Cited:

“XII. THE ALBANIANS.

In Constantinople, they always took care to keep them (Albanians) in good spirits; for they constituted the most valiant barbarian hordes, just as they once formed the phalanxes of Pyrrhus and Alexander the Great, and the Illyrian legions of the Romans.

Thus, the Albanians remained under Turkish rule in positions of authority, just as they had been in the early Middle Ages in Franks and Saxons. The entire people split into independent units, just as the Gaugermanic tribes or the Scythian clans, who would soon choose a duke and kill him, always tore each other apart in bloody wars.

This is Albanian history. Or perhaps one cannot call it history at all? Does a people have a history that remains in the beginning of culture for millennia? A people, in whom it is forever about defending itself to remain what it is, or if for a time a part is destroyed, slowly becoming what it once was? Never did a movement emerge from the center of the Albanian people, for one would have to count their inclination toward this, to emigrate and adopt foreign lands.

The Albanians are thus, besides the Lapland, Finns, and the Basques, the people in Europe who have held their ancient seats the longest. That this became possible was less due to their geographical location than to the nature of their land.”

Source

Contributions to History and Ethnography. Löher, Franz von, 1818-1892