Written by Petrit Latifi
In the book “Годишњица Николе Чупића Volume 11”, published by Штампа Државне штампарије Краљевине Југославије in 1889, there is an article about the Rugova highlanders guarding the Church of Pejë. The author writes that the Rugovians had guarded the church for 300 years. That would mean that the Albanians of Rugova began this task in 1590 until 1941.
From the book:
Translation:
“As for the rest of the Rugovacs, they obey the voivode (the church guard) in everything that the monastery needs as their true leader. Whenever he orders and sends a message to come, they will come in as many numbers as he orders and will do what he orders them to do. When there was a war between Serbia and Turkey in 1876 and 1878, there were always 10 to 15 of them at the monastery to protect the monastery from evil and dishonest people.
In the same way, they always come to guard it when needed or when and as many as the voivode orders. In addition to the right for them to choose their own platoon, the monastery always recognizes their right to a welcome and a place to stay for the night and gives them food and their horses whenever they come to the monastery, and the monastery does not provide them with this hospitality.
And in this year 1889, in the spring, on some occasion, rumors spread among the current abbot Sofronije and some of the leading people from Pejë, it happened that the Rugovci and their duke got involved in this disagreement on the basis of their customary right to guard the Pejë monastery. Mutesarif Halil Pasha Mahmud Begu, as the old lord of Pejë, again referring to the same right, even though he had left the faith of his ancestors.
At that moment, I do not know whether on his own initiative or at the message of Sophrony himself, the church voivode came to Halil Pasha Mahmud Begu with four Rugovac chieftains and began to tell the pasha how the entire Christian millet was satisfied with Sophrony and how only five or six people had risen up to the metropolitan to take the image of Sophrony, how the church of Peć is under the Rugovac banner, how the Rugovac people have been guarding it for three hundred years, how the Rugovac people will not leave the image of Sophrony until four hundred Rugovac houses are slaughtered as they slaughtered themselves around the church of Dečani”
Reference
Balkan Academia 