By AK BOGDAN. Published in the American magazine ‘THE BARNES REVIEW’, New York, March/April 2000, Volume VI, Number 2. Translated by OJ.

The Albanians belong to one of the oldest nations of Europe. From 1250 BC to 168 BC, Albania was inhabited by 14 confederations of Pelasgian tribes, led by Kings who traced their ancestry back to Achilles. Here is a brief review of the complex path of Albanian History from early times to the middle of the 19th century.

The Illyrian Kingdom reached its zenith in the 4th century BC, under the reign of Bardhyl (White Star). His kingdom was later defeated and annexed by Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, in 358 BC. After the death of Alexander the Great, the Illyrians rose up against the Macedonians and Greeks. In 312 BC the Illyrian King Glaus expelled the Greek colonists from the islands of Corfu and from Epidamnus (or Durrachion, or Durazzi, or Dyrrahium, or Durres).

During the two Illyrian Wars of 229 and 219 BC, the Romans were able to annex most of the Western Balkans. Despite this the Illyrian Kingdom survived until 180 BC when the Dalmatians declared themselves independent and established their own independent republic, which was conquered by Emperor Augustus in 9 AD, the same year in which the Roman legions in Germany were defeated by Herman the Saxon.

In 171 BC the last Illyrian king, Gentius, was captured near Scutari (Shkodra) and sent as a prisoner to Rome. His kingdom was divided between the three Roman provinces of Dalmatia, Macedonia and Epirus. During the history of Rome, five Roman Emperors – Diocletian, Claudius II, Aurelian, Probus and Constans I were of Illyrian origin.

The early medieval Albanians emerged from the chaos of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as descendants of the Dardanian and Phaeonian tribes, who lived in upper Illyria and Thrace until the time of the massive invasions of the Germanic Goths, who took part in the Albanian lands during the fourth century AD. At the end of the sixth century, the Thracian-Illyrians were displaced by the invasions of the Avars, Antes and the Slavicized Bulgar Turko-Ugric tribes.

The last place where the Illyrians found refuge from these barbarian invasions were the mountains of Epirus, Thessaly, Western Macedonia and Dalmatia. In 535, the armies of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian conquered Illyria and Mestia and expelled the Goths, Lombards and Gepids from the Illyrian lands.

But 100 years later, Emperor Heraclius II invited the semi-wild tribes of the “Sorbians” (Serbs, Serbs) and “Khrobates” (Croats, Croats) from Ciscarpathia, who, led by their leaders, occupied the territories of present-day Silesia and southern Poland, places abandoned by the German Vandals and Ostragotes. The Byzantine emperor placed them (the Slavs) in the Western Balkans as defenders of Constantinople from the Avars.[i]

After this, the Serbs, Croats, and other Slavic tribes soon invaded Mesopotamia, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, even attacking Crete. However, the Byzantines subdued them. But the Bulgars (Bolgars, Volgars), a race descended from the Altaic Turks and the Urgic race of their contemporaries the Mordovians and Chuvashs in Northern Russia, subdued the Serbs in the late ninth century.

Their Tsar, Simon the Great (AD 893–927), a convert to Orthodox Christianity, extended his kingdom from the Carpathian Mountains to the Adriatic Sea, including present-day Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro.

This new Bulgarian Empire was destroyed at the Battle of Kleidon in 1014 by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who ordered the massacre of 10,000 captured Bulgarians by gouging out their eyes.

Medieval Islamic chronicles identified the first Albanians with Christian Arab tribes who migrated to the Byzantine heartland after the early Islamization of Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and the Hijaz. Early Arab writers of the classical Islamic period were well aware of the geographical divisions of Ptolemy of Alexandria, who described the Illyrian “Albanoi” tribes as aggressive inhabitants living between Dyrrachium-Romanum and Albanopis.

The ninth-century Muslims of Andalusia (in post-Vandalic Spain) and Sicily were also well acquainted with the Sacalibs, or Slavs, who as militant slavers and allies of the Avars invaded the Illyrian part of the Balkans in the seventh century AD.

Nomadic Slavs and Slavonic Croatian tribes, together with the Serbs, forced the Albanian shepherds to abandon their ancient lands in Arbanon, north of Lake Ohrid. This led the Albanian tribes to fortify themselves in the hills of southwestern Illyria. It is possible that some Christian Arab immigrants from Syria lived in Macedonia during the seventh century AD.

There is a possibility that they joined the Albanians at this time in their new settlements in Epirus, Thessaly and Upper Albania. Byzantine sources of this time confirm that the Christianized Arab tribe of Banu Ghassan, led by Jabal bin Al-Ahyan, nicknamed Arnaut, left Syria during the Muslim conquest and was received by Emperor Constantine II in Macedonia. Some historians speculate that Emperor Nikephoros I, who ruled Constantinople between AD 802 and 811, was himself a descendant of Jabal, the last of the Ghassanid clan.

During the reign of the famous Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad, even the most serious Arab scholars believed that the Arnauts of Albania were Ghassanid Arabs from Syria or Berbers from North Africa, who, “blinded by pre-Islamic ignorance,” converted to Christianity. They crossed the Mediterranean Sea and settled in Roman lands.[ii]

After the fall of the Islamic state of Sicily, many Arab and Berber Muslim refugees from the war crossed the narrow Adriatic Sea and found refuge in Albania via Ragusa (Dubrovnik). How many survivors of the religious massacres against Muslims displaced from the Apulian city of Lucera (AD 1300) who escaped the Christian sword and found refuge in the hills of Albania is a subject open to historical debate.[iii]

It is certain that some Muslim survivors from the medieval “safe heaven” of Lucera managed to settle and take refuge in the independent republic of Ragusa, which in the past had had quite good commercial relations with Islamic Sicily. If the third generation of these Muslim refugees from Sicily and Puglia survived as Muslims or Crypto-Muslims in the Albanian mountains, they would certainly have been among those who enthusiastically welcomed the Turkish troops led by Jakut Pasha and Hoxha Firouz, in the Albanian capital of Kruja (Aksa Hicar) in 1396. The

old Greater Albania of the Middle Ages was divided into two main linguistic groups: the Geges and the Tosks. The name of the former goes to the Albanians of Northern Albania and the latter to the Southern Albanians. The Geges are mountain people who live in the areas of Shkodra, Kosovo, also in Diber, and in the Macedonian city of Uskub (Skopje). They are probably descendants of the Illyrian tribes of Penesti and Linkesti.

Some of the Gheg tribes, such as the Miredita, Grudi, Kelmendi and Kastrati, remained nominally Catholic. However, most Ghegs gradually converted to Islam in the 15th century. The Muslim and Christian Ghegs have a long tradition of revenge with ancient rituals demanding blood for every murder, abduction of a woman or insult.

Blood feuds (among the Ghegs) are sanctioned by the pre-Islamic law of Leke Dukagjini called the “Old Law.” According to Leke’s law, an Albanian man is totally responsible for the safety of his friends. And an honor killer under the Old Law cannot be seen as the murderer who started the blood feud. The bloodsucker, or murderer, is usually penalized by setting his house on fire.

At the beginning of the 20th century, more than 75% of Albanian Ghegs were Sunni Muslims, and about 10% of them were followers of the Dervish cult of the Bektashis.

The Southern Tosks of Albania live in Ioannina (Old Epirus) and Preveza, and in the area of ​​Permet. In the 14th century AD, Albanian mercenaries of the Latin lords in Greece migrated to Epirus and infiltrated Thessaly, Morea and many Aegean islands, where they settled and established their colonies.

These highly Hellenized Albanian colonies enjoyed special privileges from the Turks. However, many of them migrated to Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, where they joined the staunchly Catholic Arberesh, who had fled from Central Albania after the collapse of the Skanderbeg rebellion.[iv]

Most of the Tosks converted to Islam as early as the 15th century. However, many of them accepted Islam long before the Turkish conquest of lower Albania. In medieval Christian Europe, conversion was not a major theological problem for most ordinary people, who did not treat Islam and Christianity as two opposing religions in doctrine. For the Christianized masses of Europe, Islam and Christianity, like Orthodoxy and Catholicism, or later Catholicism and Protestantism, were more like two different systems of religious rites.

Moreover, the popularity of pre-Manichean and semi-Christian “heresies” which arose and spread in the Balkans inspired many influential heresies in the West. The Cathars [predecessors of the Albigensians] and the Paterenses were quite widespread in the Mediterranean lands between the Pyrenees and the Rhodope Mountains. It is quite difficult to believe that Albania was not affected by these religious movements.

But we can only speculate about the existence of the Bogomiles (Theophiles) and the Babuns in Albania. Perhaps some Albanians were influenced by the Balkan Church dissidents who did not accept the authority of the Catholic Bishops and the Orthodox Patriarchs. The mountains of Albania were an ideal place for the refuge of dissident Christians condemned by the Papal inquisitors who condemned them to the fire.

The Franciscan spiritual order and the followers of Joachim of Flores from Calabria – disobedient to Pope John XXII – built their communes in the mountains of Albania. The mountains of Albania were an ideal place for the Christian mystics of early times.

The geographical spread of the two antagonistic churches (the Orthodox and Catholic Churches) has left deep roots in the ancient history of Albania. According to the text of the New Testament (Romans 15:19), St. Paul founded and preached the new Christian religion in Durrachium (Durres).

The cities of Shkodra (Scodra), Vlora (Aulon, Avlona), and Preveza (Nicopolis) became dioceses of the Illyrian Bishops. But the Illyrians in general were quite hostile to Christianity, and the Dalmatian Emperors Decius and Diocletian mercilessly persecuted Paul’s followers. In 311 AD, “the name Christianity disappeared” from Epirus and Dalmatia.

However, after the declaration of Christianity as the state religion of the Romans by Constantine, Catholic Bishops built their churches in Praevlis (Upper Albania) and Macedonia. It was Saint Jerome (Hieronumus) from the Dalmatian city of Stridon who translated the Christian scriptures from the Greek into Latin.

In the 9th century, after devastating invasions by the Avars and Slavs, Albania was conquered by the Turkish Bulgars, who had been Slavized and Christianized in 865. Their Khan, Samuel, invaded Albania 26 times, but in 1018, Emperor Basil II, the “Bulgar Slayer”, defeated them and revitalized Byzantine power over the Balkans. Under the Bulgarian occupation, Catholic Albanians were confused by the theological struggle between the Pope, Nicholas I, and the Patriarch Photius.

When the Eastern Schism finally divided Christianity into the Greek and Roman churches (1054), the Albanian Christians of Praevalis declared themselves Catholic, and their cousins ​​in Epirus remained under the religious authority of the Greek Patriarchate.

Islam spread to Southeastern Europe on the basis of genial religious passions, which produced a vibrant and powerful culture stimulated by the conquering spirit of the Ottomans.

In the 1330s the small Franco-Byzantine feudal lords of the Aegean islands were turned into vassals of the Turkish Emirs, and Catalan mercenaries from Aragon collaborated closely with the Muslim liberators in the Morea (Peleponnese).[v]

In the early 15th century, when thousands of impoverished Byzantine sailors and shipbuilders from Crete and Constantinople (Istanbul) defected to the Muslim emirates of Asia Minor, where they converted to Islam, they, led by Turkish sailors, attacked the Venetian colonies.[vi] Oppressed Byzantine serfs and serfs migrated to Muslim territories in such large numbers that much of Thessaly and Thrace was completely depopulated by the late 1340s.

Many small feudal lords and feudal leaders accepted the superiority of Islam without any theological inoculation. The Byzantine Emperor Andronicus III paid homage to Emir Umur of Aydin and recognized his Islamic state as the superior power of the region. Basil (Emperor-King) of Byzantium, who paid annual tribute to Emir Umur, gave the Muslim colonizer the island of Chios as a gift. Later, Emir Umur was invited by Emperor Andronicus III and John Cantacus to intervene militarily in their Christian vassal lands, which were divided in civil war.[vii]

Many of the Christian nobility also did not hesitate to invite the Muslim Turks into their wars with other Christian states. Sigimonto Pandolfo Malateste (1417-1468), the ruler of Rimini, sent a letter written by his advisor, the humanist Roberto Valturio, to the Sultan Muhammad II “Fatih”, with an open invitation to him to conquer Rome. He attached to his letter a very detailed map of Italy.

In April 1486, Boccolino Guzzoni (Gazonio), who had conquered the Papal city of Osimo near Ancona, sent a letter to the Sultan proposing a coalition against the church-state. When Muslim marines from Durres captured the Italian port of Otranto, the Catholic inhabitants of Piceno expressed their willingness to accept the religion and supervision of the “Grand Turk.”[viii]

The history of the Albanians is one of the greatest paradoxes in the annals of European civilization. The millennium of futility for the Albanians ended with the Turkish intervention in the Balkans. In the 16th century, Albania, along with Bosnia and Macedonia, represented the corner of the Ottoman Caliphate that was engaged in the anti-crusade against the Church Militant, and the Adriatic coast offered the Ottomans the best strategic defense against the Popes and the Crusaders. However, the emergence of Muslim Albania as the main base of the Turks in the Ottoman strategy for supremacy will remain unclear if objectively assessed.

Albania has also been part of Islamic civilization, where the resistance of Albanian Muslim tribes to Ottoman authority created an autonomous (Albanian) administration. The evolution of Roman Catholic Albania from a client state of the Republic of Venice into an Islamic state radically changed the Albanian elite and the Albanian people.

The invading Bulgarians and Serbs established their supremacy in the former Byzantine Illyria by force of arms. But the Albanians opposed aggressive Slavism and counterattacked. The Serbian and Byzantine armies were subdued by the Byzantines. From the 11th to the 15th century, the northeastern lands of the Medieval Arberish remained under the occupation of the Serbian Feudal Princes of Zeta and Raša, who relentlessly extended their power over Albania until the fall of the Serbian Kingdom in the second half of the 14th century.

The Serbian rule over the fief of Decani in 1330, and also the chapters on the Orthodox monastery of Saints Michael and Gabriel in Prizren (from 1348 and 1353) clearly indicate the presence of a large Albanian population in all the villages of Western Macedonia, Kosovo and Metohija. They (the Albanians) at this time were shepherds, mercenaries and farmers.[ix]

Under Serbian tyranny, Albanian Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians were forcibly baptized into the Serbian church, established during the oppressive regime of Stefan Dushan. According to his “draconian” law, only the Serbian church was “true” Christianity. All other religions were forbidden. Those who refused to be baptized by Serbian priests were branded on the face with a hot iron, exiled, and their property confiscated by the Serbian Tsar. Many Catholic Albanian feudal lords and their men who resisted the policy of Serbization were executed.[x]

Before the Serbian conquest of Albania, Norman adventurers dominated the Adriatic region. They conquered Muslim Sicily and southern Italy, helping the Pope and Lombard princes to retake Apulia and Calabria. In 1078, the Bishop of Devolli (Diabolis) in central Albania was the one who called Norman troops from Italy to support the local Roman Catholics against the Byzantines.

The Normans came to Albania with Muslim mercenaries from Sicily and a small contingent of Bulgarians and Greeks, led by Nikephoros Vasilicus. But this multi-ethnic and multi-religious army was defeated by the autocrat Alexius Comnenus in 1079.

During this war, the Byzantine army was supported by the Seljuk Muslims of Sultan Suleiman and by Turkish mercenary troops. The Macedonian Muslim soldiers were Turkish hostages captured by John Comnenus during the Seljuk-Byzantine wars in Asia Minor.

However, after two years the Normans, led by Robert Guiscard (“Robert the Cunning”) and his son Bohemond, returned to Albania from Otranto and captured Durrës and Vlorë (Avlona). A few months later the Normans easily captured Skopje and Ohrid.[xi] Emperor Alexius, stunned by the defeats in Albania, appealed to the Seljuk Sultan Suleiman for urgent assistance.

The Muslim ruler of Rum (Konya) sent him 7,000 experienced warriors, led by Kamir-khan (Kamires). The new Byzantine army, led personally by the autocrat Alexios and his Muslim allies, attacked the Normans near Larissa in southern Macedonia. But Beomund’s troops withstood the onslaught of Byzantine, Muslim Turks, and Oguz archers and managed to survive.

After the collapse of Byzantine power in Albania, the Normans established their own kingdom in Albania, which stretched from Durres to the Vardar River, where the nomadic Turkic tribes of the Pechegens and Oguz (Ög Öz) camped during the summer. These horsemen from the Kipchak Steppes repeatedly crossed the Danube near the Dobruja and plundered the Balkans as far west as Lake Ohrid.

For two centuries, the Albanian ports of Durres and Vlora became the gateways for Western Crusaders to the Outremer via Egnatia (the Egnatian Road). During the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204), some of the Western Militae Christi (Christian Militants), mostly Hospitallers (from the Order of Saint John) and Templars, invaded Albania, before beginning their plundering and plundering of Constantinople, and incorporated the territory of Albania into their Latin kingdom under the leadership of Baldwin of Flanders.

What we know about the Albanian population of this time is limited due to the Albanians’ lack of participation in the power struggle between the Franco-Norman and Venetian Dukes. During this time, the only known semi-independent entity in Albania was Kruja, where its feudal lord, Progon, held a small castle. In 1208, his nephew Dimitri opposed the Serbian rule of the Despotate of Zeta, led by “Prince George the Great”, and the Venetians who controlled much of the Adriatic.

When the Western Crusaders established their power in Constantinople, the Comnenian Prince Michael I withdrew to Albania, where his loyal forces were able to expel the Venetians from much of the Adriatic. In Ioannina he declared the formation of the independent Despotate of Epirus, which extended as far as Shkodra. After his death in 1215, Theodore the Angel and later Michael Komnenus’ son Michael II Palaeologus (1230–1267) restored the supremacy of the Orthodox Church in Albania. In 1258, Michael II gave his daughter Helena to Manfred, King of the Hohenstaufen of the Two Sicilies.

Her dowry (Hellenes) included the Albanian lands stretching from Corfu to Berat. Eight years later, after Manfred’s violent death, Albania passed into the hands of Charles I of Anjou (Anjou) of Burgundy. In 1274, 19 Albanian chieftains from central Albania recognized him as King. Epirus, meanwhile, passed to the last two Komnenian leaders, Nikephoros (1267-93), and then to his son Thomas (1293-1318), who was killed by his sister’s son, Nicholas Orsini. Nicholas himself was later killed by his brother John, who was then poisoned by his wife, Anna Palaeologus, mother of Nikephoros II (who was killed during the invasion of the northern Albanian tribes in 1358).

Charles I of Anjou was succeeded by his invalid son, Charles II, who in 1300 ordered the expulsion of the Sicilian Muslims to the Apulian city of Lucera. Charles II, in turn, bequeathed the kingdom of Albania to his son Philip, Duke of Taranto. After his death in 1333, Albania was ruled by Philip’s brother, John of Gravina, and two years later by John’s son Charles, who was executed at Aversa in 1347 by his cousin Louis, King of Hungary.

In 1368, the new Angevin ruler, Philip II, was replaced by the Albanian clan of Topia. The Despotate of Epirus was taken by Gjin Bua Shpata, an Albanian feudal lord from Delvina. Gjin Shpata also conquered the Frankish state of Thessaly. In 1380 and 1382, the Serbian Despot of Ioannina requested assistance from Muslim Turkish troops to push back the bandits of Gjin Bua Shpata.

In 1381 and 1384, the Latin feudal lords of Arta requested protection from Turkish troops against the invading Zenebishte clan of Gjirokastra. Turkish mercenaries, who crushed the Albanian Kakaks, established order in Epirus. But in Central Albania, the Angevin vassals created three small Albanian despotates led by the clans of Muzaka from Berat (1280-1389), Topia from Durres (1338-1460) and Balsha from Shkodra (1360-1421).

Tanush Topia married the indefatigable daughter of Robert, the Angevin King of Naples, but later the enraged King Robert killed Tanush along with his wife. In 1385, their son Karlo Topia asked Sultan Murad I for military intervention and assistance against his cousin Gjorgji Balsha II. The Ottoman Sultan sent him 40,000 Janissaries from Macedonia, who defeated Balsha II’s army at the Battle of Savra, near the Vjosa River on 18 September 1385. Gjorgji Balsha was also killed in this battle while trying to escape from the battle. Ottoman historians describe this battle as the “expedition to Karli-ili” (to the lands of Karl).

After the destruction of Serbia, the northern Albanian feudal lords such as the Balshas, ​​Topias, Dushmans, Spanajs, and Dukagjins emerged as independent rulers of Albania. Only the Kosovars remained under Serbian tyranny until 1455, when Turkish troops liberated them from the oppressive regime of Prince Brankovic.

Modern Albanians call themselves Albanians, which means “people of the land of the Eagles.” They adopted the old Byzantine emblem, the double-headed eagle—which in Byzantine eyes symbolized the imperial unity of the Roman West and East—as the insignia of their war clothes. However, an Albanian from Tetovo told the writer of this article that the double-headed eagle and red field have another meaning for Albanians, which is: “The Albanian eagle is vigilant against the dangers of the East and the West.”

In Albanian, the word I-liria means “freedom.” Most Albanians in Albania, Kosovo, Chameria (Ioannina), western Macedonia, and southern Montenegro converted to Islam when Christianity entered the Renaissance and Reformation. The process of Islamization of the Balkans, like the process of Christianization of Northern Europe, was gradual and multi-stage, but certainly much less violent than the conversion of Poles and Hungarians to Roman Catholicism or that of Bulgarians and Serbs to Greek Orthodoxy.

The beloved Serbian cliché of “violent Turkization/Islamization” (of Albanians) is as historically incorrect as the claims of SS gas chambers and baking ovens in Elie Wiesel’s writings. Recognizing the xenophobic racism and the fighting spirit of the Albanians, the pride, and at the same time the constant resistance of the Albanians against the invaders from the West, South, East and North, it is quite difficult to believe that Islam, which is today the most important part of Albanian nationalism, was imposed on this proud, ancient nation of the Aryan race in Europe by the Turks.

No one can force the Albanians to believe what they deny. Fanatic communists struggled for 45 years for this, and today the Albanians pray again in rebuilt and new mosques. The Albanian rebels often resisted the corrupt and brutal regime of the Turkish feudal lords, but never against the religion of the Turks.

Ironically, in the 19th century, when the decadent Sultan Mahmud II declared his policy of “Tanism” (Reformation), it was the Muslim Albanians and Bosniaks who rose up against “Ottomanism,” created their own Islamic states, and declared Jihad (self-defense war) against the “dangerous Turks who betrayed the Islamic way of life.”

Albanian Muslims are proud to be European, Aryans of Muslim origin. As symbolized by their Black Eagle, they look to the Islamic Orient and the European West with admiration, but in their hearts they never submitted to Turkish dictates or Western schemes.

The precise date of the mass conversion to Islam in Albania and Macedonia is debatable, but diocesan reports sent by the Albanian Bishops of Durres to the Pope and the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (the Vatican’s center for the propaganda of the Faith) allow us to arrive at an approximate date for the Islamization of the Albanians. Sources indicate that the earliest converts originated among tribal leaders and the oppressed masses of Albanian society who aspired to improve their spiritual and social condition.[xii]

Most of the Albanians of Tivat who did not emigrate to Italy and Austria accepted Islam. As conversion to Islam increased, the abandoned churches were turned into mosques. In 1610, only two cathedrals served a thousand Roman Catholics.[xiii] The papal legate Marino Bizzi wrote in the same year that in the face of a dormant and uneducated Catholic clergy, the spread of Islam in Albania “by zealous imams and graceful dervishes” was lively and enthusiastic.[xiv]

Only the Miredita and Clementi clans fanatically adhered to rural Roman Catholicism, taking advantage of the advantage the Ottomans had given their tribes as “protected peoples.” Some southern Tosk tribes remained in the Greek Orthodox Church. The mass conversion of Albanians to Islam took place between 1620 and 1650. Within three decades, 300,000 Roman Catholic Albanians accepted Islam.[xv]

After the fall of the Serbian kingdom and the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire in In the mid-14th century, the Albanian highlanders regained their lost lands of Illyria, Macedonia, and Epirus. In the first decade of the 14th century, still under Slavic and Bulgarian pressure, Albanian clans spread into Greek-controlled Boeotia, Attica, Thessaly, and the Morea (Peleponnese), where they clashed with the Franco-Norman barons and prepared these territories for the coming Islamization.

After the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, the small Albanian feudal lords and chieftains divided among themselves the lands of southern Illyria now taken from the “Greeks” and transformed them into free zones. Fighting among themselves and resisting Serbian invasion, these Albanian feudal mini-states supplied fierce mercenaries to the Latin regional powers, which fought for supremacy on the Adriatic trade routes leading to North Africa.

Muslim (Maghreb) and in the Levant. The Southern Tosks usually recognized the Byzantine Emperors as their rulers, but the Catholic Ghegs favored the rule of the Franco-Norman Dukes, the Venetians, and the Popes of Rome. In 1417, Sultan Muhammad I extended the Islamic state over all Albanian territories, transforming southern Albania and Epirus into a new Sanjak called Arvanit-ili (Land of the Arnauts) with Argyrokastre (Gjirokastre) as its capital.[xvi]

The first generation of Albanian petty feudal lords maintained the Christian faith, but most of their sons converted to Islam. The Turkish sultans never forced the Albanians to convert to Islam. On the contrary, Catholic bishops and Orthodox patriarchs were given large timars (properties, lands), and armed Christian tribes served in the Ottoman army. Christian soldiers were protected from taxes and were well paid by the Muslim authorities.

The Catholic warrior tribe of the Clements paid only 1,000 shares of taxes to the Sanjak-bey, and they did not pay ushr taxes and awarid-i divan (a type of state tax) as defenders of strategic roads.[xvii]

During the reign of Murad II, Albania became an integral part of the Ottoman state, but some Catholic chieftains of Western Albania still continued to cooperate with the Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Naples. They, at first, plundered Muslim cities. These chieftains were very dissatisfied with the timars system and the weakening of their fiefdoms.

In 1431, the powerful clans of the Aryans and Kastriots – whose power had fallen under the laws of Sharia – rebelled against the Islamic state. But they were again suppressed, because the majority of the Christian timars-holding Albanians did not support their rebellion. Only a small band of rebels led by Skanderbeg, who was well armed and paid by the King of Naples, continued the war until 1468.

Skanderbeg’s mother was a Serbian woman, but he (Skanderbeg) studied in Istanbul. After his death, the pax-Ottomanica returned to Albania.

Some Albanians converted to Islam – as before with Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy – for common reasons, and some from the appealing power of Islamic doctrine. Of course, we must remember that the medieval societies of Europe were Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim because their leaders supported their regimes with those ideas. But the most powerful agent of Islamization in the Ottoman-dominated lands of Eastern Europe was neither the victorious Turkish power nor the decadence of the Christian Churches, but the missionary work and stimulus of the Islamic dervishes and imams who tirelessly preached the words of the Quran to their kinsmen.[xviii]

Even after the collapse of Skanderbeg’s rebellion, the Turkish authorities did not force Christian Albanians to accept Islam, since it is known that the Ottoman Sultans could not Islamize even their Serbian, Byzantine, or Western wives. However, some Albanian, Serbian, Greek, and Bulgarian Christians “rented out” their daughters to Muslim feudal lords (derbeys) for a certain period of time. Muslim feudal lords paid a certain amount of money to the father who “rented out” his daughter.[xix]

But in Christian Britain, feudal serfs were often more degraded by their tradition of jus prima noctae, which gave British feudal lords the right to rape the wives of their Scottish serfs on the first night of marriage. English aristocratic nobles did not pay for this (“right.”)

During the reign of Sultan Bayezid I, the Muslim administrators of the Albanian sanjaks inaugurated a new system of timar-holding. The devastating Ottoman-Timurid war in Anatolia halted the rapid expansion of the Islamic state into Europe, but after a period of stagnation between 1402 and 1417, under the leadership of Mehmed I, Ottoman power extended throughout Albania.

The process of extending Ottoman power over Albania was a difficult one, since there had been no central government in Albania since the fall of the Serbian kingdom. The Ottoman sultans had to establish fraternal ties with each individual feudal lord or Albanian tribal leader. Some of them were appointed as heads of vilayets (provinces) and others were appointed commanders of Christian troops in the Ottoman army. Skanderbeg’s stronghold at Kruja, which was taken in 1478, was renamed Akca Hisar (White Castle), and the Christian defenders of Lesh (Lezha) capitulated without a siege.

The city of Shkodra was annexed to the Ottoman state in 1479. Two years later the port of Durres and other Venetian-occupied fortresses on the Adriatic coast were surrendered to the Ottomans. By 1571 all of Albania was under Ottoman rule.[xx]

During Sultan Muhammad II’s campaign against Skanderbeg’s rebels in central Albania, the Turks built the great city of Elbasan, which became the most powerful center of Islamization in Albania. Muslim architects built entirely new cities in Albania, such as Tirana, Pecini, and Gjakova. Hundreds of newly built bridges connect the land that was once a periphery of Venetian and Norman dominion with the heart of Islamic civilization in Asia.

Many of the young Albanian Muslims are staunch supporters of the urbanization and Islamic education inaugurated by the Ottoman conquest of their country. Hadim Suleiman Effendija, an Albanian peasant from a village near Gjakova who, after converting to Islam, rose to the position of the Sultan’s top general in Istanbul, built his own educational system of scholarships and support for talented Albanians. He built in Gjakova a large mosque, an Islamic college, a primary school, a library, a public bazaar, public baths, and a clock tower.[xxi]

According to the Ottoman census of 1520, the Albanian sanjaks were home to 15,000 Muslims, 2,500 Jewish immigrants expelled from re-Christianized Spain and Portugal, and 495,000 Christians. Between 1506 and 1520, there were 5,850 Muslim Turks living in Albania, or 1.01 percent of the total population of Albania.

The Turkish timar holders in Albania numbered no more than 800 military troops, imams, ulemas, and their families. A very small number of exiles (deported Turks) from Konya and Juruku nomads from Koja-ili, Sarukhan and Janik defended the strategic roads near Dibra against the highlanders of northern Albania.[xxii]

Almost all of the 528 Jewish families expelled from Spain were settled in Vlora. The majority of the Muslim citizens of the time lived in Elbasan, Berat (called by the Ottomans “Arnavud Beograd” or Velarde) and Tirana.[xxiii] In 1583, there were 650 Muslim families and 400 Christian families in Berat. Muslims and Christians lived in separate areas. In 1520, in the sanjak of Elbasan, Ohrid, Vlora and Shkodra, there were about 3,000 Muslim peasant families. Muslim and Christian peasants in Ottoman Albania were quite well protected by Islamic law against feudal abuses.[xxiv]

Hundreds of Albanians reached high positions in the Ottoman state. Among them were many high viziers of the Sublime Porte such as: Gedik Ahmed, Davud-pasha, Ahmed Dukagjin Zade, Kara Ahmed, Koca Sinan Pasha, Lutfi Pasha, Kara Murad, Tarhunku Ahmed Pasha, Ajaz Pasha, the famous dynasty of the Prime Ministers of Cyprus (Koprulu) and others.

The Albanian Janissary Agallars were those who led the Ottoman army during its campaigns in Hungary, Moldavia and Persia. Jahja Bey Dukagjin wrote in 16th century Istanbul, the most popular poems of the time in Istanbul. The cultural and military contribution of Muslim Albanians to the Islamic civilization of the late Middle Ages cannot be ignored. Islamization brought the Albanians the Arabic script, the script in which the great Albanian literary art of “Aljamiado” (Bejtexhism) was written.[xxv]

The daily life of Arnautlluk (Albania) under the rule of the Sublime Porte became cosmopolitan and civic. In the 16th century, Albanian peasants, like Bosniaks and Bulgarians, migrated to the kasabas (small towns) built by Ottoman urbanists. Islamic urbanization, education, and employment opportunities attracted poor Albanians to Islam, and by the end of the 17th century most of them had abandoned the Christian churches.

By the time of the military and political decline of the Ottoman Empire, Christianity in Albania had been reduced to a remote religion of the inhabitants of the remote mountainous regions. The Islamization of Albanians has progressed more in the Albanian urban centers of the sanjaks of Elbasan, Shkodra, Prizren, Vlora, Delvina, and Ohrid than in the isolated regions of the Albanian Alps.

In the ancient lands of Macedonia, the Catholic and Orthodox Albanian inhabitants accepted Islam much more quickly than the local serfs of the Slavic feudal lords. The same happened in Kosovo and Metohija, where the authority of the Serbian Orthodox Church was quite strong, and whose autonomy was recognized by the Islamic State as the spiritual authority of the Christian Slavs.[xxvi]

Peter Mazreku, a Papal envoy of Albanian origin, who investigated the rapid decline of Catholicism in the Sanjaks of Prizren, Shkodra, Skopje and Vucitrn, wrote in his 1624 report that the majority of Albanians in these areas were Muslim. His report was confirmed in 1638 by Gregorio Bardhi, bishop of Tivat. In Peja, Gjakova, Vucitrn and Prishtina, 90 percent of the Albanian citizens were Muslim. In Janjevo, Novoberde and Trepca, however, the number of Muslim families was even smaller than that of Christians.

Many Albanian and Serbian Christians emigrated from Islamized Rumelia to Italy or Hungary. More than 150,000 Albanian Catholics migrated to Puglia after the collapse of Skanderbeg’s rebellion.

By the end of the 17th century, the Albanian aristocracy of Kosovo had been almost completely Islamized. The papal legate, Marino Bizi, who visited Albania in 1610, was not exaggerating when he reported that the Albanians of the Western Sanjaks were lost to the Catholic Church.[xxvii]

Christianity in pre-Islamic Albania was never strong. Catholic and Orthodox Albanians, deeply divided between the fierce struggles of the Western “Latin heresy” and Eastern schism, developed a sense of political survival in this theological swamp. The Serbian conquest of Albania and Dushan’s violent policy of Serbization of Latin heretics significantly destroyed the missionary role of Catholic priests long before the arrival of Turkish troops in Durrës.[xxviii]

In 1479, a peace treaty was signed between the victorious Sublime Porte and the defeated Venetian Republic. In this agreement, the frightened Venice was forced to leave all its dominions in Albania except the cities of Ulcinj and Tivat, which remained under its rule until 1571.

Immediately after the breaking of the siege of Vienna by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (1683), the Venetians and the “Holy League” invaded the Muslim Balkans. But the Janissaries cut the Christian armies to pieces, and the Catholic minorities refused to support the wild duke of Holstein, who fled to Habsburg-occupied western Hungary in 1690.

After his retreat from Bosnia and Serbia, 35,000 Serbs, led by Bishop Arsen Crnojević, left Kosovo at the invitation of Habsburg Emperor Leopold I, and the land vacated by the Serbs was taken by 12 Gheg tribes who came from upper Albania.[xxix]

In 1727, Albanian Muslims, Bosniaks, Bulgarian Pomaks, and Turks defeated the combined Austrian and Russian armies, which reoccupied Rumelia. Twenty-five years later, Muhamed Bushati, an Albanian Pasha from Shkodra, united the tribes of northern and central Albania and with them conquered Ulcinj (Dulcigno), which by then had become a center of Christian and Muslim pirates.

His son, Kara Mahmut (“Black Kara”), subdued the Kurdish-origin Pasha of Berat and the Montenegrin Kakaks. He was so powerful that he was able to conquer the Republic of Venice, which sought the help of the Turkish Sultan for aid. In southern Albania, Ali Tepeleni Pasha (better known as Ali Pasha Tepelena), the “Lion of Ioannina” (1740–1822), organized his own Muslim militia, which bravely fought the Russians in 1787.

Ali Pasha Tepelena

In gratitude for Ali Pasha’s relentless campaign against the Greek rebels, the Sublime Porte promoted him to Pasha of Trikala in Thessaly and “Dervend Pasha” of Rumelia. In 1788, he was appointed Pasha of Ioannina (Epirus).

When the Venetian Republic was invaded by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, Ali Pasha defeated French troops in Dalmatia and captured Preveza, Vonitsa, and Butrint. British Admiral Nelson praised Ali Pasha, and Sultan Selim III promoted him to governor of all Albania. Ten years later, he became governor of Rumelia.

In 1786, Kara Mahmud’s troops defeated the Sultan’s forces in Kosovo, and Albanian artillery sent by Ali Tepeleni Pasha defected to Mahmud’s side. Ali Pasha’s troops brought order to the northern Albanian region of Suli in 1803, where local Christians had massacred several Muslim villages.

The creation of an independent Albanian Islamic state (by the Albanian Pashals) was thwarted when a Montenegrin sniper killed Mahmud Pasha in a trap. Ali Pasha was also killed in 1822 after his surrender to the westernized army of Sultan Mahmud II, led by Khurshid Pasha and Albanian beys who besieged Ali Pasha for nearly eight months.

Ali Pasha was declared a rebel by Sultan Mahmud II, when the powerful Albanian established diplomatic and economic ties with Great Britain, Russia, and France, without the permission of Istanbul. The death of the powerful Albanian Muslim leader, the ruler of Ioannina, gave courage to the Greek rebels to declare the independence of Greece.

After the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, Pasha Mustafa Bushati, the Albanian ally of the short-lived independent Islamic Bosnian state, led by Captain Hussein Aga “Zmay” (“Dragon”), defeated the demoralized Turkish troops of Sultan Mahmud II and annexed Bulgaria and Macedonia. But the Sultan’s second army, commanded by Rashid Pasha, defeated the Albanians at Prilep.

Mustafa’s troops capitulated in 1831, after a four-month siege of Shkodra, which led to the restoration of central Turkish power. In 1847, Ismail Rahmi Pasha of Ioannina and Ismail Plassa Pasha of Prizren (Kosovo), divided Albania into four vilayets (provinces). In that of Shkodra, Ioannina, Kosovo and Manastir (Southwest Macedonia)…
The destruction of the Ottoman Empire, overdosed with pseudo-Western reforms by Sultan Mahmud II, torn apart by the Eastern Orthodox revival led by St. Petersburg, led to it being declared the “Sick of the Bosphorus” and condemned to death in the secret depths of the Greater Orient.

References

[i] Pollo and A.Puto, pp. 24-28

[ii] Al-Sayyid Ahmad bin Al-Sayyid Zayni Dahlan, pp. 80-83.

[iii] The enigmatic black Arabs “Kara Arapi” of Bosnia, Rumelia and Aranautlluk (Albania) are described by the famous Muslim explorer of Europe, Efendi Evlija Çelebi. See: E. Çelebi, Petpis, Bulgarian tr. and ed. by S. Dimitrov, Sofia: Institut za Balkanstika pri BAN, 1972, p. 223, also ed. A. Matkovski, Makedoniya vo delata na stanskite patopistzy, Skopje (Uskub): Misla, 1991, p. 561.

iv Selected sources for the history of Albania, vol. 3, Albania under Ottoman feudal military rule (1506 – 1839), ed. by I. Zamputi, S. Naci, Z. Shkodra, Tirane 1963, also added; Documents of the 15th century for the history of Albania 1479 – 1506, ed. by I. Zamputi, Tirane 1967.

[v] Zachariadou in: Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean Aftetr 1204, eds Arbel, Hamilton, p. 214. Idem, “The Catalans of Athens and the beginning of the Turkish expansion in the Aegean Area,” in studi mediaveli vol. 31, pp. 821 – 838.

[vi] Zachariadou, op. cited, p. 220, 222.

[vii] H. Inalcik, Gelibolu, Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Leiden: EJ Brill, 1979.

[viii] Copia brevis Domini Innocentii ad Principes et Potentatus Christianos super cansa expeditions contra Turcum (A copy of the pope’s note of April 12, 1489)/ Arch. Sgt. Vatican, Miscellanea, II, vol. 56, fol 373.

[ix] Thalloczy Jiricek, Sufflay, pp. 257 – 269.

[x] Novakovic, pp. 153-155.

[xi] Anna Comnena, p. 103.

[xii] Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 653

[xiii] M. Bizzi, relations, op. cite, speak 9.

[xiv] Ibid, fol. 12 – 13.

[xv] Voyages de Pietro Della Valle, Rouen: R. Machuel 1745, vol 1, p. 37. Also: Universal notices of the state of Albania and the work of Monsignor Vincenzo Zmaievich, Archbishop of Antivari, examiner in the General Congregations of Propaganda Fide of 3 Debr. 1703 – 1012, Feb 1074, Bibliotheca Barberinna, Rome, MSS, no. L. p. 126.

[xvi] H. Inalcik, Arnavutlluk, Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Leiden,: EJ Brill, 1979, pp. 650 – 52.

[xvii] H. Inalcik, “Timariotes Chretiens en Albanie au XVe sielce” in: Mitteilungen des Asteirrichische Staachzarsivs, 4 Band, Vienna, 1951, pp. 118 – 38.

[xviii] P. Bartl, The Albanian Muslims zur Zeit der Nationalen Unabhagtigkheitsbevegung, Weisbaden 1968, pp. 16 – 26.

[xix] Vryonis, p. 203.

[xx] G. Stadmuller, “Die Islamisirung bei den Albanern,” in: Jahrbucher fur Gechicte Osteuropas, no. 3, (1955), Munich, pp. 405 – 420.

[xxi] Kiel, p. 21

[xxii] H. Inalcik, op. cit, p. 651

[xxiii] Ibid., pp. 654 – 656.

[xxiv] Evliya Çelebi, pp. 555 – 561. Sratsimi, pp. 183 – 213.

[xxv] Kalesi, p. 49 – 61.

[xxvi] Shkodra, pp. 160 – 71.

[xxvii] Bizzy, op. cit., passim.

[xxviii] Reported by Gillaume Adam, kryepeshkop i Tivarit te Mbreti Freng Filip VI Valois ne 1332, dhe letra e Guido de Padoves (1350), quatrain nga C. Jiriek, Geschiste Der Serben, Gotha 1911 ….

[xxix] Swire, pp. 16 – 17.