From Serenissima's Centralization to the Self-Regulating Kanun: The Strengthening of Blood Ties and the Rise of Great Albanian Tribes, 15th to 17th Centuries (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cuius regio, eius religio: Medieval Albanians and Their Social Shifts
IMC Programme, 2023
Late medieval Albanians officially belonged to three Churches, whose borders depended on their respective secular powers. Since the latter strived for territorial power, but not only, at the cost of each-other, these borders were fluid and changing back and forth from Byzantine Greek to Byzantine Serbian and Latin Angevine or Venetian. Local elites had to adopt quickly to these changes, which they could not control. Karl Topia tried to combine all of them at the same time, as the inscription in Greek, Latin and Old Church Slavonic at his favorite monastery of St. Vladimir, built by him in the vicinity of Elbasan, shows. In this paper I explore how these various religious and political changes create social elites, networks and alliances that, on the one hand were fluid, but yet on the other hand were stable with respect to certain elements, that may be called Albanian, as for instance language and other codes of communication that keep reproducing themselves among Albanians.
What (Little) We Know about Albanian Tribes: Reflections and Tabulations
Forum of EthnoGeoPolitics Vol.6 No.3, Winter 2018, pp.23-65, 2018
This essay is about major findings in Elsie’s Tribes of Albania, some of his related works, and other sources. It is based on a much shorter book review solely focused on Tribes of Albania that already has been published in the preceding issue of our journal (see Ten Dam 2018: 38-45). The latter review—and perhaps parts of this essay as well—will form part of a broader yet shorter review essay on several of Robert’s Elsie last works on the Albanians, which the peer-reviewed journal Iran and the Caucasus (Brill) intends to publish sometime this or next year.
Middle Eastern Studies, 2014
The paper aims to reconsider the development of decentralization/centralization dynamics during the Ottoman Empire, focusing on the Ottoman-Montenegrin borderlands of Northern Albania with particular reference to the Mirdite territory inhabited by Catholic tribes. First, the paper describes the local socio-political system and balance of power in Mirdite territory before the enactment of the Gulhane decree. Secondly, the paper focuses on the developments and changes occurring in this land during the Tanzimat. Interaction, intertwining and overlapping between different strategies and policies are analyzed in regard to the relationship between Catholic tribes, missionaries and Ottoman officials. Because of them, the changes and developments in the local administrative system occurring in both the religious and the political dimensions during the last part of the 19th century were expressions of the process of decentralization/centralization triggered by Istanbul from the third decade of the 19th century on.
The Tribes of Albania: History, Society and Culture
Forum of EthnoGeoPolitics, 2018
The Tribes of Albania: History, Society and Culture forms a remarkable, insightful and sorely needed addition to the field of ethnic studies in general and the oft-neglected field of Albanian studies particular. Indeed, it should help to overcome the “glaring lack of knowledge and scholarly information about the tribes of northern Albania”. This is all the more important once one realises that particularly the region of Northern Albania has contained, like Montenegro, one of the few truly tribal societies on the European subcontinent that survived more or less intact at least up to the mid-twentieth century. For decades, Dr Robert Elsie has been one of the most prominent specialists on Albanian poetry and literature. His untimely death in late 2017 leaves a gaping hole in the mentioned disciplines for years and even decades to come, that few if any non-native scholars would ever be able to fill given his in-depth knowledge and vaunted mastery of the Albanian language.
Medievo Adriatico , 2012
The paper exposes the corrupt practices of the Venetian administrators in Venetian Albania during the fifteenth century. Although the Venetian state acquired the Albanian territories on promises of preserving local customs and traditions and protecting the territories from the Ottoman threat from the east, in practice, the administration's policies aimed at utilizing the natural resources, such as grain, salt, and timber, to mention a few, which were regularly controlled, collected and shipped straight to Venice. The Venetian state centralized all aspects of Venetian Albania's economy to its benefit and at the expense of the local Albanian population.
The monography "Genealogy of Ali Pasha Tepelena", Streha, Tirana, 2014
The Albanians recognized history, especially the time of the Albanian Pashaliks, time when the name of Albania reemerged in the European scene, as a territory and as an ethnicity for the Albanians living in them, is subject of study not only for the historiography, political and cultural European thought, but also of the historiography and political thinking of the neighboring states that had just established their own nations. Of course, the reason why these studies were carried out or even the resulting conclusions, do not completely coincide or more than often one surpasses the other. On one hand, there were the Europeans rediscovering the Balkans who they felt an exotic attraction with, by using the rich history of the region they sought to revive the ideals of their ancient world at any cost, and on the other hand, the Balkans ethnicities that were becoming nations while eager to expand into large territories, created distorted images of their neighbors around the lands where they appeared. Among this hesitation and contrast also became apparent the description of the Albanian territories and Pashalik of Janina, Berat and Shkodra, the three state-forming ethnicity, where the majority of the population from the late 18th century to the early 19th century was Albanian.
Studies on South East Europe , Bd.9, 2012
This collection of papers on contemporary scholarship on various issues in Albanian history and anthropology covers a broad range of approaches and forms of analysis. It includes research on parts of the country that have rarely made an appearance in international scholarship, including recent research on various aspects of urban life in Albania, several chapters being set in Shkodra, Tirana, Elbasan and Gjirokastra. Issues of local self-organisation or identity processes are done justice to as well. A third core aspect that the volume addresses is the continued analysis of new and revealing demographic sources that shed light on the structure and history of the Albanian family.