of 20,000 Arnauts i.e Albanians having revolted against the Turks.^[63]
According to a German Manuscript, the Austrians in Kosovo went to Prizren which they described as the 'Capital of Albania' and where they were greeted by the 'Archbishop of Albania' and Patriarch of Kelmendi and 6,000 Albanian troops.^[64] Some Serbian writers have interpreted that the reference to 'Patriarch of Kelmendi in this text refers to the Serbian Patriarch Arsenije Crnojevic but there is evidence to suggest he was absent nor could he a led an exodus of 30,000 - 40,000 Serbs and that the text refers to the Albanian Catholic Pjeter Bogdani^[65]
Arsenije Crnojevic had travelled to Belgrade, which had been under Austrian rule and where he gathered 30,000 - 40,000 refugees and led them to Hungary, most were refugees from Nish and Belgrade area that had gathered there and smaller number of Serb refugees from Eastern Eastern Kosovo that had managed to escape.^[66]
A German manuscript from 1689 mentions 5,000 Muslim Albanians in Prishtina having revolted against the Turks.^[67] Among some of these Albanians that revolted were also mentioned as Serbs or 'Rascians' and the text mentions also some Serbs and Albanians fighting on the Ottoman side of Mahmut Pasha.^[68]
An English embassy in Istanbul in 1690 reported of Austrians having made contact with 20,000 Albanians in Kosovo that had turned their weapons against the Turks^[69]
Johann Georg von Hahn noted the Albanian population in Kosovo in 1690 had sided with the Austrians against the Turks^[70]
Albanian Catholic Pjeter Mazreku reported in the 1600's that in Western Kosovo there had been many Catholics but converted to Islam in order to avoid taxes and impositions^[71]

I have deleted the Serbian claims as it's completely nonsense not backed up by any kind of evidence except that they claim the ''Patriarch of Kelmendi'' refers to Arsenije Crnojevic, still does not explain how he could of led a an exodus of Serbs from Western Kosovo that had a majority Albanian population. I would like more people to contribute with actual sources or books that use sources from these events. Maybe making an entire section within that page regarding the Austrian-Ottoman wars


The Serbian claim about ''500 years of Muslim Albanian oppression'' is also rubbish.

The demographic growth into Albanian mainly happened in Western Kosova where there already was a native Albanian population (although Eastern had some smaller too) , Eastern Kosova had a large Slavic popualtion until the mid 19th century , the region only gained Albanian majority in the entire region after the expulsion of Albanians from more North of Kosovo

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lol the muppets on wiki removed everything i wrote lol

[Pashai Janinës]

lol the muppets on wiki removed everything i wrote lol

Wikipordha is not a reliable source, everyone knows.