Tom Winnifrith - Perspectives On Albania

PERSPECTIVES ON ALBANIA
Perspectives on
Albania
Edited by
Tom Winnifrith
Chairman of the Joint School of English and Comparative Studies
University of Warwick
Palgrave Macmillan
Tom Winnifrith 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
S1. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1992
ISBN 978-1-349-22052-6 ISBN 978-1-349-22050-2 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22050-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Perspectives on Albania / edited by Tom Winnifrith.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06875-2
1. Albania-History-Congresses. I. Winnifrith, Tom.
DR903.5.P47 1992
949.65-dc20 91-4949
CIP
For Helen
Contents
List of Figures and Maps ix
Preface x
Notes on the Contributors xi
Maps xiii
1 Introduction
Tom Winnifrith 1
2 The Prehistoric Background of Illyrian Albania

Anthony Harding 14
3 The Relations of Illyrian Albania with the Greeks and

the Romans
Nicholas Hammond 29
4 Byzantium and the Emergence of Albania

Stephen Hill 40
5 Conquest and Commerce: Normans and Venetians in

Albania
Michael E. Martin 58
6 Albania and the Ottoman Empire

Tom Winnifrith 74
7 Cultural Values of the Albanians in the Diaspora

Alexander Lopasic 89
8 Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora and the Making of Albania in

1912
Renzo Falaschi 106
9 Albania's Inter-War History as a Forerunner to the

Communist Period
Raymond Hutchings 115
vii
viii Contents
10 Albania after the Second World War

William Bland 123
Index 137
List of Figures and Maps
FIGURES
Figure 1 Comparative hillfort plans in the Late Bronze 24

Age and Early Iron Age
Figure 2 A transept basilica at Butrint 44
Figure 3 A triconch basilica at Arapaj near Durres 46
Table 1 Settlement sites and their effects 26
MAPS
Map 1 Albania in ancient times xiii

Map 2 Albania in medieval times xiv
Map 3 Albania in modern times xv
ix
Preface
This book results from a conference held under the auspices of the
European Humanities Research Centre and the Joint School of
Classics at the University of Warwick in April, 1988. We are very
grateful to these institutions and to an anonymous benefactor for the
support of the conference. The delayed publication of the papers
delivered at the conference is not entirely due to the incompetence of
the editor, but can be partly attributed to events in Eastern Europe in
1989 and 1990. In July 1990 Albania seems at a crossroads. Her
previous history, as this volume demonstrates, is so odd that there is
no way in which we can foretell which path she will follow.
Each author in this volume is responsible for his own contribution.
Proper names, with the aid of the maps, have been standardised, but
there has been no standardisation of views. This is after all a prelimi-
nary study. Other such studies are desirable in the coming years. We
are, for instance, unable to include a paper delivered at the confer-
ence by Mrs Falaschi, on the relationship between the Albanian and
Etruscan languages. A linguistic survey of Albania is overdue. It
would also be interesting to know more about Albanian religion at a
time when the ban on information about Albania and religion in
Albania is apparently being lifted. We welcome suggestions for other
volumes in this series.
x
Notes on the Contributors
William Bland was for many years Secretary of the Albanian Society.
He has published a guidebook on Albania and a bibliography of
books about the country.
Renzo Falaschi, after over thirty years in the Italian diplomatic

service, in which he rose to the rank of Ambassador, has used his
experience of legal and diplomatic life to write and lecture about
history and political problems. His wife, Nermin Vlora Falaschi, has
devoted herself to the study of the Pelasgic language and its direct
derivations, such as Illyrian and Etruscan, and has published some
twenty-five books.
Nicholas Hammond, Emeritus Professor of Greek in the University

of Bristol, is an Honorary Fellow of Clare College, University of
Cambridge. He travelled extensively in pre-war Albania and Greece,
and has published books on the archaeology and history of both
countries.
Anthony Harding is Professor of Archaeology at the University of

Durham. He is a specialist on the Bronze Age in Europe and in
particular on the connections between the Mediterranean and the
north of Europe in prehistory. A participant in the First Colloquium
of Illyrian Studies in Tirana in 1972, he has in recent years been
involved in extensive travel and research in Yugoslavia.
Stephen Hill is a Lecturer in the Joint School of Classics and Ancient

History at the University of Warwick with a particular interest in late
Roman and early Byzantine archaeology. He has travelled widely in
Turkey and the Balkans and has conducted extensive archaeological
fieldwork in Turkey.
Raymond Hutchings is the editor of Abstracts Soviet and East Euro-

pean Series. The author of seven books about the Soviet Union, he
has also travelled widely in south-eastern Europe, including three
visits to Albania. He reads nine European languages.
Alexander Lopasic is a Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department

Xl
xii Notes on the Contributors
of Sociology, University of Reading. He has done fieldwork in

Nigeria, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balkans (on the Negroes and
Albanians of Montenegro). He has published articles on the cults and
traditional art of southern Nigeria, and on the role of traditional
values and morals systems amongst different Mediterranean peoples,
including the Albanians.
Michael E. Martin is a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research

in the Humanities in the University of Birmingham. He has con-
tributed articles on aspects of Venetian and Byzantine history to
learned journals, and lectured for several British and overseas uni-
versities. He has travelled widely in the former Byzantine lands.
Tom Winnirrith is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Warwick in

the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and is
Director of the university's European Humanities Research Centre.
He has published books on English literature and the classics, and
has travelled widely in the Balkans.
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Map 2 Albania in Medieval Times

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1 Introduction
Tom Winnifrith
Many books about Albania begin with a quotation attributed to

Edward Gibbon to the effect that Albania 'is a country which within
the sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America'.l I have
been unable to trace this quotation either within The Decline and Fall
a/the Roman Empire, in Gibbon's Autobiography, or his numerous
letters and journals, but one can see its aptness 200 years ago when
Italy was part of the grand tour and America unexplored. Today,
thanks to easy communication and the television screen, the interior
of America is now fairly well known to people all over the world,
whereas the south-east corner of Italy is oddly inaccessible although
not as inaccessible as Albania which it faces. One hears blase tourists
saying that they were thinking of going to Brazil or Belize or even
Brindisi and Bari because they were bored of the Bahamas and
Barbados; one rarely finds such tourists boasting that they were
thinking of going to Albania. For a variety of reasons Albania has
retained its reputation for being mysterious, unknown and unap-
proachable, even though the global village has shrunk, and formerly
remote parts of the world like Australia and California have become
all too familiar.
After the second half of 1989 it is extremely difficult to be confident
about anything in Eastern Europe. Riots and revolutions, dictators
toppling, barriers falling and frontiers opening from Berlin to the
Caucasus make it seem improbable that Albania will remain quite so
remote as it was at the time of the conference in April 1988 which
gave rise to this book. At the beginning of 1990 there were rumours
that Albania had been infected by the example of its neighbours.
Many thought that these rumours were unfounded and had been
provoked by a certain amount of wishful thinking, but in the autumn
of 1989 the same was being said of Romania. 2 In July 1990 there were
considerable emigrations from Albania to the West, but these had
none of the spontaneous joy of similar movements in East Germany.
Since this is a book more about the past than the present it does not
really matter that there may be sudden changes in Albania in the
immediate future. But the history of Albania is instructive for those
1
2 Perspectives on Albania
wishing to know about the present and the future. Albania's immedi-
ate neighbours are Yugoslavia and Greece. Both countries for differ-
ent reasons do not fit into the category of communist countries which
suddenly revolted against their past ways, and this may be one reason
why the Albanian communist regime is less likely to fall than those in
Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Yugosla-
via has two major problems on its hands, galloping inflation and the
growing battle between the various nationalities, most conspicuously
in the largely Albanian-speaking province of Kosovo, adjacent to
Albania. But, though nationalism has been a force hostile to Com-
munism in Soviet Russia and to a lesser extent in East Germany and
Romania, it is a factor which the fiercely communist and defiantly
nationalist regime in Albania would hope to operate in its favour. For
this reason, though a week is a long time in politics, we hope that the
following account of the history of Albania from prehistoric times
will not be too affected by recent political developments.
It is possible that in the next two years Albania may be opened up
to foreign visitors. Even now one may visit the country and read
about its history. Tourists see the country under the guidance of the
officials of Albtourist who explain the history of Albania, inoffens-
ively but firmly, in the light of the official policy of the Albanian
government. Such guidance tends to produce either a somewhat
uncritical acceptance of the party line or a somewhat uninformed
resistance against it. Histories of Albania have tended to follow the
same pattern. In an attempt not to fall into this mistake we have tried
to present a number of different viewpoints in this volume: it is not
just their chronological period which separates Dr Hutchings and
Mr Bland.
By doing this we inevitably risk accusations of a piecemeal ap-
proach. This book is not a history of Albania, but a collection of
different outlooks on different periods of Albanian history, prelimin-
ary studies for a history which will be difficult to write. It is difficult
to write the history of a race which has spent so much time under
foreign domination and whose records as well as being difficult to find
are usually to be found in the language of these foreign invaders.
Again, while the real hero of these pages must be the Albanian
people who succeeded in preserving their identity and winning their
independence, inevitably it is the captains and kings who dominate
this story. Caesar and Pompey, Robert Guiscard and Alexius Com-
nenus, Mussolini and Hitler all play an important part in the history
of Albania, although of course none of them were Albanians. Alba-
Introduction 3
nian leaders like Ismail Qemal, King Zog and even Enver Hoxha
receive extended treatment in this volume, although this treatment
may not be popular in all quarters.
The concentration on Albanian leaders rather than on the Alba-
nian people is a consequence of the foreign presence in Albanian
history and the reliance on foreign sources of Albanian historians.
The unreliability of Albanian sources and the uncertainty of judge-
ments about Albanian heroes can be shown even more dramatically
in the case of two central figures in Albanian history who for one
reason or another receive only passing mentions in this book.
Skanderbeg and Fan Noli are figures rightly revered outside and
inside Albania. As the man who kept the Turks at bay for over
twenty years when the Ottoman armies were sweeping through
Europe virtually unopposed, Skanderbeg wins admiration as a defen-
der of liberty and European civilisation. For twenty years Skander-
beg was leader of a united and free Albania in a brief interlude after
nearly 2,000 years of Greek, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Norman and
Serbian occupation, and before over 400 years of Turkish rule fol-
lowed in turn by the period when the country was at the mercy of the
Great Powers. It is not therefore surprising that he is the hero of
Albanian history, even though his aristocratic, autocratic and Chris-
tian background seems slightly out of place in modern Albania. It is
however possible to cast some doubts on details of Skanderbeg's
story, inflated by inaccurate historians, nationalistic propaganda
machines and romantic poets to legendary proportions. It is even
possible to speculate on whether Skanderbeg was really quite the
good influence on Albania's history that legend has made him out to
be, since his campaigns of heroic but bloody resistance, though it
resulted in a series of victories, was ultimately unsuccessful, and he
could in a way be said to resemble another general emanating from
Albania, Pyrrhus of Epirus, who gave victory a bad name. In spite of
his ignorance of Albania, Gibbon's verdict on Skanderbeg is not an
altogether unfair one. Gibbon wished in a memorable footnote for
'some simple, authentic memoirs of a friend of Skanderbeg, which
would introduce me to the man, the time and the place'. He deplored
'the old and national history of Marinus Barletius . . . where his
gaudy and cumbersome robes are stuck with many false jewels'. 2 In
his main text Gibbon sourly remarks that 'the bashaws whom he
encountered, the armies that he discomfited, and the 3,000 Turks
who were slain by his single hand must be weighed in the scales of
suspicious criticism'. Equally sourly, but in a way more fairly, Gibbon
notes that Skanderbeg died a fugitive on Venetian territory and asks

pertinently whether 'the instant ruin of his country may redound to
the hero's glory'.3
The case of Fan Noli is more complex. Although we have consider-
ably more evidence about his career and personality, not all of it has
yet been sifted. As an Orthodox Bishop who spent a great deal of his
life in America, it may seem surprising that Noli is respected in
modern Albania, and yet the odd mention of Fan Noli works won-
ders with Albanian customs officials who are proud to acknowledge
not only Albania's first democratically-elected prime minister, but
also the translator of Shakespeare and a considerable poet in his own
right. Rather cruelly one can ask how many presidents from the
middle of America or prime ministers in Europe have similar epis-
copal or poetic qualifications. Equally cruelly Fan Noli's brief period
of rule in the latter half of 1924 can be shown to be a total failure. He
offended the well-meaning United Nations, he offended the Great
Powers by acknowledging Soviet Russia, he offended the landowners
of Albania by promising reform, and the workers on the land by not
achieving it. With admirable honesty he admitted the latter two
faults. Nevertheless Fan Noli is still the one name that is regarded
with equal veneration by the many political factions interested in
modern Albania who take the name of democracy, perhaps in vain. 4
This volume begins not in the turbulent twentieth century after the
birth of Christ, but well before the equally turbulent twentieth
century before Christ. The first two contributions both refer to the
vexed question of the Illyrian origin of the Albanian nation. Nat-
urally enough Albanian patriots are anxious to stress this origin, for
which the existence of the Albanian language provides fairly strong
evidence. Occasionally their anxiety had led them to emphasise the
Illyrian presence too strongly, especially in connection with the
artefacts which provide the archaeological evidence for this period.
Dr Harding's and Professor Hammond's a.rticles provide a useful
corrective to this anxiety, although it should be stressed that Alba-
nian chauvinism is relatively mild when compared with that of other
Balkan historians who have claimed in vain and in spite of consider-
able evidence to the contrary that Aristotle was a Bulgarian or that
Alexander the Great was a Vlach.s
The great civilisations of Greece and Rome brought Albania into
the forefront of recorded history, even though the Illyrian people
living in the mountainous hinterland of Albania are unlikely to have
taken much notice of the conflict between Epidamnus and Corcyra
Introduction 5
which precipitated the Peleponnesian war; the campaigns of Alexan-

der and Philip and Perseus of Macedon; the struggle between Caesar
and Pompey at Dyrrachium; or even the presence of the future
Emperor Augustus at Apollonia at the time of his uncle's death.
Some Albanians in the southern part of the country may have fought
for or against Alexander or Perseus and have taken part in one or
more of the three campaigns at the end of the Roman Republic which
ended near but not on Albanian territory at Philippi, Pharsalus and
Actium. Albania's proximity to Italy made it important as Rome
established its power over the Balkans, and then again when various
Roman leaders fought for power in the Balkans. The establishment
of the Via Egnatia from the alternative ports of entry at Dyrrachium
and Apollonia, then through what is still the only serviceable route
through central Albania from Elbasan (Scampi) to Lychnidus on
Lake Ochrid was clearly important for Albania in antiquity.
There are few records of the country in late antiquity. The mel-
ancholy chroniclers of barbarian invasions are interested in the fate
of Constantinople, and occasionally in that of classical Greece, but
have little to say about areas to the north, threatened more fre-
quently, but described more vaguely in an antiquarian fashion as
Moesia, Macedonia, Dardania and Illyricum. There were difficult
campaigns in the interior about the time when the Danube frontier
was first seriously threatened at the end of the second century, and
when it finally broke at the end of the sixth. On occasions the Via
Egnatia ceased to be viable as a route through the empire. On
occasions the various divisions of the empire left Albania, close to
Italy, and yet clearly in the Balkans, oddly divided between East and
West. On occasions, as with the invasion of Alaric the Visigoth,
Albania found itself at the mercy of a barbarian invader.
In spite of these vicissitudes, Albania would seem to have survived
under Roman rule for nearly 800 years. There then followed the Slav
invasions at the end of the sixth century. Various explanations can be
offered as to why, alone among the various nationalities of the
Balkans, the Albanians preserved their original language, not adopt-
ing as they did in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria the language of the Slav
invaders, or retaining the learned languages of antiquity as they did
in Romania and Greece. The rugged remoteness of Albania, set well
away from the main north-south invasion routes, must be taken into
account. There were few obvious attractions in the barren mountains
and marshy plains of the western Balkans. The presence even to this
day of scattered pockets of Latin-speaking Vlachs in the Central
Balkans and the survival of Greek in the Southern Balkans would

seem to indicate that Slav could be resisted. Finally there is a certain
amount of evidence that Byzantine authority was maintained in
coastal districts on both sides of the Southern Adriatic even during
the darkest days of the Slav invasions. Albanian may well have
survived because of the conflicting claims of Greek, Latin and Slav.
So much of Albania's history is obscure in the Byzantine period
that Dr Hill has done well to construct an article to cover the
medieval period. Dr Martin concentrates very reasonably on the brief
interludes during this period when Albania emerged into the lime-
light as the battleground between the Normans of Italy and the
reviving Byzantine empire, and the declining Byzantine power and
the rising star of Venice. In the 400 years before the Ottoman
invasion, different parts of Albania fell at different times under
Byzantine, Serbian, Bulgarian, Venetian and even Angevin rule,
while other parts enjoyed a precarious independence. One would
need many different maps to record the shifting frontiers of this
period, and there is no very good way of discovering from these maps
or from contemporary chronicles much of the history of the Albanian
people. It is very difficult to conjecture the extent of the district
where Albanian was spoken as a first language. The Latins, the Slavs
and the Greeks each had a church and a written language; without
these advantages the Albanians are doomed to obscurity. The Byzan-
tine, short-lived Serbian and Bulgarian, and long-lasting Ottoman
empires were all multi-national states, and it is anachronistic to
expect the kind of ethnic consciousness which would lead to the
national uprisings of the nineteenth century.
Nevertheless the period between the breakdown of Byzantine
authority in the twelfth century and the establishment of Ottoman
rule at the end of the fifteenth century is important in the history of
Albania. The Byzantines and Normans were principally interested,
as Dr Martin shows, in the coast and in the Via Egnatia. The
Albanians were free to roam through the interior of the Balkan
peninsula, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we hear of
many Albanian incursions into the centre of Greece. Albanians are
often confused with Vlachs in the records ofthese incursions, and our
Byzantine authorities are unlikely to have been interested in the
exact language the invaders spoke. We can note in passing that many
of them probably in fact spoke more than one. Relics of these
invasions can still be found in the Albanian speakers of Attica and
Introduction 7
Boeotia, a dying fragment of what was once a large Albanian minor-

ity in Greece. 6
A more controversial area of Albanian expansion is Kosovo in
Yugoslavia. Dr Lopasic gives us a fascinating insight into the customs
of this region, but rather tactfully avoids, as I do myself, too close an
investigation into its history, a sensitive subject at the present time.
The very high proportion of Albanians in the Kosovo area is clearly
an embarassment to all concerned. The rise in the birth rate of
Albanian families and the departure of Serbs, discomfited at being a
minority in what they regard as their historic homeland, have in-
creased the disproportion. Kosovo was the scene in 1389 of a great
battle between the Turks and a Christian army led by Prince Lazar, a
Serb. Lazar lost the battle and his life, but the event was celebrated in
many a Serbian lay, and when in 1912 Serbian soldiers in the Balkan
wars recaptured this area they kissed the sacred ground of the
battlefield.
South of Kosovo lies the town of Prizren, almost on the border of
Yugoslavia and Albania. In this town the street signs are oddly in
Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Prizren is much less Alba-
nian than areas to the north and the east, having only 69.6 per cent of
its population who registered themselves as Albanian in the last
Yugoslav census, as opposed to the 99.8 per cent in the district of
Glogovac in the centre of Kosovo. Nevertheless Prizren is an import-
ant town in Albanian history, the site of the first meeting of Albanian
nationalists, and the triple street signs draw attention to a number of
factors which must be borne in mind when considering this history in
the modern period. 7
We would think it odd if south-eastern England was largely inha-
bited by Belgians with a few French settlers and a slightly greater
number of English people attached sentimentally to historic sites like
Hastings and Canterbury. And yet this is the position in south-
western Yugoslavia where the Albanians vastly outnumber the Serbs
in spite of the presence of the historic Serbian sites of Pee and
Kosovo, the latter like Hastings commemorating a defeat. When we
talk of Albanians in the modern period we are talking about people
who live in a much larger area than the modern state of Albania.
Albanian nationalists in the nineteenth century hoped for a union of
the four vilayets of Shkoder, Kosovo, Monastir and Ioannina to be
either an autonomous part of the empire or an independent state.
Only Shkoder is in modern Albania and curiously the people of this
vila yet were much less active nationalists than the inhabitants of
Kosovo and Monastir (Bitola), now in Yugoslavia, or the inhabitants
of Ioannina, now in Greece.
Prizren was the scene of an early congress where the Albanians
declared their hand against the Turks, but the presence of a Turkish
population in this Yugoslav town is a useful reminder of the fact that
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Albanians spent as
much time fighting for the Turks as they did against them. Even when
they were fighting against them they were sometimes fighting to
prevent what indeed happened in Prizren and elsewhere, the incor-
poration of Albanian speakers in the newly-independent Balkan
states. It seems odd that a combination of Great Power realpolitik
and sentimental memories of fabled battles long ago should have
secured Kosovo for Serbia, but this is what happened. Unfortunately
the history of the Kosovo region in the late medieval period is
extremely obscure. It is not clear whether in the fourteenth century
during the time of the Nemanjid empire the population of Kosovo
was predominantly Slav or Albanian. There are contemporary re-
cords from imperial archives, but they are ambiguous. Thus the
records of Decani only name one Albanian village, and nine Vlach
villages, with the implication that the rest of the villages were Ser-
bian. On the other hand many of the proper names in these appar-
ently Serbian and Vlach villages seem to be Albanian. 8
Serbian historians allege that the Albanian presence in Kosovo
came as a result of the Ottoman invasions. As the Serbians retreated
northwards to lands that remained independent (Belgrade did not fall
to the Turks until 1529) so, it is argued, the Albanians expanded in
their wake. Certainly the Ottoman advance caused major changes in
population. The frontier was constantly shifting, as indeed were
loyalties in the battle between East and West. Both sides in this battle
tended to reward their followers with lands near the frontier. We find
Serbian communities and Vlach communities unexpectedly far north,
probably placed there by the Hungarian and Turkish generals as
frontier guards. Albanian collaboration with the Turk may have been
rewarded in the same way, although in the fifteenth century the
Albanians fought against them. Alternatively the Albanians may
have expanded northwards of their own initiative to fill a vacuum left
by the retreating Serbs.
On the other hand, the Albanian diaspora in the late medieval
period took place in so many directions that it would be rash to
assume that before this period Albanian speakers were confined to
Introduction 9
the modern state of Albania. We have already noted the wide extent
of Albanian invasions into Greece. The campaigns of Skanderbeg
can hardly have been bloodless. Skanderbeg himself was an early
example of an Albanian taken to the Turkish court, and we find
plenty of examples in Turkish history of more loyal Albanian ser-
vants of the Ottoman court. The janissaries too must have removed
large sections of the Albanian population. Finally the large and
interesting Arberesh community in Italy, where Albanians first seem
to have settled after the Ottoman attacks, is a further testimony to
the extent and the vigour of the Albanian population at the end of the
middle ages.
It was from Italy that much of the support for Albanian indepen-
dence initially came. By the end of the nineteenth century Albanians
had spread all over the ramshackle Turkish empire, and further afield
to places like America, another breeding-ground of nationalist fer-
vour. But the road to independence was a difficult one. It is the
object of the last three papers in this collection to show three stages
along this road. Signor Falaschi and Mr Hutchings, deliberately
briefly, provide an insight into two figures, important but contro-
versial, in the struggle. Other figures like the Frasheri brothers or
Fan Noli himself could have been chosen. The comic opera story of
Wilhelm of Wied has not been written in full, and the story of how
the throne of Albania was offered to the England cricketer C.B. Fry
is both an amusing footnote to Albanian history and a tragic insight
into how this history has been dominated, if not written, in an
insensitive fashion by forces that seem irrelevant to the people of that
country.
Both Ismail Qemal and Zog suffered, as their biographers honestly
admit in their sympathetic handling of their subjects, because they
were associated with foreign powers. Such an association was almost
inevitable in the First World War where the history of newly indepen-
dent Albania was most peculiar, divided fairly rapidly between the
opposing sides. Again there is no very good account in English of
Albania in this war. The British army held the eastern part of the
Salonica front, although even their campaign here is not exactly well
known. The Italians and French were active in Albania, the latter
indeed setting up a short-lived republic at Kon;e, whose president.
had the impressive Greek name of Themistocles, but who was shot as
an Austrian spy.
From the time of the First World War until very recently Greece
claimed part of southern Albania, owing to the presence of a Greek-
speaking minority there. There is also an Albanian-speaking minority

in Greece, and no frontier can really do justice to the ethnographical
complexity of this area, although the story of the delineation of this
frontier after both World Wars has yet to be written. 9 Unlike other
Balkan nationalities Albania has a good record in its treatment of its
own minorities, and recognising this fact, Greece has now abandoned
any claims to what used to be called northern Epirus. Unfortunately
for any Albanian claims to territory in Yugoslavia, the frontier was
changed briefly during the obviously unpopular Italian occupation in
the Second World War, and it seems unlikely that the large numbers
of Albanians in Macedonia and Kosovo will ever become part of the
Republic of Albania.
Various British accounts of the Second World War in Albania do
exist. It is odd that Albania should have attracted such a colourful
cast. Evelyn Waugh's father-in-law, Aubrey Herbert, was a staunch
friend of the Albanians in the First World War, and a great deal more
successful than Waugh as a Balkan warrior in the Second World War.
The botanist Margaret Hasluck was a British spy right up to the
Second World War, in which she supported the movement favour-
able to King Zog. The actor Antony Quayle, who wrote a novel
about Albania, was one of those flown in to support the partisan
movement. Professor Hammond from the scholarly side of the groves
of academe and Patrick Leigh Fermor from its more colourful side
both supported the Albanian resistance. Julian Amery, son of the
man whose speech helped Churchill to power, and son-in-law of
Harold Macmillan, wrote perhaps the most interesting account of
Albania during the war in Sons of the Eagle and Forward Mqrch.lO
Finally and most sinisterly Kim Philby seems to have singlehandedly
scuppered some probably futile attempts to overthrow the Albanian
regime just after the Second World War.
In his account of the present state of Albania Mr Bland wisely
eschews the drama engendered by more exciting accounts. It would
be a help to have an objective description of Albania in the Second
World War, but such an account is unlikely to appear in the near
future. The Second World War in Yugoslavia and Greece is still the
subject of bitterly partisan histories, which are in their turn savagely
attacked, and for these two countries the evidence is more readily
available than for Albania, which has kept its cards close to its chest.
This is perhaps a pity in view of the still burning issue of the Corfu
incident, where Yugoslavia rather than Albania was almost certainly
responsible for the mining of a British ship, this leading to the seizing
Introduction 11
of King Zog's gold, still apparently in the vaults of the Banks of

England. l l British scholars interested in Albania are right to feel
annoyed that in spite of Balkan warriors like Aubrey Herbert, a
rather more popular figure than Kurt Waldheim, it is 'more difficult
for them to pursue research into Illyrian antiquities than it is for
German or Austrian scholars.
The history of Albania since the Second World War is largely the
history of Enver Hoxha. There is a book in English on Hoxha by Jon
Halliday,12 and, though it has no pretensions to boring academic
standards, it is a lively, interesting and surprisingly sympathetic
study. It brings out Hoxha's wit, intelligence and charm, while of
course it is not nearly as friendly as Mr Bland to the cause which
Hoxha represented. Hoxha did claim to support the people of Alba-
nia, and support them he did, first with, then against, British,
Yugoslav, Russian and Chinese legations, needing all his wit and
charm to drop his erstwhile political allies at the opportune moment.
Of course in the process some Albanians suffered. The execution of
Coti Xoxe in 1948 and the suicide of Mehmet Shehu in 1981 are not
mentioned by Mr Bland, and why should they be in his account of the
improvement in Albanian standards.
The life of Enver Hoxha is yet another problem set to students of
Albanian history, and one not yet properly answered by them. Even
the warmest admirer of Hoxha, whose voluminous works cover most
aspects of the humanities, cannot but admit that he has not solved all
these problems. This introduction attempts to raise difficulties in the
history of Albania which the separate essays do not succeed in
answering. Nevertheless they do succeed in showing the difficulties of
any answers in Albanian history, and it is as a prolegomenon to this
difficult study that we offer this preliminary effort.
All Balkan countries badly need objective historians. In all too
many cases the history of the past has in Balkan studies been
rewritten by historians of the present. In order to understand events
in 1390 one has to understand the slant of writers in 1930, whose
attitude has both been conditioned by events in the recent past, and
amplified and distorted by romantic propaganda and a particular
political stance. Albania has been unfortunate in that the romance of
her story has appealed to many, and the propaganda in her history
has been peculiarly partisan. This book attempts to redress the
balance.
NOTES
1. The quotation, without exact reference, is to be found in F. Konitza, The

Rock Garden of South Eastern Europe (Boston, 1957), p. 12; also in
A. Logoreci, The Albanians (London, 1977), p. 1. and P. Prifti, Socialist
Albania since 1944 (Massachusetts, 1978), p. 1.
2. In April 1990 I met a considerable number of Vlach emigres from
Albania in the United States. Some had left Albania for New York and
Bridgeport after the First World War, while others had passed from
Albania to Romania which they had left with difficulty in the decades
after the Second World War. Almost all of these Vlachs still had relatives
living in Albania, and many of them had had telephone calls in the spring
of 1990 from these relatives. Something is clearly stirring in Albania.
3. E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1906)
vol. 7, pp. 171-5. Gibbon's call for a less partisan approach than that of
Barletius would seem to have been answered by the discovery of two
other contemporary sources, the Historia Scanderbegi by Antivarino,
mentioned by G .M. Biemmi, Historia de Giorgio Castrioti, detto
Scander-begu (Brescia, 1742) and the chronicle of John Musachi, re-
corded by C. Hopf in Chroniques greco-romanes inedites ou peu connues
(Berlin, 1874). A. Gegaj, L'Albanie et l'Invasion turque au XV siecle
(Paris, 1937) draws heavily upon these two sources, as does F. Noli,
George Castrioti Scanderbeg (New York, 1947) in spite of the hostility of
historians like ably and Babinger to Antivarino and Musachi as for-
geries. The unreliability of primary sources explains the ease with which
history has become a national myth. It also may explain the unwilling-
ness of modern scholars to enter the arena of Skanderbeg studies.
4. J. Swire, The Rise of a Kingdom (London, 1979) pp. 443-4. There is a
very hostile portrait of Fan Noli, unfairly bitter about his disloyalty to his
Greek origins, and pro-Communist leanings in P. Ruchas, Albania's
Captives (Chicago, 1965) pp. 20-7 and a similarly biased account in
H. Baerlein, Under the Acroceraunian Mountains (London, 1922).
5. See T. Winnifrith, The Vlachs (London, 1987) for chauvinism in Balkan
history.
6. E. Hamp, in Current Trends in Linguistics, ed. T. Sebeok (Paris, 1972)
vol. 9, pp. 1626-92 gives a good account of Albanian speakers in the
Balkans and Italy. In Greece there is a considerable decline in the
number of Albanian speakers owing to improvements in education,
communications and the nationalistic policy of successive Greek govern-
ments.
7. Statistics for the ethnical composition of Yugoslavia can be found in
I. Bertie, Veliki Geografski Atlas Jugoslavje (Zagreb, 1987). One would
normally be dubious about such statistics and of such dubious entities as
Jugoslaveni and Muslimani, but the overwhelming majority of Albanians
in Kosovo is attested by these statistics in spite of these doubts.
8. We can compare the very different essays published in the volume
published by the Academy of Sciences of the PSR of Albania, The
Albanians and their Territories (Tirana, 1985), with a volume published
by the Serbian Academy (with French translation) Les /llyriens et les
Introduction 13
Albanais (Belgrade, 1988). This latter volume covers the whole period
from antiquity to the Turkish period. The last essay, that by S. Cirkovic,
'Les Albanais a la lumiere des sources historiques des Slaves du Sud', pp.
341-59, reveals the difficulty that there are not enough Albanian sources,
and that Slav sources are not very informative about Albanian names.
Albanian and Serb sources resolve this problem in different ways.
9. N. Petsalis Diomedis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (Salo-
nica, 1978) gives a brief account of Themistocles's career and elsewhere a
longer though pro-Greek account of the Albanian-Greek ethnological
frontier. Ruchas is more pro-Greek and treats Themistocles Germenji
even more cruelly.
10. J. Amery, Sons of the Eagle, (London, 1948); Forward March, (London,
1963).
11. L. Gardiner, The Eagle Spreads His Claws (Edinburgh, 1966).
12. J. Halliday, The Artful Albanian: Memoirs of Enver Hoxha (London,
1986).
2 The Prehistoric
Background of Illyrian
Albania
Anthony Harding
The peoples whom the Greeks and Romans called Illyrians occupied
an extensive tract of territory bordering on the Adriatic stretching
from Epirus in the south and Macedonia in the south-east to Istria in
the north. Such a large area naturally contained considerable diver-
sity in its cultural make-up, and the ancients regarded the term
'Illyrian' as a wider whole within which smaller tribal groupings were
to be discerned - Iapodians, Liburnians, Dalmatians, Taulantii, and
others. The earliest references to the Illyrians in the ancient authors
emanate from around 500 BC, in the works of Herodotus and
Hecataeus, but it is with Thucydides, around 400, that the Illyrians
come to occupy a real place on the world stage. One of the causes of
the Peloponnesian War was the quarrel between Corcyra and Epi-
damnus (later Dyrrhachium, modern Durres). Epidamnus, we are
told, lay in territory occupied by the Taulantii, 'barbarians, an
Illyrian people'; the Corcyraeans in their attack 'took the Illyrians
along with them'. The geographers Strabo (c. 54 BC-24 AD) and
Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) give a more detailed account of the
disposition of the various tribes, and the latter's reference to 'Illyrii
proprie dieti', which seems to separate Illyrians properly so called
from a wider grouping of tribes commonly called Illyrian, has caused
much discussion. Certainly the Roman province of Illyricum, which
extended from the Danube to the Macedonian border on the Alba-
nian Drin was far greater than the area recognised by historians and
geographers as actually having been occupied by 'real Illyrians:, but
opinions differ as to whether these were originally one tribe which
gave its name to a wider grouping, or whether the name refers to a
linguistic unit, composed of a number of distinct tribes.
Whatever the truth of these matters, it is clear from any analysis
that the territory of modern Albania was occupied by Illyrians of one
kind or another, as was much of the Dalmatian coast. Even after 168
BC, when Illyria became subject to Rome, the old tribal groupings
14
Prehistoric Background of Illyrian Albania 15
continued in being, so that a large measure of local differentiation

was still visible. To themselves, as to the Greeks and Romans, the
Illyrians were a race apart.
This separateness, discernible from the time of the earliest records,
must go back at least some way in time before the advent of history:
nothing the historians wrote suggested that the Illyrians had arrived
in their territories at all recently. This takes us into the realm of
prehistoric archaeology, and the remains of Illyrian civilisation that
survive on Albanian territory. Where are the forebears of the Tau-
lantii of 431 BC to be seen in archaeological record? When did
'Illyrians' get to their later homeland, and at what point can we
suppose that an Illyrian ethnic identity took shape?
This question, so crucial to an understanding of the processes that
led to the formation of the Illyrian nation as it eventually was, has
been answered in a number of different ways. Traditionally it has
been supposed that the beginnings of the Illyrian peoples are to be
discerned at the point where the supposedly characteristic elements
of their material culture - armour, dress ornaments and weapons -
begin to appear in the archaeological record, that is, in the Early Iron
Age, quite early in the first millennium BC. Some have therefore
supposed that a movement of peoples into the Balkans occurred at
the end of the Bronze Age, at roughly the same time as the supposed
movements of the Celts into central Europe. Others, notably Yugo-
slav archaeologists, have identified the time of the transition to the
Bronze Age from the Eneolithic as the period when the Illyrian racial
entity began to form. A variant on this is that favoured by Albanian
archaeologists; according to them, the Bronze Age shows a contin-
uum of culture both within itself and from the preceding Eneo-
lithic, as the continuity of the site at Maliq indicates. This would
imply that the people who later became the Illyrians were present in
Albania already in the third millennium, and since there is no specific
indication of an arrival at the end of the Neolithic, before that. This
view coincides well with the political desirability of proving an
unbroken continuity of occupation from earliest times through to the
Illyrian state and, eventually, to the Albanians.
In the last few years these matters have taken on a renewed
importance thanks to a new analysis of the problem by A.C.
Renfrew. 1 Proceeding from a quite different starting point - the
problem of the spread of Indo-European languages - he has sought to
introduce Indo-European speakers, ancestral to Greek, Illyrian and
other languages, at the start of the Neolithic age at the time of the
spread of farming. Renfrew proceeds from the very reasonable

premise that only at this point was there a major and widely-attested
movement of people sufficient to account for the major language
change that must have occurred. If this suggestion were to be proven
correct, then the Albanian position would receive major support as
far as a high antiquity for Illyrian speakers in 'Illyria' is concerned.
Critical appraisal of Renfrew's thesis is complex, and beyond the
scope of this discussion, but the positive point demands an answer:
granted that the farming way of life spread through Europe at the
beginning of the Neolithic - which everyone accepts - what archae-
ological echo can we expect to find? New sites, new artefact types,
certainly; but what are the implications in ethnic and linguistic terms?
Opinions may differ on the extent of new population that might have
entered particular regions of Europe, but it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that at least some movement took place, presumably
introducing a language that was different from whatever existed
beforehand. Though there may be objections on linguistic grounds to
supposing that the language in question was Indo-European, or rather
its hypothetical ancestor, there must have been a language; and
though we need not suppose that the traveller through Neolithic
Europe could make himself understood wherever he went just by
speaking 'Indo-European' -like some prehistoric Esperanto -linguisti-
cally we would expect structural similarities between the different parts
of the family of languages which it is assumed would have grown up.
A modification of this theory has been suggested by A. and S.
Sherratt. 2 According to this view, the hypothetical common 'proto-
Indo-European language' (*PIE) which, linguists posit, must have
been preceded by a yet more hypothetical 'pre-proto-Indo-European
language' (**PPIE), or group of languages, which gave rise to *PIE
and which, according to these authors, 'it is logical to postulate ...
achieved prominence as a result of the primary spread of farming' ,
spreading into Anatolia, the Balkans and central Europe 'before
meeting the resistance of native populations in western and northern
Europe'. This would be followed in the fourth and third millennia by
a common 'coastal koine' around the Black Sea, and perhaps the
Aegean, where *PIE formed, leading to extinct forms of Greek,
Illyrian and other languages. Finally, in the Bronze Age (third-
second millennia) the full form of Greek and Illyrian would have
developed, and in roughly those areas where they are later found.
If one follows the line taken by either Renfrew or A. and S.
Sherratt, one would conclude that Illyrian speakers were present in
Albania by the second millennium BC at the latest, and their immedi-

ate linguistic predecessors by at least one millennium, probably two
or even three, before that. Since this coincides with at least some
variants of the position taken by Albanian and Yugoslav scholars, we
might imagine that the matter can be regarded as settled. This is to
overestimate the confidence with which speculative statements about
the remote past can be accepted, but we can certainly take it as
reasonable that Indo-European speakers, ancestral to the later Illy-
rians, were present in Albania by 2000 BC at the latest. The period of
time to consider, therefore, is the 1500 years between that point and
the first attestation of historical Illyrians.
1500 years is a long time for a historian, less so for a prehistoric
archaeologist, but on any analysis, the tempo of change for much of
the forty-five or so generations involved was slow. Certainly it is
difficult for archaeology to divide that time up except into rather
broad chunks. This is in increasing contrast to the situation in many
other parts of Europe, where the spectacular advances in the effec-
tive application of dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating make
the exact specification of site and period duration commonplace. This
situation must eventually affect Albania too, but for the moment
there are neither tree-ring nor radiocarbon dates, although it is
known that suitable material for both has been recovered in excava-
tions. Since it is unlikely that Albanian archaeological science will be
able to produce dates by these methods itself in the foreseeable
future, outside help will be needed, but for that to become possible a
change in political attitudes will first have to take place. So for the
moment we can only accept the situation as it is, and proceed using
cross-dating and dating by analogy.
The period 2000--500 BC covers the Bronze Age and the early part
of the Iron Age. General accounts have appeared in a number of
works, some in English? The salient features may be briefly men-
tioned. The most important site, or rather group of sites, for the first
half of the period is the settlement of Maliq, 4 in an upland basin near
Korce. This was at least in part a 'pile' site, i.e. stabilised by means of
long wooden posts driven into the marshy ground. A succession of
layers produced pottery of types that enable comparisons with areas
to north and south to be drawn. Another important sequence is that
from Nezir,5 a cave site in the north-central part of the country,
where strata succeed one another more or less continuously from
Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age.
By around the middle of the second millennium BC, the charac-
I
teristic burial form of inhumation in a pit or stone box (cist) under a

large heaped-up pile of stones (tumulus) was starting to be used.
Many hundreds of these tumuli are known from Albania, and from
adjacent areas of Yugoslavia, especially on the Glasinac plateau of
Bosnia. They cover quite a wide range of dates, but are concentrated
in the later part of the Bronze Age and earlier Iron Age, when they
occur in large groups or cemeteries.
Scores of tumuli have been excavated in Albania in the last forty
years, with the result that tumulus burial is effectively the only known
burial form of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. Frano Prendi
has listed 156 tumuli excavated between 1952 and 1987, in twenty-
eight different localities. 6 The most numerous are in the Mat valley
and the Kukes basin on the middle course of the Drin, both in the
northern half of the country; elsewhere the numbers are small,
though in many localities numerous graves were found in a single
tumulus. Important sites are those at Pazhok in the Devoll valley,
Cepune and Vodhine in the Drinos valley, Bar<; and Ku<; i Zi in the
Kor<;e basin, Prodanit in the south-east, Bajkaj inland from Sarande
in the south-west, and many others. Many were poorly furnished with
objects to accompany the dead, but enough had durable and charac-
teristic material for regularities to be discerned. This is especially the
case where objects imported from Greece are concerned; such finds,
though never numerous, provide valuable fixed points with which the
Albanian sequence can be calibrated against developments in the
outside world.
During the course of the first millennium BC another important
development occurred. Many hilltops were provided with heaped-up
stone surrounding walls; in some areas of Europe the remains of
house foundations may be seen inside the forts thus defined. In
Albania, as elsewhere, some of these hill-forts began in the Bronze
Age, though their main period of occupation was in the Iron Age,
and in some cases they later developed into fully urbanised town
sites under Greek influence. The phenomenon of fort-buildiJ;tg is
widespread in the western Balkans during this period; it may well be
connected with structural processes common to many groups of the
period, and have been one part of a complicated set of developments
that ultimately contributed to the rise of larger political units - the
kingdoms or states known to the classical historians.
Two themes thus stand out as being particularly important during
the period when a recognisably 'Illyrian' nation must have been
taking shape: the relationship between indigenous and 'foreign' craft
production, with the associated question of contact with the south
and the relative importance of southern and northern elements in the
industries seen in Albania; and the rise of nucleated settlement,
usually defended.
INDIGENOUS PRODUCTION AND FOREIGN INFLUENCES
Albanian archaeologists have learnt to live with the fact that the
monuments they study were created not far from, and in some cases
under the influence of, the ancestors of their better-known neigh-
bours to the south, the Greeks. Much of the interest shown by
western European archaeologists in Albania is attributable to a
desire to fill in the edges of the Greek world; certainly it lies within a
Greek-oriented world view. Yet for most, if not all, the period
considered here, there is no reason to think that southern influences
had anything to do with the formation and development of Bronze
and Iron Age society, even if objects were imported from the south.
It is not only the south that was involved; Albanian craftsmen were
influenced to some extent also by areas to the north, though it must
be admitted that this is much harder to define.
In the Bronze Age, there are a very few pieces of imported Greek
pottery,7 of which the best-known is a Vapheio cup of Late Helladic
IIA date, found in Pazhok tumulus I with a rapier, arrowheads, two
golden spiral ornaments and a locally-made amphora. Other certain
pottery imports are all late in the Bronze Age, and not necessarily
imported from very far away: it is known that production of Myce-
naean pottery took place in a variety of areas by 1200 BC, including
Macedonia. There are also a number of imported Mycenaean wea-
pons, mostly swords: these are either of the 'horned' type, as at
Komsi in the Mati area, Varibopi near Fier and Germenj near
Lushnje, the 'lobate' type as at Germenj, Bru~ (Mati), Nenshat
(Shkoder) and Rrethe Bazje (Mati), or the late T-hilted type as seen
at Kelcyre in the Vjose valley. There are three spearheads of Myce-
naean type, from Vajze, Kelcyre and Pazhok, and a large group of
knives which I and others have suggested in the past are Greek-
derived, though their temporal and geographical distribution now
suggests they may have emanated from a wider field. The same may
well be true for a group of double-axes, which seem to be especially

common in the north-west Greek area and possibly indicate local
workshops.
If this does not add up to a great deal of material of southern
provenance, neither is there a great deal in the bronze industry that
can be firmly pinned down as local. An exception is the characteristic
axe type, found mainly in north Albania and Montenegro, usually
called 'Albano-Dalmatian'. A hoard (collective find) of 124 axes was
found at Torovice near Lezhe, the largest bronze hoard yet found in
Albania. s Of these, thirty-two are of the 'Albano-Dalmatian' type,
ninety-one are socketed axes more characteristic of the Middle
Danubian area, and one is of Italian type. Strikingly, virtually all the
axes are miscast, and were presumably intended for recasting. It has
indeed been noted that, while chronologically earlier axes were used
as tools, later examples seem regularly to have been unfinished and
may have been intended mainly as a medium of exchange.
Albanian Bronze Age metalsmiths were clearly aware, at various
times, both of Greek metal products and of 'European' forms, that is,
forms that are distributed widely through Europe. This is particularly
evident in the production of swords, spearheads, pins and safety-pins
(fibulae). At the same time, it is possible to point to objects imported
from the north or west, for instance an Early Bronze Age dagger
found at Vajze which is certainly an import, in all probability from
Italy. In other cases, it is unclear to what extent importation is
involved: many bronze types were created on a Europe-wide basis,
and Albanian smiths took part in these developments no less than
those of other areas.
The bronze industries of the Bronze Age in Albania are thus a
mixture of different elements, local and external; and the external
elements are derived from a variety of sources. In this connection, it
is of interest to note the really very small quantities of metal involved
by comparison with what was being produced in the great river
valleys to the north, in what is today Yugoslavia. Detailed study of
the metalwork has identified a number of phases of deposition,
varying greatly in the amount of metal that was left behind in the
ground. The picture is seen best in northern Yugoslavia (northern
Croatia and Serbia and the Vojvodina), Hungary and Romania, but
echoes are found further south. In those areas, the vast majority of
metalwork was laid down in the period called by some authorities
Hoard Horizon II, equivalent in date to what in Germany would be
called Hallstatt AI; a recent estimate of date for this period, based on
both radiocarbon and dendrochronology, is 1225 to 1155 BC. 9 In this

period, large numbers of such 'hoards' were consigned to the ground,
in most cases with every appearance that they were intended for
eventual recovery. We are talking about literally tonnes of metal
surviving archaeologically, to say nothing of the presumably much
greater amount that has not survived. This phenomenon is, however,
markedly regional in nature. As one goes southwards from the Sava
valley into Bosnia, and further into Montenegro and eventually
Albania, the amounts of metal involved decrease markedly, and
eventually stop altogether. Why? The Torovice hoard is remarkable
not only because it is unique, but also because it was quite different in
kind from the hoards found further north. What is more, it is
demonstrable that it is not merely a question of remoteness from the
main centres of metallurgy, though this was no doubt one element
that played a role as far as the inland fastnesses were concerned: but
if this were the main factor involved, we would not find swords and
other prestige objects occurring with some regularity in the graves of
the area. It is also a question of other factors influencing the depo-
sition practices, technological, social and economic, by no means all
of them even half understood, given the great remove in time and
culture that exists between us and the people of the Bronze Age.
Something of those factors can perhaps be glimpsed in the preval-
ence of swords in graves in Albania, compared with the situation in
Yugoslavia. In the Late Bronze Age, only a handful of the 200 or so
swords that survive in Yugoslavia are known to have been deposited
in graves. Interestingly, several of these are found in southern Serbia
and Kosovo, not far from the Albanian border. By contrast, almost
all the swords in Albania were in graves; none is known to have been
in a hoard. Presumably swords possessed a different symbolic value
in the two different areas, regarded as an everyday artefact in the
north but in the south highly valued and kept as part of the warrior's
treasured fighting equipment.
In the Iron Age, imports from the south continue, sporadically at
first, then with increasing frequency. A lekythos from Ban; with
concentric semicircles on the shoulder is of sub-Mycenaean type
(perhaps dated to the late eleventh century). The settlement at Tren
produced imported sherds from late Proto geometric to Late
Geometric, and a Protocorinthian kotyle of Thapsos type. Else:
where, Thessalian fibulae are found, and a large range of the small
bronze objects (pendants and the like) usuallYI called 'Macedonian'
bronzes. Many of these were no doubt imported into Albania from
areas further east and south; others may have been produced locally.
By the time of the founding of the first Greek colonies (Epidamnus,
627 BC; Apollonia, c. 600 BC), it was quite common for Greek
pottery to be imported, at the colonies obviously, but also at 'native'
sites. Such a situation is paralleled at Vitsa in north-west Greece, not
far from the Albanian frontier, where only small quantities of im-
ported Geometric pottery are present, in distinction to the much
larger quantities of later wares.lO
At the same time, smiths were producing high-quality bronzework
such as the greaves that are known from several parts of the Illyrian
area and are seen at Shkoder in Albania and at Ilijak and Dabrica in
Bosnia. In common with other smiths of the Balkan area, they also
developed techniques for producing elaborate chain pendants and
other ornaments for attaching to clothing. Such ornaments were
presumably used to produce an effect on the beholder, and therefore
have a social as much as a typological or technological importance.
THE RISE OF POPULATION CENTRES
The hill-top fortifications, or gradine as they are called in Yugoslavia

and castellieri in Italy, represent one of the most visible elements in
Adriatic pre- and protohistory. Well-known examples occur in Istria
at the head of the Adriatic, but they in fact occur widely down the
Dalmatian coast and throughout Albania. The practice of creating
fortifications has been widely assumed to reflect an inherent insta-
bility of the age, indicating the rise of aggression on a tribal scale
and the defence of tribal territory. Whether the encircling ramparts
actually protected their inhabitants in real action is by no means
certain; in many cases the intention was prqbably to deter attackers
rather than to test their effectiveness in battle. At the same time,
large numbers of people lived, at least for a time, within these
defences. In the Albanian context there is little specific information
relating to the density of early occupation of hillforts beyond the
recovery of pottery dating to the Bronze Age, but sites in Yugoslavia
that have been more extensively excavated (for example, Varvara-
Velika Gradina near Prozor, Radovin near Zadar, Pod near Bugojno,
Vis near Derventa) show that substantial numbers of houses could
be, and no doubt usually were, built inside the defence works. The
concentration of large numbers of people in this way in situations
that were often remote from the subsistence base on which they
depended can only have had very marked effects on social and
political life, and must itself be related to, if not directly inspired by,
the socio-political situation that was emerging in first millennium BC
Europe as a whole.
Thanks to the increasing quantity and quality of work by Albanian
archaeologists in the last two decades, it is now possible to specify
rather more closely the stages by which occupied hill-tops developed
into proto-urban sites. Muzafer Korkuti and Neritan Ceka have
charted the development of the earliest 'urban' sites in Albania,l1
distinguishing three main phases: an early, Late Bronze Age phase
named after the site of Badher; a 'pre-urban' phase, characterised by
the sites of Gajtan and Trajan; and a 'proto-urban' phase, for which
there are many characteristic sites. The first phase comprises those
hill-forts that have a Late Bronze Age origin, of which at least
twenty-four are known. These vary very considerably in plan, from
simple single enclosures to more elaborate forms with more than one
line of defence, often on promontories. Muzafer Korkuti's analysis of
the south-western forts suggested that the earliest forts were the
simplest, of which Badher, near the coast north of Sarande, was a
good example. Sixteen houses were found there, lying outside the
defence wall, associated with pottery of Late Bronze Age type. These
houses, apparently unenclosed, might, however, suggest that Badher
represents a case of arrested development rather than anything else:
it seems likely that they would have been enclosed had the site
continued to exist. In fact the majority of the sites on Ceka's list are
dated not by finds of pottery or other datable material but on the
basis of the typological resemblance of the fort plan to sites that are
so dated. There is a very considerable size range included in the list,
from small enclosures of less than a hectare to large sites whose walls
embrace many hectares. This suggests some variability in their ori-
gins and early development.
The next phase, belonging to the first part of the Early Iron Age, is
represented by a rather shorter list of sites, of which the best-known
is Gajtan near Shkoder, a defended area of five hectares on a roughly
triangular hill-top. Artificial ramparts, for the most part in straight
lengths, are added in those places where nature does not provide
adequate defences. These are walls three and a half metres thick
formed of separate compartments filled with carefully broken up
rubble; the spaces between stones on the face of the walls are filled
with small stones to give an even surface. In the interior, installations
1 BADHER
~ 3 KAlIVO
i~
"====' 25m
2 llESHAN
!
Fig. 1 Comparative hill-fort plans in the Late Bronze Age and
Early Iron Age:
1. Badher, Late Bronze Age (after Korkuti);
2. Lleshan, Early Iron Age, 'pre-urban' (after Ceka);
3. Kalivo, Early Iron Age, 'proto-urban' (after Korkuti).
for pottery-firing and for cultic activities have been identified, along
with some remains of domestic debris. It is unfortunate that little is
known about the sites of this phase, which is crucial for an under-
standing of the formation of the Illyrian ethnos. Determination of
date is in any case rendered much more difficult than in preceding or
succeeding phases because this period corresponds to that of the
Greek Dark Ages, characterised by its relative poverty of material
culture.
It is in the third, proto-urban, phase that the biggest change in
terms of numbers and elaboration is seen. In the circuit walls one sees
right-angled or obtuse-angled junctions set within an overall
geometric plan, in distinction from earlier plans which were usually
curvilinear or built up of straight sections. This is thought to rep-
resent the first use of an architecturally planned fort, with specific
tactical considerations in defence also playing a part. In the interior,
a habitation area can be distinguished from an area of economic
activities. It is for this reason that Albanian archaeologists see this
period, the seventh to mid-fifth centuries, as a time when the forts
assumed a role as centres of production and exchange, where the new
social forces were concentrated during the time of transition from
'primitive' communities to slave societies.
In the absence of detailed excavation information, it is not possible
to do more than speculate on the precise means by which these sites
operated in the developing urban systems of the age. Table 1 lists
some observed effects in the archaeological record of the period,
together with their assumed correlates in the social and economic
spheres.
The pathway illustrated takes into account only some of the known
processes operating on the system during later prehistory, and raises
many issues that cannot be discussed within the confines of this short
essay. The point which is worth stressing is that what was happening
in Albania was much the same as what was happening in many other
parts of southern Europe; the emergence of the Illyrians was not
different in kind from the emergence of the Thracians, or of the Celts
further north. In each case we can observe the process of settlement
nucleation going hand-in-hand with new agricultural and metallurgi-
cal techniques, with a concomitant effect on settlement patterning. It
is all too easy to assume that there is a causal connection between
these events, but the progress in archaeological interpretation of the
last twenty years cautions us against a facile acceptance of such links.
Indeed, to the sceptical empiricist, it may be questioned whether any
TABLE 1 Settlement sites and their effects
Social unit Socio-economic effects Material culture effects

Little visible differentiation
Small group system
(Early Bronze Age) 1 New resources (metal)
Potential for wealth display - -
~ Prestige goods
Wealth differentials _ _ _ Imported goods
~
Control of critical resources
~
Rise of group leaders
1
Reinforcement of social inequalities
Imported goods
_ _ Prestige goods
Competitive expa~sion on good so~

1 Use of marginal land
____ New cultigens
Agricultural intensification - - -
~
Demand for t011S and weapons ~
1
Increase in smithing activities ~
Bronze hoards
~
Large group system
(Late Bronze Age)
Inter-group conflict
New warfari teChniqUe~

1 ~eaponry &
Fort building
armour
Territorial patterning of sites
(sites 5-20 km apart)
~
Permanent residence in forts
Need for controlled food product~
~ _ _ _ _ Food storage
Centralised authority
~
1
Coalescence of adjacent groups _ _ _ _
~ Larger sites
Proto-states
(Early Iron Age)
Territories >20 km diameter _ _ _ __
~ - Urban sites
Emergence of supreme leaders - - -
of the elements of material culture which have been here enumerated

can be accepted as 'Illyrian' in any meaningful sense. They were in all
likelihood brought about by people who later became known as
Illyrians, but this cannot be shown unequivocally to have anything to
do with their Illyrianness. Much debate has been aroused, for
instance by the painted pottery of the Late Bronze and Early Iron
Ages known as Devollian pottery. For Albanian archaeologists, this
is pre-eminently an Illyrian product, with an origin in the area later
called Illyris. This may well be true, but it does not therefore become
specifically Illyrian pottery any more than Beakers can be called
Celtic pottery, or Rossen ware Germanic. Albanian archaeologists
have criticised this scepticism on my part before, and will no doubt do
so again; but they do so not from any reasoned critique of the
theoretical foundations of the role of material culture, but from a
powerful - and understandable - wish to see the evidence legitimat-
ing a specific, and politically necessary, viewpoint.
At present it is impossible to trace Illyrian prehistory in more than
the broad outlines I have suggested, but the auguries for the future
are very favourable. Archaeological techniques have progressed
markedly in the last twenty years, and with the current strong
development of archaeological science, are going to continue doing
so. Much remains to be accomplished on the political front before
those techniques can be applied readily in Albania, but when this
happens archaeologists can get to work on a largely unspoilt store of
archaeological information. Together with the equally marked pro-
gress of research in neighbouring Yugoslavia, the development of
archaeology in Albania is leading to a resolution of the problems that
currently face us in Illyrian prehistory. 12
NOTES
1. Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle of Indo-
European Origins (London, 1987).
2. A. and S. Sherratt, 'The archaeology of Indo-European: an alternative
view', Antiquity 62 (1988), pp. 584-95.
3. The most accessible to an English-speaking audience is that by F. Prendi
and by N. Hammond in the Cambridge Ancient History revised (2nd)
edition, III (1982), pp. 209 ff. and 624 ff., to which the reader is referred
for fuller details of, and references to, sites mentioned here. Other
general works dealing with later Albanian prehistory are: S. Islami and
H. Ceka, 'Nouvelles donnees sur l'antiquite illyrienne en Albanie',
Studia Albanica 1 (1964), pp. 91-137; F. Prendi, 'Epoka e bronzit ne
Shqiperi/L'age du bronze en Albanie', lliria 7-8 (1977-8), pp. 5-58;
F. Prendi, 'Die Bronzezeit und der Beginn der Eisenzeit in Albanien', in
B. Hansel (ed)., Siidosteuropa zwischen 1600 und 1000 v. Chr. (Berlin,
1982), pp. 203-33.
4. F. Prendi, 'La civilisation prehistorique de Maliq', Studia Albanica 3
(1966), pp. 255-80.
5. Zh. Andrea, 'Mbi gjenezen dhe vijimesine e kultures se Matit ne epoken
e bronzit', Iliria 1985/2, pp. 163-74.
6. F. Prendi, 'Kerkimet arkeologjike ne fushem e kultures pre dhe proto-
historike ilire ne Shqiperi', Iliria 198811, pp. 5-33.
7. Listed in, for example, A. Harding, The Mycenaeans and Europe (Lon-
don, 1984), pp. 239-40.
8. F. Prendi, 'Nje depo sepatash parahistorike nga Torovica e Lezhes',
lliria 198412, pp. 19-45.
9. L. Sperber, Untersuchungen zur Chronologie der Urnenfelderkultur im
nordlichen Alpenvorland von der Schweiz bis Oberosterreich (Bonn,
1987), pp. 137 ff.
10. I. Vokotopoulou, Vitsa. To nekrotapheia mias molossikes komes
(Athens, 1986).
11. M. Korkuti, 'Die Siedlungen der spaten Bronze- und der When Eisen-
zeit in Siidwestalbanien', in B. Hansel (ed)., Siidosteuropa zwischen
1600 und 1000 v. Chr. (Berlin, 1982), pp. 234-53; N. Ceka, 'Fortifikimet
parahistorike ilire', Monumentet 29 (1985), pp. 27-58; 31 (1986),
pp.49-84.
12. Since this account was written, a radiocarbon date has become available
for the settlement of Maliq (p. 17). Carbonized cereal from Maliq Level
11a, dated at Lyon, produced a date of 5530 T 110 BP (calibrated
4660-4092 BC; Ly-4975). See J. Guilaune and F. Prendi, Antiquity,
1991.
3 The Relations of Illyrian
Albania with the Greeks
and the Romans
Nicholas Hammond
In 1931 I photographed some nomadic Vlach shepherds at Chaliki

near the source of the river Achelous. Two leaders - called Tschelni-
kadzi - held each between his knees a fine ram, his greatest pos-
session, on which the increase of the flock depended. They wore
homespun clothing and a heavy cloak (kappa) of mixed goathair and
sheep-wool. As a contrast to them I cite a gravestone relief of c. AD
200, which shows two smiths working what is probably iron on an
anvil. They are Illyrians of the Kor~e area. They wear typical Illyrian
dress: a long one-piece homespun shirt, worn without a belt, which
was perhaps the prototype of the dalmatic of Roman officials and of
Christian priests, and a conical leather or knitted cap with a tassel
hanging from the top, like a Victorian nightcap.
These two pairs may introduce us to two very important aspects of
Illyrian Albania in Greek and Roman times. The first is transhumant
pastoralism, in which a whole group of men, women and children,
herds of sheep and goats, and horses and mules move every year
from coast to mountains and from mountains to coast, usually like
migrating birds to the same places. The coastal plain of Albania has
the sweetest grass in all the Balkan peninsula and also very extensive
winter pastures for transhumant flocks of sheep. Inland there is an
immense amount of summer pasture in the mountain-forests of oak,
beech and pine and on the Alps above the tree-line. 'If only the
coastal plain were more spacious', wrote Margaret Hasluck, 'it would
be a perfect complement to the mountains for pastoralism on the
grand scale. ,1 In fact the plain is thirty-seven miles from near Lezhe
(ancient Lissus) to the mouth of the Vjose (ancient Aous), and its
widest and richest part is the area between two ancient Greek
colonies, Dyrrachium and Apollonia. It is watered by five great rivers
(Drin, Mat, Shkumbi, Seman and Vjose), which have a steep fall
from the high mountains and are raging torrents in November and
March, when Albania has the highest rainfall in Europe. Until the
29
engineering works of Enver Hoxha the rivers flooded the whole of

the coastal plain twice a year. This was good for pasture, but not for
agriculture. The floods were a feature of ancient times too; for Julius
Caesar had the greatest difficulty in crossing the river Apsus (now
Seman), because 'the banks were obstacles and the rivers very high'
in March 48 BC, when his army was withdrawing southwards from
near Dyrrachium. 2 The route he had to follow in floodtime was on
the foothills east of the plain, and it was still so in the 1930s when I
walked there. The plain, called Myzeqe by the Albanians and Mala-
kaster by the Vlachs, then lived up to the latter name (meaning 'bad
camps') because there was endemic malaria. But the malarial mos-
quito may not have reached Albania until late Roman times: there is
thus good reason to suppose that the central and northern part of
Albania - known to the Greeks as Illyris - produced an excess of
cheese, wool, hides, rugs, clothing and leather goods thanks to the
excellent conditions for transhumant pastoralism. A very valuable
side-product of this kind of pastoralism has always been the export of
timber, felled in the high mountains and floated down the rivers. In
antiquity timber was in great demand.
Metals were mined in early prehistoric times in Metohija and
Kosovo in southern Yugoslavia, and early weapons and tools in
copper were found at Maliq (near Korce) in the Chalcolithic period.
Within Illyrian Albania the main deposits of copper and of iron were
located in Mati and Mirdite; in recent decades many more deposits of
various minerals have been mined. It was probably from these mines
that the copper was derived for the weapons and tools at Maliq and at
Lefkas, an island south of Corfu. Illyrian smiths had their own
techniques, such as the shaping of facetted sockets of spearheads by
hammering the bronze, and there is no doubt that they produced the
majority of the spearheads and iron knives which have been found in
warrior-graves of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. They
excelled in the making of bronze pendants which were worn by men
and women in Illyris, probably as a form of portable wealth; for until
recently Albanian shepherds and their women often wore bronze
ornaments and strings of Napoleons. Another speciality was the
production of copper pans and utensils and bronze situlae; in recent
times the Vlachs of Sirrakou and Kalarrites were famous for their
copper ware.
Akin to these mineral deposits was a huge hill of fossilised pitch
(bitumen) near Selenice (south east of Apollonia). The pitch and the
inflammable gases nearby were among the wonders of the world in
Illyrian Albania, the Greeks and the Romans 31
ancient times. When Holland visited Selenice in 1813, he saw

mineshafts sunk 100 feet into the hill, and he noted that the pitch
which was brought out was 'nearly a perfect black with a resinous
lustre' .3 So too Ovid in the principate of Augustus had praised the
black colour of the pix Illyrica. It was in great demand for many
purposes and especially for caulking ships.
Equally famous was the iris Illyrica, which was almost a panacea in
ancient times: it was said to cure boils, relieve headaches, induce
abortion, charm a teething child, and - glory of glories - act as a
potent deodorant. It was much desired by the ladies of high society at
Rome. But it was not much used at home, for the Illyrians of
Dardania, living as they did in dug-outs under a dunghill, were not
fussy about odours, and the Illyrians in general were exposed to total
immersion in water only at birth and at death. This still seemed to be
so in parts of Albania in the 1930s.
The Illyrians and the Greeks first clashed with one another as
sea-farers and colonisers. Sailing and rowing were developed in the
Adriatic Sea not by the Albanian Illyrians, whose coast was low and
hazardous, but by the Illyrian tribes of the Dalmatian coast and
farther north. In the eighth century the Liburnians, who held 300
miles of coast between Istria and Split, had planted colonies of their
own people at Dyrrachium (the only natural harbour of Central
Albania) and at Corfu, but they were driven out of Corfu by the
Greeks of Corinth who gained control of the island in 733 BC, and
thereafter used it as a staging post on the route to Italy and Sicily via
the mouth of the Adriatic Sea. But the safest crossing was usually
inside the Adriatic Sea from Dyrrachium to Brundisium (Brindisi);
and in 625 the Greeks of Corinth and Corfu drove the Liburnians out
of Dyrrachium with the help of the local Illyrians, the Taulantii. They
then developed two harbours, one at either end of the coastal
peninsula, and fortified their city.
The coast between Corfu and Dyrrachium was dangerous for
sailing craft: it began with the steep Acroceraunian range, in which
there is only one safe cove, called 'Grammata' from the thankful
inscriptions of ancient mariners (used as a secret harbour by Anthony
Quayle in 1944), and the coast to the north was mostly flat and
featureless. The Bay of Vlore has safe anchorage at its head, where a
city called Oricum had been founded by Greeks returning from the
Trojan War, and there was no room there for the Corinthians. So 200
of them sailed up the Vjose (Aous), established good relations with
the local Illyrians, founded a joint settlement and made a riverine
harbour. They named their city Apollonia, after the god Apollo, in
558.
Thus the Greeks of Corinth established and often controlled a
relatively safe route with Greek ports available for traffic sailing from
the eastern Mediterranean to the west. It must be remembered that
ships then sailed within sight of land as much as possible: indeed, this
was still the case in Venetian times. The importance of Dyrrachium
on this coast is indicated by the entry in the Greek Portulan, based on
a Venetian mariner's guide:
Durazzo shows from afar like an island with five heads. When you
come inshore you will see the fort, commanding all the hill. Keep a
wide berth on your port side, and you will see a thick white cape,
called Cape Pale. Go inshore towards it. 4
We have seen that at Dyrrachium the Greeks were welcomed, and

the first settlement on the defensible hill was one of Greeks and
Illyrians. But when other waves of Greeks arrived, the Illyrians were
forced out. Nevertheless, friendly relations were still maintained with
the Taulantii. There was a mutual interest in trade, for the Taulantii
could sell foodstuffs, wool, hides, slaves, stock and especially timber
to the Greeks, who brought from overseas olive oil, wine, fine bronze
vessels, weapons and armour, and luxury goods. Iron, copper and
especially silver from Damastium near Lake Ochrid were traded
through Dyrrachium. It quickly became a very powerful and well-
peopled colonial city. Apollonia was built on a site which was not
easily defensible, and it was always dependent on good relations with
the Illyrians. It remained a mixed settlement, the numerous and
well-to-do Illyrians having a tumulus cemetery and the Greeks their
flat graves, but its development was on Greek lines and it was
reinforced by waves of Greek settlers. The ruling group consisted of
Greek founder-families and their descendants, who were according
to Aristotle 'few out of many' and who governed 'a majority not of
free birth'. 5
Of the two Greek cities Dyrrachium had relatively less land; for it
was hemmed in to the north and east by the Taulantii, a strong cluster
of Illyrian tribes which were united under a monarchy. To the south
the territory of Dyrrachium was limited by a very large river, the
Shkumbi (ancient Genesus). Its future lay therefore in trade by sea,
for which it was well placed, and in trade overland into the Mat valley
and up the Shkumbi valley into the rich lakeland of Ochrid and
Prespa.
Apollonia, on the other hand, was not a port of call, since a
sandbar made entry into the river difficult, and the city was ten
kilometres up river. Its future lay in exploitation of the hinterland
and in particular of the Myzeqe plain, of which it soon controlled the
southern part. The pastures here were enjoyed in the fifth century
Be, Herodotus tells us, by a great herd of very fine sheep, owned
communally by the citizens of Apollonia and dedicated to the Sun-
God. At night they were kept in a cave for safety. Each year a leading
man was appointed to be in charge of the flock (like a Vlach
tschelnikadze), and on the occasion of which Herodotus tells us he
fell asleep one night and the wolves broke in and killed sixty of the
sheep. The Apolloniates blinded him and thereby incurred the wrath
of the gods - but that is another story. 6 It might have happened in the
1930s; for conditions then were much as in the fifth century Be.
Because Apollonia controlled the southern part of the Myzeqe, it
levied taxes from the nomadic pastoralists who brought their flocks
there for the winter, and it was a market of exchange for pastoral
products and imported goods. As the city grew stronger, the Apollo-
niates seized the hill of fossil pitch, won some territory south of the
lower Aous and traded extensively up the Aous valley.
The Illyrians of our area were organised in small tribes, dis-
tinguished by name and by tattoo-patterns, and they were mostly
engaged in transhumant pastoralism. Some tribes clustered together
to form a larger tribe with a common name, which did not however
eliminate each small tribe's name. Thus Hecataeus, writing c. 500
Be, gives the names of two small tribes which belonged to a cluster
with the common name 'Taulantii'. Occasionally two of these larger
tribes combined for a common purpose, but they were generally
hostile to one another. We can infer their way of life in the Late
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age from the results of excavation by
Albanian archaeologists. The salient feature is the burial of the
leading men (and occasionally a woman) of a small social unit in a
large tumulus, some twenty metres in diameter, and the grouping
together of several such tumuli as if of a larger group, such as a tribe.
In some places such groups of tumuli were placed near one another
so as to form a huge cemetery with hundreds of tumuli, used over
many centuries, for instance in Mati, Mirdite and Zadrime. On the
other hand there are very few signs of permanent settlement, and
only a few roughly fortified hilltops. The conclusion is that the tumuli
are the memorials of transhumant pastoral peoples, who returned
over the centuries to the same pastures. This conclusion is supported
by the painted designs on pottery, derived clearly from woven rugs
and paralleled in the arts of the Vlachs and the Saracatsans (Greek-
speaking nomads), which are found not only in Central Albania but
also in western Macedonia, central Macedonia, Epirus and north-
western Greece - all being areas where transhumant pastoralism was
practised. The artefacts found in the tumulus-burials in Albania are
knives, spears and double-bladed axes (used for hunting and logging,
as much as for war), bronze pendants, armlets, diadems, bracelets,
buttons, beads, tweezers and buckles; and amber beads and neck-
laces for men and women.
Tumulus-burial was characteristic of Illyrian tribes both to the
north of Albania and in Albania, but it was customary also among
other pastoral groups which were Greek-speaking, e.g. in central
Epirus and in western Macedonia (in Pelagonia and Eordaea) or
Phrygian-speaking (e.g. below Vergina). A great expansion of Illyr-
ian tribes occurred from c. 900 BC onwards, the centre from which
they came being Glasinac in Central Yugoslavia, remarkable for
cemeteries containing more than 20,000 tumuli. The leading warriors
buried in some of these tumuli had as many as ten spears each in their
graves. Tribes from the Glasinac area entered North and Central
Albania in large numbers and overran the existing Illyrian tribes. The
names of the leading tribes are preserved in a genealogical form,
which came from a Greek source. 7 Illyrius, son of the Cyclops
Polyphemus and his lady Galatea, had various sons and daughters, of
whom some were eponyms of the Dardanians (in Metohija and
Kosovo), the Taulantii (from Tirana southwards), Encheleae (by
Lake Ochrid), and Parthini (middle and upper Shkumbi valley).
Illyrius himself was the eponym of the Illy,.-ii, a tribe inland of Lezhe,
from which the Greeks extended the name to all peoples of similar
speech. The expansion carried some groups of warriors into Central
Epirus, others into Central Macedonia, and one group to Halus in
South Thessaly, where a tumulus contained remains of men and
women with swords, knives and spears of the eighth century BC.
Very rich offerings were found in two evidently royal cemeteries
which were situated in the basin north of Lake Ochrid. In one, at
Trebenishte, there were gold death-masks, gold gloves, gold sandals,
much silverware, and vessels and helmets of bronze (manufactured
probably in Corinth or in one of her colonies). The dead numbered
ten men, each with an iron sword and spears, and three women with
dress-pins and ornaments. Similar objects were found in the second
cemetery, at Radolishte. The striking wealth in silver was no doubt
due to the mining of silver locally (the later mining-town being called
Damastium), and it is to be connected with the minting of large silver
coins, inscribed in Greek letters 'of Tynteni', who are probably the
later Atintani. The royal houses of the two cemeteries may have been
Peresadyes and Encheleae respectively, a combination perhaps of
Thracian and IHyrian dynasts; and they prospered from the trade
which came from the Adriatic Sea and from the Thermaic Gulf on the
route which later became famous as the Via Egnatia, and also from
trade which came from the north and the south through the lakeland.
This culture flourished circa 540-480 BC. 8
The pattern of IHyrian settlement was set by the time of the
Trebenishte culture. In the coastal sector the Taulantii held most of
the Myzeqe (Apollonia having acquired the southern part). Inland of
them were IHyrian tribes, the Parthini of the Shkumbi valley and then
south of them the Bylliones, reaching the north bank of the Aous.
They were neighbours of Greek-speaking tribes, grouped under the
common name Chaones, of whom the most northerly, the Dassare-
tae, extended into the lakeland south of Lake Ochrid. To the east of
the IHyrian tribes were Greek-speaking tribes in what came to be
known as Upper Macedonia. We owe our knowledge to the earliest
Greek geographer, Hecataeus, whose account was used by our
informant, Strabo.
In the classical period of Greece the IHyrians were feared as
warriors and raiders. Thucydides described their incursions into
Upper Macedonia in 423 BC: the warriors were terrifying in physique
and in war-cry, each fighting for himself and engaging in hit-and-run
tactics. They were ruled by a small number of men who owed their
position to their prowess in combat. 9 In 400 or so a brilliant leader
seized power; this was Bardylis, probably a Dardanian, who obtained
control also of some other IHyrian tribes. The wealth of his state was
based on resources in gold and silver (two local silver coinages are
known), on trade northwards and eastwards, and on loot which was
acquired by raids far and wide. He drove one Macedonian king out of
his realm twice, and he killed another and 4,000 Macedonian soldiers
in 359. And his warriors raided often into Epirus and in 385 killed
15,000 Molossians in battle. His army was equipped and trained in
the Greek manner, and he had great reserves of manpower.
In 358 Bardylis met his match in a young man, Philip of Macedon,
who had invented a new weapon - the pike - and trained his best
infantry in its use. Whereas the Greeks and the Illyrians fought with a
six- or seven-foot spear in a close phalanx, Philip's men fought with a
pike of twice that length, so weighted in the butt that three-quarters
of the pike was in front of the pikeman. Because two hands were
needed to wield the pike, the soldiers had only a small shoulder-
shield, and they were able therefore to form a closer phalanx and to
present four pikepoints to each enemy spearpoint. When the
Macedonians attacked the 10,000 men of Bardylis with equal num-
bers, they killed 7,000 Illyrians and forced Bardylis to withdraw to
areas west and north of Lake Ochrid. Philip had superb cavalry,
trained to fight with a long lance (carrying a blade at each end) and
charging in a wedge formation; they were particularly formidable in
pursuit of a defeated army such as that of Bardylis. In a series of
campaigns Philip extended his sway over the Taulantii, the Grabaei
and the Ardiaei, reaching the Adriatic coast north of Shkoder. A
rising by the combined forces of the Taulantii and the Dardanians
was defeated a year after Philip's death by Alexander the Great. The
kings of the Illyrian tribes, once outfought, were left on their thrones
and had to provide taxes and services to their Macedonian overlord.
Many thousands of Illyrians served under Alexander in Asia, and
many returned with considerable wealth to their homeland. Macedo-
nian influence can be seen in the built-tombs, sometimes cut in
sandstone rock, which have been excavated in the upper Shkumbi
valley and on the north bank of the Aous; and there are representa-
tions of Macedonian-type helmets and shields, especially of cavalry-
men.
Experience of a wider world and of Greco-Macedonian ideas
enabled a king of the Taulantii, Glaucias, to develop his own power,
when the Macedonian world was disrupted by civil war. He obtained
the alliance of the two wealthy Greek colonies, Dyrrachium and
Apollonia, and in 307 he put a young pretender on the Molossian
throne, Pyrrhus, who was related by marriage. But his power was
short-lived, for Pyrrhus proved to be a brilliant commander and an
ambitious king. As the adopted son of Glaucias he took over the
Taulantian area, made marriage alliances with the Dardanian and
Paeonian royal houses, and extended his authority as far as Lissus.
His realm was inherited and maintained by a capable son, Alexander.
For some fifty years, c. 290-240, Greek influence was at its height in
what is now central Albania. One effect was the growth of fortified
cities from the 290s onwards in northern Epirus (e.g. Antigoneia and
Amantia) and in Illyris (e.g. Byllis and Lissus); and this led to settled
life with a basis of agriculture and stock-raising, a decline in trans-
hum ant pastoralism and tumulus-burial, and the spread of Greek
pottery and Greek coinage, especially from Apollonia and Dyrra-
chium. The southernmost Illyrian tribes tended to become bilingual.
Thus Byllis, the largest city in the territory of the Illyrian Bylliones,
was a Greek-speaking city, visited by Greek envoys from the shrines
of Greece.
The interpretation which I have put before you would not win the
approval of my Albanian colleagues, who hold that the development
of cities began in the north and spread southwards, and that cities
such as Lissus, Amantia, Antigoneia and Phoenice were 'Illyrian
cities'. The archaeological evidence seems to be against them. For in
sites, fortifications, towers, gates and masonry, and in the construc-
tion of theatres, odeons, temples and agoras the cities of Epirus and
Illyris are indistinguishable, and in the titles of the city-officials and
the language of their decrees these cities are entirely Greek. They are
indeed typical Hellenistic cities, such as developed also in parts of
Thrace and Asia at this time. The period of intensive Hellenisation,
as it is called, was relatively short in Illyris, but had a lasting
influence.
Soon after 240 the Molossian monarchy came to an end, the
Epirote League lost its position of authority in Illyris, and Illyrian
pirates and raiders by land sacked Phoenice and made off with much
loot. Then, in 229, a new and more dangerous power appeared on the
scene. This was Rome, from where came emissaries requiring the
queen of the Ardiaei, Teuta, to halt her people's piracy on Italian
shipping. Teuta refused, on the ground that piracy was a matter of
private enterprise; and she felt stronger in that her Illyrians were
besieging Dyrrachium and already held Corfu. But Rome, the con-
queror of Carthage in the First Punic War, stood no nonsense. 10 A
fleet of 200 warships of a size far larger than any Illyrian ships
descended on Corfu and took the Greek city, Corcyra, into its
protection. The fleet then moved to Apollonia, where a Roman army
of 2,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry had been landed by another
fleet. As the forces moved north, they took into the protection of
Rome Apollonia, Dyrrachium, the Parthini and the Atintani, and
they proceeded at sea as far as Issa, where they set up a client king.
But they did not enter the nest of the pirates, the Gulf of Kotor, or
engage the forces of Teuta. It was enough for Rome to establish a
protectorate, extending from south of Lissus to Apollonia on the
coast and including the Illyrian tribes up to the western side of Lake
Ochrid. The Bay of Oricum (Vlore), the Bylliones and the Dassare-
tae were outside the Roman area. But Corcyra remained under the
care of Rome. In 228 the Roman forces went home, but they were
able at any time to cross the Adriatic and operate from the friendly
bases which they had acquired.
During the Second Punic War, when Rome was distracted by
Hannibal, the Atintani deserted to Macedonia and opened the route
to Lissus, which Philip V captured in 212 and made into a naval base
on the Adriatic Sea. He built a fleet of small ships with Illyrian
timber, and the peoples of Lissus and Shkoder issued their first
coinages with Macedonian emblems. He hoped to make contact with
his ally, Hannibal, then in South Italy, and with the Carthaginian
army. But he was too late. Dyrrachium, Apollonia and Corcyra
remained loyal to Rome; his fleet at Lissus proved useless; and Rome
made an alliance with the Greeks against him. Peace was made in
205, but in 200 large Roman forces, based on their protectorate,
attacked Macedonia and won a crushing victory at Cynoscephalae in
197. Another war broke out in 171 and ended in the total defeat of
Macedonia and the division of the kingdom into four republics.
During these wars the Illyrian tribes in the protectorate - Taulan-
tii, Parthini and Atintani - had been loyal to Rome, and the successor
of Teuta, called Gentius, sent ships to help Rome in 171. But in the
autumn of 169 Gentius joined Macedonia. In the following spring he
invaded the northern end of the Roman protectorate, only to be
defeated outright by Roman forces twice as numerous as his own.
Gentius, his family and some other leading Illyrians were sent to
Rome, where they were later to walk in chains behind the chariot of
the Roman victor. Farther north the Roman forces accepted the
surrender, or captured and looted the cities or tribes that resisted;
and this time they penetrated to Rhizon (Kotor) and garrisoned the
city. In 167 a settlement was imposed. The kingdom of Gentius was
divided into three republics, each sealed off from the other, and the
Illyrians of the republics were to pay Rome as tax half of what they
had paid to Gentius. l l Roman forces were withdrawn but Roman
authority was to stay for several centuries.
What is now central Albania flourished greatly during the Roman
empire, for the great Roman route from Rome to Asia - the Via
Egnatia - crossed to Dyrrachium and Apollonia and followed the line
of the Shkumbi valley and then passed north of Lake Ochrid into
Macedonia and on to Asia. There was a market locally and in Italy
for any surplus foodstuffs and animal products, and many Illyrians
served in the Roman armies. But northeast Albania, the region of the
Albanian Alps, was not touched by Roman forces or by the Roman
road-system. It was there that the Illyrian way of life and the Illyrian
language persisted, and after the collapse of the Roman empire and
the weakening of the Byzantine empire the Illyrian-speaking peoples
expanded once again into the Mat valley and the Myzeqe plain. By
then they were known to their southern neighbours as Albani, and
their language as Albanian. 12
NOTES
1. M. Hasluck, The Unwritten Law in Albania (Cambridge, 1954), p. 6.

2. H. Holland, Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly, Macedonia,
etc. (London, 1815), p. 519.
3. Caesar, Bellum Civile 3. 75 and 77.
4. A. Delatte, Les Portulans Grecs (Liege, 1947), p. 24 (Portulan 1).
5. Aristotle, Politics 1290 b 12-14.
6. Herodotus 9. 93-4.
7. Appian, Illyrian Wars 2.
8. B. Filow, Die archaische Nekropole von Trebeniste (Leipzig-Berlin,
1927).
9. Thucydides 4. 126. 2-5.
10. Appian, Illyrian Wars 7.
11. Livy 46. 26. 11-15.
12. In addition to the works mentioned in notes 1, 3, 4 and 8 above readers
interested in this period should read the Albanian periodical Iliria
(Tirana, 1971-); Cambridge Ancient History 3.3 (Cambridge, 1982), pp.
261 ff. (eds J. Boardman and N. Hammond); N. Hammond, Epirus
(Oxford, 1967); N. Hammond, Migrations and Invasions in Greece and
Adjacent Areas (New Jersey, 1976); M. Korkuti, Shqiperia Arkaeolog-
jike (Tirana, 1971); and A. Stipcevic, The Illyrians (New Jersey, 1977).
4 Byzantium and the
Emergence of Albania
Stephen Hill
The subject to be considered here poses insurmountable problems of

definition, since both Byzantium and Albania are concepts which
change in a chameleon-like manner during the period under
consideration. 1 The 'Byzantines' for instance would have referred to
themselves as Romans (Romaioi), and unless the 'Albanoi' referred
to by Ptolemy in the second century AD as inhabiting the area which
is now central Albania were the ancestors of the later Albanians, the
term 'Albanian' itself would not necessarily have meant very much to
anyone living in the area between the fourth and eleventh centuries.
The problem has been well recognised before, and Albania in par-
ticular is very difficult to define in either ethnological or geographical
terms. Thus Popovic2 could write:
Parler du territoire de l' Albanie actuelle au crepuscule de

l' Antiquite est pour des raisons diverses, une tache aussi difficile
qu'ingrate.
The issue of what is meant by 'Byzantium' need not trouble us too

much here. For the purpose of the present work, the terms 'Byzan-
tine' and 'Byzantium' will be used to refer to the East Roman
Empire, which continued with varying fortunes, based in its capital at
Constantinople, until it fell to the Turks in 1453. The Byzantines
exercised considerable influence in the territory which we now call
Albania, and for much of the time were in complete or partial control
of it, although there was a long period from the seventh to the ninth
century when such control lapsed. The problem with the terms
'Albania' and 'Albanian', on the other hand, is more complex, since
it was during the period of the Byzantine Empire that these terms
appear to have come into being. To abuse the old cliche, however,
Albania emerged 'not with a bang, but with a whimper'. Moreover,
as we shall see, it is not possible to date precisely the first appearance
of a concept of Albania which corresponds in any meaningful way to
the manner in which the term is used today. For the purpose of the
40
Byzantium and the Emergence of Albania 41
present essay, therefore, the terms 'Albania' and 'Albanian' will be

used in their modern geographical sense, except in contexts where an
an alternative meaning is indicated.
Albania was formed out of part of the territory known to the
Romans as Illyria, a region famed mainly for its pirates and
shepherds. As with so many coastal regions in the Adriatic and the
eastern Mediterranean, Roman activity in the region came about not
through any positive desire for territorial expansion - at least not in
the initial period of involvement - but in response to the indigenous
practice of piracy. That there was apparently some sort of province
established by 59 BC emerges from its allocation to Julius Caesar,
and the region was made into an imperial province by Augustus in
11 BC. A measure of Classical veneer was apparent especially in the
cities of the small coastal plains. But there was a very obvious
distinction between those cities, especially in southern Illyria, where
Greek was spoken (e.g. Dyrrachium (Durres), Apollonia, and
Buthrotum (Butrint)), and the mountainous tribal interior where the
Illyrian language continued in use. This distinction was so strong that
in the civil wars of 49 to 48 BC the coastal cities declared for
Caesar whilst the Illyrians supported Pompey. The distinction sur-
vived throughout antiquity, as may be seen from the fact that in the
early fifth century Hieronymus could still refer to the 'barbarian'
language which was spoken in Illyria.
Although the region remained relatively uncivilised when viewed
from the Classical perspective, Illyria was not without significance in
the Roman Empire. Through it, for instance, ran the highly import-
ant Via Egnatia. A simple measure of this significance can in fact be
derived from the number of emperors who could lay claim to Illyrian
connections, especially in the third century, when military and econ-
omic problems faced by the Empire gave added importance to the
provinces as bases of power. Such emperors included Decius, Clau-
dius Gothicus, Aurelian, Diocletian, who retired to Split, and even
Constantine. The same phenomenon recurred in the late fifth and
sixth centuries: Anastasius claimed Dyrrachium as his home town,
and Justin and Justinian had similar Illyrian associations.
The southern half of the region was effectively part of the eastern
Roman Empire, and it appears that Illyria embraced Christianity
relatively early, the first Illyrian bishoprics being founded in the
second century. By the fourth century the Illyrian provinces con-
tained around forty bishoprics, eleven of which were in the area of
modern Albania. Yet Christianity was at first an urban phenomenon,
associated particularly with the Greek-speaking cities of southern

Illyria. For this reason the distribution of bishoprics by the sixth
century corresponded with those areas where the degree of Classical
influence was highest; such bishoprics were either close to the
Adriatic coast or sited along the Via Egnatia. On the other hand,
many of the bishoprics in the northern and more mountainous parts
of Albania were not founded until the restoration of Byzantine
influence in the ninth century.
It is clear, then, that the early Byzantine period saw the perpetua-
tion of ethnological distinctions in Albania. These distinctions are
manifest in the archaeological record, and emerge from a considera-
tion of the early Christian buildings of Albania. The practice of laying
mosaic floors, for instance, was very popular in the cities of southern
Illyria in the Roman period, and this continued in the early Christian
basilicas of Albania, some of which have been exposed to view. A
selection of these mosaics has been reproduced by Koch 3 who pub-
lished photographs of mosaics from Buthrotum (Butrint), Arapaj
(near Durres), Sarande, Lin, Byllis, Antigoneia, and Dyrrachium.
These polychrome mosaics, which are mostly of fifth and sixth
century date, are of high artistic quality, and exhibit most of the
features and themes which are typical of such decoration in the early
Byzantine period in the Balkans and Asia Minor. The quality of the
Albanian pavements can be seen particularly well from the remark-
able example depicting a pastoral scene which was discovered in the
basilica at Arapaj, near Durres. 4 This mosaic depicts on the left hand
side a shepherd with his dog and flocks, and on the right hand side a
stable-boy with four horses. The whole scene, including the bird
perched in a tree and the rocky seats of the figures, is redolent of the
pastoral idyll which was a common feature of Classical art, and at the
same time has a sense of peace and tranquillity which recalls Isaiah's
Peaceful Kingdom and other animal scenes, which were popular
symbols of much desired Christian harmony in the late fifth and early
sixth centuries. The Arapaj mosaic demonstrates, therefore, that in
artistic terms Albania was very much part of the cultural heartland of
the early Byzantine empire. The existence of an actual paradise
mosaic in the narthex of the basilica at Oktisi may indicate indeed
that the early Byzantine Christian communities in Albania were as
conscious of the need for Christian unity as those in more southern
and eastern parts of the empire where Monophysitism was stronger. 5
The same point could be made in respect of the early Christian
architecture of Albania. Again, space does not permit a full survey,6
but interesting observations arise from a relatively brief analysis. As

in most areas of the Byzantine world, three-aisled basilicas, such as
were built at Byllis and Buthrotum, dominated architectural thinking
in early Byzantine Albania. There is, however, a range of early
Byzantine churches in Albania which exhibit more unusual features.
Particularly remarkable is the presence in the region of a series of
churches with triconches incorporated in their plans. For instance,
the basilica at Arapaj, near Durres, terminated at its east end with
just such a triconch, a clover-leaf shaped triple apse rather than the
usual single semi-circular apse. The single-aisled chapel at Antigo-
neia, which was perhaps designed for a funerary purpose, also
terminated in a triconch. In its turn, the basilica at Lin exhibits a
variation on the theme since it had a single apse at the east end, but
conches were added to the outer walls of the north and south aisles of
the basilica. One of the most remarkable of the early Byzantine
churches in Albania is the church at Sarande, which was apparently
an example of a 'domed basilica' with three conches set along the
north and south walls of the church. The church was visited by
Hasluck during the First World War, and his lively description in a
letter home still conveys a sense of the importance of the building: 7
At SS. Quaranta I went up a very high & perspiratious hill- always

greatly against my principles - to see what the church of the SS. 40
was like. I found a ruin, preserved to the springs of the vaults,
nearly 30 m. long and of most peculiar plan. I think Justinian or
thereabouts, not later; one of the big experimental churches you
don't find much later than Just. and more closely connected with
the Roman things before than the Byz things after. Altogether
rather a find, and when I can ("after the war") get a clever young
man with a tape measure, I shall go again.
As well as the basilicas, there were some early churches in Alba-

nia, especially baptisteries, which were centralised in form, being
based especially on square and circular plans. There is a large
centralised church with three conches at Buthrotum, and another
such church at Lin. Perhaps the most remarkable of the centralised
buildings, which is as notable for its mosaics as for its architecture, is'
the baptistery at Buthrotum. This building contains two concentric
rings of columns inside a square plan: at the centre of the building
was set a sunken quatrefoil font.
The well-preserved basilica at Buthrotum8 (Butrint) exhibits
Fig. 2 A transept basilica at Butrint.
another remarkable feature, since it contains a tripartite transept.

The overall plan of this basilica is in fact cruciform, since the transept
arms extend northwards and southwards beyond the outer walls of
the aisles. This church, which is usually attributed to the sixth
century, owes its good state of preservation to the fact that it was
restored in the medieval period, when the east end was strengthened
by the insertion of a secondary inner apse, and the columns of the
nave were replaced with piers.
In these respects the early Byzantine churches of Albania exhibit a
series of features which demonstrate that they belong with the
important group of architecturally related churches constructed in
the coastlands and islands of the Aegean and southern Asia Minor.
In these regions basilical thinking dominated the planning of early
Byzantine churches with congregational functions, but there too the
basilicas regularly contained significant sophistications such as tri-
conchal apses. Similarly, the tripartite transept in the basilica at
Buthrotum has parallels in the churches of Salonica and, more
commonly, southern Asia Minor. The 'domed basilica' at Sarande,
perhaps the most unusual of the early Byzantine churches in Albania,
also has affinities with southern Asia Minor. That the early Byzantine
churches of Albania can be included in a group ranged round the
coasts of the southern Adriatic, the Aegean, and southern Asia
Minor highlights the distinction between the coastal Illyrian regions
and the eastern Balkans, Constantinople, and the Black Sea areas,
where simpler architectural forms prevailed until the sixth century.
The architectural sculpture of these Albanian churches supports
this view of their coastal associations. Thus a particularly interesting
marble capital from Dyrrachium,9 which is now in the Tirana mu-
seum, derives from the so-called 'Theodosian' capital with its lower
register of upright acanthus leaves above which, at the corners of the
capital, are set four animal protomes in the form of sheep. The
Dyrrachium capital is attributed to the fifth century, and parallels for
it can be found in Salonica, and, above all, in Cilicia in southern Asia
Minor, where the form was particularly popular in the late fifth
century. 10
The preceding paragraphs have contained numerous references to
parallels between the early Byzantine monuments of Albania and
those of southern Asia Minor, more especially those of Cilicia and
neighbouring Isauria. The association reflects cultural realities in the
early Byzantine world, where the sea was often a more useful means
of communication than overland routes, but there was a still more
precise connection. Cilicia and Isauria were the homeland of the
group of itinerant architects and builders known as the 'Isaurian
Builders' ,11 and it is worth noting that not only the plans, but also the
sculptural decoration and the mosaics in the Albanian churches are
highly redolent of Isaurian associations. We know that there was a
o
Fig. 3 A triconch basilica at Arapaj near Durres.
considerable diaspora of the Isaurian Builders after the death of

Zeno (474-91), and it would be entirely appropriate that they should
have been active in the area of Dyrrachium at the time of Anastasius,
especially since it is likely that the Isaurian Builders were active in
Salonica and Ravenna at about this time.
The distinction between the more Classicised southern parts of
what we call Albania, and the more Illyrian interior and northern
regions can be seen from the distribution of the sites of significant
early Christian monuments enumerated above. All the sites with
important churches and mosaics are in fact in the southern half of
Albania and on or near the Adriatic coastline or the Via Egnatia.
Nevertheless all areas of what is modern Albania remained popu-
lated, albeit with some at a less opulent level, throughout the early
Byzantine period, as can be detected from the fortifications of this
period and from finds of early Byzantine cemeteries.
The early Byzantine fortifications of Albania have been studied by
Bal$e12 and, more recently, by Popovic, who has provided a useful
distribution map. 13 Whilst they may not be as precisely datable as the
churches, the castles of Albania are of vital importance for illustrat-
ing some degree of continuity in terms of settlement. This could not
be discerned simply from a study of the churches, which evidently
declined in terms of wealth and magnitude around the middle of the
sixth century. The castles which have been studied, such as Scampi
(Elbasan), 14 are also significant since they allow some observation of
structural phases. Such analysis helps indeed to supplement the
otherwise tenuous account of the early medieval history of Albania
which emerges from the historical sources.
Karaiskaj suggests that the fortress at Scampi on the Via Egnatia,
which resembles those at Vig and Palaiokastra, may first have been
erected in the late fourth to early fifth centuries, perhaps after the
Gothic invasions of Illyria in 378. The original fortification, which is a
fine example of late Roman military planning, is of a type which is
entirely appropriate to Scampi's position on the Via Egnatia. It
consisted of a rectangular enceinte (c. 348 by 308 metres), with walls
three metres thick constructed in opus mixtum with regular brick
courses. U-shaped towers projected from all four sides, and there
were deeply projecting fan-shaped corner towers, the angles of which
were themselves strengthened with solid brick construction. At some
point in the early Byzantine period the walls of Scampi were re-
paired, and it appears that by the fifth or sixth century the site was in
use as a civilian settlement. The castle was again restored by the
Turks in the fifteenth century. <;eka's survey of the region surround-

ing Elbasan 15 attempted to provide a context for the fortification at
Scampi. He saw evidence, for instance, of considerable agricultural
activity in the Roman period, but considered that this had declined
by the sixth century. By then the rural settlements had decreased in
size, and the principal settlements had been defended. Numismatic
evidence clustered in two periods; the first series ran up to the late
fourth century, the second series concentrated around the reign of
Justinian in the sixth century. From the mid-sixth century there were
signs of widespread destruction, which was presumably a conse-
quence of the Slavic invasions.
External and internal pressures led to many changes in the Illyrian
provinces. One of these, early in the fourth century, was the division
of the Prefecture of Illyricum into eleven provinces, the four
southernmost of which were Praevalis, Dardania, New Epirus, and
Old Epirus. Modern Albania consists of New Epirus, which had its
metropolis at Dyrrachium, much of Praevalis, and parts of the other
two provinces. 16 When, in 395, the empire was split into eastern and
western sectors, southern Illyria went to the eastern empire and the
eastern church, whilst northern Illyria went to the western empire,
under the ecclesiastical authority of the Pope. Already in the fifth
century Albania had seen invasions of Visigoths, Huns, and Ostro-
goths. The situation became more complicated with the onset of Slav
invasions in the sixth century. The uncertainty arising from these
external pressures doubtless led to the increasing fortification of the
Illyrian regions during the period. The early sixth century saw the
first fortress constructed at Tirana. More strikingly, according to
the Suidas this period saw Anastasius fortifying his home town of
Dyrrachium, which was presumably a particularly important under-
taking, one befitting the metropolis of New Epirus.
The walls of Dyrrachium, which have been studied by various
scholars,17 are best preserved on the south and east sides of the city.
They were originally constructed from solid brick, and have Turkish
repairs and restorations in stonework. Some impression of the magni-
tude of these walls can be gained from Anna Comnena's lively
account of Bohemond's siege of Dyrrachium in 1107-8.
I must explain briefly the plan of the city of Dyrrachium. Its wall is
interrupted by towers which all round the city rise to a height of
eleven feet above it (the wall). A spiral staircase leads to the top of
the towers and they are strengthened by battlements. So much for
the city's defensive plan. The walls are of considerable thickness,

so wide indeed that more than four horsemen can ride abreast in
safety. IS
Anna's description was in fact designed to lay stress on the remark-

able size of Bohemond's siege eIlgines which were so high 'that the
city towers were overtopped by as much as five or six cubits . . . .
Like some giant among the clouds . . .'. Since it was the height and
width that Anna was anxious to emphasise, she neglected to record
that Dyrrachium was equipped with a triple circuit of walls extending
to seven kilometres in circumference. Some of the bricks in the first
phases of the walls of Dyrrachium carry stamps which Zheku used as
evidence for dating the earliest construction periods. 19 He argued, on
the basis of letter-forms and from analysis of the monograms, that the
walls were originally constructed in the fourth century and restored
by Anastasius after being damaged by earthquake in 34520 and
subsequently ravaged by the Goths. In fact the stamped bricks come
only from the southwest side of the defences, and it seems more
likely that this stretch in particular may be associated with the work
conducted under Anastasius. In any event the massive scale of
Dyrrachium's defences ensured the continuing importance of the city
throughout the period of Byzantine influence in Albania.
A major refortification of the Balkans, including Albania, is pre-
dictably reported by Procopius 21 as taking place during the reign of
Justinian, whom he describes as constructing a vast number of
castella in the Balkans, including 167 which were built in the southern
provinces of Illyria. Procopius's account probably reflects conditions
in the century and a half before Justinian, but even if Justinian was
responsible for all that Procopius attributes to him, his efforts merely
served to halt temporarily the process of decline in the Illyrian
provinces. During the second half of the sixth century, the region was
subject to endless revolts and invasions. Thus Justinian's army had to
put down a revolt in Illyria in 551, and tried to turn away a series of
barbarian incursions, one of which moved almost up to Dyrrachium.
Some sense of the scale of the problem can be gained from Proco-
pius's description in the Secret History:22
Illyria and the whole of Thrace, the country from the Ionian Gulf
to the outskirts of Byzantium, including Greece and the Cherson-
ese, was overrun almost every year by Huns, Antae, and Slavs,
from the time when Justinian took control of the Roman empire.
The invaders inflicted incurable damage on the inhabitants of these

areas, for I think that more than 200,000 Romans were killed or
enslaved in each invasion, so that the whole region came to look
like the wilderness of Scythia.
The desperate state of affairs in the Balkans in the later sixth

century is brilliantly described by Gibbon:
The fortifications of Europe and Asia were multiplied by Justinian;

but the repetition of those timid and fruitless precautions exposes
to a philosophic eye the debility of the empire. From Belgrade to
the Euxine, from the conflux of the Save to the mouth of the
Danube, a chain of above fourscore fortified places was extended
along the banks of the great river. Single watch-towers were
changed into spacious citadels; vacant walls, which the engineers
contracted or enlarged according to the nature of the ground, were
filled with colonies or garrisons; a strong fortress defended the
ruins of Trajan's bridge, and several military stations affected to
spread beyond the Danube the pride of the Roman name. But that
name was divested of its terrors; the Barbarians, in their annual
inroads, passed, and contemptuously repassed, before these use-
less bulwarks; and the inhabitants of the frontier, instead of repos-
ing under the shadow of the general defence, were compelled to
guard, with incessant vigilance, their separate habitations. 23
After the death of Justinian in 565, the problem deepened, since

the barbarians began to settle in Illyria rather than moving away.
A vars crossed the Danube in 568 and defeated the Byzantine army.
There followed a series of Byzantine campaigns against the A vars in
the period from 579 to 582, which ended in what must have been a
very unsatisfactory peace, since Menander refers to the presence of
100,000 Avars in the Balkans by 580, and John of Ephesus writes of
Avars settling in Illyria by 584.
Slav migrations into Illyria in the late sixth century, which can be
detected from the archaeological record, served to emphasise the
already clear distinction between the cities of the plain and the
settlements of the interior. By the beginning of the seventh century
the Byzantine hold on Illyria was virtually lost. During the reign of
Phokas (602-10), Slavs reached the Adriatic coast. Heraclius
(610-40) was too troubled by problems with the Persians to take on
an active role in the Balkans, and it is reported in the Miracula Sancti

Demetrii that the whole of Illyria was terribly ravaged by the Slavs
who 'brought with them their families and everything they
possessed'. It was these waves of Slav invasions at the end of the sixth
century and in the early seventh century which finally caused the
abandonment of many early Byzantine sites in Albania,24 and the
withdrawal of the Byzantine army to Thrace. The text of the Mir-
acula Sancti Demetrii, which may be dated to the early seventh
century, contains in fact the last reference to Illyrians. One further
indicator of the weakening and ultimate disintegration of the Byzan-
tine hold on the region was the migration of refugees from southern
Illyria to Macedonia, the Peloponnese and perhaps to Constantino-
ple itself.
In the period from the early seventh century to the first half of the
ninth century Albania was outside the Byzantine sphere of influence
and under increasing Slavic domination. The Slavic presence in the
Illyrian region from the seventh century onwards is well attested by
the distribution of Slavic place-name forms,25 although it seems likely
that the density of Slavic settlement may have been less great in
southern Illyria. Given the lack of historical evidence, this period is
capable of description as a 'Dark Age'. The archaeological record is
similarly obscure, but artefacts from early medieval cemeteries in
northern Albania have been used to demonstrate the existence of the
so-called 'Komani-Kruja culture' .26 The artefacts from these cem-
eteries, often situated at the base of contemporary castles, are
apparently of local manufacture and relate closely to earlier Illyrian
forms, whilst at the same time showing considerable signs of contem-
porary Byzantine influence. But as well as the locally produced
artefacts, the grave-goods found in the Komani-Kruja cemeteries
include imported Byzantine objects, which may well have come in via
Dyrrachium, and brooches which appear to be of Slavic origin. The
finds from Komani-Kruja sites demonstrate not only that early
medieval Albania was not in complete decline, but also that there
was a shift in settlement from the low-lying sites of the Roman period
to more defensible positions in the uplands.
The phenomenon of the Komani-Kruja people is of considerable
significance, since it has been suggested that this culture may rep-
resent continuity from the Illyrian cultures which are otherwise lost
to the historical and archaeological record. Some indeed have wanted
to make the modern Albanians the successors of the ancient Illyrians
and have therefore tried to find in the Komani-Kruja people a

proto-Albanian society.27 On this subject Popovic writes with some
caution: 28
Si l'on admet, d'une part, Ie caractere romano-byzantin ou proto-

roman et chretien de la civilisation de Komani-Kruja et que,
d'autre part, l'on rejette les hypotheses sur son appartenance slave
ou avare, il faut alors renoncer aussi it voir dans ses porteurs des
Illyriens non-romanises, ou plus precisement des Albanais. Cette
conclusion s'appuie tant sur des arguments d'ordre archeologique
que linguistique et historique. Par Albanais on entend Ie groupe
ethnique parlant l'albanais, qui est une langue indo-europeenne,
avec une lexique, une morphologie et des lois phonetiques qui lui
sont propres. Contrairement au roumain, ce n'est pas une langue
romane, mais un parler tout it fait it part comportant des emprunts
du latin, du slave et aussi d'autres langues. Les opinions concer-
nant son origine divergent largement. Selon les uns, l'albanais
representerait les derniers vestiges du thrace, selon d'autres de
l'illyrien ou meme du daco-mysien. Quelle que soit la solution de
ce probleme philologique, depassant de loin nos competences
personelles, elIe n'est pas en mesure d'apporter une lumiere
nouvelle it la question de l'appartenance ethnique de la population
du type Komani-Kruja.
The ninth century saw renewed Byzantine interest in the Balkans,

and signs of renewed prosperity in Albania itself. An early sign of
Byzantine authority reasserting itself was the creation during the
reign of Nicephorus I (803--11) of the maritime Theme (naval com-
mand) of Cephalonia,29 which was intended to control the Adriatic.
By around 850 most of what is presently Albania was incorporated in
the Byzantine province (Theme) of Dyrrachium, which included the
whole of New Epirus, and part of Praevalis, whilst Old Epirus was
included in the adjacent Theme of Nicopolis. Although Albanian
territory was to change hands repeatedly in the following centuries,
not least because of the arrival of Bulgars and Latins, it is interesting
to note that by the ninth century there was in existence a geographi-
cal entity which resembled what we now think of as Albania.
Early in the ninth century new bishoprics were set up at Kruja,
Stefaniaka, Lezha, and Kunavia. The creation of these new bishop-
rics indicates that the old ethnological and religious divisions within
Albania, which were still strong in the seventh century, had broken
down during the intermission in Byzantine control. Further new

bishops were created in northern Albania during the tenth century.
It is not the purpose of the present paper to discuss in detail the
complicated history of Byzantium and Albania from the ninth to the
fourteenth centuries, and a brief account should suffice, since much
of this material is covered in a subsequent chapter. 30 Byzantine
control of Albania in the ninth century was still troubled by Serbian
migrations, and from the middle of the century the Bulgarians started
to infiltrate the region. By the end of the ninth century they had
penetrated almost as far as Dyrrachium, although the city had not
fallen. The Bulgarians remained in Albania until the death of their
Czar Simeon in 927. At the end of the tenth century the Bulgarian
kingdom was re-established under Czar Samuel, and this time the
Bulgarians succeeded in taking Dyrrachium. Consequently Albania
was the scene of Byzantine campaigns in the early part of the
eleventh century, when the emperor Basil II the Bulgar-slayer (Bul-
garoctonus) restored Byzantine control of Albania with his victory in
1018 at the battle of Beligrad (Pulcheropolis/Berat). By this time the
Classical name of Pulcheropolis seems to have been replaced by the
Slav form Beligrad.
In the eleventh century the Theme of Dyracchium was under the
authority of a Duke, and divided into various provinces. The Duke
had command of the Theme's army, which consisted of a mixture of
mercenaries and peasant soldiers who were obliged to present them-
selves armed when summoned by the general. Despite the success at
Beligrad, Basil did not succeed in re-establishing Byzantine control
very securely, and the eleventh century was marked by a series of
insurrections involving both the peasantry of Albania in 1040 and
1080, and the dukes of Dyrrachium themselves in the 1070s. In 1043
we hear of Albanians apparently involved in the revolt of George
Maniaces, the Duke of Sicily, against Constantine IX Monomachus.
In 1077 Nicephorus Bryennius, Duke of Dyrrachium and husband of
Anna Comnena, rose against Michael VII Ducas, while in 1078 a
further rebellion was led by the Duke of Dyrrachium, Nicephorus
Basilaces.
These revolts are the historical context for what appear to be the
first Byzantine references to Albanians. Michael Attaliates reports
that George Maniaces sailed from Italy to Dyracchium, from where
he marched on Constantinople. 31 Attaliates describes Maniaces's
troops as consisting of a mixture of Romaion kai Albanon. There has
been considerable debate about whether Attaliates's Albanians came
from the Balkans or from Italy, and it has even been suggested that
they might have been mercenaries from Scotland. 32 Ducellier in
contrast argued that Attaliates's Albanians must have come from
Albania, in view of Attaliates's statement that, after the failure of the
revolt, the Albanians, who had been equals with the Byzantines in
church and state, became enemies of the Byzantine empire. This
seems to indicate that the Albanians supported Maniaces as allies
rather than as mercenariesY
The issue is further confused since Attaliates reports the involve-
ment of a tribe called the Arbanitai in the revolt in 1078 led by
Nicephorus Basilaces, Duke of Dyrrachium. 34 In this case, at least,
there can be no doubt that the Arbanitai came from Albania, and,
more precisely, from northern Albania. 35 By the end of the twelfth
century there was actually a principality of Arbanon, based on Kruja
in northern Albania.
In May 1081, the Normans, led by Bohemond, son of Robert
Guiscard, landed in Albania. For the next three years the Byzantines
had to campaign against the Normans, and in October 1081 the
Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus personally led an expedition
to Albania, which is vividly described by his daughter Anna Com-
nena in her epic history, the Alexiad. Alexius was defeated outside
Dyrrachiumand was forced to withdraw, leaving the acropolis in the
control of the Venetians, and the command of the rest of the city in
the hands of Komiskortes, a native of Arbanon. 36 At a subsequent
point in her narrative, Anna refers to Guiscard being shot at from all
directions by people she calls Arbanitai. 37
Whether Attaliates's Albanians and Anna Comnena's Arbanians
are the same people, or whether the latter are a distinct group within
the former may never be resolved, but it appears that by the eleventh
century the Byzantines were aware of a distinct ethnic group in part,
at least, of what is now called Albania. The subsequent history of
Byzantium and Albania is troubled and 'beyond the scope of the
present essay. The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the continu-
ation of Norman campaigns in the country, and in 1096 the first
Crusade devastated Albania en route to the east. Byzantine authority
became increasingly weak, especially after the death of Manuel
Comnenus in 1180. From about 1190 to 1216 there was a semi-
autonomous principality of Arbanon, which initially included most of
the mountainous zones of Albania. After 1216 Arbanon was con-
trolled successively by the Despotate of Epirus, by the Bulgarians,
and from 1235 by the Byzantines in Nicaea. In 1269 Charles I of
Anjou landed in Albania, and on 21 February 1272 he founded the

Latin kingdom of Albania, which covered most of Albania from the
Drin to VIore. By the fourteenth century Byzantine writers such as
Gregoras and Cantacuzenus were using the terms 'Arbanite' and
'Albanian' to apply to all Albanians. 38
Cantacuzenus records the last Byzantine efforts in Albania with his
account of the efforts of Andronicus III Palaeologus to quell a
rebellion in the area of Berat. Andronicus, who was obliged to take
Turkish mercenaries with him, defeated the Albanians in 1341, but
the description of his campaign sounds more like large-scale brigand-
age in that he is said to have captured 300,000 head of cattle, 5,000
horses, and 300,000 sheep. This was clearly the last gasp of Byzantine
activity in Albania. Andronicus died in 1341, precisely at the point
when the Serbian empire was established by Stefan Dushan. The
Serbs invaded Albania in the 1340s and by 1347 Latins and Byzan-
tines alike had been driven out of the country.
Andronicus's campaign against the mountaineers of Albania illus-
trates a point about Albanian settlement patterns which was com-
mented upon by FerjanCic: 39
Si nous prenons en consideration les donnees venant des sources

byzantines sur les Albanais, dans 1'intervalle allant de la moitie du
XIe siecle - epoque des premieres donnees a leur sujet - et jusqu'a
la deuxieme moitie du xve siec1e - epoque de la fin de 1'historio-
graphie byzantine -, on peut relever une caracteristique tres im-
portante. Les auteurs byzantins, tant historiens que chroniqueurs,
decrivent les Albanais comme des eleveurs nomades qui vivent en
dehors des villes. Pendant 1'ete ils font paitre leurs tropeaux sur les
versants des mont agnes , et en hiver ils descendent avec leurs
animaux dans les regio.ns des plaines plus chaudes.
The references to transhumance in medieval Albania may well reflect

the weakening of Byzantine influence in the country, and the last
Byzantine campaigns sound more like border raids on pastoral moun-
taineers than proper war. Modern Albanians would doubtless find in
these observations more indicators of continuity from the ancient
Illyrians, who were, after all, mountaineers, brigands, and shepherds.
NOTES
1. I should like to acknowledge gratefully the help which I received in the

preparation of this paper from my colleagues at the University of
Warwick, Mr 1. Crow, Dr S. Ireland, and Dr T. Winnifrith; from
Dr K. Wardle and Mrs D. Wardle of the University of Birmingham; and
from Professor M. Harrison of the University of Oxford.
2. V. Popovic, 'L' Albanie pendant la Basse Antiquite', in M. Garasanin
(ed), Les Illyriens et les Albanais (Belgrade, 1988), p. 251.
3. G. Koch, 'Friichristliche und friibyzantinische Zeit (4.-8.1h.)" in
A. Eggebrecht et al. (eds) , Albanien: Schiitze aus dem Land der Skipeta-
ren (Mainz, 1988), pp. 118--137, plates 82-93, 96-99.
4. G. Koch, op. cit., plate 85.
5. M. Gough, 'The Emperor Zeno and some Cilician Churches', Anatolian
Studies 22 (1972), pp. 199--216. Gough (pp. 210-12), has argued that a
group of Paradise mosaics in Cilicia should be related to the theological
controversies at the end of the fifth century.
6. For a general survey see A. Meksi, 'L'architecture paleochretienne en
Albanie', Monumentet, 30 (1985), pp. 13-44.
7. M. Hasluck (ed.), Letters on Religion and Folklore by the Late
F. W. Hasluck (London, 1926), pp. 10-11, plate 6.
8. See e.g. Koch, figures 77-8.
9. A. Eggebrecht et aI., (eds), op. cit., p. 444, Katalog 358.
10. A fine example of a 'Theodosian' capital with dove protomes was found
in the 'Kuppelbasilika' at Meryemlik, near Silifke (see Ernst Herzfeld
and Samuel Guyer, Meriamlik und Korykos, zwei Christliche
Ruinenstiitten des Rauhen Kilikiens, Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua,
vol. 2 (Manchester, 1930), p. 60, plate 59). An unpublished capital with
sheep protomes, which came from the 'Domed Ambulatory Church' at
Dag Pazan (probably Coropissus) is now in the Adana Museum. Both
churches can confidently be assigned to the reign of Zeno (474-91).
11. C. Mango, 'Isaurian Builders', Polychronion (Festschrift F. Dolger)
(1966), pp. 358--65.
12. A. Bal<e, 'Fortifications de la Basse Antiquite en Albanie', Monumentet,
11 (1976), pp. 45-74.
13. Popovic, op. cit., figure 7.
14. G. Karaiskaj, 'La citadelle d'Elbasan', Monumentet, 1 (1971), pp. 61-77;
'New Data for the Dating of the Castle of Elbasan', Monumentet, 3
(1972), pp. 147-55; Popovic op. cit., figure 5.
15. N. <;eka, 'Archaeological Survey of the Elbasan Region', Monumentet, 3
(1972), pp. 7-33.
16. Popovic, op. cit., figure 2 shows the relative positions of these provinces.
17. See especially Rey, 'Les remparts de Durazzo', Albania - Revue
d'archeologie (1925), pp. 33 ff; K. Zheku, 'Decouvertes epigraphiques
sur les murs d'enceinte de la citadelle de Durres', Monumentet, 3 (1972),
pp. 35-46; and Popovic, op. cit.
18. Alexiad, 13, 3.
19. Zhekhu, op. cit.
20. Skylitzes-Cedrenus (Bonn) 1, p. 522.

21. Procopius, De Aedificiis, 4, 4-5. (Loeb volume 7), 248-67.
22. Secret History, 18, 20-l.
23. E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(London, 1776--88), ch. 40. The quotation is on pages 295-6 of volume 4
of The World's Classics edition.
24. Popovic, op. cit., p. 267.
25. Popovic, op. cit., p. 268, figure 15.
26. S. Pollo and A. Puto, The History of Albania from its Origins to the
Present Day (London, 1981), p. 31; Popovic, op. cit., pp. 269-80, figures
16--21.
27. Pollo and Puto, op. cit., pp. 31-2.
28. Popovic, op. cit., pp. 277-8.
29. H. Ahrweiler, Byzance et la Mer (Paris, 1966), p. 48.
30. Michael Martin's article covers the activities of Normans and Venetians
in Albania. Ducellier's publications provide a detailed account of much
of the history of the period. For a general resume see Pollo and Puto
op. cit., pp. 34-57.
31. Michael Attaliates, Historia, ed. Bekker (Bonn, 1853), 9.
32. A general discussion of the arguments can be found in B. FerjanCic, 'Les
Albanais dans les sources Byzantines', and in M. Garasanin (ed), Les
Illyriens et les Albanais (Belgrade, 1988), pp. 341-59, 304-6.
33. A. Ducellier, 'Nouvelle essai de mise au point sur l'apparition du peuple
albanais dans les sources historiques byzantines', Studia Albanica, 2
(1972), pp. 300-6.
34. Michael Attaliates, op. cit., 297.
35. FerjanCic, op. cit., p. 306.
36. Anna Komnena, Alexia4, 4, 8.
37. Ibid., 6, 7.
38. See Ferjancic, op. cit., pp. 313-14.
39. Ferjancic, op. cit., p. 322.
5 Conquest and
Commerce: Normans and
Venetians in Albania
Michael E. Martin
The first Normans to settle in the Mediterranean lands reached

southern Italy in the second decade of the eleventh century. They
came as pilgrims, a calling soon abandoned for more congenial
employment as mercenaries in the wars which raged between popes,
both emperors, the Saracens, the Lombard princes and a host of
lesser rulers, barons and freebooters. The truth was that southern
Italy was too far removed from the main centres of power to be
governed effectively from any of them. The Norman ranks were soon
swelled by a stream of recruits from Normandy. The most notable of
these was the redoubtable family of Tancred de Hauteville whose
thirteen sons by his two marriages all made their way to Italy. The
eldest, William, eventually became count of Apulia and was suc-
ceeded by his brothers and half-brothers. Among the latter was the
eldest son of Tancred's second marriage, Robert, surnamed Guis-
card, 'the cunning'. Robert elevated the country to a duchy and in
1071, after a bitter struggle, drove the Byzantine forces from Bari,
their last outpost in Italy. But Robert's ambition knew no bounds.
He set his youngest brother, Roger, on the course that was to make
him ruler of Sicily and his successors the kings of the most glittering
of twelfth-century European states. He repudiated his first wife to
marry the formidable Sichelgaita, daughter of the Lombard ruler of
Salerno. For Sichelgaita's daughter Helena, Robert sought and ap-
parently obtained the promise of the hand of the Byzantine emperor
Michael VII, or of one of his close relations. Indeed, Robert as
conqueror of the Byzantine territories of Apulia and Calabria saw
himself as the heir to the eastern empire and, as he moved about
Italy, assumed the titles and discharged the functions that had for-
merly belonged to the emperor himself.
A palace revolution in Byzantium ended the prospect of the
marriage alliance, but it provided a pretext for Robert to extend his
conquest across the Gulf of Otranto. Early in 1081 Robert began to
58
Normans and Venetians in Albania 59
assemble his forces. His ostensible purpose was to exact redress for
the slight suffered by Helena, now confined to the women's quarter in
the imperial palace in Constantinople. Her confinement was in fact to
last for twenty years, but the circumstances of her detention were not
onerous: according to Orderic Vitalis her only duty was to comb the
emperor's beard each morning. Moreover Robert could adopt a
legitimist position. A man claiming to be the emperor Michael -
some said he was a monk, others a domestic servant - had turned up
in Robert's entourage and enabled Robert to declare that he was
assisting a lawful ruler against usurped power. Contemporaries were
in no doubt that his real intention was to seize the imperial throne.
Our best source for the events that followed is the Deeds of Robert
Guiscard, a Latin poem in five books written by William of Apulia.
Although it is addressed to one of Robert's sons, Roger Borsa, whom
William speaks of as playing Augustus to his own Virgil, it was
actually composed at the request of Pope Urban II towards the end of
the eleventh century. The reader of William's works may be forgiven
if the parallel with Virgil does not strike him as particularly apposite;
but William's skill as narrator more than atones for his shortcomings
as poet. A second source is the Alexiad, an account of the emperor
Alexius's reign composed mainly by his daughter Anna some thirty
years after Robert's death, and apparently incorporating some ma-
terial from the Deeds.
In the spring of 1081 the first detachments set sail. Valona and
other towns were taken and Corfu also fell to the Normans who were
soon joined by Robert himself, by his wife Sichelgaita and the
pretender. Like William of Normandy in 1066, Robert bore a papal
banner. The Norman army and fleet now turned northwards moving
in parallel to one another, but off Cape Glossa the fleet ran into a
squall: sails were ripped apart, yards blew down and oars snapped as
rowers plunged them into the tumultuous seas. Here it seemed were
the looming cliffs of Epirus, the wild surge, the coast of doom of
Horace's fifth ode.
Despite this misfortune, the Norman forces reached Durazzo
(Durres) in June and laid siege to the city. Durazzo was the key to the
campaign. It was one of the western termini of the Via Egnatia which
ran by way of Ochrid and Salonica to Constantinople. The Epidam-
nus of Catullus and Cicero, its name had, by an obscure process,
become Dyrrachium. A story was circulated to the effect that when
Robert was told that the city was called Dyrrachium because it was
durandus, strong in withstanding sieges, he replied, 'I too am
durandus and when I've finished here they'll call it mollicium' (the
soft). The defences were impressive. The walls were of brick and
dated from the time of Anastasius (491-518), a native of the city.
They were wide enough to allow four horsemen to ride abreast in
safety on the wall-walk. A bronze equestrian statue adorned one of
the gates: it was still there in the fifteenth century when it was seen by
the antiquarian Cyriac of Ancona. The ramparts were punctuated at
intervals by battlemented towers rising eleven feet above the walls.
At the instigation of Alexius, wooden structures of loosely-fitting
planks were erected along the parapet, so that any Norman who
scaled the woodwork would be sent crashing, planks and all, into the
ditch. These planks were still in place twenty years later, for when in
another siege the defenders tried to speak to messengers waiting
under truce on the beam below, the projecting timbers made conver-
sation impossible. The defence of the city was entrusted to George
Palaeologus, a brother-in-law of Alexius.
Robert's forces sufficiently impressed the citizens for them to
temporise and ask his purpose in coming to Durazzo. Robert's
response was to have the pretender decked out in sumptuous attire
and led in procession round the walls with a suitable retinue of
musicians and escorts in attendance. But the pretender was greeted
with hoots of derision from the walls, the citizens shouting, 'We know
that fellow - he's only a wine waiter and a third-rate one at that'.
While the Norman ships anchored in the old Roman port to the
north of the city, the soldiers camped between the walls and the
lagoon, now an area of new housing, at the point where it used to
open into the sea. The channel was crossed by a bridge linking the
promontory on which Durazzo stood with the mainland. Robert set
about building a huge siege tower protected by coverings of hides.
On the top were mounted slings capable of hurling rocks into the city.
Palaeologus was undeterred. He built his own tower surmounted by a
pivoted beam which could be swung out in such a way as to prevent
the lowering of the drawbridge of Robert's tower onto the ramparts.
When the Normans attacked, the drawbridge jammed, half lowered
against the beam, while the defenders poured arrows on to the
topmost stage of the tower. Unable to withstand these volleys, the
Normans abandoned the tower. The defenders set fire to it with
naphtha and pitch, despite the covering of hides, and a sally led by
Palaeologus and equipped with tools borrowed from the stone
masons in the city broke up the base of the tower.
Some weeks later the Venetians, who were technically the subjects
of the Byzantine emperor and whose commercial interests led them

to oppose the establishment of the Normans on both sides of the
Adriatic, arrived with their fleet off Cape Pali. They anchored off the
headland forming a sea harbour made by linking the larger vessels by
chains. Wooden towers were built at each of the mast heads and
ships' boats were raised on pulleys and slung between them. The next
day Robert went with one of his sons, Bohemond, to challenge the
Venetians and, when battle was joined, the Venetians in their raised
skiffs threw down heavy blocks of wood studded with nails on to the
decks of the Norman ships. One of these missiles holed Bohemund's
own ship and he had to leap onto another to avoid being sucked
down. Another Norman ship was destroyed by Greek fire. The
Normans were routed, and pressing home their victory, the Vene-
tians cut the cables of some of the Norman ships still tied up in the
port. They returned to their own station laden with booty.
In October 1081 Alexius himself reached the plain to the east of
the city. He came at the head of a great army composed of many
diverse ethnic groups, including Anglo-Saxon refugees from Norman
England, perhaps anxious to avenge Hastings fifteen years earlier.
His daughter Anna lists them in her account of her father's reign, but
they are perhaps more familiar to western readers as they appear, set
back 300 years in time and translocated from Epirus to the Pyrenees,
in the Chanson de Roland. There, according to Gregoire (though this
proposition has not commanded universal assent), the polyglot army
of Alexius, the name of each of its contingents carefully preserved, is
placed under the command of the Muslim emir of Saragossa.
On the arrival of Alexius, Robert abandoned his camp and ordered
it to be destroyed, together with the ships; then he marched his men
across the bridge over the mouth of the lagoon to meet Alexius on
the plain. The bridge too was destroyed; no possibility remained
either of withdrawal or of surrender to the garrison of the city.
Perhaps there were some murmurings among Robert's men, some of
whom had been reluctant to leave Italy. His movements were well-
judged, for they thwarted the strategy pursued by Alexius - a
simultaneous three-pronged attack consisting of a sortie from the
walls, the despatch of a detachment of Greek troops to splash
through the marshes of the lagoon and take Robert in the rear, and
the deployment of the main body of the Greek forces to meet the
Normans head-on outside the city. The first two groups executed
their manoeuvres only to find the Normans gone; in the main engage-
ment the Normans were initially forced back. Some turned in flight,
wading into the sea in an unsuccessful attempt to surrender to the

Venetian ships patrolling off the coast. Sichelgaita, Robert's Amazo-
nian wife, though wounded by an arrow, rallied the waverers, crying
to them, 'Stand like men!' Alexius's Varangian guard, among whom
the Anglo-Saxons probably served, advanced too far and, exhausted
by their armour, were an easy prey to Robert's men. Those who
escaped took refuge in the church of St Michael: there was no room
for them all inside, so some clambered on the roof which, weighed
down by these Nordic giants, collapsed and suffocated those inside.
This is one version; according to Anna, the Normans burned both
church and refugees. After this the Greeks were broken. Alexius
himself was pursued by nine Normans who cornered him in a bend of
the river Charzanes, a predicament from which he escaped only by
leaping his horse on to a high rock. This battle was claimed by Sir
Charles Oman in his famous history of warfare in the middle ages, as
'the last attempt made by infantry to face the feudal array'. He saw
the battle as a landmark in military history marking the end of the old
pre-eminence of the infantry and showing that the future lay with the
armoured horseman. But there is little support for Oman's view. The
defeat of the Varangians, the turning-point of the battle, is categori-
cally attributed by Anna to the counter-attack of the Norman
infantry.
Notwithstanding the defeat of Alexius, Durazzo still refused to
admit the Normans. But among the numerous Venetian residents in
Durazzo was one who was intensely jealous of the Venetian leader
who, he thought, excluded him from policy-making. This man, whose
name was Domenico, arranged through another Italian, a man from
Bari, to meet Robert secretly at the church of St Nicholas which
stood some way to the south of the present Adriatica Hotel. In return
for the promise of Robert's niece in marriage, a promise later
fulfilled, Domenico undertook to deliver the city to Robert. At dead
of night Robert's picked force made its way cautiously to the walls: so
cautiously that the Venetian, bored with the long wait, had gone to
sleep, but the man from Bari awoke him in time for him to lower his
rope to the Normans below. Horns eventually sounded the alarm,
but it was too late, and the citizens awoke to find the walls in Norman
hands. This was in February 1082.
By then, however, the diplomacy of Alexius in Italy was bearing
fruit. On several occasions bribes and presents had been sent to
Robert's enemies, and especially to the German emperor Henry IV
to whom Alexius dispatched such persuasive gifts as a gold cross set
with pearls, a reliquary containing fragments of various saints each

identified by a label, gold, crystal and onyx ornaments and a piece of
balsam wood. Aroused by these blandishments, Robert's enemies in
Italy were moved to action and, a few weeks after the capture of
Durazzo, Robert was forced to return to Italy to deal with them. The
expenses of war and diplomacy drained Byzantine resources: in
Constantinople the empty treasury stood with its doors open. Bohe-
mond and his men raided widely through the Balkans from Skopje in
the north to Trikkala and Larissa in the south. In the end it was the
weariness of Bohemond's troops and his inability to pay them, rather
than any military defeat which led the Normans to withdraw to
Valona (Vlore).
Meanwhile the Venetians, after temporarily retiring to re-equip
their fleet, appeared once more before Durazzo which they found
almost deserted. They briefly occupied the city, except for the ci-
tadel, still garrisoned by a Norman detachment. Offshore the Vene-
tian sailors established a xylocastron, a sort of Mulberry Harbour, on
which shelters could be erected. Here they spent the winter before
sailing in the spring of 1084 to join a Greek fleet off Corfu.
In Italy Robert had once more subdued his enemies. Again he
fitted out a fleet, this time an even larger one; but when, after two
months of storms, he finally encountered the allied Venetian and
Greek fleets off Corfu, he was twice defeated. The Venetians had
nine triremes with specially raised gunwales. Their tactics were to
allow the lower Greek biremes to come between themselves and the
Normans so that, while they could not be boarded, from their
superior height they could project lumps of iron and fire arrows onto
the Norman ships. It was a refinement of the stratagem of the raised
skiffs which had worked so well at Durazzo three years earlier. The
irrepressible Robert gathered the remnants of his fleet and attacked
the allies in the harbour of Corfu; the Greek ships fled and the
Normans turned on the Venetians. The Venetians ships, over-
buoyant because their cargo of supplies and war materials had been
discharged, were unstable. The water, says Anna, did not even reach
the second line - a reference to the system of multiple Plimsoll-lines
employed by the Venetians to assist in the navigation of the Venetian
lagoons. When the men all rushed to one side of the ship to fight off
an attack, it at once capsized. Many Venetians were drowned and
many taken prisoner.
The Norman army now moved south to winter at Vonitsa while
their fleet entered the river Glykys (Thiamis, just below the Greek-
Albanian border). During the winter these naval forces were ravaged
by disease and the absence of rain in the spring made it difficult to
relaunch the ships. But at last Robert was able to sail for Cephalonia,
and there he died in July 1085 on the headland at the north of the
island, known to this day as Fiskardo, an appropriate memorial to
Robert Guiscard's mighty name.
At the news of Robert's death, panic spread among the Normans.
Their one thought was to return to Italy and, forgetful of their booty,
they scrambled aboard the ships. Shortly afterwards, enticed by the
promise of an amnesty, the citizens of Durazzo surrendered their city
to Alexius and killed Domenico. We are not told the fate of his young
bride, given to him as the reward of his treachery.
In death as in life Robert was restless. His coffin was swept into the
sea off Otranto, but was eventually retrieved. The heart was buried at
Otranto and the other remains at Venosa with other members of the
Hauteville family. His epitaph, William of Malmesbury noted,
began, 'Hie terror mundi Guiscardus'. Not since Caesar, not since
Charlemagne, had the earth produced men like the Hauteville
brothers, said William of Apulia. For the daughter of his enemy,
Anna, he was to be compared with Achilles, while in Dante, Robert
found his apotheosis, raised to the Heaven of Jupiter in the company
of the crusader Godfrey de Bouillon and a miscellany of Gallic folk
heroes. Only Gibbon is disdainful: Venusi remained for him, 'a place
more illustrious for the birth of Horace than for the burial of the
Norman heroes'.l
Bohemond was still determined to implement his father's pro-
gramme. In 1104 he abandoned to his nephew Tancred the recently
created principality of Antioch and returned to the West to recruit
another army. In October 1107 he once more crossed the Adriatic to
Valona. From there he turned north to Durazzo, re-enacting the
events of a quarter of a century earlier until the Normans and their
allies were soundly defeated by the Greeks. By the treaty of Devol,
concluded the following year, Bohemond had to promise fealty to
Alexius. Two further Norman invasions followed. It was more than
fifty years after Guiscard's death that his nephew, King Roger II of
Sicily, led another Norman army across the Adriatic, but this time
the force kept further to the south, advancing from Corfu to Corinth
and Thebes. Finally a century after the first Norman campaign,
William II - known as William the Good - sent yet another force
against Durazzo. The city fell almost at once and the triumphant
Nomans swept along the Via Egnatia to Salonica. They were on the
road to Constantinople before the Greeks could check their advance.

For a century the Normans had looked with covetous eyes at Albania
and especially Durazzo: but it hardly needs to be emphasised that for
them Albania was no more than a stepping-stone on the way to
Constantinople. 2
In the meantime a few documents of the twelfth century show
Venetian merchants using Durazzo as the starting-point for trading
ventures by land right across the Balkan peninsula as far as Salonica
and, in one case, from there by sea to Constantinople. To this point
the role of the Venetians in both the political and economic life of
Albania had been peripheral and, to judge from the events of the
1080s, even surreptitious. Their great moment came in 1204 with the
Fourth Crusade. The recent studies by Professor Alain Ducellier of
Toulouse, rich in sources and illuminating in commentary, must be
the point of departure for any subsequent essay.3 The Venetians
showed no haste in exploiting their opportunity. Although the cru-
sading fleet put in at Durazzo in 1202 en route for Constantinople,
the city was not occupied. In 1204 the Partitio Romaniae, the division
of the former Byzantine territories which took place after the capture
of Constantinople, assigned Durazzo to the Venetians, but it was not
for almost a year, in July 1205, that, without resistance, the city
surrendered to them.
It should properly have been under the authority of the Venetian
podesta in Constantinople, but the former Byzantine territories in the
west were renounced to Venice itself. The Venetian military
governor soon bore the title of 'duke', by analogy presumably with
the Duke of Crete, although Ducellier thinks the title was used in a
conscious attempt to suggest continuity with Byzantine rule. A Latin
archbishop, appointed by Innocent III, was expelled by the Vene-
tians. This first period of Venetian control of Durazzo and its imme-
diate hinterland lasted only seven years until 1212 when it was
retaken by the Greeks. During that time Venetian economic activity
was at a very low level, and the handful of commercial documents
suggests, according to Ducellier, that the Venetians were buyers, not
sellers, in Albania. They were principally interested in obtaining
good Byzantine gold coin in exchange for their own silver, rather
than in the purchase of goods. Hence the surviving commercial
contracts state that payment is to be made in coin of good alloy
bearing the head of Manuel Comnenus (1143-80), the coins minted
before the debasements of the later twelfth century. If Ducellier is
right, this illustrates very neatly the general movement in the period
of silver eastwards in return for a westward movement of gold, a

trend which has attracted a good deal of comment from economic
historians.
But it may be that too much attention should not be given to the
insistence in the contracts on the type and quality of coin, for such
formulae and specification are common in medieval Levantine trans-
actions, even in cases where the object of the contract was undoubt-
edly the purchase not of coin, but of commodities. Nor should the
exemption of precious metals from tariffs in the 1210 treaty between
Venice and Michael Angelus Ducas, Despot of Epirus, be given too
much consideration. The exemption of the means of exchange was
common in similar commercial treaties of the period and need not
imply that the only concern of the Venetians was to get good coin.
Ducellier sees the low level of economic activity as the result of
threatened revolts, pressure from the Ragusans and Serbs, the inter-
ruption of the Via Egnatia and the short duration of the treaty with
Epirus, which was to run for two years only, from 1210 to 1212.
However, many similar treaties were nominally of such short dur-
ation, but seem often to have been formally or tacitly renewed on
their expiry. It should be noted too that the Venetians were in these
years already under great pressure. They were active in Alexandria,
Syria, Cilician Armenia, Negroponte, the archipelago and of course
Constantinople and Crete where in the course of the thirteenth
century 3,500 Venetians were to settle. In these circumstances it is
hardly surprising to find only limited exploitation of their new posi-
tion in Durazzo.
In 1212 the Greeks of Epirus retook Durazzo in circumstances of
which nothing is known. For much of the thirteenth century, the city
remained once more principally under Greek rule, first under Epirus,
then, after 1256, under the Palaeologues of Nicaea and, finally after
1262, under the restored Byzantine emperors of Constantinople. In
1258 Durazzo had fallen to Manfred, successor of Frederick II and
hero of Dante, but was re-occupied by the Greeks the following year
after the battle of Pelagonia. In 1267 by the treaty of Viterbo Albania
passed to Charles of Anjou, as part of his marriage portion when he
was given the hand of a Byzantine princess. The Angevins had
inherited the mantle and the ambition of the Normans. This Angevin
period was a time of little commercial activity in Albania both for
Ragusans and Venetians. Venetian enterprise was concentrated in
Spinarizza, where a Venetian consulate was for a time established.
Durazzo, however, was only occupied by the Angevins in 1272,
and there followed more than a century of intermittent warfare with

the Greeks. At the great battle of Berat in 1281 the Greeks under the
Emperor Michael Palaeologus scored a resounding victory over the
Angevin cavalry; it was a reversal of what had happened outside
Durazzo in 1081. Durazzo fell once more to the Greeks (1284), while
southern Albania remained Angevin. But the Greeks could no longer
hold on to the north, and before the end of the thirteenth century
northern Albania, including Durazzo, had fallen to the Serbs.
Although the Greeks were to reoccupy the city and environs for a
time in the early fourteenth century, once again the Angevins reas-
serted their authority while in the 1340s a new Serbian offensive
dislodged both Greeks and Angevins from most of Albania. Serbia
was to be master of most of the country until the death of Stefan
Dushan in 1355.
In short, Albania as a whole was Byzantine during the first part of
the thirteenth century, Angevin between 1267 and 1281 and then,
while the north reverted to Byzantium, much of the south remained
under Angevin rule until both parts were overwhelmed by the Serbs
in the mid fourteenth century. Thereafter until the Turkish conquest,
Albania was divided between rival families of barons or war-lords:
in the north the Balsha, Dukadjin, Thopia and Kastrioti families, in
the centre and south the Muzaki and Shpata. Within this broad
pattern, the Albanian cities suffered even more complex vicissitudes.
Durazzo, for instance, in the 200 years between 1205 and 1400
underwent ten changes of lordship. From all this turbulence the cities
emerged with a growing measure of autonomy. In their documents
they style themselves as communes or universitates. There were
important colonies of Venetian and Ragusan merchants in both
Durazzo and Valona, each with its own consul. The Peace of Turin of
1381, one of the truces in the long series of Venetian-Genoese wars,
compelled the Venetians to abandon much of Dalmatia to Hungary,
and, in order to preserve their position in the Adriatic as much as for
the places themselves, Venice occupied Durazzo in 1392, Shkoder in
1396 and Lezhe in 1404. Meanwhile from at least 1356 Butrint in the
south had a castellan appointed by the Venetian regime in Corfu.
This led to the establishment of a Venetian colony there.
Venice maintained its position in Albania partly by the support it
gave local families, on some of whom it conferred Venetian citizen-
ship. The most important of these was the Thopia family, even
though they had sometimes resisted Venetian power. It was a Thopia
who finally ceded Durazzo to Venice in 1392. At first only the citadel
was Venetian, but eventually the whole town was taken, and it was
the Venetian consul who superintended the making of the ditch
which made Durazzo an island. In the south the Balsha family was
dominant, and the widow of Balsha II Comnena ruled after her
husband's death. She sought Venetian protection. Ducellier thinks
Venetian interest moved north from Valona to Durazzo because of
local difficulties and because of problems with Catalan pirates and
with Turks. It was easier to defend the northern part of the country
which by 1400 had come to be styled 'Venetian Albania'.
On the seaboard, Venetian and Ragusan merchants competed.
Trade was for the most part in the products of an agrarian economy.
The Venetians shipped wax, leather and skins and salt fish, but corn,
especially millet, and also beans appear in the commercial contracts.
There is little indication of long-distance commerce along the Via
Egnatia, although silk appears occasionally in the documents. The
purchase of a cloak and sword recorded in one contract is excep-
tional, and they could in any case have been of local manufacture.
Ducellier considers that the salt trade was largely in Ragusan hands.
There are, however, numerous indications of Venetian interest and
participation in the traffic in salt. In the latter Middle Ages the ex-
port of metals from northern Albania became significant, while in
the south the investment in the building of fish ponds at Butrint by
the Venetians suggests more than local consumption. To Albania the
Venetians brought the cloths of western Europe and the valonia of
Corfu for tanning. It was the Venetian coinage (gross i) that served as
the principal, though not the only currency, and the Venetians were
important in the not insignificant coastal trade. By the end of the
fourteenth century, the Venetians had displaced the Ragusans in
importance in Durazzo, while the Ragusans were more powerful in
the south, where the Venetians seem to have abandoned their station
at Spinarizza. The dominant Venetian family in Valona were the
Contarinis, who specialised not only in commercial loans but in
ransoming prisoners from the Greeks. Also important was the Mauro
family which had interests in Epirus, especially Arta. In 1319 a
dispute with the citizens of Valona led to the destruction of Venetian
houses in the town. At Valona, more costly merchandise was handled
than in the north. This merchandise included wax, kermes (cochineal
dyestuffs), indigo and especially silk. But the most remarkable export
was of Albanians themselves. From 1380 Venice was much engaged
in what was effectively a trade in Albanian slaves, especially from
Durazzo to Venice. The Albanians were charged six ducats for their
passage or worked four years on arrival in Venice before being set
free. The charge for these 'boat people' was later raised to eight
ducats or ten years' service, on the grounds of their uncouthness.
The principal visible remains of the Venetian presence in Albania
are the fortifications, often begun in Byzantine times and recon-
structed by the Turks. At Shkoder, where Ducellier thinks much of
the surviving work is Venetian, the tail and haunches of the lion of
St Mark are still above the portal: but he has lost his head and is a sad
fellow, defaced, disembodied, dismembered. The innermost and
highest of the baileys of the fortress of Shkoder has a three-storey
building described by Ducellier as the capitanato. It seems to have
the features of a warehouse and was indeed used by the Turks as a
powder magazine. In this function it suffered the same fate as the
Parthenon and is now undergoing restoration. Ducellier thinks that
the citadel of Lezhe is also Venetian. At Durazzo the Venetian
contribution to the extensive walls of Byzantine times is the great
circular tower by the museum, built shortly before 1401 to defend the
foreshore.
Finally, south of Sarande the coast sweeps in a wide bay to the
river which drains the lake of Butrint into the narrow strait opposite
Corfu. Members of the Birmingham University/Courtauld Institute
survey of 1976 will well remember the contrast between the unre-
lenting chill of the grey skies and limestone of the mountains round
Delvine and the mellow spring air of Butrint, where, in the midst of
the trees and swamps, clamorous with nightingales and the bass
accompaniment of gregarious frogs, the grove which reminded
Aeneas of the woods of Ida and the fondly-remembered Simois, one
comes suddenly on the awesome basilica known as the Venetian
cathedral and ascribed to the fifteenth century. Some Byzantinists in
the party reverently claimed the work as much earlier, associating it
with the early Christian baptistery which is nearby. Some thought the
basilica was a re-build of the twelfth century and would allow to the
Venetians and the fifteenth century only the blocked bay in the south
aisle, the subsidiary apse enclosing the main apse in a polygon, and
the two tombs in the south aisle. The Virgilian associations were not
lost on the Venetians. In the first decade of the fifteenth century an
unknown Venetian traveller, of a literary turn of mind, paused here
on the way from Venice to Greece and the Black Sea. He left a rather
bald account of his travels, but he knew his Virgil.
Here are the Chaonian mountains and the castro they now call
Butrint, of which the Aeneid says, ' ... portuque subimus Chaonio
celsamque Butroti consendimus urbem . . .' Here after so much
toil, pious Aeneas met Helenus son of Priam: but it now belongs to
Venice.
As to the other great Venetian centres, Valona and the island of

Sazan, no recent accounts exist. Apart from buildings, Ducellier
thinks one of the two bells preserved in the museum of Shkoder are
of Venetian origin. It might be added that at Pojani, ancient Apollo-
nia, just west of Fier, in the exo-narthex and refectory of the church
famous for its fresco of Andronicus II, are a series of ship graffiti, the
work either of Ragusan or Venetian sailors, showing one masted
vessels with and without oars, and some three and five masted
vessels. I have not come across any reference in the sources to the
belfry-like structure in the citadel at Kruje known as the Venetian
tower.
But where in all this, it may reasonably be asked, are the Alba-
nians? It is characteristic of Albanian history that it is part of other
people's history. Visitors to the recently-opened museum at Kruje
remark, if kindly disposed, on its spaciousness, or, more cruelly, on
its emptiness. Indeed many of the exhibits are casts and models, and
the admirably displayed documents are photographs of originals in
Venice, Dubrovnik and Vienna. The Norman sources have nothing,
and the Venetian sources little, to say ofthe native peoples. What the
Venetian sources do reveal is curiously and consistently cryptic and
negative. In the 1440s, the Venetian Senate warned against the
appointment of Albanians to office in Corfu; in Shkoder the Alba-
nians were likely to rebel in 1433: always they are spoken of as a
problem, as unreliable. If you want to find medieval Albanians who
are less shadowy, you have to go abroad, ,for in the Middle Ages, as
in our own day, though for different reasons, the Albanians often
chose a life of exile. The most celebrated exodus in medieval times
was of Albanians southwards into Greece and more especially the
Peloponnese where what Sphraztzes calls 'the base and useless nation
of the Albanians' settled in numbers. Indeed by the fifteenth century
under their leader Petros Cholos, Peter the Cripple, they could
challenge the rule both of Palaeologue and Turk, and the Greek
sources speak of the Albanian with universal fear and abomination.
From the beginning of the fourteenth century began a big emigration
of Albanians from Durazzo to Ragusa and the North. Ducellier
explains the exodus by reference to recurrent earthquakes, the

rivalry of robber-barons and the Turkish threat. Some Albanians
simply sought their fortune overseas. Some of these emigrants went
to Venice, where the Albanian settlement has been studied by
Ducellier.
These settlers were for the most part poor people, unlike some of
the Albanians who contributed to the artistic achievements of the
Serenissima in later centuries, and in Venice they turned readily to
crime. Ducellier lists some of the cases that came before the Venetian
courts: an Albanian charged with armed assault, another with am-
bush, a third with murder of an officer, another with the release of an
arrested prisoner. Another Albanian ran a hit squad. Some of the
Albanian women immigrants worked as prostitutes. Albanians in
more regular employment were generally in humble situations, often
as domestics, paramedics, soldiers and officers of the watch.
Even in these employments their proclivity for crime and violence
was evident. One domestic was accused of knifing his mistress,
another of ravishing his master's daughter, but not all were so
untrustworthy: on the contrary, in other cases it was excess of loyalty
that led them astray, as in the case of an Albanian valet in the service
of a Venetian doctor, who with his fellows caused a Jewish doctor to
be summoned without cause in the middle of the night to the bed of
the great Carlo Zeno, apparently in an attempt to embarrass his
master's rival. The court dealt lightly with them, appreciating the
joke. Of the Albanian soldiers, some were among the instigators of a
mutiny on the Flanders galley, while among the Albanians serving in
the watch, one was charged with abusing his position to seduce the
daughter of a citizen, another of theft and yet another, stumbling on
a brawl between two of his compatriots in the course of his patrol, far
from separating them or dispersing the crowd of Albanians who had
gathered to watch, used his office to make one combatant surrender
his weapon, which was then used to despatch the other. One is
reminded irresistibly of the reputation of Albanian emigres in con-
temporary New York. Other Albanians, more pacific, found employ-
ment as bakers, couriers, barbers or grocers. One was a wine
merchant and a few were ordained. Castello was their most favoured
quarter and by 1442 they had their own scuola or guild. Ducellier
records no Albanian nobles, such as settled in Naples. But against the
modest ambitions of those law-abiding Albanians whose careers
Ducellier has recovered, can be set an Albanian exile in Venice who
had no such diffidence: in 1365 the Great Council discussed the case
of an Albanian who claimed he was the Byzantine emperor. The

council concluded that he must be mad. 4
The campaigns of the Normans and the colonisation by Venetians
in Albania represent but one aspect of the perennial temptation of
the Italian states to make the Adriatic an Italian sea. These ambitions
went back to Roman republican times and anticipated the policies of
the Fascists in the 1930s. Mussolini spoke more truly than he knew
when he referred to his invasion of Albania on Good Friday 1939 as
an attempt to complete unfinished business. In Elizabethan England
too, Italian aspirations in the area were appreciated: when Shakes-
peare wanted to pay tribute to Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano,
who was the guest of the English court in 1600, he could think of no
more fitting compliment to an Italian nobleman than to make his
family Dukes of Illyria, on whose wild shores was cast up the
bewildered Viola. 5
NOTES
1. E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1906)
vol. VI, p. 222.
2. For the Norman period the principal sources are: the Alexiad of Anna
Comnena, ed. B. Leib, 3 vols (Paris, 1937-45). There are English
translations by E.A.S. Dawes (London, 1928) and E.R.A. Sewter (Har-
mondsworth, 1969); William of Apulia, La Geste de Robert Guiscard,
ed. M. Mathieu (Palermo, 1961): Geoffrey of Malaterra, De rebus gestis
Guiscardi, ed. E. Pontieri in L.A. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum scripto-
lores, vii (Bologna, 1927). Secondary works include F. Chalandon, Essai
sur Ie regne de Alexia I Comnene (Paris, 1900), (a very full discussion,
useful despite its age), J.J. Norwich, The Normans in the South (London,
1967); D.M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice (Cambridge, 1988). I am
indebted to Dr J.D. Howard-Johnston who very kindly gave me a
preliminary draft of his forthcoming study on the relationship of the
Gesta Roberti Wiscardi and the Alexiad which will especially consider the
Norman campaign in the Balkans.
3. A. Ducellier, La facade maritime de I'Albanie au moyen age: Durazzo et
Valona de xie au xve siecle (Salonica, 1981) and the many essays of
Ducellier conveniently collected in L'Albanie entre Byzance et Venise,
xe-xve siecles (London, Variorum reprints, 1987).
4. On Venetian Albania, apart from Ducellier, see Acta Albaniae Veneta
saec, xiv et xv, ed. J. Valentini (Rome, 1967-77); the calendars of
F. Thiriet, Regestes des deliberations du Senat venitien concernant la
Romanie (Paristrhe Hague, 1958--61) and Deliberations des assembtees

venitiennes concernant La Romanie (Paristrhe Hague, 1966-71).
5. The first part of this article incorporates material from an article entitled
'An Adriatic Hastings' which first appeared in History Today (April,
1977).
6 Albania and the Ottoman
Empire
Tom Winnifrith
Skanderbeg, the national hero of Albania, won his reputation for his
long and successful campaigns against the Turks between 1445 and
1468. This much is certain in a very uncertain area. Skanderbeg's
birth in 1405 has more or less been established, but it is not at all clear
for how long, under what terms and for what reasons he spent his
youth and early manhood as a servant of the Turks. Skanderbeg's
almost unbroken series of victories, marred only by the occasional
defeat and more than occasional piece of treachery, are well attested,
but it is difficult to be sure whether the inspiration behind these
victories was national feeling, religious fervour or the class struggle.
Skanderbeg's death in 1468 was closely followed by the complete
collapse of resistance with the capitulation of Kruje in 1478 and the
conquest by the Turks of all Albania apart from a few coastal
possessions still retained by Venice. It is difficult to know whether
this rapid submission is a tribute to Skanderbeg's magnetic powers as
a resistance leader or to the desperate nature of his resistance.
Skanderbeg's relations with the Papacy, with Venice and with Naples
were difficult in his lifetime, and are difficult to disentangle 500 years
after his death. Skanderbeg's Italian campaigns seem an odd aber-
ration, since it is hard to avoid the feeling that such a champion of
Christendom should be otherwise engaged at a time when his own
country was in peril, and Christendom had suffered such a grievous
blow with the fall of Constantinople. Unsatisfactory primary auth-
orities and partisan secondary historians have made it difficult to
distinguish fact from fiction in Skanderbeg's life, and even harder to
come to any estimate of his place in history. 1
But, though Skanderbeg has had his detractors, the fact that he
fought against the Turks and fought so successfully is enough in most
people's eyes. It is not only the shadows of Mr Gladstone and
Gallipoli which suggest that the Turks must be the enemy. No less a
person than Disraeli wrote a story in which Skanderbeg is the hero,
although the story is confused by making Skanderbeg a Greek.
Perhaps the confusion, echoed in many a Greek work on Skanderbeg
74
Albania and the Ottoman Empire 75
and reversed in the work of Fallmerayer who sought to prove that the
Greeks were Albanians or Slavs, is revealing. 2 The Turks were seen as
brutal invaders in their advance, sottish oppressors in their decline,
destroyers of the glories of the past, enemies of progress in the
future. Such a vision was exploited by the Greeks who had had a
glorious past and who after gaining independence seemed to have a
future. It could not be exploited by the Albanians who had hardly
had any past apart from Skanderbeg and did not in the nineteenth
century seem to have much future. For, as this chapter will try to
show, after a brief period of resistance to the Turks in the fifteenth
century and a few intermittent revolts thereafter, Albanians when
not fighting each other spent most of their time fighting with the
Turks rather than against them, and so far from being at the forefront
of the battle for independence and liberty found themselves leading
the forces of reaction and even occasionally fighting against the Turks
when they were trying to grant freedom to other independent races.
The Turks arrived in Albania well before Skanderbeg was born,
and left the land, of course, well after he died. Significantly there is
no real Turkish minority in present-day Albania, nor would there
ever seem to have been one, although there is a considerable Turkish
presence in Greece in spite of population exchanges, in Bulgaria
where there are difficult minority problems, and in Yugoslavia where
in view of other minority problems the Turks seem relatively unim-
portant. But in Albania there are few Turkish speakers, although
plenty of Albanian speakers in Turkey and the former Ottoman
empire. King Farouk and Mother Teresa, Kemal Ataturk and the spy
whose codename was Cicero, make an improbable series of those
with Albanian blood who have achieved a kind of fame in the modern
world outside Albania. During the period with which we are con-
cerned a number of Ottoman grand viziers, notable those of the
Kopriilu dynasty, had Albanian ancestry, and seem to show that
unlike Skanderbeg most Albanians saw more profit in working with
the Turks rather than against them. 3
The Turks arrived in Albania in 1385, invited by Charles Thopia,
feudal lord of Durres, to help him against the Balsha family, masters
of most of central Albania. At Savra near Elbasan there was a battle
in which the reigning Balsha was killed. His nephew succeeded him
and married the daughter of Tsar Lazar of Serbia. Albanian maps in
Tirana and Kruje museums show the Albanians playing a heroic and
largely successful part in the battle of Kosovo, but it is difficult to
distinguish fact from fiction in this battle. Almost certainly there were
Albanians on both sides. After the battle, in which both the Sultan
Mehmed and Tsar Lazar lost their lives, it was against Albania that
Mehmed's son Bayezit turned in vengeance, whereas Lazar's son as a
Turkish vassal was allowed to keep his power, and indeed fought
heroically for the Turks in the battle of Ankara in 1402 when Bayezit
was heavily defeated by Tamerlaine.
This defeat threw Turkish rule in Europe into jeopardy. United,
the Balkan nations might have thrown off the Turkish yoke, but in
fact the Albanians were even more divided than they had been in the
fourteenth century when the Thopia and Balsha families had both
carved out sizeable domains for themselves. Although a Thopia took
part in the revolt of 1432 with the Araniti family, the Thopias had
already ceded Durres to the Venetians, as the Balshas had surren-
dered Shkoder. Other families, notably the powerful and mysterious
Dukadjins in the north, had taken over control of much of the
country, although they like John Kastrioti, the father of Skanderbeg,
clearly accepted some kind of Turkish suzerainty. By 1423 Sultan
Murad was undisputed master of the Ottoman empire. The rebellion
of 1432 may have been caused by him trying to impose more direct
rule. It resulted in three disastrous Turkish defeats, but eventually
George Araniti was beaten in a battle at Gjirokaster and took refuge
in a guerilla campaign. This was the campaign Skanderbeg decided to
join in 1443.
Skanderbeg married George Araniti's daughter Donika in 1451,
but well before that date at the congress of Lezhe in 1444 he had
assumed command of the Albanian resistance. We must pay tribute
to Skanderbeg's political success in keeping some kind of control of
this motley collection of Albanian allies. These political triumphs
were not as consistent as the military victories. Naples was an
uncertain ally and Venice was sometimes distinctly hostile. At vari-
ous times the Dukadjin, Araniti, Span and Dushmani families were
lukewarm in their support. The treachery of Moisi Golemi and
Hamza, Skanderbeg's own nephew, is well known. The assassination
of Leq Zaccaria by Leq Dukadjin as a result of a quarrel over Jerina
Dushmani is another colourful, but tragic episode in the story of the
Albanian resistance. After Skanderbeg's death we hear little of the
other Albanian families. Many, like Skanderbeg's own son, left for
Italy. There was a revolt in 1488 in which John Kastrioti allied
himself with the Dukadjins, some of whom passed to the service of
the Sultan. Uprisings took place in 1494 and 1499. A peace treaty
between Venice and Turkey put an end to this phase of the Albanian
rebellion.
The gradual conversion to Islam of most of the Albanian popu-
lation which remained in the Balkans requires some explanation. It
did not happen immediately. Figures from early Ottoman censuses
show that in 1510 Christians in Vlore exceeded Moslems by thirteen
to one and in Gjirokaster there were fifty-three Moslem families and
12,257 Christian ones. Wisely the Ottomans did not insist on the
holders of timars revoking their religion in order to obtain the grants
of land which went with an obligation to provide military assistance,
and out of 331 limar holders in Albania 60 per cent were Christians.
There is, however some evidence to suggest that Christian timar
holders were less privileged than their Moslem equivalents, and this
may have been a factor in the support given to Skanderbeg and the
subsequent flight of Christian refugees to Italy. Sensibly the Turkish
authorities would seem to have decided that the best way of winning
over the local population was to make the existing tribal chiefs into
timar holders, thus effecting little change in their condition except
that they fought for the Turks rather than against them. The heads of
the major families with a large number of supporters would seem to
have followed Skanderbeg's son to Italy. Other elements of the
Albanian diaspora to Greece at this time and to Serbia are less easy
to attribute to feudal or religious loyalty, since we hear of Albanians
in Greece before the Turkish invasion and the Albanian presence in
Kosovo was certainly strengthened, if not totally explained, by a
massive Serbian withdrawal after the Turkish conquest. 4
The departure of a large number of committed Christians may
have been one reason for the gradual conversion of the bulk of
Albanians to Islam, leaving a small rump of Catholics in the north
and a slightly larger number of Orthodox Christians in the south. It is
probably true that self-interest prompted many. Muslims would seem
to have had some privileges, notably the avoidance of taxes, and
Albanian Muslims could and did rise to high positions in the Ottoman
empire. There were outbreaks of anti-Christian violence at various
times, provoking the peculiar phenomenon of crypto-Christianity,
also to be found in Anatolia, where people retained secret Christian
beliefs, while outwardly conforming to Islam. On the border between
the Eastern and Western churches, Albanians had had good reason
to distrust the exclusive claims of both churches to exclusive truth.
The Bogomil heresy, strong in parts of the Balkans, notably Bosnia,
could explain why the similar creed of Islam found acceptance,

especially when the rather similar and simplistic Bektashi creed was
the one which was particularly favoured in the western Balkans.
There is not much evidence of missionary endeavour from either of
the main sects of Christianity in Albania. A few Franciscan friars in
the north kept Catholicism alive, while in the south the heroic
Aiolos Kosmas, who taught that Albanian like Vlach was the
language of the Devil, did something for Orthodoxy in the South
before his martyrdom in 1779. Kosmas's strong linguistic views may
give some clue to the failure of churches which paid no attention to
the language of the believer, and yet made some demand on the
believer's understanding of language.
In addition to being divided by religion the Albanians were divided
into two main linguistic groups, the Ghegs and the Tosks, north and
south of the Shkumbi river. The difference between the two was
about the same as the difference in language between Lowlands Scots
and English, but cultural distinctions were also involved, with the
Ghegs remaining in a tribal structure akin to that of the Scottish
Highlands, while among the Tosks this structure had decayed, and
there was more urbanisation and Ottoman interference. The timar
system broke down as there was less need for the armed cavalry
which was its basis, less opportunity for holders of timars to fight in
wars on the distant frontiers and eventually, as the frontiers began to
recede, less opportunity for the Ottoman government to reward
soldiers with timar holdings in conquered lands; it became necessary
for the government to finance itself by other means. Taxes had to be
raised, and the distinction between the military, free from tax, and
the tax-paying civilian began to be blurred. Albanians objected to
these attempts at central control and became rebellious.
Albanian histories of the years between 1550 and 1750, the period
in which the power of the Ottomans i~ the Balkans stood on a
plateau, after their initial rapid success and before their protracted
decline, draw attention to a number of revolts. These they attribute
to national and class uprisings against alien feudal or capitalist
oppressors. Certainly there were rebellions in Albania, notably in
1537 when the Ottomans planned to invade Italy, in 1571 at the time
of the battle of Lepanto, in 1610 after a great convention inMati, and
in response to the Austro-Turkish war of 1683-99. 5 It is possible to
exaggerate the extent to which these rebellions were a result of a
genuine wish for independence. Self-interest, the wishes of particular
local rulers, tempting alliances with Venice or the Hapsburgs and the
bellicose temperament of the Albanians are less creditable factors

which have to be born in mind. The absence of any native Albanian
sources is a complicating factor. Genuine independence seems to
have been achieved in the mountains of the far north and the area of
Himare in the south, but it is difficult to disentangle the former area
from the resistance of Montenegro, and they still speak Greek to this
day in the district of Himare.
The first real move for Albanian independence came after the
Turkish decline had set in, and it came from two sources, unlikely to
win support in popular mythology, the Busharli family, based on
Shkoder, and Ali Pasha of Tepelene. The former family held sway
over northern Albania for three generations as hereditary despots,
sometimes fighting with the Sultan, sometimes against him, some-
times preserving the balance in a difficult period which took in both
the Napoleonic wars and the first movements for Balkan indepen-
dence. Ali Pasha played the same role, for a time more successfully,
although his death was ignominious. Had Fate dealt its cards a little
differently the first real independent state in the Balkans would not
have been the tiny Greek principality of 1832 with its capital in
Athens, but a much larger Greek-Albanian state with its capital in
Ioannina.
Ali Pasha is however an unlikely and contradictory Albanian hero.
He was recognised as governor of Ioannina by the Porte in 1788. For
his exploits against individual Christian communities he is regarded
as a cruel tyrant. Even today in remote parts of the Balkans one can
hear folk tales and songs about his bad behaviour towards women.
His savagery towards individual communities like the Suliotes and his
sacking of the great Greek or Vlach city of Moschopolis (Voskopoje)
have given him a bad reputation. But other communities probably
rather enjoyed his rule. Albanians spread into Greece and Macedo-
nia. It was not just Albanian speakers who gained some advantage.
The Vlach community of Samarina prospered in the time of Ali
Pasha. An epic poem in Greek celebrated his prowess. He too, like
the Greek state which came to a painful birth in 1832, owed some-
thing to Miltiades and Marathon, to Homer and above all to Byron,
who spoke of him more poetically, but as ambiguously as this last
paragraph has done. 6
Had Ali Pasha succeeded in establishing an independent princi-
pality the Balkans might have been spared much strife. A state which
had two religions and two nationalities might have prevented some of
the terrible internecine wars which were to dominate Balkan history
for the next hundred years. In these wars the Albanians play a
peculiar part. Cruelty, incompetence and even kindness on the part
of the Turks all provoked resentment. Istanbul refused to pay Alba-
nians who fought against the Greeks, and indeed in 1830 executed
500 of them in Monastir. The Tanzimat reforms, intended to improve
the lot of the ordinary inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire, were seen
by the Albanians as constituting an infringement on their liberty. In
spite of the Tanzimat reforms, no Albanian schools were set up in the
first half of the nineteenth century, and frequent divisions and sub-
divisions of Albanian territory into different vilayets can be seen as an
attempt by the Porte to diffuse Albanian nationalism.
All this would seem to involve a classic case of repression leading
to nationalistic fervour. But the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878
destroys this simple picture. The Albanians were naturally incensed
that Albanian speakers in the Ottoman Empire should be incorpor-
ated into the independent states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and
Greece. Equally naturally this indignation was most conspicuous in
those areas in the north, east and south most likely to pass from
Turkish rule. Most of these areas are not, nor ever have been, apart
from a brief period in the Second World War, part of the Albanian
state but they still contain a large number of Albanian speakers. The
political and linguistic frontiers have of course changed with bewil-
dering rapidity in the Balkans, but in Albania these changes have
been less surprising than in other areas, the main element of surprise
being that the political frontier of Albania has always lain in all areas
considerably inside the linguistic frontier.
The political frontier in 1878 changed twice after the abortive
Treaty of San Stefano, which brought an enlarged Bulgaria inside the
boundaries of modern Albania, was rejected. The revisions of the
frontier at the treaty of Berlin drove Bulgaria, never much of a threat
to Albanian aspirations, right back, and also made considerable
rectifications in Turkey's favour to the Montenegrin frontier. There
were further rectifications in this area in 1884. Eventually in 1913
Montenegro recovered most of what she had lost in 1878 and 1884
from the new kingdom of Albania. After the First World War
Albania lost a little land to Yugoslavia both in the north and more
significantly in the north-east in the area of Kosovo, much fought
over in the past and much disputed at the present time. 7
The Montenegro-Albania border is full of savage mountains and
has a savage history. The population is sparse, and present Yugoslav
census figures which show a considerable body of Albanian speakers
in the thin band of territory disputed between first Montenegro and

Turkey, then Albania and Yugoslavia, suggest that the Slav side was
lucky. In the case of Kosovo, where the population of a less moun-
tainous area is greater, present figures are likely to be misleading, as
there has been a boom in the birthrate among Albanian families and
large-scale emigration by Serbs. There are now very few areas in
Kosovo where Serbs are in a majority and there are areas to the north
and west of Kosovo where Albanians, or at any rate Muslims, form
the majority. In 1878 the Albanian presence was less conspicuous,
but still conspicuous enough to make leaders from Kosovo play a
major part in the League of Prizren and in subsequent efforts to keep
Albanian territory part of the Ottoman empire. Perhaps it was
loyalty to Turkey, loser in both the Balkan War and the First World
War, which made it inevitable that Kosovo should pass to Serbia,
which was on the victorious side in both these wars, although Serbia's
earlier heroic defeat in 1389 was the factor which made and still
makes her possession of Kosovo so important.
In what is now Yugoslav Macedonia the political frontier has
always, probably for strategic reasons, been to the west of the
linguistic frontier, except possibly in the area, as confusing geo-
graphically as linguistically, around the lakes of Ochrid and Prespa,
where modern Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia meet. Diber, at
present Macedonian Dibra, was a focus of early Albanian nationalist
feeling, but there has never been a great deal of trouble in this area
since 1913 when Macedonia was surprisingly awarded to Serbia;
Diber itself remained in Albania until 1926. The present Yugoslav
government's kindly attitude to its Albanian and Turkish minorities
is easy to understand in view of the much greater problem posed by
the fact that historically and linguistically Bulgaria has always had
excellent claims to Macedonia.
It is in Greece that the linguistic and historical frontiers have
caused most confusion. In 1832 Greece won its independence and
gained roughly the territory of Classical Hellas. By 1851 it had won
Thessaly but very little in Epirus which remained Turkish until 1913.
This seems odd in view of the gains made by Montenegro and nearly
made by Bulgaria. The Balkan wars carried Greece up to the present
frontier. During the First World War Greece briefly occupied what is
called northern Epirus, the southern district of Albania centred on
Gjirokaster and Kon,;e, which has some claim to be Greek-speaking.
The political situation was confusing as there was no real Albanian
government, only a French and Italian occupation in the south
opposing an Austro-Hungarian occupation in the north. Mter the

war there were slight changes to the frontier, and not until very
recently has Greece abandoned its claims to northern Epirus. In the
Second World War Greece briefly occupied southern Albania, and
there was a good deal of emigration by Albanian speakers from
Greece.
This emigration, together with educational and political pressure
to turn Albanian speakers into Greeks, has made the southern
linguistic frontier hard to determine. It is complicated by the pres-
ence on this frontier of large numbers of Vlachs, with whom the
Albanians occasionally made common cause, as a beleaguered min-
ority, who were unwilling to abandon the suzerainty of the Sultan,
but were generally regarded as Greeks. It is further complicated by
the fact that most southern Albanians were members of the Greek
Orthodox church, and in some statistical tables, where there was a
division between Muslims and Christians, this factor clearly operated
in favour of the Greeks, who were also able to use the Church as an
instrument of propaganda and education. The complicated geogra-
phy of the area makes any linguistic or political frontier almost
impossible to draw. Even today it is possible to find on the coast
Greek speakers almost as far north as Vlore and Albanian speakers
as far south as Preveza. Albanian speakers in Greece can be found
both to the north and south of the Kalamas river. This was seen as a
possible frontier, although on both sides of the river there are mainly
Greek speakers. Further inland there are still Greek speakers in and
around Kon;e and Gjirokaster, the twin goals of the Greeks in both
world wars. Across the Greek border there is little evidence of any
Albanian presence in towns like Ioannina, Ali Pasha's second capital,
and Konitsa, home of Faik and Mehmet Konitza, two leading figures
in the struggle for Albanian independence. 8
Another leading family in Albanian history were the Frasheri
brothers, who came from Frasheri, an originally Vlach town in
southern Albania. Abdul Frasheri was a leading light in the League
of Prizren (1878), and as one of the only two southern members able
to attend the meeting he can be credited with some degree of
responsibility for turning it into a congress of all Albanians rather
than a local meeting designed to meet a particular Slav threat. The
Albanians were of course facing threats on many fronts at this time.
In the heartland of what is now Albania there was not much enthu-
siasm for the work of the League. Local Muslims saw nothing wrong
with the status quo and did not see it as seriously threatened. The
Great Powers were remarkably ignorant of Albanian national prob-

lems, and as late as 1908 an Italian cartographer, G. Amadori-Virgilj,
was still refusing to recognise Albanians as being distinct from
Turks. 9 Further South Philhellenism and the influence of Childe
Harold led to an inevitable confusion between Greeks and Albanians
as ferocious fustanella-wearing fighters for liberty who frequently
spoke each other's language.
The three Frasheri brothers, Abdul, Nairn and Sami, and Abdul's
son, Midhat, were all prominent in not only the political fight for
Albanian nationhood, but also in the struggle to create an Albanian
literature and language. Sami and Abdul Frasheri were founder
members of the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings; Nairn
Frasheri was a leading Albanian poet; and Midhat Frasheri was
chairman of the difficult congress at Bitola in 1908 which almost
resolved the in:soluble if absurd problem of the Albanian alphabet.
By 1908 there was some feeling of Albanian nationality and a recog-
nition among the Great Powers that an Albanian state should be
created as part of the intractable problem of Turkey in Europe.
Thirty years earlier the problem was seen rather differently. 10
At the League of Prizren the delegates, mostly beys and pashas
from Kosovo or Macedonia, the areas most under threat, favoured
the maintenance of the sovereignty of the Sultan. Fairly soon we find
Turks fighting those Albanians who resented the efforts of the Otto-
man government to hand them over to their Slav neighbours. Turkish
might eventually prevailed and in 1881 Dervish Pasha broke the
power of the League of Prizren. Prominent Albanians were deported
to the Dardanelles, Abdul Frasheri among them. The demands for
autonomy, and for Albanians to be united under one vilayet were not
met, nor did the Turks do anything to help Albanian culture and
education. This repression and the largely selfish interference of the
Great Powers, notably Austro-Hungary and Italy, did much to en-
sure that thirty-five years after the League of Prizren Albania
achieved not autonomy, but full independence, although not of
course with the boundaries the League had desired. In addition
revolutionary nationalistic movements in nearby Macedonia and the
efforts of Albanians in Italy, Egypt and America did much to inspire
a feeling of nationhood.
And yet Albania was still bound by curious ties to Turkey. Vasi
Pasha, an idealist Albanian patriot and poet in the Frasheri mould,
died in 1892 as Turkish governor of the Lebanon. Ismail Qemal was
likewise an Ottoman official. Faik Konitza, though bitterly hostile to
Turkish administration, did not believe Albania was ready for nation-
hood. All three men were progressive thinkers, opposing the stagna-
tion of conservative beys. In 1897 Albanians fought on the Turkish
side against the Greeks, although there were disturbances in Albania
during this year. In 1899 assemblies in Pee and Diber, although
showing autonomous leanings, both declared their loyalty to the
Sultan. By the turn of the century Ottoman rule in Europe was
threatened everywhere. We find Albanians rising against the Turks
but also joining with them in fighting the Slavs. In March 1903 the
Albanians of Kosovo attacked a Turkish garrison in protest against
the reform initiated by the Great Powers of allowing Christians to
become members of the security forces. In the south revolutionary
bands of Albanians were formed to counter the activities of the
Greek andartes. Friendly relations were, however, established with
the Bulgarian comitadjis, and with anti-Greek Vlachs.
This revolutionary activity was confusing and uncoordinated. At
times when candidates claiming to be descendants of Skanderbeg
came forward aspiring to the Albanian throne there was a comic-
opera air about the rebellion in Albania. Marxist historians find it
difficult to trace any genuine proletarian uprising at this stage,
although they have tried!l1 The successful Young Turk revolution in
1908 was engendered by two very different sets of opponents to the
government. The first set were liberals, believing in greater auton-
omy and democracy. Albanian patriots like Ibrahim Temo, founder
in Istanbul of the first opposition society, and Ismail Qemal were
members of this group, in which they were interested both as Alba-
nians and as members of the Ottoman empire. The success of the
revolution led to the founding of Albanian clubs and newspapers and
schools. Conservative elements in the north of the country did not
support such progress, finding themselves more in tune with the other
wing of the Young Turk movement which saw salvation in a narrower
chauvinist Ottoman Islamic outlook.
It was this set under Enver Bey which was ultimately to be
triumphant in Istanbul. They fought hard in favour of the Arabic
alphabet, alienating many who thought that the Latin alphabet had
won the day, but winning some support among Muslim fanatics in
Albania. In 1910 the Istanbul government suppressed Albanian
schools, newspapers and clubs, but in 1911 a more tolerant attitude to
these aspects of Albanian nationalism and to the Latin alphabet
prevailed. It was not only the Turkish government which made
compromises: in 1909 a Congress of Diber swore loyalty to the
Ottoman state. But a brutally suppressed revolt in Kosovo in 1910

inflamed Albanian opinion, and in 1911 there was a further revolt on
the border with Montenegro. This time, although some Albanian
Muslims fought against the largely Catholic rebels, Orthodox and
Slav Montenegro gave some help to the Albanian revolutionaries.
The Sultan eventually passed a general amnesty and showed an
equally conciliatory attitude towards uprisings in the south. But an
election campaign in 1912 produced through fraud and terror a
majority in favour of the Young Turks, and the stage was set for a
full-scale confrontation.
That this confrontation did not immediately occur in 1912 was due
to three factors. Albania, in spite of the heroic efforts of the Frasheri
brothers and the statesmanship of Ismail Qemal, was far from united.
The Ottoman government made, or pretended to make, various
concessions. Possibly because of these concessions the other Balkan
nations rose in revolt in the First Balkan War. At the beginning
of this war the Albanians loyally fought on the Turkish side. As
the front collapsed Albanian local troops were often left to bear the
brunt of the invading armies. With the clear defeat of Turkey the
time was ripe for Albanian independence to be declared, and on
28 November Ismail Qemal landed at Vlore two days before the
Albanian flag was raised.
The flag so raised was that of Skanderbeg, but, as with the story of
Skanderbeg with which we began, heroic gestures did not solve a very
complicated problem. The Balkan Wars were still being waged, and,
though Turkey sued for peace, the Greeks and Montenegrins still
fought on, determined to reach their goals of Shkoder and Ioannina.
When the peace treaty was signed on 30 May 1913 there were still
Greek, Turkish, Montenegrin and Serbian troops on what passed for
Albanian soil, and no certain decision was made as to what consti-
tuted this soil or who should govern it. The troops, apart from the
Greeks in northern Epirus, gradually withdrew and after a slight
pause, occasioned by the Second Balkan War, the Great Powers
began the difficult task of delimiting the frontier and deciding on a
ruler for the new state.
With the departure of Turkish troops in 1914 the story of Turkey's
involvement with Albania is virtually at an end. There were moves.
among the Muslim section of the Albanian population to find an
Ottoman prince to rule them instead of Prince Wilhelm of Wied, and
even occasional attempts to bring back the rule of the Sultan. 12 The
outbreak of the First World War led eventually to a partition of
Albania between the forces of France and Italy in the south and the
Austro-Hungarian army, following the defeat of the Serbians, in the
north. Thus the infant state was almost strangled at birth, but revived
after the Peace Treaties in which the defeat of Turkey ruled out any
Ottoman participation in Albania. It could be argued that the even-
tual triumph of the Muslim Zogu over the more enlightened Western
democracy of Fan Noli represents a kind of belated victory for
Turkish ideals, but if so the triumph was short-lived.
The collapse of Ottoman rule in the Balkans has certain similarities
with what is happening today in outlying provinces of the Soviet
Union. In Armenia and Azerbaijan for instance (an area coinciden-
tally and confusingly known as Albania in antiquity), we have the
same degree of complexity in ethnic, religious and political frontiers,
the same mountainous terrain and age-long feuds. Further and per-
haps most importantly there is the possibility of someone being both
a Russian official and Armenian or Azerbaijani nationalist, in the
same way that Albanian leaders often confusingly achieved promi-
nence in the service of the Turk.
We have further examples of the same phenomenon nearer home
in Ireland where Erskine Childers and Roger Casement both served
the British Empire and were afterwards executed for their efforts in
the cause of Irish nationalism. Ireland, rather than Armenia, whose
future remains unknown, is a better warning against the simplistic
view, which this paper questions, of the Albanians as an oppressed
people all of whose problems were solved when their Turkish op-
pressors left. As in the case of Ireland, the removal of the occupying
power led to a period of anarchy and civil war almost as bad as the
troubles which had preceded independence. It is of course possible in
both cases to blame the occupying power both for what happened
before and what happened after independence, to lament the poverty
and economic stagnation of the occupied Countries and to mourn the
missed opportunities of home rule for Ireland and autonomy for
Albania which could have been taken. In both Albania and Ireland
an unjust frontier imposed near the beginning of this century is still
creating trouble towards its end. Both countries have a brave and
attractive people who live in a remote and beautiful country which
has been bypassed by much of the twentieth century with all the evils
and benefits of economic prosperity. Both countries have a haunted
past and an uncertain future. Both have mixed feelings to their
former imperial power. It was an Irish poet, Padraic Colum, who
described Skanderbeg as a 'historyless man', 12 and both countries

need a proper account of their own history almost as much as they
need to get away from this history.
NOTES
1. See Introduction. Fan Noli gives a fairly evenhanded account of Skan-

derbeg's role in history. Modem scholarship on the Ottoman Empire
recognises Skanderbeg's achievements, as is shown by the work of
F. Babinger, Mehmed The Conqueror, revised edition (Princeton, 1978),
K. Inalclk, The Ottoman Empire (London, 1973) and S. Shaw, History of
the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, 1976).
2. Disraeli's novella is entitled The Rise of Iskander and was first published
in 1833. There is a useful account of it and other Greek versions of
Skanderbeg's life in T. Giokala, Ho Georgios Kastriotes-Skenderbees
(Salonica, 1975).
3. Shaw, vol. 1, pp. 206-13, for the Kopriilii family. See also C. Koztepeter
Ottoman Imperialism During the Reformation (London, 1973),
pp. 248-50 for earlier Albanian leaders.
4. Inalclk, p. 132, gives the figure for Moslems and Christians in VIore and
Gjirokaster, although it is perhaps worth noting that it is precisely in
these areas that the Greek language is strongest today. For the Albanian
diaspora and conflicting interpretations of the evidence about it see
Introduction, notes 4 and 8.
5. K. Frasheri, The History of Albania: A Brief Survey (Tirana, 1964),
pp.92-5.
6. There is an interesting if unscholarly account of Ali Pasha by W. Plomer,
Ali the Lion (London, 1926). For his activities among the Vlachs see
A. Wace and M. Thompson, The Nomads of the Balkans (London,
1914) who show his kindness to Samarina and cruelty to Moschopolis. I
have improbably heard old men both in Bulgaria and the Bronx sing
songs and tell tales of Ali's wickedness as if he had died but a few years
ago.
7. The vicissitudes of the Yugoslav Albanian border are well shown in
J. Swire, Albania: the Rise of a Kingdom (London, 1929) and more
concisely in H. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics (Liverpool, 1951),
pp.233-40.
8. For the Konitza family, writers, ambassadors and politicians see Swire
and (less kindly) P. Ruchas, Albania's Captives (Chicago, 1961). It is an
odd feature of Albanian life until recently that such a small number of
families, whose names very often derive from Albanian towns, dominate
so much of intellectual, diplomatic and political life.
9. Wilkinson, pp. 157-63.
10. S. Skendi, The Albanian National Awakening (Princeton, 1967) gives an

excellent portrait of the Frasheri brothers and this period of Albanian
history. Abdul's sons Midhat and Mehmet played a part in Albanian
politics after independence had been gained.
11. Frasheri, pp. 145-70.
12. Quoted in E. Licho, ed., Skanderbeg (Boston, 1968), pp. 194-5.
7 Cultural Values of the
Albanians in the
Diaspora
Alexander Lopasic
The aim of this essay is to discuss the importance of Albanian cultural

values outside the present state of Albania, in Kosovo, in Greece and
among the Albanian Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic of Ger-
many.
Albanians succeeded in preserving their traditional, social, and
cultural system for a very long time both in northern Albania and in
Kosovo. This system was based on tribes, subdivided into clans (fis),
who claimed their common ancestor from as far as twenty genera-
tions back. According to experts on Albania, this is the only tribal
system to survive in Europe right up to the present century, and it is a
good example of a strict patrilineal system, according to which 'a man
has blood and a woman kin'. Under this system a man could count his
ancestors and his blood relatives throughout several generations,
while a woman would depend on her patrilineal relatives, who
protected her and her interests. 1 Clans were further subdivided into
large households (shpi) consisting of several brothers and their de-
pendants, thus forming very viable social and economic units. Such
units were also the foci of a morality based chiefly on a concept of
honour, and this code which played a decisive role in the life of the
Albanians.
Southern Albania was inhabited by another linguistic group,
the Tosks, who came under the direct control of the Ottomans after
the death of Skanderbeg in 1468. The original extended families of
the zadruga type started to break down and develop into the latifun-
dia type of system controlled by the Albanian Moslem landed nobil-
ity (beys), who played a very important role as officials and soldiers in
many parts of the large Ottoman empire.
This Ottoman period is also noteworthy for the number of ethnic
movements of Albanians, particularly to the present-day Kosovo-
Metohija region. This was the direct consequence of the unsuccessful
rising of the Serbs in 1689, when a large number of them, under the
89
Patriarch of Pee, had to flee to Austrian territory and leave a very

fertile region which was occupied by Albanians converted to Islam,
thus enjoying different privileges. Some Albanians, however, had
been living in that region from very early times.
In the south, Albanians had already started to move into Greece
towards the Peloponnese and Thessaly in the thirteenth century when
they fought as mercenaries of the Despot Michael II Angelos in
1268. 2 According to the Venetian chronicler Marino Sanuto, writing
in 1325, Albanians in Thessaly were involved in several Byzantine
wars of succession as well as internal strife. After the death of the
Emperor Dushan of Serbia in 1355 Albania became the field of many
local conflicts, forcing Albanians to move towards Greece; by cross-
ing Epirus they reached the Gulf of Corinth, Morea, the peninsula of
Attica, and such adjacent islands as Hydra.
Many centuries later, after 1964, Albanians from Kosovo and
Metohija joined the migratory wave of Yugoslav Gastarbeiter who
moved to the Federal Republic of Germany as a largely unskilled
labour force. The traditional values of the Albanians survived in
many cases, demonstrating the strong feelings of cultural identity that
exists among one of the oldest social and ethnic groups in Europe.
Every society has a few basic values by which it can be character-
ised. In the Albanian case one of the most important is a very clearly
identified sense of honour. Honour for all Albanians is the Alpha and
Omega of their way of life; it is the pivot of their very existence.
'What profit is life to a man if his honour be not clean?' To cleanse his
honour an Albanian would pay the very greatest price. Every individ-
ual is also answerable for the honour of his fis (clan). This is a classic
example of that collective responsibility which contributes towards a
strong feeling of consensus and solidarity. Honour is very highly
prized, even above such things as liberty or life itself. The slightest
reflection on the members of a man's family or ancestors was consid-
ered as an offence against honour and could be avenged only by the
shedding of blood. Honour, being so important, can be taken away
from a man by spitting at him, beating or pushing him, threatening
him, or accusing him of a lie; by breaking into somebody's house
(one's house is considered sacred by the Albanians), breaking an
agreed truce, or dishonouring a woman. All of these demanded
restitution of honour by drastic means. 3 This explains the important
role of the feud, the instrument of restitution of honour and a
mechanism for keeping it intact. Maintenance of honour is also
related to the egalitarianism of the Albanians, according to which the
Central Values of Albanians in the Diaspora 91
honour of every Albanian is equal, whether the dead person be a

man or a woman, a simple peasant or a bajraktar, each offence
demands equal punishment. In social terms a dishonoured person is
as though dead: he will be seldom visited and socially avoided, while
his children would have difficulty in finding marriage partners. To
restore his honour he must take revenge, following the principle of
injury for injury, life for life.
The terms under which the retaliation is allowed to take place and
its extent are clearly indicated and described in the traditional code of
Leqe Dukadjin, called after a prominent chieftain of the Ghegs
(Northern Albanian tribes) who lived from 1410 to 1479 or 1481. He
was a contemporary of Skanderbeg, and is described in many stories
of the period, eventually becoming an integral part of Albanian
folklore, respected by all Albanians following traditional culture.
It is said that he was excommunicated by Pope Paul II for his most
unchristian codes and law, though he probably only codified the
already existing rules and applied them more rigidly, so that they
survived until the nineteenth century. It was in the second half of that
century that a great council of chieftains and Ottoman officials tried
to make some amendments to the code which at the time was still
widely used in Northern Albania besides having an important influ-
ence throughout the whole Albanian territory. In the end, it was a
Franciscan father, Shtjefen Gjecov (1874-1929) who collected the
code and arranged for its publication in Albanian; it was finally
published posthumously in Shkoder in 1933. Eventually the code was
translated into Italian and published under the title, Codice de Lek
Dukagjini ossia Diritto consuetudinario delle montagne d'Albania,
ed., P. Gjecor, (Rome 1941).4
The importance of this code can be demonstrated by two stories
often quoted by Albanians in order to underline its wisdom and
validity. One day the Sultan decided to visit the Kosovo area and he
came to the province dressed as a peasant. While riding to a nearby
market town he encountered a poor peasant travelling on foot;
because of his age, he moved with some difficulty. The Sultan took
pity on him and dismounting, offered him his horse. The poor
peasant agreed to the offer; but when on horseback he rode away
leaving the astonished and angry Sultan to find his way to the
market-town on foot. When he arrived, he looked around and found
his horse in a stable guarded by a groom. He explained the situation
and asked the groom to return his horse, but the man refused, saying
that he could return the horse only to its owner, namely the person
who had brought it to the stable. The Sultan, of course, got very
angry, and approached the local cadi, who ordered both men to
appear before the court in order to adjudicate the case. The thief
denied that he had stolen the horse or even encountered the Sultan.
In the end, not having any proof to the contrary, the cadi returned
the horse to the thief, adding that he had followed the laws of the
Sharia. After that, however, he asked both men to remove their
boots and show the soles of their feet, thus following the traditional
code of Leqe Dukadjin. The soles of the thief showed clearly the
scars of somebody used to walking, whereas those of the Sultan
implied he was used to riding, since they had no scars. Then the cadi
returned the horse to its rightful owner and arrested the thief. The
Sultan was very impressed by this adjudication and described it as
true justice. This is one of many stories indicating the wisdom of the
traditional legal code and a well-known saying, 'Ashtu e la Leqe' (it
dates from the time of Leqe Dukadjin), means that something is just
or absolutely right.
The second story is just as important, as it refers to equality of the
offender before the law. According to the code all are of equal value,
but the story tells how this was disputed by Skanderbeg who claimed
that the blood of different people should be valued differently.
Dukadjin disagreed, saying that God gives to each soul its own
character. A good man can be the son of a bad one, or vice versa.
Seeing that Skanderbeg could not be easily persuaded, Dukadjin
suggested, in front of the council of elders, that he should ask his
mother what his father was really like, asking her to swear it on the
gospel of St Mark. The mother agreed to her son's wish and replied,
'Your father was an ugly and evil man, but from him descended a
good, handsome man'. Returning to the council Skanderbeg said,
'Ashtu e la Leqe'. The legend survived, and the code of this chieftain
of medieval Albania became the unwritten law until modern times.
The fact that two of the most important figures of traditional Albania
were said to have endorsed it gave the code a particular vigour and
permanence.
That it still remains important can be illustrated by a recent feud
between two extended families in a village some twenty kilometres
from Prizren, in the autonomous Yugoslav province of Kosovo,
between the years 1952 and 1970. A shepherd boy led a flock of sheep
to someone else's pasture; this man saw him and shouted to him to
remove his flock. The boy refused, after which the owner approached
him and slapped him in the face. The relatives of the youngster took
this as an insult and decided to take revenge. An exchange of insults,

abuse and even fighting followed until 1965 , when one of the brothers
of the pasture owner was badly beaten up by the young shepherd. On
the same day five of his relatives beat up two other brothers of the
pasture owner. Three days later another two brothers were thrashed,
and were taken to hospital. This last conflict resulted in the applica-
tion of the unwritten law of Leqe Dukadjin, dating from the fifteenth
century. The family of the shepherd did what under such circum-
stances had to be done: they shut themselves up in their house and,
through a mediator, asked for a truce (besa). According to the
Dukadjin law, if besa is granted, the culprit and his family can move
freely in the village. However, other conflicts followed, including the
beating-up of the young shepherd by the owner of the pasture. This
resulted in a real battle in which the relatives of the young man forced
their entrance into the house of their opponent using shovels, hatchets
and other weapons. The attackers were eventually repulsed owing to
the larger number of the defendants. Further conflicts, attacks, even
ambushes, followed. The family of the pasture owner decided to send
mediators to the opposite side, but were refused. In the end members
of the pasture owner's group withdrew into their house and remained
there for four years. (This is a custom which survived very strongly,
and according to some estimates, there were 6,000 people in the
seventies living under this voluntary house arrest.)
In this loaded atmosphere seventeen members of the pasture
owner's family travelled through the village in a cart, encountering
on the way some of their enemies. One of the brothers abused a
member of the enemy group with particular vehemence. Insulted by
this abuse one of their opponents drew a pistol and killed a brother of
the abuser. This encounter developed into a real battle with four
dead and two severely wounded. Police and the law intervened, but
in vain, and the feud went on. In 1969 another killing followed, and a
member of the pasture owner's family was struck by fourteen bullets.
Members of his family became bolder in the meantime and started to
leave their house to till their fields and look after their cattle; their
children continued to go to school. A younger brother of the pasture
owner decided to visit his vineyard, neglected through his long
absence, hoping that his opponents would not see him as the New
Year preparations were taking place. However, he was followed and
killed in the vineyard by a member of the opposite side who used a
machine gun, a survival of the Second World War. At last the feud
reached a temporary end because of the intervention of the state,
with five dead and fifteen arrested, quite apart from deserted fields
and neglected flocks.
This example should show how Albanian feuds develop, persist
and intensify until a killing takes place. This then prevents any
possible settlement, and further conflicts and killings go on. Only a
large number of killings, exhaustion of the conflicting parties and full
intervention of the mediators including a village priest or hodja, high
blood-money, or an exchange of marriage partners might bring the
feud to a provisional standstill. 5 The story of this feud demonstrates a
number of important issues which are part of the moral and legal
system of Albanian society, as indicated in many of the real and
apocryphal cases adjudicated by Leqe Dukadjin.
The first is besa (an oath), described as 'a period of truce given by
the house of the killer to the house of the killed in cases of feud,
which guarantees that during that period no "blood-debt" will be
collected'. To send people to ask for besa is the law, to give besa is a
duty, and it is regarded as humane behaviour. In such a case the killer
is supposed to visit the house of the killed and express his condol-
ences, even participate at the funeral and stay for the obligatory
lunch. Such a besa is usually given for twenty-four hours. Those who
break the besa, according to the Code, are sentenced to death. It was
considered a most terrible crime: the execution of such an offender
would be carried out by members of his own fis, thus demonstrating
their rejection of his offence. Besa had the important function of
controlling the fury of the offended and cooling their blood, enraged
through the killing. KrasniCi illustrates the importance of besa among
the Kosovo Albanians through the following story. 6
One Kosovo peasant killed another in a dispute, not even knowing
the victim; after that he fled to the next village looking for protection
and refuge. He entered a courtyard he did not know and asked an old
woman there for protection and a besa from his followers. The
woman agreed; but a little later the pursuers entered her courtyard in
order to inform her that an unknown man had just killed her son. The
woman realised that the man she had just given protection to was the
killer of her son, but, faithful to her besa, she refused to denounce
him, and the pursuers continued to search elsewhere. The same night
she went to the killer and cursed him for what he had done to her son
and asked him to flee her house immediately. He did and was saved.
This story shows how besa protects people in need and, according to
this, anybody in such a situation can put himself under the protection
of a passer-by, man or woman, or more often an important person in
a village, shouting the words, 'I am under protection, I was given

besa by so and so'. If he is killed, in spite of that, the killer 'owes'
blood to the person who gave besa to the fugitive, even if he himself
had never spoken to the one who was killed.
Besa was given also for a number of practical reasons, like finishing
the harvest, milking domestic animals, or visiting a doctor. There
were cases in Kosovo in which besa was refused, forcing members of
the offender's family to find refuge in their own houses, remaining
there as prisoners for a number of years. They survived only through
friends who supplied them with food during the night, but their fields
sometimes remained unattended and their cattle died from hunger.
Killing somebody who tended his fields or milked his goats while
under the protection of besa was another serious breach of the moral
code for which the death penalty was applied. For minor breaches of
the code the offender's fis would take away his weapons, a serious
penalty in such a dangerous environment. The besa had a firm place
in Albanian folklore, and expressions like 'An ox is bound by its
horns, a man by his word', or 'An honest man does not break his
word', or even 'besa is stronger than death', are common.
The following examples should also demonstrate how Albanian
folklore described various heroes who always kept their besa; they
were prepared to suffer the worst possible conditions, but would not
break their besa. One story describes a group of Mirditi warriors who
all swore besa to each other, and after a long battle against the Turks
only one survived and came home to see his old mother. She,
however, was very unhappy, saying that as all the comrades swore
besa to each other her son should return to Shkoder and ask the
Turkish Vizier to execute him, as it is more honest to die in battle
than to break the besa. The Vizier was so impressed that he not only
allowed the son to return home but gave him and his mother presents
as a sign of respect and recognition for an honourable man.
Came together Saljani from Stoja,

swore besa to each other
Each swore besa to his neighbour
We are not going to wait any longer
We go to saraj [the palace of the Pasha] to die.
When in one of the poems the Turkish Pasha tried to explain to the
Sultan in Istanbul why he had had such high losses he connected them
to the practice of besa among the Albanians:
Father emperor, what can I tell you?

They keep their besa very faithfully
They do not betray each other
and for death they do not care.
(KrasniCi (1962) pp. 276-7)
In one of these battles one of the clans betrayed the rest and the
singer abuses them in his song, telling them to change their men's
trousers for dimije (women's trousers). As a result of this betrayal the
other clans had serious losses.
The love poetry also sings about besa between lovers, who give
each other an honourable promise that the girl will wait for her fiance
to return from the army or work in another area. It was believed that
besa was an agreement which guaranteed eternal bonds between
lovers, in spite of all difficulties or dangers. 7 In Albanian society besa
represents all the best and highest qualities of the traditional culture. 8
Besa had a wide application; for instance, it was given to some of
the retreating Serbian units who crossed Albanian territory in 1915
and between the Austrian army and Mirdite tribes in the First World
War. Besa was even declared on a national basis on a number of
occasions, such as during the Young Turk revolution, but the Otto-
man authorities demanded guarantees other than besa alone. These
were important decisions, as besa usually had only a limited duration
and was generally applied to smaller groups such as two fis or tribes.
Besa was even concluded between enemies such as the Albanians and
their Montenegrin neighbours when the latter fought the Turks. The
Albanians kept their word and protected Montenegrin villages with
their womenfolk and children while their men were fighting the Turks.
Another important element mentioned in the Kosovo feud were
the fortified towers used by people who were afraid of retaliation.
When a feud started members of the family would move to such a
refuge and stay there as long as security was lacking. This sometimes
took years, and their fields were tended by their friends or neigh-
bours. Baron Nopcsa, a well-known expert on northern Albania,
describes the number of fortified towers as being in direct relation to
the number of feuds and killings.9
Because of the crucial and normative function of the besa and the
egalitarian type of legal system someone has to take authority for the
execution of the conditions and has to stand behind the rules which
besa imposes. The first guarantor is the besa giver, but he also needs
support because without that support there is no besa. These guaran-
tors were called dorzons. It is through dorzons that an individual got

his besa. Whoever gets guarantees through dorzons knows he does
not need to fight for the execution of the promise, and the creditors
are absolutely certain that the settlement or payment of the debt will
take place. The main function of the guarantors is to guard besa; they
are the ones who guarantee the besa institution. The legal scholar M.
DjuriCic is absolutely right when he gives his study of the role of
dorzons in the Kosovo region the title 'guardians of besa' (cuvari
bese). The word dorzon, according to the same author, originates
from the word dore meaning 'the hand', and the verb zene meaning
'caught', or, in exact translation, 'somebody who catches by the
hand'. Further meanings of the word dore are power, force, guaran-
tee. Dorzons are highly respected individuals, a moral aristocracy in
a traditionally egalitarian society. All tried to be on good terms with
them, and people would even offer them their daughters in marriage.
Often they had a bodyguard to support them in the performance of
their duties, and their positions were sometimes hereditary. In a
society like that of the Albanians, dorzonship was a way to higher
social status and respect, as besa was an instrument of peace in a
conflict-prone society. Dorzons also regulated divorce; this could be
provisional or permanent, with or without permission for remarriage.
Dorzons not only had the power and prestige to impose the rules but
also to see that they were followed. If, in spite of that, besa was
breached and the dorzons offended, the reaction was very severe and
repaid only in blood. 'He who breaches besa wounds the dorzon of
the besa, who will react accordingly and kill the offender.'
The execution of the penalty is completed by the dorzon alone; no
one else interferes. The law is in their hands and they make full use of
it. In such a case the dorzons are 'debtors in blood' to the offended
family, but the bloodmoney which they are supposed to deliver (pay)
must, according to the law of Leqe Dukadjin, be produced for the
offended family by the family of the offender.
Besa can be inherited; this principle is expressed in proverbs such
as 'when grandfathers eat sour grapes, their grandsons have tooth-
ache'. As a result of this besa can be treated as a permanent institu-
tion. However, after the end of the period of guarantee, besa ceases
to be binding, and the dorzons are free of any further obligation ..
Besa is also related to the complicated rules of the Albanian patri-
lineal marriage systems, and the dorzon, as already indicated, regu-
late the important rules of divorce in which they can impose rules
and see that they are followed. Dorzons are most welcome guests,
marriage partners, godfathers and best men; in short, they perform

all important functions in an egalitarian but prestige-oriented society. 10
It is not surprising that the institution of besa remained very
important among Albanian communities outside the national terri-
tory. Some examples from Kosovo are given above, and in addition
there are instances from the Albanian villages in the Greek peninsula
of Attica. There the word bessalis meant a person who always keeps
his word of honour, and bambessis is used for a person who does the
opposite, a dishonest person.
Some years ago an Athenian wine merchant, owner of a well-
known tavern in the Plaka, came to the village of Kalyvia to buy
wine. That which he was offered was very good, but the merchant
offered a low price, saying that he would take that low quality wine
out of kindness; he also asked the wine-owner to deliver the wine to
Athens. On the railway station waiting for his train, he met another
wine-merchant and told him how he had tricked the local wine-
grower, but was overheard by a local man who reported it to the
tricked villager. He told him he should not deliver the wine to
Athens, but the duped villager replied that he could not breach his
word; as the villagers would say, he remained bessalis. As a result of
this experience, it was usual for women of the Albanian villages to
warn their husbands not to give besa to people who approached them
while the menfolk were sitting and drinking their wine, because this
sometimes created embarrassing situations for men who gave prom-
ises which they later realised they could not keep.
The second story refers to the Greek elections in 1932 when the
Prime Minister Venizelos tried to continue his mandate but was
opposed by, among others, the Albanians of Attica who were mon-
archists; they blamed Venizelos for the introduction of the republican
system. On this occasion one of the anti-Venizelos politicians was
giving a speech and offering free wine in order to attract the voters to
his side. Realising that part of his audience was drunk he started to
put pressure on them, asking them to promise to vote for him. He
pointed out that the party was short of funds, so their support was
crucial. One of the group, a wealthy Albanian, tried to leave the
room before being approached by the pressing politician, who saw
him leaving and said in front of the others 'Uncle Sotiri (the man's
nickname), are you going to collect the three hundred drachmas you
promised to give to the party half an hour ago'? He had not made any
such promise, but being intoxicated, he was not certain whether or
not he had done so. So he went home, collected the money, and gave
it to the cunning politician, who had obviously misused the idea of

besa for his political ends. The sum demanded was a very large one in
those days.
The next story tells of a well-known wealthy money lender who
was looking for a suitable bride for his son, who had so far refused all
those suggested. This was common knowledge in Kalyvia, and one
day a group of villagers tried to playa trick on him. They decided to
approach the money lender when he was visiting his favourite tavern
and then greeted him with applause when he entered the house. He
was told that as he was celebrating his name day next evening, he
should pay for at least one round of drinks for his assembled friends.
He agreed and in due course most of them, including the money
lender, became intoxicated. The organiser of the coup, who had a
marriageable daughter, stood up and proposed a toast to the money
lender, congratulating him on the betrothal of his son to the organ-
iser's daughter. Next morning the money lender realised what had
happened, but through giving his besa he could not easily withdraw
and he accepted an unwanted daughter-in-law.
The last of these instances of besa from Attica refers to a case, the
like of which occurred often in Albanian villages; it is a good example
of the cultural continuity in the diaspora. This story originates in the
1920s when the Greek government decided to build a number of
roads; one of them ran near Kalyvia. Two young men from the
village used to work daily on these roads, only a few hours' walking
distance from the village, and one Saturday afternoon they were
returning home with their wages when they started an argument
which ended in a fight, during which one of the boys fell to the
ground so awkwardly that he killed himself. Other workers saw what
happened and tried to catch the other boy to accuse him of the
accident. He started to run and succeeded in reaching his village
before his pursuers, where he tried to find refuge. As it happened he
passed the house of the dead boy and entered it, asking the boy's
father, whom he knew well, for besa and protection. The father,
knowing the fleeing boy, but not knowing who the dead person was,
agreed and gave him shelter. In due course the pursuers reached the
father's house and asked him if he had seen the boy. The father
denied it as he had given his besa, but was told that it was actually
that boy who was responsible for the accident. During the following
night the young man left the house and fled to a distant village where
he found work on one of the local ships, so he never returned to the
village.
After the war, villages originally populated by Albanians began to

be inhabited by Greeks coming from areas troubled by the Civil War;
the number of non-Albanians rose to one-third. Due to this the old
institutions and customs started to lose their force, and the idea of
besa began to lose its original importance. Even so, besa still persists
among elderly members of the population, particularly where busi-
ness and other similar enterprises are concerned. Nowadays the
younger generation is seldom aware of the importance of this most
important Albanian institution. l l
Every treaty needs besa and every besa needs its guarantors, the
already discussed dorzons, and their importance can be also shown
by this case from Kosovo, where, in a village fight, the sons of Prem
Tomaj beat up Zef Zefaj from a neighbouring village. When the
young man was brought home in a very bad state, his father became
very angry and started to shout, 'Tell the Prems that they owe us a
blood', and this meant that a feud had started between the two
families.
When informed by their neighbours, the Tomaja started to prepare
themselves for the worst. As a consequence of this development the
oldest, Nikol Zefaj, became the 'master of the dispute', or master of
the insulted and damaged house. In other words, he became the
'creditor of blood', which meant he would collect the evidence, chose
those to be sworn in, whom the other party was supposed to provide,
and in the end 'collect his debt in blood'. He was supposed to avoid
any action and accept the verdict of the elders and intermediaries. He
also had to appoint a dorzon who would be the guarantor of the besa.
For dorzon he chose Zef Markaj from his own village. Markaj
accepted this highly important function, knowing how respectable
the position of dorzon is. If necessary this function could have been
inherited by his son, since some of these conflicts have lasted a long
time.
Markaj was not only a respectable person but also an uncle of
Nikol Zefaj, which gave him an even more important role. As all this
was happening, the house of their opponents was going through a
series of very different events. The family started preparations for a
wedding of one of the Tomaj sons, who then asked the dorzon to
arrange a besa with the other side. The dorzon then asked Tomaj
how long he would like the besa to last, to which Tomaj replied that
three days would be necessary. The dorzon agreed, but at the same
time asked if more time might be needed. Tomaj agreed that a longer
time would be better, but he doubted that Nikol Zefaj would give
him more. Unfortunately, the dorzon had become involved in some

other business, and therefore asked his cousin to arrange the besa
from the opposite party. He arranged the three-day besa, and the
wedding took place as planned. Throughout the three days the Zefaj
family members were waiting for the end of the besa, and on the
fourth day they took a position near their opponents and ambushed
and killed one of the Tomaj brothers who, still in a good mood, did
not take the necessary precautions. After that they organised a party
to celebrate the execution of their opponent. Shortly after that the
Tomaj family appeared in full strength and shouted, 'You owe us
blood: You broke the besa and we shall persecute you for the murder
and breach of faith.' Nikol Zefaj, completely taken aback by such
accusations, replied, 'Are you mad, or has brandy turned your
heads?' To which the leader of the Tomaj family replied, 'You first
gave us a lasting besa and then ambushed my son.' Nikol Zefaj
protested that they gave only three days of besa as asked by the
dorzon's cousin. What happened was that the cousin had requested
and received besa for three days, but when he informed the dorzon,
the other side was still celebrating and misunderstood the message,
thinking that a long besa had been accepted. Zef Markaj, the dorzon,
decided to confront Nikol Zefaj and started to threaten him with
blood for a broken besa. This eventually led to open conflict between
the dorzon and the Zefaj family.
As this development led to danger for two members of the Zefaj
family they followed the usual procedure in such situations and
entrenched themselves in their fortified house, waiting for the out-
come of the conflict. This forced the formation of a special council of
elderly men respected for their honesty and impartiality, known as a
pleqnaret. In the end the council was formed of three older men who
were felt to have particular expertise and experience which made
them qualified to deal with this complicated case, in which three
parties were now involved, the families Zefaj and Tomaj and the
dorzon Markaj. In conclusion the council found twenty-four people
to swear together with the Zefaj family, that only three days were
actually given and not more. The ceremony took place in the house
of Nikol Zefa j, in a special room usually used for receiving -guests or
for other such important occasions. The actual oath had to take place
at the crucifix, but without a priest. Nikol Zefaj became master of the
oath and responsible with his life and property for his family to the
dorzon Zef Markaj. On the agreed day all met in the Zefaj house to
settle the issue. One by one the oath-givers swore their oaths and
after the sixteenth had said his part, the dorzon got up and pro-
claimed that he believed them and sat down. All members of the
council stood up, one after the other, confirming the oath and the
besa conditions, namely the innocence of the Zefaj family. When all
council members had finished, the dorzon stood up with some diffi-
culty and offered his hand to Nicol Zefaj with the following words,
'Forgive me, Nicol, for troubling you to swear the oath, but I realised
before that you have the besa for only three days and it was our
negligence that we gave wrong information to Prem Tomaj at his
son's wedding'.
After that the councillors proclaimed the innocence of the Zefaj
family towards the dorzon Markaj, and two new dorzons were
appointed to guarantee that arrangement. After settling that part of
the conflict dorzon Markaj stood up and asked the members of the
Zefaj family to become paid killer (argal) of the Tomaj family, but
this was refused and in this way the case was settled. The Zefaj family
then symbolically ended the conflict by giving a feast to which all
participants in the oath were invited. However, the story did not end
there, as the Zefaj family continued to fear the Tomaj family and
took many precautions for the next four years, sometimes with an
arranged besa and sometimes without it, dreading ambush or attack.
One of the Zefaj brothers was so frightened that on a few occasions
he shot at his own shadow; another brother shot at a completely
unknown and innocent individual.
In the end the actual termination of the feud was considered and
arranged through mediators who are always available for that kind of
settlement, which is always connected with blood-money agreed
between the two parties, symbolising that satisfaction given to the
wronged party. The amount of the settlement was very high which,
perhaps, explains the reason why Prem Tomaj refused to accept the
blood-money for some time out of pride and personal decency. In the
end he accepted it, knowing that only the acceptance of the blood-
money could truly end the feud. Thus, it was five years before the
Tomaj and Zefaj families found their peace. 12
It is clear that for Albanians besa symbolises in the strongest terms
both honour and honesty for each individual member of that very
egalitarian-minded society. In Albanian terms, it is the uitilllate
source of all that is worth living for. The concept has also survived
among Albanians outside Albania, not only in neighbouring Kosovo
or among those in Greece, but also among Albanians elsewhere. It is
not limited by space, time or distance. The final example discussed
here concerns Kosovo Albanians working in the Federal Republic of

Germany, where they started to move after 1963, when workers from
Yugoslavia began to enter German industrial cities on a large scale.
In that workforce Albanians, because of their religion (mostly
Islam), language and strong kinship identity, formed a small but
distinct group keeping to themselves and leading an enclave existence.
The conflict described here demonstrates the survival of strong ties
with the village of origin in Macedonia. A dispute started when the
owner of a meadow, by name Ahmed Dushman, allowed some water
from his field to flow into the meadow of a neighbour called Mehmed
Aliya. The dispute was followed by a fight in which Dushman was
threatened by Aliya and his relatives with wooden planks and garden
tools. In the end Dushman injured Aliya with a knife, and the conflict
ended with Aliya being taken to hospital but discharged after a week
because the injury was small. However, this led to animosity between
the two families, and tensions and minor conflicts followed. Such
conflicts are very much part of the traditional dispute pattern, which
can easily develop into a feud and 'conflict of blood'. Ahmed Dush-
man had a younger brother, Jusuf, who worked for some years in a
German industrial town, sending money regularly to his relatives
who because of this enjoyed some prestige in their village. Unfortu-
nately for the Dushman family one of Mehmed Aliya's brothers
worked in the same German town, and this induced Ahmed Dush-
man to send his brother a telegram warning him of possible danger.
Since retaliation from Aliya's relatives was expected and dreaded,
the young man took some precautions and never returned home
alone after dark, usually being accompanied by his cousins or friends.
In spite of that he was ambushed and stabbed by Mehmed Aliya's
brother when he went to get some cigarettes from a nearby slot-
machine. He was severely wounded and had he not been taken
immediately to hospital he would have died from loss of blood. There
is no doubt that the stabbing in Germany was a retaliation for the
stabbing in Macedonia, following the principle of injury according to
the code of Leqe Dukadjin.
The culprit escaped to France, from where he travelled back to
Macedonia. Here he was eventually arrested and questioned by the
local police. He was accompanied during his ambush by two cousins
and a relative by marriage, who were all shortly afterwards taken into
custody by the German police, released and then tried some time
later. The court asked an expert on Albania for advice; he explained
that it was a case of feud, and that the culprit had retaliated according
to the rules of Leqe Dukadjin demanding injury for injury, life for
life, and that he was under considerable pressure to act in the way he
had. The relatives involved, particularly the cousins, had kinship
responsibilities, but there was no proof that they had actually partici-
pated in the attack. The third relative gave the impression of partici-
pating without much enthusiasm; his interests were obviously
elsewhere, namely in the material advantages of his occupation and
life in the industrial West. The cousins accepted with stoic calm the
long procedure of the court, which they could not easily follow
because of language difficulties. Their statements were translated first
into Serb and then into Albanian, which made the whole court
procedure even more cumbersome.
The German court was faced with the dilemma of how best to solve
the case; it sentenced the two cousins only lightly, but they lost their
work permits and were asked to leave Germany after a short period
in prison. The third relative was acquitted during the hearing and was
the only one who was allowed to stay. The actual culprit was sen-
tenced in Macedonia, and he also lost his work permit. So we have a
case which demonstrates that the changes consequent on work abroad
in a different social and economic environment have been adapted to
the old code of Leqe Dukadjin. That the younger brother was
ambushed instead of the older one, as would have been expected,
was certainly related to the idea that because he lived and worked
abroad he was more important, and his removal would have hurt the
Dushman family much more than an attack on the older brother who
still lived in their Macedonian village. The principle of hitting where
it hurts most was certainly applied. 13
By illustrating the value system of the Albanians in the diaspora,
we can come to a few interesting conclusions: the first significant fact
is the isolation from the outside world which permitted the Albanians
to preserve their value system nearly intact for several centuries until
the present day. Albanians, belonging to a pre-Indo-European cul-
ture, survived colonisation, occupation and migration because their
own structure remained almost intact, and for them modern political
and social change started only between the two wars, particularly
after the Second World War. The basic principle of social organis-
ation, the kinship system, remained very strong and, because of its
importance, particularly protected. Kingroup loyalty was perma-
nently supported and strengthened in all situations of crisis. Besa
became a symbol of loyalty, and the feuding group its most important
weapon. The kingroup, the living microcosm of Albanian society,
was protected by this most dangerous weapon of aggression and

defence.
The second important point is that kinship and the values symbol-
ised in besa are a vital part of Albanian identity, particularly in
relation to social and political structures imposed from outside. Besa
and the code of Leqe Dukadjin are closely related to the Albanian
heroic past and to two most important names in their history, Skan-
derbeg and Leqe Dukadjin, who have always symbolised the most
precious values of traditional Albanian society. Life in the diaspora
will eventually introduce some more important changes but the
traditional system will demonstrate considerable strength and perma-
nence for some time to come.
NOTES
1. M. Hasluck, The Unwritten Law in Albania (Cambridge, 1954), pp.

25-30.
2. G. Stadtmiiller, Geschichte Sildosteuropas (Vienna, 1950), pp. 206-7; G.
Stadtmiiller, Forschungen zu albanischen Frilhgeschichte, Albanische
Forschungen 2 (Wiesbaden, 1966), pp. 28-30; B. Ferjancic, 'Tessalija v
13 i 14 st', Bizantoloski Inst. Srpske Akademije Nauka Pos Izd 15
(Belgrade, 1974), pp. 187-265.
3. M. Godin 'Das albanische Gewohnheitsrecht' Zeitschrift fur vergleich-
ende Rechtwissenschaft, 56, (1954), p. 52.
4. See also Hasluck, pp. 13-14; I. Whitaker, 'Tribal Structures and National
Politics in Albania 1910-1915' in I. Lewis (ed) , History and Social
Anthropology, pp. 263-4; M. Zurl, Krvna Osveta u Kosovu (Zagreb,
1978), pp. 51-2.
5. A. Lopasic, 'Feud in the Mediterranean', The Journal of the Durham
University Anthropological Society, 5 (1979), pp. 109-10.
6. M. KrasniCi, o. Besi: 'Prilog proucavanja obicajnog prava kod Siptara',
Zbornik za narodni iivot i Obicaje, 40 (1962), p. 273.
7. Krasnici, pp. 276-9.
8. For Besa see M. Durham, High Albania (London, 1909), pp. 52, 71-2;
M. Djuricic, 'Cuvari Bese,' Srpska Akademija Nauka i Umetnosti, 83
(1973), pp. 7-9; Hasluck, p. 164.
9. B. Nopcsa, Haus und Hausrat in Katholischen Nordalbanien (Sarajevo,
1912), p. 39.
10. Djuricic, pp. 9-15, 36-50, 87,163-7.
11. Mrs Weals Baderitaski shows this in a thesis for the University of
Reading on Albanian villages in Attica.
12. Zurl, pp. 72-87.
13 A. Lopasic, 'Traditional legal systems and West European courts', paper
presented to the 10th International Congress of Criminology, Hamburg,
1988.
8 Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora
and the Making of
Albania in 1912
Renzo Falaschi
After the declaration of the independence of Albania, which took

place at Vlore on 28 November 1912, the Italian Consul sent a report
to Rome, dated 6 December, expressing the following detached
opinion on the event:
The Albanians . . . had understood that opposed interests and

alleged disagreements between Rome and Vienna were a good
enough guarantee to prevent anybody from touching their country.
Deluding themselves with this conviction, until yesterday they
remained disunited, even enemies among themselves ... At the
sudden apparition of new, unexpected enemies that could have
condemned for ever the existence of the Albanian nation, they got
rid of all antagonism and gathered around a man quite superior for
intelligence, experience and cleverness, and struggled to save
themselves declaring their independence and applying to Italy and
to Austria, both willing to sponsor their cause thanks to a harmoni-
ous contrast. The Executive Committee was elected by an As-
sembly of no less than 70 delegates who had reached VIore from all
parts of Albania, some after ten days of painful travel ... I believe
that they have put behind them personal envies and jealousies ...
And the Consul concluded with a meaningful and encouraging ac-

knowledgement: 'I was pessimistic and incredulous as long as poss-
ible: now I believe I can declare that the Albanians should be
supported without doing any harm to justice, but rather as an honour
to mankind'. 1
This 'quite superior' man, spontaneously chosen as their leader by
all the Albanians, was Ismail Qemal Bey VIora, a man who had
renounced wealth and glory for the sake of democracy and progress
and love of his country. Born at Vlore in 1844, he was only six years
old when his father, who had headed a revolt against some new
106
Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora 107
restrictions imposed by the Sublime Porte, was sentenced to a long

deportation in Asia Minor. The rest of the family was moved away
from Vlore and exiled in Salonica for several years, during which the
young lsmail Qemal went to a public school and learnt Greek and
Turkish. He already knew Albanian, Italian and French. He carried
on his secondary studies at the renowned Zosimea Gymnasium of
Ioannina and eventually went to the Law School of Istanbul, and at
the same time started his career as a civil servant working as an
interpreter at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
His eclectic culture, his ready wit and enterprising spirit did not
escape the careful eye of the famous liberal statesman, Midhat Pasha,
who realised how reliable and useful young Ismail Qemal would be
for his progressive programmes. Consequently Ismail Qemal became
Governor of Varna, where, at the age of twenty-five, he had the
chance to welcome Emperor Francis Joseph on his way to the
opening of the Suez Canal, and where, backed by Midhat Pasha, he
played a great role in establishing agricultural banks for the welfare
of the region. He later became Governor of Constanza and restored
an old Roman aqueduct to supply water to the thirsty town. His
humanistic studies instilled in him a great love for the past, and in
addition to the restoration of this aqueduct he was also responsible
for finding in Epirus the site of the famous Pelasgic sanctuary of
Dodona. In his capacity of President of the Danube Commission, he
became a friend of General Gordon, who later tried to have him at
his side at Khartoum. In a letter written on his way to the Sudan,
Gordon said to him, ably foreseeing the future: 'I have already told
you, you will be a great man, and I still think it. Keep yourself free
from adventurers'. 2
His modem and innovating ideas, supported by his dangerous
intelligence, aroused suspicion and envy from some of his own
fellow-countrymen, and even from relatives, as well as from Sultan
Abdul Hamid, who during all his life respected and feared him at the
same time. In 1877 he had him exiled for seven years in Asia Minor,
but all the same Ismail Qemal loyally strove to make the backward
sovereign modernise his empire, beseeching him to keep abreast with
the European powers. He wrote to the Sultan, always in vain, about
the rights of the Armenians, the questions of Egypt and Crete, the
Russian expansion into the Mediterranean, his reports being true
masterpieces of realism and political clairvoyance. These are but a
few lines of a report on the state of the Empire he sent to the Sultan
in 1892:
The founders of most great Empires, which, as history shows us,

have owed their growth to a series of favourable circumstances,
cannot be compared in merit with those who have foreseen and
arrested the decay that inevitably follows the period of an Empire's
glory, by introducing reforms calculated to give it new life and a
fresh impulse to its prosperity, for every Empire that has carved a
path for itself by the sword has at the same time sown the seed of
its decay . . . The Ottoman Empire is of all nations that one that
has most need of reform, and therefore of reformers ... Europe,
after having for centuries sought out a formula for the solution of
the Eastern Question, in the course of which she took part in
sanguinary wars, ended by acknowledging that the best practical
solution was the maintenance of the Ottoman Empire ... Russia,
to achieve her ends, does not hesitate before any political measure.
She has always admitted the possibility of an understanding with
Turkey as a means of arriving at her objects ... as the dream of
possessing Constantinople has but grown with the time among the
Russians, having been passed down from generation to
generation . . . A useful policy for the present and for the future
would be one that would tend to establish an entente between the
Balkan States by the conclusion of a defensive alliance and econ-
omic accord, the prelude to the constitution of a great Oriental
State . . . The establishment of a free entente such as I suggest
would give the peoples of each State the right to settle in any part
of the great Empire, and to be considered as belonging to it, with
freedom to undertake any enterprise they wished. Turkey would
have the advantage of having re-established her unity as a State
with the old frontiers, but instead of having to devote all her
resources to preventing the emancipation of the people .... Her
strength would reside in the unity of the people for their mutual
defence, and their resources could be devoted to the economic
development of the Empire. 3
His mind seems to have been already opened to something very

close to what Europe is still striving to bring about after a century. In
April 1900, Ismail Qemal was appointed Governor General of Tri-
politania, but he was secretly informed that the Sultan's true inten-
tion was to intern him again. At this point, realising the failure of all
his advice to turn the Ottoman Empire into a sort of Commonwealth,
he decided to break with the past and devote all his forces to the
Albanian cause. By a stratagem he left Istanbul on 1 May on board a
British ship bound for Athens. After many efforts to make him come
back, the Sultan even tried to have him murdered, and eventually set
up a court that sentenced him to death by default, and to the loss of
all civil rights and the confiscation of his properties.
Ismail Qemal settled in Brussels, then in Rome, but moved about
Europe, chiefly living in Paris and London, working hard in order to
make the Powers accept the idea of an autonomous Albania and to
create the international bases for economic progress for the new
country. His programme appears clear from the reports on his talks
with the Italian Ambassador in London, the Marquis of San Giu-
liano, in August 1908. The points Ismail Qemal discussed were: a) his
firm intention to fight for securing international support in order to
make sure that no territory mainly inhabited by Albanians be severed
from Albania (with a particular view to Kosovo, because at that time
Ioannina and all North Epirus were considered part of Albania); b)
the need to open Albanian schools, to distribute books written in
Albanian and to adopt the Latin alphabet (the latter was a long-felt
need in order to preserve the western personality and Albanian
individuality in contrast to the Arabic writing of Istanbul, the Greek
letters of Athens and the Cyrillic alphabet of Cetinje, Belgrade and
Sofia); c) the economic development of the country by means of
communication infrastructures, mainly through the construction of
the Vlore-Bitola railway (which would have linked Albania with
Salonica) and the introduction of capital and foreign companies to
exploit mines and timber; d) lastly, the need of a wide administrative
autonomy. The modernity of Ismail Qemal's thought is shown in
particular by his belief that no true independence can be achieved
without sufficient economic power. This concept was indeed rare at a
time when the idea of power seemed to be identified more with
political and military force.
Shortly before this, when in Paris, Ismail Qemal, who was still
under a death sentence, was reached by a cable from the Sultan
paradoxically requesting his advice in face of the Young Turks'
rebellion. Ismail Qemal did not hesitate to suggest the immediate
promulgation of the Constitution, and that in fact happened the
following day. But Ismail Qemal's troubles were far from being
finished. On 15 February 1909, the Young Turks revealed their true
uncompromising Islamic and centralising nationalism, and, owing to
the federative ideas professed, charged with treason the Liberal
Union, of which Ismail Qemal was one of the most important leaders
after having been elected as parliamentary representative of Berat
and Vlore, following his civil rehabilitation. Brutally attacked in

Parliament itself and threatened with death, Ismail Qemal had to
resume his wandering life in Europe. He realised that his plan to
form a federation was not feasible and that, as he wrote to his fellow
citizens of Vlore, 'it was necessary to follow another direction'. 4 This
was his cautious way of preparing the Albanians for a new idea, that
of independence.
Meanwhile Italy had started a war against the Ottoman Empire
occupying Tripolitania. This made Turkey an ideal prey for the
Balkan States. Realising the danger, Istanbul hastened to make
peace with Italy, but Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece
began at once a military offensive that turned into a series of disasters
for Turkey.
At Bucharest, where a large and prosperous Albanian community
lived, a historical meeting took place in November 1912, attended by
Ismail Qemal. The final declaration, however, did not yet fix whether
autonomy or independence should be proclaimed. Like the prudent
diplomat he was, Ismail Qemal waited for a signal from the Great
Powers that would define what guarantees of survival an independent
Albania might enjoy. Immediately after the resolution of Bucharest,
he went to Vienna where he met the Austrian Foreign Secretary,
Berchtold, and the Italian Ambassador, A varna. It is evident that on
that occasion he found the support he was waiting for, and at Trieste,
as he was boarding the SIS Briin ready to sail for Durres, he released
an interview, published by the local paper I1 Piccolo of 20 November
declaring enthusiastically in answer to a question about what would
happen after his landing in Albania: 'Something extremely simple,
but so ardently wished by us all: the proclamation of independence
for our homeland'. 5
Ismail Qemal found at Durres a most precarious situation: the
Serbian army was drawing close by fOl"ced marches and indeed
succeeded in overcoming the Turkish forces and occupying the town
on 30 November. Consequently, Ismail Qemal thought it necessary
to move at once to Vlore, where he was surrounded by a totally
different atmosphere, with the local people and the delegates who
meanwhile had arrived from allover Albania inspired by an ardent
feeling of love for their country. As is known, on 28 November Ismail
Qemal proclaimed the independence of Albania in front of a cheer-
ing and deeply-moved crowd, and it was said that the spirit of the
great hero Skanderbeg was fluttering over the patriots extolling
freedom just as when, almost five centuries before on-28 November
1443, he proclaimed independence from Ottoman rule at Kruje,

raising the same red flag with the black double-headed eagle in the
middle.
But the country was in a miserable condition: Shkoder was besieged
and actually fell next April, northern Albania was almost entirely
occupied by the Serbs and the southern coast was blockaded by
the Greeks who had invaded all the southern part of the country. The
Serbs and Greeks, as well as the Montenegrins, asserted in fact that
they were fighting against the Turks and recognised neither the new
State of Albania nor her declaration of neutrality.
But this was not the only danger threatening Ismail Qemal, be-
cause his worst enemies were perhaps among his own people. Many
Albanian notables had cheered independence, calculating that they
would be increasing the privileges they already enjoyed, but they
were promptly and bitterly disappointed by Ismail Qemal's demo-
cratic policy and a rumour about a plan of his to reallot the latifundia
(large agricultural estates). As a consequence, they gathered around
Esad Pasha Toptani and set up a rival government at Durres. This,
however, was not recognised by the International Control Committee
established by the London Conference of Ambassadors in order to
assist Albania.
Ismail Qemal was passionate, incorruptible and ardently loved by
the people: it was not easy to get rid of him openly. Only a trap could
work, and this is what happened. An Albanian connected to the
Young Turks, Beqir Grebene, managed to enter into secret negotia-
tions with Ismail Qemal, presenting him with a plan which envisaged a
joint military action of Turkey and Bulgaria, who by then had broken
up with her other partners, Serbia and Greece. Albania's participa-
tion would have been rewarded with the restoration of Kosovo and
Chamuria, the Albanian regions that the Conference of the Ambas-
sadors had yielded to Serbia and Greece respectively. After much
hesitation it seems that Ismail Qemal ended by accepting passive
participation, not going any further than allowing the transit of
Turkish troops and arms over Albanian territory.
Mysteriously the plan came at once to the knowledge of the
Control Com~ittee and Beqir Grebene was arrested in January 1914
by the Dutch police who had been sent to the Powers as a neutral
force in Albania. During his trial, conducted by the Chief of the
International Police Force, General De Weer, the supposed agree-
ment with Ismail Qemal emerged, and he found himself compelled to
resign, together with his cabinet. The agreement appeared in fact to
be in opposition to the declaration of neutrality of Albania, although

this had not been recognised precisely by Serbia and Greece. At the
end of the trial no blame was attached to Ismail Qemal, but the
disappointed notables had achieved their goal.
The Powers paid great consideration to Esad Pasha, who knew
how to give assurances of loyalty to each of them, while Ismail Qemal
was no longer regarded as the strong man of Albania. He never
ceased to work for his country, however. At first, he settled in Italy,
then moved to France and led a very difficult life. But in January 1918
the strong Albanian community in the United States entrusted Ismail
Qemal with the task of representing them at the already expected
peace conference in order to regain Kosovo and Chamuria for
Albania. At this point he became dangerous again, especially for
Serbia and Greece, and the French government agreed to get him out
of the way by sending him to Spain.
There Ismail Qemal again entered in contact with the Italian
government. The Italian Foreign Secretary Sonnino had by then
realised how untrustworthy Esad Pasha was and was happy to envis-
age Ismail Qemal as Albanian representative to the peace conference
that was just starting in Paris. Therefore, Ismail Qemal was invited to
Italy and temporarily put up at Perugia. From there, on 15 January
1919 he sent a memorandum to the Italian Prime Minister and to
Sonnino, a real masterpiece of diplomacy and patriotic love. But
before the memorandum ever reached its destination (the two states-
men were by then both in Paris) Ismail Qemal suffered a stroke and
died on 26 January 1919.
Just before this he had called a press meeting and was in a state of
anger. He said something about 'untrustworthy people' and then
collapsed. At once a rumour spread that he referred to the Italian
Premier, but that cannot be accepted as he knew that the memoran-
dum had not reached him, and the only answer is that again the
wellknown notables must have played a trick on him. A clear expla-
nation, as well as an unconscious tribute to Ismail Qemal, is shown by
a report written on 30 September 1913 by Petaiev, the representative
of the Czar in the Control Committee.
The rivalry between Esad Pasha and Ismail Qemal, which at first
sight seems a personal matter, is undoubtedly marked by a class
struggle. Esad Pasha ... represents the interests of the great
landowners ... who treat their peasants in a feudal way. They are
supported by elements . . . that look with fear at the positive

results of the too democratic policy of Ismail Oemal. 6
On 22 January 1919, Ismail Oemal had written:
Today is a decisive day for Albania: we shall be reborn or we shall

die. If I had money, I would have made a trip to America for a
complete understanding with all those patriots. However, in agree-
ment with the [Italian] government, I believe it necessary for me to
go to Rome. From there I shall be able, at this dangerous and
critical moment, to arrange with the Albanians of Albania a
nationwide action and draw the final programme. From Italy I wish
to make three or even six delegations come from Northern, Cen-
tral and Southern Albania, so that along with the delegates coming
from America we may go all together to Paris and present to the
Conference the demands and the rights of Albania. 7
This was exactly what the Italian government wanted, but also what
the Albanian notables had striven to prevent by any means possible.
Ismail Oemal's body was taken by the Italian destroyer Alpino to
Vlore, then the headquarters of the Italian troops in the Balkans. On
12 February there took place a solemn funeral, attended by General
Piacentini, Commander of the Italian Forces in the Balkans, by local
notables and a great crowd of ordinary people. It was reported that:
should the greatness of a political personality be measured by the

simple people's love, it ought to be admitted that no one would
even get near to Ismail Oemal Vlora. During the ceremony of his
funeral ... no peasant and no townsman remained at home: all
the slopes of the mountains and both sides along the route of the
cortege were overcrowded. It was a magnificent apotheosis by the
whole people, without exception, and represented the crown he
had conquered with his extraordinary service to his country, till his
last breath. 8
So ended the intense, magnificent and tormented life of Ismail

Oemal. But his work is not\over and his memory is still deeply
revered. Diplomacy, it has been said, is the art of achieving what is
possible and Ismail Oemal, although without an army and deprived
of any economic power, contrived to exploit this art to obtain support
and help, and succeeded in making the Albanian State live, in spite of
being invaded from outside and undermined from inside. This is
indeed a great achievement and almost an incredible one for a man
who had already gone through so many disappointments, suffered so
many failures and learnt how little one can rely upon others when
having nothing to offer in exchange. For nobody else, perhaps, is
more suitable Machiavelli's saying that 'A Minister ought to die
richer with good fame, and benevolence, than with treasures'.
NOTES
1. R. Falaschi, Ismail Kemal Bey Vlora: His Thought and Work from the
Italian Documents (Rome, 1985), pp. 126-7.
2. Ibid., pp. 352-3.
3. N. Falaschi, Ismail Kemal Bey Vlora: Memorie (Rome, 1975), pp. 22~0.
4. R. Falaschi, p. 361.
5. Ibid., p. 364.
6. Ibid., p. 400.
7. Ibid., p. 409.
8. Ibid., p. 412.
9 Albania's Inter-War
History as a Fore-runner
to the Communist Period
Raymond Hutchings
Albania's independence was proclaimed in 1912, but throughout the

Great War no effective government of the territory existed and
various regions were occupied or traversed by foreign armies. By the
secret Treaty of London (1915) Albania was to be partitioned to
satisfy Greek and Italian ambitions, but the Treaty of Versailles
upheld Albanian autonomy. Territorial integrity was achieved when
Italian troops were ejected from VIore by an Albanian scratch force
(1920), but apart from a compact and rather inaccessible territory, its
own language and folklore, and fierce nationalism the country
possessed little else. Constitution, capital city, even its own currency,
were lacking; communications were of the poorest. Illiteracy was
very widespread. Local groups, supporting one leader or another,
caused constant upheaval. This Time of Troubles had to be ended, if
necessary via an imposition of autocratic rule. From 1922 until the
Italian invasion on 7 April 1939 the dominating figure was Ahmed
Zogu or Zog (a contraction of Zogolli, and meaning in Albanian
'bird'), as Minister of the Interior, then President, and from 1
September 1928 as King. Surviving several assassination attempts -
political life in Albania then, as later, was risky - Zog died from
natural causes in exile in 1961. As I shall seek to show, his reign was
in a number of respects a recognisable forerunner to the post-1944
communist regime which aimed to perpetuate its own rule through
forbidding his return.
In the early years of the inter-war period the most pressing need,
though by no means the sole one, is encapsulated in the title of the
latest study of the period: King Zog and the Struggle for Stability in
Albania. 1 Could the institution of monarchy help to achieve that
goal? Indeed, given that nowhere else in south-east Europe did
political democracy strike deep roots, it would have been strange if it
had done so in the region's most retarded country. That a fully-
fledged democratic programme was launched in 1924 by Bishop Fan
115
S. Noli, whom Zog with Yugoslav military aid and the connivance of
other governments overthrew, is somewhat remarkable although
explicable from Noli's background of education in America. The other
Balkan states were monarchies of foreign provenance, while even
Albania had earlier been allotted by the Powers a German-born
monarch - from a monarchical nationality at the time fashionable -
Prince Wilhelm of Wied, who had withdrawn from Albania in 1914,
but not abdicated. A kingly system was possibly more attuned to
Albania's half-millenium within the Ottoman Empire than a republi-
can one; it does seem not too unnatural that it was followed by the
forty years' rule of the charismatic Enver Hoxha, until his death on
11 April 1985. On the other hand, under the Ottomans Albania had
been divided among three pashaliks, not one; the pashas were
appointees (albeit sometimes asserting virtual independence, for
example Ali Pasha of Tepelene); and Konstitutzioon had aroused
exaggerated hopes in 1908. 2 An hereditary and tribal principle (with
some peculiarities) was ingrained among the northern clans. The
ancestral lordship of Mati (north-central Albania) had been Zog's
initial power base, whose proximity to the newly-chosen capital,
Tirana, gave him confidence. 3 The hereditary principle is lacking in
post-war rule, but family connections are by no means lacking: in
March 1986, a year after Enver Hoxha's death, his widow Nexhmije
was chosen to head the Democratic Front, which is the country's
mass political organization.
A royal title might convey another nuance. As an independent
country, Albania has never included all ethnic Albanians: besides
some in southern Italy, about 1.7 million live in Kosovo (Yugoslavia)
where today they comprise one of Europe's two largest national
minorities. This does not remain the case without friction. Albanian
uprisings in Kosovo occurred in 1913 (crushed by Serbia) and in 1945,
while in 1989 the province was placed under tighter Serbian control.
A King of the Albanians - the title Zog assumed - would be seen as
laying claim to some or other of these compatriot-settled territories,
though without any hope of success unless Yugoslavia were rendered
impotent. Curiously, World War II was to perform that service, so
far as frontier-drawing was concerned, and a decision of the Axis led
to the inclusion within a greater (but now puppet) Albania of virtually
all Albanians living in Yugoslavia before its dismemberment. Ironi-
cally, Zog, having been displaced by King Victor Emanuel of Italy,
could not take advantage of this. However, the post-war regime has
not been able to either (it was the Balli Kombetar, who were
Albania's Inter-War History 117
defeated in the civil war against the National Liberation Front, which
had favoured retention of Kosovo, though Albania could scarcely
have upheld any such claim against Tito's Yugoslavia), while the
dwindling group of Albanian speakers in Calabria likewise remains
separated except via cultural exchange.
In certain other respects the Zog regime was a recognisable fore-
runner of the post-war one, although very different in its origins and
social structure. Zog's strivings to unify his nation embraced carrying
further a process initiated by the Ottomans, who in the previous
century had forbidden Albanians south of the river Shkumbi to
carry arms;4 by outlawing the carrying of arms in the north as well,
and by suppressing the blood-feud, which had been flourishing as
recently as 1908,5 Zog smoothed the path for his successors. An effort
was made to make education more nationalist and less sectarian ,6
though the communist regime would go farther in that sense. Zog's
propaganda methods (carnivals plus censorship) in some ways pre-
saged his successor's, though the atmosphere was less earnest ('a
cheap musical farce' according to Konitza,7 who surely exaggerates)
while the censorship was more haphazard than subsequently, not
being ideologically grounded. 8 On the other hand, there was no
Italian television to receive.
Secrecy under Zog was less pervasive than under the communists,
about whom no reliable political history can yet be written. 9 The
King from time to time announced 'elections' which, if anything,
exhibited some slight progress towards democracy;lO in this depart-
ment the post-war regime has retrogressed. Celebrations marked
especially the King's birthday, but also the declaration of Albanian
independence. For occasions like Zog's coronation day the people of
Tirana were commanded to come onto the streets 'dressed in national
costumes or new fashionable clothes';l1 ordinary clothing is now
expected on festive days, even though national costumes are still
worn (scarcely at all in Tirana, commonly in northern highlands)
even on ordinary working days. The King was interested in female
eman,cipation, and an unprecedented barnstorming visit by three of
his sisters, 'fully arrayed in very up-to-date Western dress' to
Shkoder12 (where in 1848 both Muslim and Christian women had
been veiled)13 was intended to serve the same purpose as the more
recently composed opera Mrika. In March 1937 a new law made it a
punishable offence for a woman to conceal her face. 14 A Civil Code,
enabling civil marriage and divorce, was instituted. 15 Though atheism
is now official policy, whereas Zog sought (and eventually succeeded)
to create an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church,16 the

religious views of Zog and of his successors cannot be seen as diametri-
cally opposed. Although a Muslim, Zog married (in 1938) a Roman
Catholic; two of his cabinets included a majority of Christians.17 In
other words, Zog was less enthusiastically for a particular religion or
religious practice than Enver Hoxha was against religion in general
(as is shown by the prohibition since 1967 of religious instruction and
public worship). Despite official atheism, religious influences on the
economy are not fully overcome, as witness the fact that keeping pigs
has to be encouraged: 18 eating pork is of course contrary to Islam.
It was a major weakness of the inter-war period that no striking
success was achieved in economic development. Statistics published
subsequently start from 1950, or sometimes from 1938, rarely (in the
cases of 35 Years of Socialist Albania and 40 Years of Socialist
Albania never) going back earlier. Economic development did take
place between 1912 and 1944, although from an extremely low and
primitive base. For instance, whereas in 1912 there were only thirty-
four industrial units (almost all of them extremely small), by 1922
there were eighty-five; foreign trade doubled between 1922 and 1924;
development continued between 1925 and 1928. 19 A number of
bridges were built. 20 A national currency, the lek, began to be issued,
though the national accounts continued to be reckoned in gold
francs. Unfortunately, the world economic depression affected the
economy severely between 1929 and 1935. Both exports and budget
revenues fell sharply. After 1935 all major economic indices showed
substantial improvement, but this was chiefly due to Italian loans,
which enabled Italy to gain a dominating stance in the Albanian
economy. Still, that position would have been gained earlier and
would have been still more dominant without Zog's political acumen.
The King successfully resisted Italian demands for a customs union of
the two countries, which as the vast bulk of Albanian revenues came
from the customs would have hamstrung the nation's independence.
Under Italian occupation (1939 onwards) such a union was pro-
claimed and at once harmed or bankrupted native producers who
could not compete with lower-cost Italian imports. 21 However, Ita-
lian expertise did bring some economic gains in the shape of mineral
discoveries and mineral extraction increased considerably, though
larger outputs of cigarettes, beer etc. were probably destined mainly
for the occupiers' own consumption. 22
Under Zog, growth had been hampered not only by world trends
but by the court's exorbitant demands. According to Zog's Minister
in the United States, some 3 per cent of the national revenue went to
Zog, although the bulk of his wealth came as a gift from Mussolini. 23
Some at least of the '100 sacks of gold', in addition to other treasure,
which the King brought with him out of Albania24 might have been
used to finance economic development. What wealth may have been
accumulated by Albania's communist rulers is not known. Under
Zog urbanisation was prevented, though that non-result is parallelled
in post-war policies which anathematise migration. 25 Still, the bring-
ing of the northern clans into the economy, paying taxes like the rest
of the population, was a huge achievement and one which should be
especially appreciated by Zog's successors, who have started to
exploit that regions's hydro-electric power and mineral wealth.
Zog, as President, 'eventually put roads at the top of Albania's
needs'.26 His government 'added a few hundred miles of new roads'
to those already built by various foreign armies, or by previous rulers
of Albania; while this does not sound enormous, it doubled the
existing mileage. Previously, the fastest travel between Tirana and
Korce had been on horseback, and took three days.27 Popular travel
within Albania remains probably on a rather small scale, except along
routes (such as Tirana to Durres) where passenger trains run. Road
building during Zog's reign may be linked with law enforcement: the
suppression of brigandage enabled greatly enlivened trade throughout
the country. 28 Yet in general the country's economic infrastructure was
scarcely advanced during Zog's reign, existing railways even being
allowed to decay. 29 The construction of any railway line to a standard
gauge - a process which still continues - is an undertaking inseparably
linked to the communist period of Albania's history.
The buildings too that were built with Italian aid were not what the
economy most needed: they included a palace at Tirana for Zog and
the reconstruction of his castle in Mati.30 But other proposals were
made for economic development and grassroots progress. The con-
struction of small-scale industries was planned as was an agricultural
school; wooden beds were to replace sleeping on dirt floors. 31 Land
reform was mooted, though carried out on only a very small scale. 32
Swamps were to be drained. 33 An Italian model farm near Durres,
which Zog agreed might be enlarged,34 is probably identical with the
Jube Sukth farm in that neighbourhood which nowadays is often
shown to foreign visitors. 35 Zog's successors added far more ambi-
tious economic plans of their own, in regard to agriculture, industry
and otherwise, besides effecting other transformations, both physical
and intellectual.
Given the much bigger, though (especially in the earlier stages)

largely Stalinist-imitative achievements of postwar Albania in de-
fending its independence and promoting economic development,
social change and population growth, could not inter-war Albania
have achieved more than she did? Very probably she could have, but
big things have small beginnings. In all departments the country
stood at a more primitive stage. Albeit on a small scale and unsys-
tematically, certain foundations for growth and progress were laid
down by the Zog governments, in the face of most difficult circum-
stances, both internal and external. In several respects these circum-
stances were less favourable then than later: for instance, the Soviet
Union, under Stalin preoccupied with building 'Socialism in one
country', probably would not have given much support to a socialist
Albania. In that hypothetical situation much else would also have
been different, but surely Mussolini, having crushed the communists
in Italy, would have intervened militarily much earlier in Albania;
any support from other countries in such a context being, even in the
circumstances that actually existed, fitful and eventually ineffective.
Since 1945, Albania's rates of growth have been hugely affected by
the levels of aid from the USSR, East European countries and
China. 36 The international climate in the 1930s as regards aid to
under-developed countries was much less favourable than that since
World War II, while the application of Keynes's doctrines relating to
economic stimulation, even had they been applicable to Albanian
circumstances, still lay in the future.
It would have been too much to have expected Zog to lead national
all-out resistance in April 1939, considering that up to then, outside
Spain, there had been no armed resistance to Axis aggression in
Europe. The fact that Italy was compelled to invade is in a sense a
tribute to his skilful diplomacy, in that the Italians eventually came to
the conclusion that only through invasion could they control Albania
completely.37 The ex-King, from his home in wartime Britain, did
later make persistent offers to organise an uprising in northern
Albania and harrying operations elsewhere, but these proposals
encountered opposition from various governments and ultimately
were not put into effect.38 Obviously these offers hardly weigh in the
scales against the genuine achievements in Albania of the resistance
movements, the Balli Kombetar and the National Liberation Front,
neither of which intended any restoration of the Zogist regime. It
seems nevertheless rather out of character (since Zog, who when
attacked in Vienna had fired back, did not lack courage) that he
should have immediately fled when the Italians invaded, but this
could have been for family reasons: his wife had given birth only two
days before and had not yet recovered. At any rate, it is unfortunate
for his personal reputation that he did not give a lead when the hour
struck. Thus the scene was left clearer for the Italians, later for the
Nazis, and finally for the Communists.
NOTES
1. B.J. Fischer, King Zag and the Struggle for Stability in Albania (East
European Monographs, Boulder, 1984).
2. M.E. Durham, High Albania (London 1909, reprinted 1985), pp. 326-8.
3. Fischer, p. 80.
4. E. Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania (Lon-
don, 1851, reprinted, 1988) p. 71.
5. Durham, numerous references.
6. Fischer, pp. 211-13.
7. F. Konitza, Albania: The Rock Garden of Southeastern Europe (Boston,
1957), p. 150.
8. Fischer, p. 80.
9. Regarding secrecy in Albania, see R. Hutchings, Soviet Secrecy and
Non-Secrecy (London 1987), various references.
10. Fischer, pp. 237-8.
11. Fischer, p. 143.
13. Lear, p. 82.
14. Fischer, pp. 248-9.
16. Fischer, pp. 170-1.
17. Konitza, p. 132.
18. For instance, the first piggeries are just being opened in Puke district, but
interest evidently remains weak. (F. Kulli, Bashkimi, 21 April 1989,
p.2.)
19. I. Fishta and V. Toc;i, Gjendja ekonomike e Shqiperise ne vitet 1912-44,
prapambetja e saj, shkaqet dhe pasojat (Tirana, 1983), pp. 31, 33, 59.
20. Fishta and Toc;i, pp. 43-4.
21. Fishta and Toc;i, pp. 199-202.
22. Fishta and Toc;i, p. 221; R. Hutchings, The ACES Bulletin, Winter 1984,.
p.86.
23. Konitza, p. 155.
24. Fischer, pp. 293-4.
25. R. Hutchings, The ACES Bulletin, Winter 1984, p. 86.
27. Konitza, p. 15.
28. Fischer, pp. 103-4.

29. Fischer, p. 45.
30. Fischer, p. 92.
31. Fischer, pp. 173-4.
32. Fischer, pp. 173-4.
34. Fischer, pp. 226, 232.
35. Economist Intelligence Unit, Quarterly Economic Review of Rumania,
Bulgaria, Albania, no. 2, 1983, p. 20.
36. R. Hutchings in J.P. Hardt (ed.) Pressure for Reform in the East European
Economies (Washington, 1989), and R. Hutchings in R. Schonfeld
(ed.), Industrialisierung und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung in Sudost-
europa (Munich, 1989).
37. As pointed out in Fischer, p. 306.
38. Fischer, pp. 295-301.
10 Albania after the
Second World War
William Bland
In 1912 all the resentment at 400 years of foreign rule burst forth in a
mass uprising of the Albanian people. This culminated in the convo-
cation of a National Assembly which, in the seaside town of Vlore,
proclaimed the independence of Albania on 28 November 1912. The
first government of independent Albania was set up, headed by the
patriot Ismail Qemal. But at this time the European Great Powers
did not disguise their view that they - and they alone - had the right
to determine the destiny of small nations. While recognising the
separation of Albania from Ottoman rule, they set up an Inter-
national Control Commission to administer the new state and ap-
pointed a German prince, Wilhelm of Wied, as its head of state. They
also arbitrarily drew the boundaries of the new state so that half the
Albanian people were included in Yugoslavia, and forced the resig-
nation of the Qemal government. The Albanian people were not
grateful for the assistance of the Great Powers, and Wilhelm ruled
only from March to September of 1914, when he was forced by a
popular uprising to flee the country.
The new state had hardly been established when the First World
War broke out in July 1914, and, although the Great Powers had
guaranteed Albanian neutrality only the previous year, Albanian soil
became a battlefield between the warring states. When the Armistice
was finally signed on 11 November 1918, Albania found itself occu-
pied by Italian and French troops. The Peace Conference opened in
Paris in January 1918 and debated claims to Albanian territory from
the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugosla-
via), from Italy and from Greece. In December 1918 a new National
Assembly met in Durres and appointed a new government, which
succeeded in negotiating the withdrawal of the French troops; similar
efforts in relation to the Italian forces, however, failed. On 20 May
1920, therefore, the government issued a national call to arms, and in
June a volunteer army drove the Italians from the mainland and
forced the Italian government to recognise the country's indepen-
dence. At this time Albania had still a very backward economy -
123
mainly agricultural in the plains and pastoral in the highlands. Most

of the arable land was owned by a class of aristocratic landowners,
the Beys, while the highlands were dominated by semi-feudal tribal
chieftains. Except for a few months in 1925 this coalition of Beys and
chieftains dominated the political life of Albania until 1939, the
leading figure in the government from 1921 being the Mati chieftain
Ahmet Zogu.
The industrial bourgeoisie of Albania found its aspirations frus-
trated by the existing political system and was able, despite its tiny
size, to mobilise the masses of the people for a radical change. In
June 1925 the 4,000 government troops found themselves faced by
12,000 armed citizens; Zogu and his fellow-ministers were forced to
flee and a new liberal government was installed, headed by the
writer, composer and churchman Fan Noli, pledged to introduce
agrarian and democratic reforms. The Yugoslav government
financed and armed a force of Albanians loyal to Zogu, and in
December 1925 these forces invaded Albania and succeeded in
overthrowing the Noli government. The new regime represented the
interests of the same coalition of Beys and chieftains as before, but
now took the form of an open dictatorship. Zogu became first
President and in 1928 King Zog. But the internal basis of support for
the Zog regime was so limited that it felt compelled to seek foreign
backing, and turned for this primarily to fascist Italy. In return, over
the next few years Italian finance and business were granted a
stranglehold over the Albanian economy.
In 1939 Italy presented new demands to Albania which would have
removed the last trappings of independence, and Zog demurred. On
7 April, Good Friday, 1939, therefore, 70,000 Italian troops invaded
Albania and succeeded in occupying the whole country within a few
days. Zog fled the country. Local communist groups had been
formed in Albania during the 1930s, and in November 1941 represen-
tatives of these groups merged them to form the Communist Party of
Albania. The party adopted the classical Marxist-Leninist analysis of
the revolutionary process in a colonial-type country - namely that
this should consist of two stages: firstly, the stage of national-
democratic revolution; secondly, and uninterruptedly, the stage of
socialist revolution. In accordance with this strategy, it adopted a
policy of mobilising the broadest elements of the population, irres-
pective of political views, into a National Liberation Front to free the
country from foreign rule and establish a democratic regime. In the
Albania after the Second World War 125
military field, the party adopted the strategy of 'people's war',

beginning with the formation of small guerilla units which would
gradually merge into larger units and eventually into a regular army.
This National Liberation Front came into being at a conference
held in the liberated village of Peza in September 1942, and in July
1943 the guerilla units, now 10,000 strong, were united into a
National Liberation Army. In September, 1943 Italy surrendered, and
100,000 German troops poured into Albania to take the place of the
defeated Italians. However, by November 1944 the National Libera-
tion Army had succeeded in liberating the entire country. The
National Liberation Front was then transformed into the Democratic
Front and, under the leadership of the Communist Party, adopted a
programme of building a socialist society in Albania. Elections were
held in December 1945, under conditions described by the British
and American Missions in Albania as 'free and secret'. According to
the official figures, 90 per cent of the electorate voted and of these 93
per cent voted for the candidates of the Democratic Front. Albania
had taken the road towards the construction of a socialist society.
During the first few years of its existence, the foreign relations of
the People's Republic of Albania were closest with Yugoslavia,
which rendered considerable economic aid to Albania. When Bel-
grade began to press for Albania to join the Yugoslav Federation,
this was supported by a faction within the communist leadership
headed by Koci Xoxe and opposed by another faction headed by
Enver Hoxha. In 1948, however, when the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia was expelled from the Communist Information Bureau,
the pro-Yugoslav faction was decisively defeated, and Xoxe was later
tried for treason and executed.
From 1948 to 1961 Albania's closest relations were with the Soviet
Union, which gave Albania extensive economic aid. After Khrush-
chev's rapprochement with Tito in 1955 and Moscow's pressure upon
Tirana to rehabilitate Xoxe (which was resisted), relations between
Albania and the Soviet Union began to cool. The crisis came when
the new Soviet leadership attempted to persuade Albania to hold
back its industrialisation programme and accept the so-called 'div-
ision of labour' policy within the Soviet bloc - under which Albani~
would supply food and raw materials to the bloc and buy its manufac-
tured goods from it. The Albanian leaders regarded this as a colonial
policy and began to criticise the Soviet leaders as 'revisionists' - as
traitors to Marxism-Leninism and to Socialism, who were seeking to
restore an essentially capitalist social system. These disagreements

resulted in the complete rupture of all relations with the Soviet Union
in 1961.
From this time (1961) to 1978 Albania's relations were closest with
China, which was criticising the Soviet Union in similar terms and
which made up in economic aid to a great extent for that previously
forthcoming from the Soviet Union. However, Peking began to
express the view that the Soviet Union was such an enemy of world
peace that it should ally itself with all anti-Soviet states in the world -
including the United States. When Albania rejected such a foreign
policy in 1978, China - as the Soviet Union had done earlier - ended
all aid to Albania, although in this case relations were not broken off.
As a result of these experiences, the Albanian leaders drew the
conclusion that, in the world of today, foreign aid always has strings
attached, and the present constitution prohibits acceptance of any
foreign loans or credits. Today the main barrier to friendly relations
between Albania and Yugoslavia is the position of the Albanian-
speaking majority in Kosovo, and the brutal treatment of Kosovars
who demand republican status within Yugoslavia on a par with most
of the other nationalities. Although Tirana explicitly repudiates any
claims to Yugoslav territory, Belgrade blames the unrest in Kosovo
upon the Albanian government. For a considerable period Albania's
relations with its other next-door neighbour Greece were equally
frosty - the main factor here being Greek territorial claims to south-
ern Albania. Since these have been dropped, however, relations have
become cordial.
It is common to read in the press that Albania pursues an 'isola-
tionist' policy. The Albanian authorities reject this, pointing out that,
in fact, Albania has diplomatic relations with more than a hundred
states, including all the major countries of Europe except for Britain
and the Soviet Union. Its declared policy, is to establish diplomatic
relations with all states that adopt a friendly policy towards Albania,
with which relations can be established on a basis of equality, and
which do not adopt policies of racism. On this basis, they exclude
diplomatic relations with the two super-powers - the United States
and the Soviet Union - on the grounds that these are so aggressive in
their policies that relations cannot be established on a basis of
equality. They also exclude relations with Israel and South Africa, on
the grounds that these states officially adopt racist policies.
For a long time the Corfu Channel Incident of 1946 - in which two
British destroyers struck mines when sailing through Albanian terri-
torial waters - was an obstacle to the establishment of diplomatic

relations between Britain and Albania. It was accepted that at this
time Albania possessed neither mines or minelayers, and the British
case presented to the International Court was that the mines were
laid by the Yugoslav navy and that the Albanian authorities must
have known of their presence and were therefore responsible for the
incident. However, the neutral commission of naval experts which
visited Albania reported that the mines could have been laid without
being seen or heard from the shore. Since Belgrade was pressing
Tirana at this time for the stationing of Yugoslav troops on Albanian
soil, the creation of a confrontation between Albania and a naval
power could be regarded as serving Yugoslav aims. Albania, on the
other hand, was seeking admission to the United Nations, for which
British support was essential. I believe that any objective person
reading the proceedings of the International Court today would be
satisfied that the judges who found Albania guilty in the Corfu
Channel Case had allowed themselves to be influenced by the politics
of the cold war. Indeed, the fact that proceedings were never brought
against Yugoslavia, which was alleged to have laid the mines but
which, by the time the case came to court, was moving into closer
relations with the West, supports this view.
The International Court operates on the basis that it can adjudicate
only on points agreed by the states which are party to a case. Both
parties had agreed here to accept the verdict of the Court as to
responsibility, but the question of the assessment of any damages was
not mentioned. Nevertheless a majority of the judges proceeded,
contrary to the Constitution of the Court, to assess the amount of
damages which Albania should pay. The Albanian government in-
sisted that the amount of the damages was a matter for diplomatic
negotiation, but for many years the British government insisted that
the full damages awarded unconstitutionally by the court should be
paid before diplomatic relations were established. For the last nine
years, however, the British government had modified its position in
this matter, and has expressed its readiness to establish diplomatic
relations with Albania unconditionally.
For its part, the Albanian government demands the return of its state
gold (which was looted by the Germans during the war and recovered
by the Western Powers in Berlin) before diplomatic relations are
established. This gold is admitted to be the property of the Albanian
state, for which it is held in trust by the Tripartite Commission for the
Restitution of Monetary Gold, consisting of representatives of Britain,
France and the United States. While France supports the return of
the gold, Britain and the United States insist, contrary to trusteeship
law, that they have the right to withhold the gold. The Albanian
government has made it clear that it assesses the significance of the
return of this gold not in its value, but as an indication that the
previously hostile policy of British governments towards Albania has
been modified. In this connection the Albanians do not forget that
the Anglo-American intelligence services organised successive armed
interventions into Albania in 1949-54 for the purpose of overthrow-
ing the government. But the gold has not been returned and as a
result there are still, after forty-five years, no diplomatic relations
between Britain and Albania.
Albania regularly participates in the work of international organis-
ations such as the United Nations, where it has consistently de-
nounced terrorism and supported the rights of small nations to
determine their own destiny, including the right of the Palestinian
people to their own state and the right of the Irish people to a unified
state free of British troops. It has condemned American military
intervention in Central America in the same terms as it has con-
demned Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia and Afgha-
nistan. It calls for the dismantling of both NATO and the Warsaw
Pact, and for the international prohibition of nuclear weapons.
The Constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania
defines Marxism-Leninism as the official state philosophy, and Marx-
ism-Leninism regards all states as dictatorships of a social class. In
consequence, this constitution characterises the Albanian state as
one of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' , in which all power belongs
to the working people. Anti-socialist political activity is prohibited,
together with (since 1976) the public practice of religion. The Party of
Labour of Albania (as the Communist Party has been called since
1948) is defined as 'the sole leading political force in society'.
The sole legislative organ is the People's Assembly of 250 deputies,
of which 29 per cent are women, elected by universal suffrage every
four years. These deputies are part-time and unpaid, and between
meetings of the Assembly decrees may be issued by its full-time
Praesidium, elected by the Assembly. Such decrees have to be
approved at the next session of the Assembly. The President of the
Praesidium of the People's Assembly is the State President and head
of state - a post held at present by Ramiz Alia, who is also First
Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour. Under
the Constitution, the First Secretary of the Party holds the post of
Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The People's Assembly

appoints the Council of Ministers or government, which is the su-
preme executive organ of state. The post of Chairman of the Council
of Ministers, held at present by Adil Carcani, is equivalent to that of
Prime Minister. Local government in districts, towns and villages is
exercised by People's Councils, elected every three years by the
citizens of the electoral area concerned.
The election process begins some time before the actual elections
with the nomination of candidates. These then speak, are questioned
and the candidatures are discussed at electoral meetings - which
whittle down the candidates to one, who is held to be the most active,
self-sacrificing socialist out of those who have been nominated. He or
she mayor may not be a Party member. The election itself is secret
and is regarded as a ratification of the decisions taken previously at
the electoral meetings. However, any deputy or local councillor may
be removed from office on presentation of a petition signed by a
certain number of the electorate.
Although political opposition to the socialist order is prohibited,
there is a great deal of opportunity for public criticism of state
departments and state officials. Every town and village has a notice-
board where citizens may - and do - criticise shortcomings, and the
official or department must reply to this criticism alongside within
three days. Furthermore, the drafts of the economic plans and of all
new laws are circulated for public discussion before being debated by
the state body concerned.
Prior to the country's liberation from the Italo-German occupation
in 1944, the Albanian economy was by far the most backward in
Europe. More than 80 per cent of the population was illiterate, and
85 per cent lived in the countryside. Industry provided only 4 per cent
of the gross national product, and consisted mainly of small work-
shops. The six mines had all been Italian-owned and their minerals
exported to Italy. There were in 1938 only twenty-six miles of
asp halted roads and not a single mile of railway. The new regime has
as the main plank in its programme the transformation of the country
into an industrialised socialist state. 1
Let us look first at agriculture. The first important step taken was.
the Land Reform of August 1945, by which all land held in excess of
that which could be worked by the landholder and his family (fixed at
five hectares in most parts of the country) was confiscated without
compensation and distributed free of charge to 71 ,000 peasants with
little or no land. This was primarily a political measure, designed -
successfully - to win the support of the middle and poor peasantry.

Economically, it was not a step forward, since it was clear that
agriculture could make little or no material advance on the basis of
such small plots. In the following year (1946), therefore, a campaign
was initiated to persuade the small peasants to pool their land,
voluntarily, into large co-operative farms. At the time of the land
reform some of the large estates had been retained by the state and
transformed into state farms. These were equipped with agricultural
machinery which could not be used on small plots, and were provided
with health centres, cultural centres and shops. Coach trips were then
arranged for the peasants to visit these state farms, so that they could
see the benefits of large-scale farming - the shorter hours, shift work
and holidays, the increased production (25-30 per cent higher than
that of peasants working individually), and the urban-type amenities.
As a result the movement to form co-operative farms became a mass
movement in 1955 and was completed in 1967. The number of
co-operative farms increased from ninety in 1950 to 1,484 in 1960,
and then declined to 417 in 1987. The decline in the number after
1960 was not due to a reversal in the direction of the co-operative
movement, but to the amalgamation of existing co-operative farms
into larger units. This is evident from the fact that the average
cultivated area of a co-operative farm increased from 232 hectares in
1950 to 1,205 hectares in 1987, while the number of co-operative
farming families increased in the same period from 4,517 to 311,404 -
an increase of 68 times.
Each co-operative farm is administered by a committee elected by
its members. Each family on the farm has a small personal plot from
which they retain the produce for their own use. A co-operative farm
does not own its own large machines. These are owned by state
machine and tractor stations, which hire them and their operators to
the co-operative farms. Since the state is officially defined as domi-
nated by the working class, this fulfills Stalin's precepts that under
socialism the main means of production should be owned by the state
and that the working class should play the leading role in relation to
the peasantry. In 1971 a new social movement in agriculture com-
menced: the transformation of the most efficient co-operative farms
into higher-type co-operative farms. A higher-type co-operative farm
receives investment directly from the state and each has the exclusive
use of a machine and tractor station.
Following the principles laid down by Stalin in his last work The
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR 2 - principles never
applied in the Soviet Union itself - the Party of Labour of Albania

regards co-operative farms as enterprises which should, at the appro-
priate time, be transformed into state farms. The most efficient
higher-type co-operative farms, with the most socialist-conscious
members, are now in the process of being transformed into state
farms, in which the workers are state employees in receipt of wages,
that is, rural members of the working class.
Since Liberation there has been a great increase in agricultural
production. In 1987 total agricultural output was 5.4 times that of
1938. This has been in part due to the improved social organisation of
large-scale farming. Another vital factor has been an increase in the
area of cultivated land (which is now 2.4 times that of 1938); this
increase has been brought about by the draining of the malaria-
ridden marshes which in 1938 formed 13 per cent of cultivatable land,
and by the opening-up of new land - especially in the highlands,
where terrace farming has been widely applied. Today hilly and
mountainous areas account for 52 per cent of cultivatable land and 45
per cent of agricultural production. 90 per cent of this increase in
agricultural production, however, has come from intensification -
from higher yields as a result of scientific research. Albania has a
Mediterranean-type climate, with very dry summers. Efficient agri-
culture thus requires artificial irrigation. The land area under irriga-
tion has increased more than fourteen times since 1938, and the
irrigated area has risen from 10 per cent of the cultivated land area in
1938 to 57 per cent today - the highest figure in Europe.
Another important factor has been the development of specialised
education in agriculture. In 1938 there was one agricultural college in
Albania: today there are 400, turning out 15,000 graduates a year.
There are also two higher institutes of agriculture - in Tirana and
Kon;e - turning out agricultural specialists of university level.
But, of course, a fundamental factor in the increase of agricultural
output has been the parallel development of industry. The traction
power used in agriculture is more than ten times that of 1938, and
whereas then 90 per cent of the power used was animal power, today
Plore than 90 per cent is motor power. In 1970 the electrification of
every village in the country was completed. In 1938 there was only
450 horse-power of tractor power in the whole country; today the
figure is 289,700 horse-power - an increase of 642 times. Again the
quantity of chemical fertilisers used in agriculture has increased since
1950 by ninety-five times. As a result of these developments, despite
the fact that the proportion of bread grains sown has decreased from
84 per cent to 49 per cent, Albania has since 1976 for the first time in
its history been self-supporting in bread grains.
Industrial production has increased much faster than agricultural
production, being now 160 times the level of 1938. This has been in
part due to an increase in the number of workers - by thirty-six times
(from 22 thousand to 788 thousand) in the same period. This com-
pares with an increase in total population of four times. Every effort
is made to encourage population growth by the provision of extended
maternity leave with pay, creches and day nurseries. In other words,
the Party of Labour of Albania completely rejects the Malthusian
concept of 'population explosions'. There is no unemployment.
Work for all and choice of occupation is guaranteed under the
Constitution and, in these circumstances, since a worker produces
more than the value required to support himself and his dependents,
every new baby is regarded as a future asset to the economy and to
the defence of the country. In addition, as a result of the great
improvement in the standard of living and the provision of a free,
non-contributory health service, the expectation of life has increased
from thirty-eight in 1938 to seventy-two years today. As a result
Albania has a very high rate of increase of population (19.5 per 1,000
a year), which is 3.5 times the average for Europe. It is also a very
young population, with 91 per cent of the people of or below working
age.
One of the first measures of the new regime was to nationalise the
few small factories which existed. Today there is no private enter-
prise at all - even the small shops and newspaper kiosks are state-
owned. In the absence of profit as the motive and regulator of
production, there is full central planning of production, and Albanian
economists reject the view put forward in other Eastern European
countries that central economic direction becomes impracticable or
at least an impediment as the economy develops. One of the key
questions in the planning of industrial production is the proportion of
means of production (machines, etc.) to consumer goods. Stalin, who
is greatly admired in Albania, held that the correct course for
socialist industrial planning was for the production of means of
production to increase more rapidly than the production of consumer
goods. In this way, the maximum possible expansion of the consumer
goods industries would be attained in the long run. The Albanian
planning authorities have consistently followed this principle. Pro-
duction of the means of production has increased 215 times while
production of consumer goods has increased by 106 times.
In laying the basis of industry, the Albanian planners gave priority

to the development of minerals and power. In the case of fuel
minerals, such as coal and petroleum, these two categories, of
course, overlap. New mines were opened and modern equipment
introduced. As a result the extraction of chrome ore has increased
155 times, and today Albania ranks fourth in the world in extraction
of this mineral; coal extraction has increased 577 times. Parallel with
the development of the mining industry, there have arisen the indus-
tries concerned with the smelting and refining of the minerals ex-
tracted. Albanian geologists have made intensive explorations of the
whole territory of Albania and, as a result of their work, deposits of
new minerals have been discovered, the most important of these
being iron and bauxite. Iron ore mining began only in 1958, but
already the amount extracted has multiplied eleven times. This iron
ore provides the raw material for the large, modern factory of the
Party iron and steel works at Elbasan, which commenced production
in 1978. Another foundation on which Albania's industrial develop-
ment was based has been the production of electric power, which has
grown 434 times since Liberation. Albania is very rich in water
power, and now 86 per cent of its electric power is generated from
large hydro-electric power stations. Other industries regarded as
basic - since they produce a means of production or raw materials for
other industries - are the chemical and engineering industries. The
production of chemicals - a new industry since Liberation - has
increased 586 times since 1950. Of vital importance, since it produces
machinery for all industries and for transport and communications, is
the engineering industry, in which production has grown by 710 times
since Liberation.
The railway system which now connects most Albanian towns and
links the country with the European rail network has been built
entirely by the volunteer labour of students and young people under
the supervision of professional engineers. The Albanian authorities
stress that increased production should not come from speed-up or
longer working hours, but from an increase in the number of workers
and from raising the productivity of labour. In the latter connection,
the amount of capital invested per worker increased 5.1 times be-
tween 1950 and 1975. And apart from the large number of innova:.
tions proposed by shop-floor workers, a whole range of scientific
institutions carries on research with the aim of bringing about a
technico-scientific revolution in industry. As a result there is a high
degree of automation in the new factories. What is called 'workers'
control' operates within each factory. All important decisions require

the approval of the plant's trade union branch which, in extreme
cases, can demand and secure the dismissal of the factory director.
The principle of self-reliance which has been in operation since
1976 does not mean a policy of economic isolation or autarky, as the
media often suggest. Foreign trade is a state monopoly, and Albania
has at present trade relations with more than seventy foreign
countries. It strives to sign long-term agreements, so that exports and
imports may be incorporated in the state plan. Albania's principal
exports are electric power, fuels, minerals and foodstuffs, but 67 per
cent of exports are now processed or manufactured goods. Its main
imports are capital goods and raw materials for the development of
the economy; only 12 per cent of imports are consumer goods.
The state budget has increased very considerably over the years.
Its expenditure has grown 13.1 times since 1950. This expenditure is
distributed as follows: 53 per cent to the- economy, 31 per cent to
socio-cultural development, 12 per cent to defence, 2 per cent to
administration, and 2 per cent to other matters. There is now no
taxation of any kind on citizens in Albania. The entire state revenue
accrues directly from the enterprises.
Marx characterised the first phase of communist society as that of
Socialism, in which the supply of consumer goods was inadequate to
meet the desires of the population. Under Socialism, therefore,
consumer goods have to be rationed in some way - in fact, on the
principle 'from each according to his ability, to each according to the
quantity and quality of his work', since this principle provides a
material incentive to workers to develop production as rapidly as
possible. The Party of Labour has applied this principle in Albania. It
sees the so-called 'reforms' that have taken and are taking place in
the Soviet Union and other countries as essentially a restoration of
capitalist economies based on the profit motive and the market. It
regards the economic basis for this revisionism as the existence of a
highly-paid, privileged stratum of the working class. To avoid such a
development in Albania, income differentials are limited by law to a
maximum of 2:1. This makes Albania by far the most egalitarian
society in the world.
The prices of consumer goods are fixed by the state. They are the
same throughout the country, and are related to the value of each
product (that is, the average amount of work involved in its produc-
tion). The total of all prices is fixed so as to be equal to the sum of the
incomes received by the citizens. Consequently, all consumer goods
produced can be sold and there can be no such thing as goods lying
unsold because of shortage of purchasing power, no such things as
'crises of over-production'. As the productivity of labour increases,
and the average amount of work required to produce a product
decreases, so its value and its price falls. The phenomenon of infla-
tion is, therefore, unknown in Albania; on the contrary, the prices of
consumer goods consistently fall as productivity rises.
Of course, the social value of an economic system can only really
be measured in terms of the extent to which it satisfies the needs of
the masses of the people. It is common for journalists writing about
Albania to make the point that the average standard of living in
Albania is considerably lower than the average standard of living in
Britain. But this is misleading, since income differentials in Albania
are limited to 2:1, while in Britain they stand at 6,000:1. The average
standard of living in Britain includes that of millionaires, who do not
exist in Albania. Those who go into the question a little more deeply
find out the average wage of an Albanian worker, compare it with the
average wage of a British worker at the current rate of exchange and
conclude that the average standard of living of Albanian workers is
considerably inferior to that of British workers.
A true comparison, however, must take into account the fact that
the Albanian worker pays no rates or taxes; that he pays no contribu-
tions towards the free health service or towards pensions (which are
fixed at 70 per cent of retiring pay and are regarded as deferred
wages); that his rent is fixed at 5 per cent of a single income; and so
on. If one takes all the above factors into account - ignoring im-
measurable factors such as security from cuts, inflation and redun-
dancy - one finds that the standard of living of the lowest-paid
stratum of the Albanian working people is now higher than that of
the lowest-paid stratum of the British working class. But, of course,
comparison with other countries with a long history of developed
industry, are not really relevant to the Albanian workers. For them,
the relevant question is: has the standard of living improved and will
it continue to improve? Here the statistics for the distribution of
retail goods are significant. The quantity of these has increased
twenty times. Allowing for increase in population, the quantity of
retail goods per inhabitant has risen 6.7 times.
Another picture is obtained from statistics of savings. If an Alba-
nian citizen wishes to buy or build his own house, he may obtain a 100
per cent interest-free loan from the state bank, repayable over fifteen
years. There is, however, no system of hire-purchase for relatively
expensive durable goods, such as refrigerators or washing-machines,

and if he wishes to buy such a thing he puts something aside each
week in the savings bank, on which interest is paid. The figures for
savings bank deposits thus give an idea of the income of working
people, over and above what they need for essentials. The average
sum deposited in a savings bank account has increased from 104 leks
in 1950 to 1,684 leks today - an increase of over sixteen times.
Of course, life is more than bread and raki. And another interest-
ing feature of Albanian society is its preoccupation with culture and
the arts. Almost every village has its local museum. There are seven
symphony orchestras - a remarkable achievement for a country with
a population of only three million. On the same basis of population
one would expect to find 133 symphony orchestras in Britain, as
compared with the thirteen which we have.
Again, Albania produces thirteen feature films a year. On the
same basis of population one would expect to find British studios
turning out 247 feature films annually, as compared with the current
figure of fifty-two. And, of course, Albanian films are Albanian. To
conclude, Albania in the modern period has undergone a radical
social transformation. Indeed, even those who regard with extreme
disapproval the absence of stockbrokers and bishops must agree that
Albania is a unique country in many respects. 3
NOTES
1. Statistics on Albania can be found in Forty Years of Socialist Albania

(Tirana, 1984), United Nations Demographic Yearbook, 1985 (New York,
1987), pp. 132-9, and Statistical Yearbook of the Popular Republic of
Albania, 1965 (Tirana, 1965).
2. J. Stalin, The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (Moscow,
1952).
3. Other works useful for studying Albania in the context of Stalinist
orthodoxy are K. Scan;o, Agriculture in the PSR of Albania (Tirana,
1984), R. Alia, Report to the Ninth Congress of the Party of Labour of
Albania (Tirana, 1986), A. Gan;ani, Report on the Eighth Five Year Plan
(Tirana, 1986).
Index
Abdul Hamid, Sultan, 107-8 besa, 93-105
Acroceraurian mountains, 31, 59 beys, 84, 89, 124
Actium,5 Bitola (Monastir), 7-8, 80, 83, 109
Alaric, 5 Bohemond, 48-9, 54, 61, 63--4
Albanian diaspora in America, 4, 9, 12, Brindisi (Brundisium), 1, 31
71, 83, 112, 116 in Germany, 89, 91, Bronze Age, 15-22, 31, 33
103--4 in Greece, 6--7, 10, 12, 13, 70, Bulgaria, 3-7, 53--4, 80-1, 84-5, 110-11
77, 81, 98-100 in Italy (Arberesh), 9, Butrint (Buthrotum), 41-5, 67, 69-70
71-2,83, 116 in Yugoslavia, 10, 17, Bylliones, 35, 37
83, 93--4, 100--2 see also Kosovo Byllis, 37, 42-3
Albanoi, 39-40 Byron, Lord, 79, 83
Alexander the Great, 4, 36 Byzantine Empire, 3, 6, 39, 40-72
Alexius Comnenus, Emperor, 2, 54,
59-62 Caesar, Julius, 2, 4, 30, 41
Ali Pasha, 79, 82, 87, 116 castles, 47-50
Alia, Ramiz, 128, 136 Catholicism, 6, 77, 82, 85, 118
Aliya family, 103 Ceka, N., 23, 38, 48
alphabet, 83--4, 109 Celts, 15, 25, 27
Amantia,37 Cepune, 18
Amery, J., 10-13 Chamuria, 111-12
Anastasius, Emperor, 41, 47-9, 60 Chaones, 35, 70
Andronicus, Emperor, 55, 70 China, 120, 126
Angevins, 6, 54-5, 66--7 Christianity, 3, 29, 41-7, 77-8, 82 see
Anna Comnena, 48-9, 53--4, 57, 59-63 also Catholicism, Orthodox religion
Antigoneia, 37, 42-3 churches, 41-7
Apollonia, 5, 22, 29, 32, 35-8, 41 Cilicia, 45-6
Araniti, 67, 76 Constantinople, 45, 53, 59, 63, 65-6,
Arapaj, 42-3, 46 69,70
Arbanatai, 54-5, 57 Corfu (Corcyra), 4, 11, 14, 31, 37-7,
archaeology, 4, 11, 14-28,33,37,42-51 59,63, 37, 39, 70
Ardiaei, 36--7 Corfu Channel Incident, 126--7
Aristotle, 4 Corinth, 31, 34
Atintani, 35, 37-8
Attaliates, Michael, 53--4, 57 Dalmatians, 14
Augustus, Emperor, 5, 41 Damastium, 32, 35
Austro-Hungary, 78, 83, 85, 90, 96, 106 Dardanians, 34-6
Dassaretai, 35, 38
Badher, 23--4 Democratic Front, 116, 125
Bajkak,18 Diber (Dibra), 81, 84
Balkan Wars, 81, 85, 110-11 Disraeli, 74, 87
Balli Kombetar, 116, 120 Domenico, 62, 64
Balsha family, 67-8, 75-6 dorzons,97-102
Ban;, 18 Drin, river, 14, 18, 29, 55
Bardylis, 35-6 Dukadjin family, 67, 76, 91-2
Bari, 1, 59, 62 Durham, M., 105, 121
Barietius, Marinus, 3, 12 Dushan, Stefan, 55, 67, 90
Basil, Emperor, 53 Dushman family, 103--4
Berat (Beligrad), 53, 55, 67, 109 Dushmani family, 76
137
138 Index
Dyrrachium (Durazzo, Durres), 5,14, Illyrians, 4, 14,28--37, 51, 55

29, 30, 32-8, 41, 45-6, 48, 53, 59-72, Indo-European languages, 15-17
76,119,123 Ioannina, 7-8, 83, 85, 109
Iron Age, 15, 17-19,23,27,33
Egnatia, Via, 5-6, 35, 38, 41-2, 47, 59, Isauria, 45-6
64,66 Islam, 77-8, 80-2, 87, 90,109, 117-18
Elbasan (Scampi), 5, 47-8, 75, 133 Issa, 37
Encheleae, 34-5 Italy, 1,9,20,38,53-4,58, 70-2, 74,
Enver Bey, 84 76-7, 83, 106, 112-16, 118--24, 129
Epidamnus, 4, 14, 22, 59
Epirus, 14, 34-6, 48, 52, 54, 59, 66, 68, janissaries, 9
81-2, 106, 109 Justinian, 41-3, 48--50
Fier, 19,70 Kalivo,24

First World War, 9,10,12,43,80-1, Kalyvia, 98--9
85, 123 Kastrioti family, 67, 76-7
France, 9, 81, 86, 109, 112, 124, 128 Kelcyre, 19
Frasheri family, 9, 82-3, 85, 88 Komani-Kruja culture, 51-2
Fry, C.B., 9 Konitza family, 82-3, 87, 117, 121
KoprUlu family, 75, 87
Gajtan,23 Kon;e, 9, 29, 81-2, 131
Gentius, 138 Korkuti, M., 23, 28, 39
Gibbon, Edmund, 1, 3-4, 12,50,57, Kosovo, 2, 7-8, 10, 12,21,30,34,77,
64,72 81,83-5, 89, 91-4, 100-3, 111-12,
Gjirokaster, 76-7, 81-2, 87 116-17,126 battle of, 7, 75-6
Gladstone, 74 Kruje (Kruja), 52, 54,70,74--5, 111
Glasinac, 18,34 Kuc,,18
Glaucias, 36
Gordon, General, 107 Lazar, Tsar, 7, 75-6
Goths, 5, 47-9 Leigh Fermor, P., 10
Grabaei,36 Lepanto, 78
Greece, ancient, 4, 16-19,25,29-37, Leque Dukadjin, 91-4, 97, 104--5
75, 81 medieval, 6, 9, 90 (see also Lezhe (Lezha, Lissus), 20, 29, 30, 37-8,
Byzantine Empire) modern, 2, 5, 9, 69
74--5,79-81, 83-4, 98--100, 115, 121, Liburnians, 14, 31
124--5, 127 Lin, 42-3
Greeks in Albania, 9-10, 13 Lleshan,24
Guiscard, Robert, 2, 54, 58--62, 64 Lychidnus, 5
Hasluck, F.W., 43 Macedonia, 10, 14, 19, 34--5, 38, 79,

Hasluck, M., 10,29,39,56,105 81-3,103-4
Hecataeus, 14, 33 Maliq, 15, 17,31
Herbert, A., 10-11 Maniaces, 53-4
Herodotus, 14, 33 Manuel Commenus, Emperor, 54, 65
hill forts, 18, 22-4 Markaj family, 100-2
Himare,79 Mat river, 18,29,32, 39, 78
Hitler, 2 Mati area, 19, 30, 33, 78, 116, 119, 124
Holland, H., 31, 39 Michael VII, Emperor, 58--9
Holliday, J., 11, 13 Mirdite, 30, 33, 95-6
Horace, 59, 62 Molossians,35-7
Hoxha, Enver, 3, 11, 30, 116, 118, 125 Montenegro, 20-1, 79-81, 85, 96,
Hungary, 2, 8, 20, 67 110-11
Muslims see Islam
Iapodians, 14 Mussolini, 2, 72, 119-20
Index 139
Muzaki family, 67 66-7,75-7, 81, 86, 89, 96, 104,

Myceneans, 19, 21 110-12,116
Myzeque, 30, 35, 39 Shehu, M., 11
Sherrat, A. and S., 16,27
National Liberation Front, 120, 124-5 Shkoder, 7, 36, 38, 67,69, 70, 76, 85,
Neolithic Age, 15, 16 111, 117
Nezir, 17 Shkumbi (Genesus), river, 32, 34, 36,
Noli, Fan, 3-4, 9,12,86,115-16,124 38,78,117
Nonnans,3, 48-9, 54,58-64 Shpata family, 67
Sichelgaita, 58-9, 62
Ochrid, Lake, 5, 32, 34, 36, 38,59, 81 Skanderbeg, 3-4, 9, 12,74-7,84,87,
Oricum, 31, 38 89,91-2
Orthodox religion, 4, 6, 77-8, 82, 85, Slavs, 5-6, 48-51
117 Soviet Union, 2, 4, 85, 120, 125-6, 134
Ovid, 31 Span family, 76
Stalin, J., 120, 130, 132, 136
Parthini, 34-5, 37-8 Strabo, 14, 35
Pazhok, 18-19
Pee, 7, 84, 90 Taulantii, 14, 15, 31-4, 36, 38
Peloponnesian War, 5 Teuta,37-8
Perseus, 5 Themistoc1es Germenyi, 9, 13
Pharsalus,5 Thopia family, 67, 75-6
Philby, K., 10 Thracians, 25, 35, 52
Philip II, 35-6 Thucydides, 14,35
Philip V, 5, 38 Timar system, 77-8
Philippi, 5 Tirana, 34, 45,117,119,121,131
Phoenice, 37 Tomaj family, 100-2
Pliny, 14 Torivice,20-1
Pompey, 2, 4, 41 transhumance, 29-30, 33-4, 55
Popovic, V., 40, 47, 52, 56-7 Trebenishte, 34-5
Prendi, F., 27-8 Tren,21
Prespa,81 tumuli, 18, 33-4
P~en, 7, 8, 81-3,92 Turks, 3, 7-9, 40, 74-89, 95-6, 107,
Procopius, 49-50 110-11, 116
Prodanit, 18
Pyrrhus, 3, 36 United States, 1, 116, 125-6, 128
Punic Wars, 37-8
Vahze, 19-20
Qemal, Ismail, 3, 9, 84-5, 107-13, 123 Varibopi, 19
Quayle, A., 10, 31 Venice, 32, 46, 60, 62, 65-72, 74, 77-8
Virgil, 69, 70
Ragusa, 66-8, 70 Vjose (Aous), river, 19,29, 31, 33,
Renfrew, A.C., 15-16,27 35-6
Romania, 1, 2, 5, 12, 20, 110 Vlore (Valona), 31, 55, 59, 63-4, 67-70,
Rome, 4-5, 14,29, 37-9, 40-1 77, 82, 87, 106, 109-10, 113, 116, 123
Vodhine,18
Salonica, 45, 59, 64 Voskopoje (Moschopolis), 79, 87
Saracatsans, 34
Sarande, 18, 23, 42-3, 45, 69
schools, 80-109 Waugh, E., 10
Second World War, 10-12, 80, 93, 116 Wilhelm of Wied, 9, 85, 116, 123
Selenice, 30-1 William of Apulia, 59, 64
Seman (Apsus), river, 29, 30
Serbia, 3, 6-8, 12-13, 20, 21, 53, 55, Xoxe, K., 11, 125
140 Index
Yugoslavia, 2, 7, 10, 12,20, 34, 80-1, Zadrime, 33

92, 115, 125-7 Zog, Ring, 3, 9, 10, 115-21, 134
Young Turks, 84-5, 96, 109

Tom Winnifrith - Perspectives On Albania

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PERSPECTIVES ON ALBANIA

First published in the United States of America in 1992

ISBN 978-1-349-22052-6 ISBN 978-1-349-22050-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2 The Prehistoric Background of Illyrian Albania

3 The Relations of Illyrian Albania with the Greeks and

4 Byzantium and the Emergence of Albania

5 Conquest and Commerce: Normans and Venetians in

6 Albania and the Ottoman Empire

7 Cultural Values of the Albanians in the Diaspora

8 Ismail Qemal Bey Vlora and the Making of Albania in

9 Albania's Inter-War History as a Forerunner to the

10 Albania after the Second World War

Figure 1 Comparative hillfort plans in the Late Bronze 24

Map 1 Albania in ancient times xiii

Renzo Falaschi, after over thirty years in the Italian diplomatic

Nicholas Hammond, Emeritus Professor of Greek in the University

Anthony Harding is Professor of Archaeology at the University of

Stephen Hill is a Lecturer in the Joint School of Classics and Ancient

Raymond Hutchings is the editor of Abstracts Soviet and East Euro-

Alexander Lopasic is a Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department

of Sociology, University of Reading. He has done fieldwork in

Michael E. Martin is a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research

Tom Winnirrith is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Warwick in

Map 1 Albania in Ancient Times

_.... Via Egnatia

Map 2 Albania in Medieval Times

Map 3 Albania in Modern Times

Many books about Albania begin with a quotation attributed to

notes that Skanderbeg died a fugitive on Venetian territory and asks

which precipitated the Peleponnesian war; the campaigns of Alexan-

Balkans and the survival of Greek in the Southern Balkans would

Boeotia, a dying fragment of what was once a large Albanian minor-

speaking minority there. There is also an Albanian-speaking minority

of King Zog's gold, still apparently in the vaults of the Banks of

1. The quotation, without exact reference, is to be found in F. Konitza, The

continued in being, so that a large measure of local differentiation

spread of farming. Renfrew proceeds from the very reasonable

Albania by the second millennium BC at the latest, and their immedi-

teristic burial form of inhumation in a pit or stone box (cist) under a

INDIGENOUS PRODUCTION AND FOREIGN INFLUENCES

well be true for a group of double-axes, which seem to be especially

both radiocarbon and dendrochronology, is 1225 to 1155 BC. 9 In this

THE RISE OF POPULATION CENTRES

The hill-top fortifications, or gradine as they are called in Yugoslavia

TABLE 1 Settlement sites and their effects

Social unit Socio-economic effects Material culture effects

Competitive expa~sion on good so~

New warfari teChniqUe~

of the elements of material culture which have been here enumerated

In 1931 I photographed some nomadic Vlach shepherds at Chaliki

engineering works of Enver Hoxha the rivers flooded the whole of

ancient times. When Holland visited Selenice in 1813, he saw

We have seen that at Dyrrachium the Greeks were welcomed, and

1. M. Hasluck, The Unwritten Law in Albania (Cambridge, 1954), p. 6.

The subject to be considered here poses insurmountable problems of

Parler du territoire de l' Albanie actuelle au crepuscule de

The issue of what is meant by 'Byzantium' need not trouble us too

present essay, therefore, the terms 'Albania' and 'Albanian' will be

associated particularly with the Greek-speaking cities of southern

but interesting observations arise from a relatively brief analysis. As

At SS. Quaranta I went up a very high & perspiratious hill- always

As well as the basilicas, there were some early churches in Alba-