Authored by Dr Milan Sufflay, who was murdered by the Serb authorities in 1926.

“The Conference of Ambassadors generally took care of the borders of the future Albania. The attacks undertaken by the Montenegrins and Serbs against Shkodër, the attacks and actions of the Serbs in Albania have never had anything to do with the war of the Balkan States against Turkey, they are now not only against the decision of the Great Powers, but against the principle ethnic to be emphasized at the beginning of the Balkan war by the Beslidhuns themselves, but also against the historical right of Albania, so not only against the future, but also against the departure of the State that is leaving.

For the scholar, it is a very boring thing, when it seems that he wants to put science at the service of politics; therefore, he usually prefers to publish the fruit of his work in scientific magazines, or at least, if necessary, among the special pages of major newspapers, but not among the political columns of daily notebooks. With all of this, a work on the Albanian sod per sod should of course be an exception, and this work especially, the indisputable and very current conclusions of which are due to be presented again here, will also serve to refute any quite prejudices. spread, especially with the spread of those embellished and inspired floods of historical lies by a pair of Serbian statesmen and writers, who are reminding that Western Europe should learn from them the historical development of the Balkans!

In order not to overdo this work with the denial that it was written ad hoc, it is enough on the one hand the monumental landscape that it has inside, which requires a continuous work of many years and relies on official documents extracted mainly from the archives of Naples, the Vatican , Ragusa of Venice; on the other hand, they guarantee the names of the authors, among whom one (Jireèek), the writer of the history of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, is also called among the eyes of the South Slavs and the Russians the best knower of the Balkans; and the other (Thallóczy), the one who gave rise to this work, is well known even outside the borders of his homeland as an outstanding and tireless researcher of the power circle of the medieval State of Hungary in the Balkans.

The reconstruction of medieval (pre-Turkish) Albania should also include a true Archimedean point of view for those disinterested in judging what is the objective minimum of the borders of future Albania and whose point of view is closer to the postulates of objectivity; and not only to put on the scale cup with I don’t know what weight. This is also the most interesting side of this work.

The ethnos of the Albanians is very ancient and the most stable of the Balkan Sinis. For more than nine thousand years, he has shared the same fate with the Slavic and Hellenic races, who now enjoy complete freedom. In pre-Turkish times Albania existed, although not as a political entity, but still existed as a geographical and ethnic concept in parallel with the political concept of Bulgaria and Serbia, leaving aside Montenegro, which from a historical point of view can be called as a bastard son of Shqipní.

Albania was formed in the Middle Ages like Bulgaria and Serbia, although its ethnic origin is very old. This is a purely medieval creature, the scientific concept of which was founded only now on the troll of the entire historical land that belonged to the western part of the Balkan peninsula. The map of medieval Albania that you can find in the first book of the work is the conclusion of a work, to which I have devoted a lot of attention.

The elements of the scientific method used for it are shown in the preface, and there it will be seen that the scientific concept and the cartographically drawn borders of medieval Albania are a result that basically comes from one main component and four secondary components. The main component consists of the history of the development of this concept in the Middle Ages, that is, the majority of representations, often quite wrong, which are found among the Greeks, Serbs, Neapolitans, Ragusans and Venetians of the Middle Ages regarding the geographical similarity of Albania.

The second four components include firstly the old Albanian settlements, secondly the assignment of the spheres of power of the small but purely Albanian princes, thirdly the medieval boundaries of the ecclesiastical circles, and finally the taxonomic configuration.

The name of the weathered Illyrian tribe of Albanvet is mentioned in the imperial time of Rome, but the mbandej disappears all alone in qv. XI goes back to the square between Byzantine springs and rain like the mother of the mountain dwellers between Shkodra, Durrës, Ohrid and Prizren with the town of Kruja in the center. From here, he spread far and wide and remained ethnically undistinguished. Raban of the Serbs in qv. XIII is much bigger than Arbanon of the Byzantines in XI. It includes under the same name and the people of Upper and Lower Pult, which lie between the eastern coast of Shkodra and Drîni Bardhë. At the same time, but a little later (1255) Arbanon of the Byzantines.

Reference

Kap. VIII Kufijt e Shqipnís në Mesjetë; Dr. Milan v. Sufflay: ”Die Grenzen Albaniens im Mittelalter”, 288-293