by Gurakuç Kuçi

The claim that Serbs or Slavs are the heirs of Illyrian heritage is a politically motivated distortion of history. Slavic tribes, including those who later formed the Serbian state, migrated into the Balkans during the 6th and 7th centuries AD, as clearly recorded by Byzantine sources such as De Administrando Imperio.

The Illyrians, by contrast, were an ancient Indo-European people indigenous to the western Balkans, present in the region for centuries before the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC. There is no such thing as “Illyro-Slavic” culture. This is not a recognized historical category but a manufactured myth aimed at fabricating a deeper ethnic continuity for Serbs in territories where they were never indigenous.

It is part of a broader strategy of historical appropriation, an attempt to displace the Albanian people’s legitimate claim as the most direct descendants of the Illyrians. By falsely branding Kosovo as “southern Serbia” and dressing modern Serbian identity in symbols drawn from occupied or historically Albanian lands, this narrative aims to legitimize political control through invented antiquity.

This isn’t cultural preservation, it’s hybrid propaganda disguised as heritage. The academic consensus is clear: Serbs are South Slavs with origins far north of the Balkans. Their arrival in the region was part of a larger migratory wave and occurred centuries after Illyrian civilization had already declined under Roman rule.

Claiming Illyrian identity is not only historically baseless, but it’s a deliberate erasure of the Albanian people’s roots, identity, and connection to the land. History is not a costume you can wear in front of a monastery. It is evidence, language, archaeology, and continuity. And on all four, the facts are not on Serbia’s side.