Author: Jusuf Buxhovi. Translator Petrit Latifi.

Although the fall of the former Yugoslavia, with the appearance of independent states: Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and finally Kosovo, changed the state realities, with which many of these peoples also began the de-conspiracy of the “Yugoslavism” based on the platform of Garashanin’s “Nacertanja”, however, among the Albanians, on both sides of the border, to the extent of The dictates of Serbian historiography continue, and with the reactivation of the “Serbian world” phrase, it is holding Kosovo politically and culturally hostage.

The corruption of Byzantium by other autonomous social and political formations (feuds, provinces and dynasties), such as the “Despotate of Epirus”, “Despotate of Art” and “Regnum Albaniae” from 1272-1296 and others until the XV century when this empire will end, in those dramatic circumstances and completely unstable in terms of social and political realities.

This highlighted on the one hand the local factors on which the interests of the East and the West were perceived and built for the greatest influence, mainly with the church factor, as was the case with the Catholic Empire of Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade in 1204-1264 and the “Despotate of Epirus”, and on the other hand, the claimants to the throne of Byzantium.

The Nemanja dynasty of Rasha, which during the time of Stefan Dushan (1331-1355) managed to be the main force of Byzantium, which was also called “Illyricum Magnum”.

Of course, the Rasha factor, seen in accordance with the realities of the time and outside of the interpretations and appropriations, from those that will be made by the Serbian historiography, the Russian one and the school of the Slavists of Vienna in the 19th century, takes it out of the hostage of this misinterpretation, i.e. of the unscientific appropriation, such as its presentation “foundation of the medieval Serbian state” and also takes the right from the Serbian Orthodox Church.

This in order to adopt Orthodox Christianity with Old Church Slavonic liturgy. Outside of these anti-historic appropriations, Rasha and the Nemanjan dynasty, its historical appearance is returned with social and political factors from antiquity (tribal origin) as well as its role in the space of Dardania, that of Macedonia and Epirus as a hegemonic force in the developments that led Byzantium from the 12th to the 15th century when it will finally collapse.

Placing the medieval Serbian state on the knowledge of non-scientific factors: church-nation – ignoring the Slavic nucleus from its appearance to the extent, which is least related to their historical geography as presented by the Serbs and, at the same time appropriating Slavism as an ethnic conglomerate and converting the ancient tribal peoples, Dardanians, Celts and others into Serbs in accordance with the fantasy of the Priest of From Orbin’s “Gesta Regnum Sclavorum” (Kralevstvo slovena) of Orbini.

It presents the argumentative spectrum of overthrowing forgeries, which for a long time have been accepted, due to the lack of a critical and objective scientific approach to them.

In order to argue these distortions, mystifications, misappropriations and falsifications among the most diverse on the basis of a great state platform and hegemonic Slavic-Orthodox ideology, which appeared from “Načertanja” in 1844 to the programs of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1937, 1944 and at the end of 1986, the focus falls on the reflection of the falsification of medieval documents by the Serbian Orthodox Church in accordance with the big-state and hegemonic concepts projected in Russia from the middle of the 18th century.

In which case the starting point is those of Byzantine authors, then the hagiographic literature with special emphasis on the efforts for the dynasty of Nemanjaj and Rasha to extract the “foundation of the medieval Serbian state” outside the time contexts and outside the social and political relations of those circumstances, while the church of Rasha supposedly with autocephaly from the Middle Ages.

Although it was a question of a temporary separation from the Ohrid Bishopric, to which it will be attached shortly, to which the liturgy in the Serbian language is even attributed, even though it is known that it was an old church language (amalgam between Slavic and Bulgarian), because the Serbian language will exist in the second half of the 19th century after V. Karadžiqi will form it with the help of the Slavic school of Vienna.

Many of the “monographs” on Serbian church life as well as the biographies about the life and work of the Nemanja dynasty are of this nature, rewritten or falsified, always with the non-scientific justifications of their “processing”, in accordance with hegemonic positions.

Among these narratives based on hagiography (ecclesiastical literature), the publications “Sveti Sava – Sabrana Dela” published by T. Jovanović, Belgrade 1998, “Stevan Prvovenčani – Sabrana dela”, by Georgievski-Jovanović, then “Živopis Svetog Save” by Teodosije Hilan-darski, as well as the work of Konstantin Philosopher “Povest slovina – Žitije despota Sre-fana Lararevića”, Belgrade, stand out. 1989, in which case it is accepted that they were invented in Odesa in the 18th century according to some accounts of the priests there!

The same happens with the “emblematic” work of S. Novakovic “Zakonik Cara Dušana, cara srpskog 1349-1354”, Belgrade 1870, in the preface of which it is accepted that “The medieval canon does not exist, but it is derived from the confessions in the 19th century in Prizren and the surrounding area as well as from some texts from the churches in Wallachia and Russia (Petergurg), which Shafarik has linked in Vienna in 1859.

The way this work has been raised to the level of the state and legal “testament” of the “Empire” of Stefan Dušan in the service of creating the ideological and political platform of the medieval Serbian state for political needs in the 19th century, which will precede it in the political map of Europe accepted at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the translation into several languages ​​and distribution in the main European centers, best shows the connection of many external factors and internal in its construction by fabricating allegedly scattered documents without scientific credibility.

This form of patching of “documents” “hidden” in “forgotten” churches and libraries is best reflected in Novaković’s work. The author, however, wishing to show “about the antiquity” of this work, which he clearly lacks, relies on several layers of fabrications and text processing aimed at “bringing to light” “authentic documents” by constructing “lost parts”.

As it was said earlier, the workshops of various churches, primarily those in Hilandar, and others in Russia, served as the basis for this work to distribute the documents processed and retouched in Vienna, to the well-known school of Slavists, from where the “meritorious documents” were treated by various researchers to create “files” such as “Monumenta slavica” and others, with which the stories of the Serbs were fed, Bulgarians, Russians with “authentic documents”.

The author of “Zakonic”, in the preface, reveals the technology and infrastructure of document processing and falsification when dealing with the “history” of Zakonic, which is necessarily related to Vienna and the work of researchers there, primarily Slavic or Serbian ones. Thus, the starting point of “Zakonic” begins with J. Rajić, in 1859 in the publication “Istorie slovenskoh narodie”, to be transferred to Miklošić, who will present it in the German language “Lex Stepani Dušani”, Vienna 1856, from where it will then fall into the hands of P.J. Schafarik, who will include it in the book “Pomatky drevnioh pismenietvi Jihostovanie”, in Prague, 1860.

Schafarik did not give the text in its entirety, since it did not exist, but presented it in 9 different manuscripts with the claim that they “are fragments discovered in different monasteries (Ravanica, Rudnik, Kazan and others) supposedly from 1350 to the year 1700, where the text from Petersburg of N. Nadežnev, which is known from the Bistrica monastery in Wallachia, occupies an important place. These texts, neither linguistically nor in terms of content, form the entirety of a canon, which is also accepted by Shafarik.

But, in his edition, Shafarik’s fragments are connected with two “authentic” texts. One from Struga, collected by a Russian priest. And the other one from Prizren, also collected by a priest named Sime. The text from Prizren, supposedly from the 15th century, was sent to Belgrade by the teacher from Smedereva, Nikola Maslin, from where the one elaborated in Vienna was handed over to Novaković to bring it to light.

Of course, Novakovic tried to reflect the documentary “credibility” of the work with Schafarik’s texts in Old Church Slavonic and Serbian. In the preface, Novaković explains the origin of the texts and their collection from hand to hand, which according to him, complete the Canon and its spirit. Thus, the 165 leaves (listina) come from 16 different collectors, whose names are unknown, except that it is said that a large part of them were rewritten by 6 clergymen and two deacons in Prizren.

Since the first edition of 1870 had many discrepancies and as such did not sufficiently meet the basic criteria to be taken seriously, Novaković, after being appointed president of the Royal Serbian Academy in 1886, presented the second “completed” version of the “Canon” with some “rediscovered” fragments of the version of the “Canon” of Struga from the 14th century and of Prizren from the 15th century.

There are included 106 articles, which represent nothing but a direct transfer (copy) of the ecclesiastical legal acts of Byzantium (Homokanon), which were part of the Roman-Byzantine law in accordance with Justinian’s code, but which regulated property issues in the relations of the church with the Empire, where it was a participant in the administration of church and local properties.

Other parts will be added to these articles from the Byzantine code, where the relations with church rites (with Catholics) are amputated and where there are also some decrees that determine the behavior of the churches, and where there are also records about the demographic overview of the population where, alongside the “Serbian” majority population, as a minority, the “Arbanian katuns” (arbanaski katuni) and “Vlach katuns” (vlaski katuni) appear.

It is not surprising the scenario of the “demographic overview” of the population of the “Empire of Dushan”, where at that time there was no national affiliation other than ecclesiastical: of the Orthodox rite (with the language of the church liturgy Old Slavic and Greek) and of the Latin rite (with the language of the church liturgy Latin)! But, it is surprising that this anti-historical and anti-scientific construct, invented by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian historiography of the 19th century for hegemonic purposes, has been accepted as “scientific truth” and has almost served all the purposes of the supposedly national reports in the imagined medieval Serbian state, where there were also some “Arbanian” (Catholic) and Vlach towns.

Thus, this falsified dictate of the so-called “medieval Serbian state”, thanks to the “verification” by historians, linguists, ethnographers of the well-known Vienna school of Slavists, has been accepted by a good part of world historiography to be carried over to the ideological one of the former Yugoslavia, which as such, will be copied in full by Albanian historians (on both sides of the border).

Although the fall of the former Yugoslavia, with the emergence of independent states: Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and finally Kosovo, changed the state realities, with which many of these peoples also began the de-conspiracy of the “heart of Yugoslavia” based on the platform of Garashanin’s “Nativity” and its “historical” epicenter – the Medieval Kingdom of Dushan.

However, among the Albanians, on both sides of the border, to a large extent, the dictate of Serbian and historiography continues, this dictate that, with the reactivation of the phrase “Serbian world”, is holding Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina hostage politically and culturally.

Therefore, the burden falls on academic scientific institutions in Albania and Kosovo to undertake organized research-scientific steps to free themselves from the dictates of the falsifications of Serbian hegemonic historiography. Although this, based on hundreds of works of this nature created by the Serbian Academy of Sciences during the last century, is not an easy task, nevertheless, the creation of a clear platform of revision of history in accordance with scientific truth is indispensable.

Reference

(Excerpt from “Dardania – antiquity, middle ages”, published by “Faik Konica” – Pristina and “Jalifat Publishing” – Houston 2020)