Myths of Albanian National Identity

Many elements of modern Albanian national ideology developed outside the Albanian lands themselves; this essay examines the ideas about the identity of the Albanian people which were put forward by an influential group of writers in early-twentieth-century America. The key figures were Fan Noli, Faik Konitsa, Kostandin Çekrezi and Kristo Dako. Although they wrote mainly in émigré papers, their arguments sought a much wider audience, especially in the period 1912–21, when the fate of Albania lay in the hands of the major Western powers. Four main categories of ‘myth’ or talismanic doctrine are identified and discussed. The myth of origins and priority claimed that the Albanians were the most ancient people of south-eastern Europe, having preceded even the ancient Greeks. The myth of ethnic homogeneity and cultural purity asserted that the Albanian people had never undergone any large-scale processes of admixture or dilution by foreign populations and foreign cultures. The myth of permanent national struggle maintained that Albanians had always fought to throw off rule by non-Albanians, whether Roman, Slav or Ottoman. And the myth of indifference to religion said that for the Albanians, religion had never been a primary marker of identity, and that their changes in religion had typically been tactical moves, made for the higher purpose of national survival. This mutually reinforcing pattern of claims thus offers a classic example of the mythic style of identity formation.

The First Albanian Autobiography

This essay presents a hitherto unknown work: the first autobiography ever written by an Albanian. It was composed in 1881–2 by a young man (born in 1861) called Lazër Tusha; he wrote it in Italian, and the manuscript has been preserved in an ecclesiastical archive in Italy. Tusha was the son of a prosperous tailor in the city of Shkodër, which was the administrative centre of the Catholic Church in Albania. He describes his childhood and early education, which gave him both a love of Italian culture and a strong desire to serve the Church; at his insistence, his father sent him to the Catholic seminary there, run by the Jesuits. He describes his disappointment on being obliged, after six years, to leave the seminary and resume lay life, and his failed attempts to become either a Jesuit or a Franciscan. Some aspects of these matters remain mysterious in his account. But much of this unfinished draft book is devoted to things other than purely personal narrative: Tusha writes in loving detail about customs, superstitions, clothes, the city of Shkodër, its market and the tailoring business. This is a very rich account of the life and world of an ordinary late-nineteenth-century Albanian—albeit an unusually thoughtful one, with some literary ambition.

Crypto-Christianity and Religious Amphibianism in the Ottoman Balkans

Christianity—secret adherence to Christian religious practices by people who outwardly professed Islam—is known to have occurred in several parts of the Ottoman Empire; this essay concerns the crypto-Christians of Kosovo, who were very unusual in adhering to Roman Catholicism. Distinctions are made here between crypto-Christianity and a range of other practices or circumstances that have been partly confused with it in previous accounts: the fact of close social coexistence between Muslims and Christians; the existence of religious syncretism, which allowed the borrowing and sharing of some ritual practices; and the principle of ‘theological equivalentism’ (the claim, made by some Muslims, that each person could be saved in his or her own faith). These things were not the same as crypto-Christianity, but they involved different kinds of religious ‘amphibianism’, creating conditions in which crypto-Christianity could survive more easily. The story of Catholic crypto-Christianity in Kosovo and northern Albania begins with reports from Catholic priests in the seventeenth century. Contributory factors seem to have been the economic incentive for men to convert to Islam to escape the taxes on Christians, and the fact that women (who were not tax-payers) could remain Christian, as Christian wives were permitted under Islamic law. This essay then traces the history of the crypto-Catholics of Kosovo, who survived, despite the strong official disapproval of the Church, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ernesto Cozzi (1870–1926)

The Italian priest Ernesto Cozzi is an important figure for two reasons: he wrote valuable ethnographic studies of life in the ‘Malësi’ (northern highlands) of Albania in the early years of the twentieth century, and after the First World War he was the ‘Apostolic Delegate’ who revitalized the Catholic Church in that country. Both aspects of his life and work were ignored under Communism, and remain little known today. This essay tells the story of his life, using his published writings, his personal diary for 1912–13, the manuscript notebooks of his friend Edith Durham and the reports he submitted to his superiors in Rome. What emerges is a portrait of a resourceful and principled man, a conscientious parish priest, fluent in Albanian, and devoted both to the Albanian anti-Ottoman cause and to the good of the Church. His ethnographic writings are discussed: what survives is a series of articles, chapters of an intended book, on illnesses, death and funerals, the life of Albanian women (including the ‘sworn virgins’), blood-feuds, superstitions, agriculture, and social organization and customary law. His personal diary is of particular interest, as it describes the dramatic events of the First Balkan War: Cozzi began by supporting the Montenegrin attack on Ottoman Albania, but became rapidly disillusioned by Montenegro’s policies. The last part of the essay discusses Cozzi’s energetic work to improve the state of the Catholic Church in Albania in the six years before his death in 1926.

British Diplomacy and the League of Prizren, 1878–1880

The League of Prizren, an Albanian movement which began in 1878 as an initiative to resist the transfer of Albanian-inhabited territory from the Ottoman Empire to Montenegro but gradually acquired an ‘autonomist’ political programme, was one of the most important developments in modern Albanian history. This essay analyses the reports written about it by British diplomats in the region, and the British policy debates which drew on those reports or reacted against them. Challenging the assumption that the ‘men on the ground’ have the most accurate information, it shows how each of the two most relevant British officials, Consul St. John in Prizren and Consul Kirby Green in Shkodër, adopted particular political agendas: the former was heavily influenced by the Russian consul, while the latter followed the line of the Austro-Hungarian one. Other elements in the Foreign Office supported Greek interests; no one was directly supportive of Ottoman ones. Briefly, two senior figures, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and George Goschen (who was sent as Special Ambassador to Istanbul) did consider the interests of the Albanians themselves; Goschen argued that the creation of a united Albanian state would both satisfy a principle of justice and contribute to stability in the region. But this remained only an argument, not an official policy.

Ali Pasha and Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars

This essay, based on archival materials, analyses the relationship between Ali Pasha of Ioannina (or ‘of Tepelenë’) and Great Britain during the period 1799–1814. Ali Pasha controlled, directly or indirectly, most of mainland Greece, half of Albania and part of Macedonia. Any French invasion of the Ottoman Empire would probably have passed through those territories, so Ali’s role as an ally of Britain was potentially of huge importance. For the same reason Napoleon also sought his support; accordingly, over many years, Ali played off each of these powers against the other. His own ambitions were focused on gaining control over various places and territories formerly governed by Venice: Butrint, Parga, Preveza and Vonitsa on the mainland, and, if possible, the islands of Lefkada and Corfu. Thanks to the presence of British (and French) envoys at Ali’s court, the story of his political and diplomatic manoeuvrings can be told in detail; it is set here against the larger background of his conflict with rival pashas in Albania, and of his relations with the Ottoman government in Istanbul. One theme that emerges clearly is Ali’s underlying dependence on British support. This conflicts with what has become the most widely accepted modern interpretation of his relationship with Britain, which claims that the British subjected him to ‘Orientalist’ attitudes because they feared his superior power: that interpretation, together with its other claims about the role of ‘Orientalism’ in Ali Pasha’s case, is refuted here.

Pjetër Bogdani’s Cuneus prophetarum (1685)

This essay investigates the background and nature of the most important early work written and printed in Albanian, Archbishop Pjetër Bogdani’s theological treatise Cuneus prophetarum. Evidence from Bogdani’s correspondence suggests that he was working on what became the second part of this large book, the part describing the life of Christ, in the mid-1670s. Possibly this derived from sermons which he had given to his flock (in present-day Kosovo). Gradually he expanded the project, adding arguments which were directed against both Orthodox Christianity and Islam. The intellectual context of this was a circle of theologians in Rome (identified here) who were engaged in conversionary work, both against those faiths and against Judaism. Conversion was, however, at most a secondary aim for Bogdani, who was writing primarily for his own Catholic flock. But his project was taken up by Cardinal Gregorio Barbarigo in Padua, who eventually published the book in 1685, and for Barbarigo the conversion of Muslims was a major aim, linked to aspirations for the conquest of the Ottoman Empire. Barbarigo was also keen to display the capabilities of his newly established printing press; this explains why Bogdani’s text, which would ideally have been produced in a pocket-sized edition suitable for covert transmission inside the Ottoman Empire, appeared as a grand, illustrated folio volume, with passages in languages such as Syriac and Armenian. Bogdani’s project had, it is argued, been taken over and used for other purposes.

Glimpses of Fifteenth-Century Albania

The narratives written by pilgrims who travelled from Venice to the Holy Land provide quite a rich source of information about Albania and its coastal territory during the fifteenth century. This was the period when Western interest in Albania was stimulated by Skanderbeg’s revolt against Ottoman rule. However, the Albanian lands were mostly untravelled and unknown by outsiders; after the city of Shkodër was conquered by the Ottomans (from Venice), only the Venetian-ruled port-city of Durrës was visited. The pilgrim narratives supply some first-hand descriptions of that city, but they also record the second-hand knowledge that circulated about other parts of the coastline, including the territory of Himarë with its notoriously fierce inhabitants. The dangers of travel down this part of the Adriatic coast are also vividly illustrated: the pilgrims feared Ottoman naval vessels, pirate attacks, and sudden storms.

The ‘Great Migration’ of the Serbs from Kosovo (1690)

This essay examines both the historical facts concerning the migration of Serbs from Kosovo in 1690, and the claims made about that migration by subsequent historians—claims which, at their most extreme, suggested that hundreds of thousands of Serbs departed, with huge effects on the ethnic composition of the region. This essay demonstrates that there was no large-scale organized exodus of Serbs under the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, Arsenije Crnojević: his departure from Kosovo in early 1690 was extremely hasty, and he had not, in any case, been leading organized resistance to the Ottomans. A large number of Serbs did move with the Patriarch to Hungarian territory later in that year; he himself gave their numbers as 30,000 or 40,000. But they had gathered, from many areas, in the Belgrade region, and only a small proportion were from Kosovo itself. One unsupported claim was made many years later, by a Serbian monk, that the Patriarch had brought 37,000 families to Hungary; and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many Serb writers interpreted that figure maximally, while also assuming that all those people had come from Kosovo. This essay analyses the ideological influences (operating primarily on Serbs within the Habsburg territories in the nineteenth century) that helped to shape that interpretation; it also criticizes excessive claims made by modern Albanian and Turkish historians.

Early Modern Albanians in the Hands of the Inquisition

It is very difficult to find, in the historical records, the voices of ordinary Albanians from the early modern period; the only rich body of material suitable for this purpose consists of the records of the Inquisition, where individual testimonies are preserved. This essay presents evidence from the Inquisition archives of Venice, Udine, Naples and Malta, plus documents from Palermo (preserved in Madrid), and cases from Barcelona, Majorca and Lisbon. In the great majority of cases, people appeared before the Inquisition because they had converted from Christianity to Islam—mostly while they were living in the Albanian lands, but in some cases when they were elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. Sometimes conversion was a deliberate choice on economic grounds (to avoid taxation), but often the change took place when the person was below the age (early- to mid-teens) when Muslim practice required consent. In several cases the life-story revealed by this evidence involves casual enslavement of young Albanians within the Ottoman Empire by others who were, like them, Ottoman subjects; it is argued that this was a more common phenomenon than standard accounts of Ottoman slavery have suggested. And in a few cases we hear the voices of Albanian women; for two of these, conversion to Islam was an opportunistic act to evade an unwanted marriage.