by Preveza Abrashi. Translation Petrit Latifi

There is a beautiful quote about the morality and humanity of the Albanian people, by Miss Mary Edith Durham from “The Balkan Concern”, Northern Albania 1913.

“I have been told that I have trusted the Albanian with great gullibility. I have given him many opportunities to rob me and several times, there has been the opportunity to eliminate me, but he has always treated me with subtle courtesy and has not taken advantage of me in the slightest. He is a man, brave and intelligent.”

Although they lived in these extremely difficult circumstances, the highlanders were not as ruthless and bloodthirsty as some scholars present them. In this regard, here is what Edith Durham writes in her work “The Worries of the Balkans”:

”I would accept that they laugh at me, but I will say that I do not believe that the Albanian is ruthless by nature. The life of the highlander is hard and harsh, much more than someone who has lived only in a civilized country can understand, so the life of people who are in these wild conditions is necessarily hard.

And although I have met him in his herds, on the slopes of the mountains and have observed him carefully, on the street and in the market, I have never seen an Albanian who tortures an animal just for fun, as the Neapolitans, Provençals and Spaniards do. The disgusting ”games” with horses and defenseless animals, which you can see every day on the streets of Naples, are not found in the capital of the so-called bloodthirsty Albanian.”