Albanians

This article is about Albanians as an ethnic group. For demographic information, see Demographics of Albania.

Albanians
Shqiptarë

File:4Shqiptaret.PNG Skanderbeg · Pope Clement XI  · Mehmet Ali · King Zog
Total population
Approximately 8 Million
Regions with significant populations
Albania	3,420,000
Serbia	1,366,000
Turkey	50,000
Rep. Macedonia	420,000
Greece	438,036
Montenegro	30,000
Italy	250,000
United States	250,000
Canada	16,135
Sweden	35,000 - 46,000
United Kingdom	300,000
France	20,000
Switzerland	95,000
Germany	100,000
Netherlands	165,706
Russia	1,200
Slovenia	6,200
Croatia	15,082
Romania	500
Norway	7,000
Belgium	5,000
Australia	12,000
Austria	20,000
South Africa	2,000
Egypt	25,000
Bosnia/Herz.	15,000
Denmark	8,000
Luxembourg	4,802
Ukraine	3,300
Finland	5,000
Languages
Albanian
Religion
mostly Sunni Muslims, but also large amounts of Bektashi Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, other.

Albanians (Albanian: Shqiptarët) are defined as an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common Albanian culture, speaking the Albanian language as a mother tongue and being of Albanian descent. Scholars believe that the Albanians are descendants of the Illyrians and that the Albanian language derives from the now-extinct Illyrian language, others however dispute this asserting that it derived from a dialect of the now-extinct Thracian language.

About half of Albanians live in the Republic of Albania, with the second largest group living in the UN administered Serbian province of Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia. There are also Albanian minorities and immigrant communities in a number of other countries.

History of the term

Further information: Origin of the Albanians and Albania (toponym)

Albanians are often claimed as the direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians, or alternatively derived of Thracian or Dacian stock, or from a mixture of these. The name Albanian itself was first mentioned in the 2nd century BCE by Polybius (Arbanios, Arbanitai with their city Arbon), the 1st century CE by Pliny (Olbonensis), and the 2nd century CE by geographer and astronomer Ptolemy (Albanoi), as one of the important Illyrian tribes situated where is now Central Albania with Albanopolis as their main city.

Albani (Albanoi), tribe in ancient Illyria, from Alexander G. Findlay's Classical Atlas to Illustrate Ancient Geography, New York, 1849

The ethnonym applied to the people now known as Albanians is first attested from the 11th century (e.g. Anna Komnene, Alexiad 4.8.4), the first reference to a lingua albanesca dates to the later 13th century.

Due to the high rate of migration of various ethnic groups throughout the Balkans in the last two decades, exact figures are difficult to obtain. A tenuous breakdown of Albanians by location is as follows:

Europe

Approximately 6,5 million Albanians are to be found within the Balkan peninsula with only about half this number residing in Albania and the other divided between Serbia (of which 1,804,000 in the province of Kosovo) Montenegro, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece and to a much smaller extent Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.

Albanians in Greece, because of historical migration, are divided into different groupings. The first are the Arvanites, descendants of ethnic Albanian immigrants from the 11th to the 15th century that have intermingled and been largely assimilated into the dominant Greek population and generally do not self-identify as Albanians. A second one are Albanian nationals who migrated during the 1990s, mainly as illegal immigrants. According to the 2001 census, there were 445,000 holders of Albanian citizenship in Greece. The Watson Institute rose this number to 600,000 in 2004 [14].

Also an unknown number of Orthodox Cham Albanians reside in the Greek region of Epirus (Albanian: Çamëria). There were thought to be a population of around 19,000 Muslim Chams before the end of World War II who left Greece for Albania and Turkey in 1945. The exact reasons for their departure vary depending on source. (According to Greek sources, it was to avoid the impending military court sentences, a consequence of their collaboration with the Italian/German occupying forces. Albanian sources claim they were forcefully expelled by the EDES troops of the Greek resistance for having collaborated with the Italian/German occupying forces.)

Whereas approximately 1 million are dispersed throughout the rest of Europe, most of these in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy (the majority having arrived since 1991, but also older populations of Arbëreshë), Austria and France.

Rest of the world

Americas: In the United States the number reaches 114,000 according to the latest 2000 US Census, while in Canada approximately 15,000 as of the 2001 census. Oceania: In Australia and New Zealand 12,000 in total. Africa: In Egypt there are 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers. Many are descendants of the soldiers of Mehmet Ali. A large part of the former nobility of Egypt was Albanian in origin. A small community also resides in South Africa.

Kosovo & Republic of Macedonia

Both Kosovo and the western regions of the Republic of Macedonia have in recent years seen armed movements (Kosovo Liberation Army, UCPMB, Macedonian NLA) aiming either for independence, greater autonomy, or increased human and political rights. Further clashes were also reported in the Preševo Valley for the period of 2000 to 2001 (in the lead-up to the Macedonian conflict).

The fate of Kosovo remains uncertain owing to the reluctance of the Albanian majority to contemplate a restoration of Serbian sovereignty and of the United Nations and NATO to separate the territory definitively from Serbia in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999.

The situation in the Republic of Macedonia seems to have been resolved by giving the Albanian minority greater government representation and the right to use the Albanian language in education and government.

It is worth mentioning here that rights to use the Albanian language in education and government were given and guaranteed by the Constitution of SFRY and were widely utilized in Serbia, Macedonia, and in Montenegro long before Dissolution of Yugoslavia. The only thing that changed in that matter is that before NATO intervention in 1999, there were information services and news ("Dnevnik") in Albanian language broadcasted on Serbian National Radio and Television, RTS.

Religion

Main article: Religion in Albania

The two main Illyrian cults were the Cult of the Sun and the Cult of the Snake. The main festivals were the seasonal summer and winter festivals during the solstices and the spring and autumn festivals during the equinoxes. An organic system of assigning human personifications to natural phenomena was culturally developed and remnants of these still appear in everyday Albanian folklore and tradition. The original culture continued until the Roman and Byzantine Empires crowned Christianity as official religion of the regime, thus suffusing Paganism, until both were later overshadowed by Islam, which kept the scepter of the major religion during the period of Ottoman Turkish rule from the 15th century until year 1912. Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Paganism kept being practiced in a lower scale. During the 20th century the monarchy and later the totalitarian state followed a systematic dereligionization of the nation and the national culture. This policy was mainly applied and felt within the borders of the present Albanian state, thus producing a nonreligious majority in the population. All forms of Christianity, Islam and other religious practices were prohibited except for old non-institutional Pagan practices in the rural areas which were seen as identifying with the national culture. As a result of this the current Albanian state has also brought pagan festivals to life, like the lunar Spring festival (Albanian: Dita e Verës) held yearly on March 14th in the city of Elbasan, which is a national holiday.

Today Albanians as a whole offer a diverse religious picture depending on the geographical region they live. Most Albanians are Muslims (Sunni Muslims and Bektashis), although there are also Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics minorities. After 1992 an influx of foreign missionaries has brought more religious diversity with groupings such as Jehova Witnesses, Mormons, Hindus, Bahá'í, Scientologists, a variety of Christian denominations and many others. This rich blend of religions has rarely caused religious strife and fanaticism and people of different religions freely intermarry. For part of its history, Albania has also had a Jewish community. Much of this community, which was saved by the Albanian people during the Nazi occupation, [15] moved to Israel circa 1990-1992.

Other terms used

The Albanians are and have been referred to by other terms as well. Some of them are:

• Illyrians; old term used during antiquity up to the Byzantine Empire.
• Macedonians; old term used by local and other European authors during the Middle Ages.
• Epirotes; old term widely used during the Middle Ages by local and foreign authors.
• Arbër, Arbën, Arbëreshë; the old native term denoting ancient and medieval Albanians and sharing the same root with the latter. At the time the country was called Arbër (Gheg: Arbën) and Arbëria (Gheg: Arbënia). This term is still used for the Albanians that migrated to Italy during the Middle Ages.
• Arnauts; old term used mainly from Turks and by extension by European authors during the Ottoman Empire. A derivate of Arbër, Albanian.
• Skipetars; the historical rendering of the ethnonym Shqiptar, or Shqyptar by French, Austrian and German authors, mainly during the 18th-20th century.

Misnaming

Because of confounding nationality with religious affiliation many authors from Byzantine times have also called and registered Albanians with the following names:

• Latins; term used during the Middle Ages from Venetian and other European authors to denote Albanians of Catholic faith mainly in the Northern regions up to the 19th century.
• Greeks; old term used generically from Byzantine times up to the 20th century by other European authors to denote Albanians of Orthodox faith in the Southern regions, as also those migrating, during the Ottoman Occupation, from Epirus and Peloponnese to Italy. Toponyms reflecting this historical misnaming began being corrected in Italy during the 1930s.
• Serbs; old term as above, used by authors to denote Albanians of Orthodox faith in the Northern regions up to the 19th century.
• Turks; old term used by ecclesiastical writings and embraced by other European authors to denote Albanians of Muslim faith, and generally all Albanian legions of the Ottoman army.

Historical individuals

Prominent individuals from Albania have included the defender of Albania during the mid-15th century Skenderbeg, the writer Ismail Kadare, the painter Ibrahim Kodra, the composer Simon Gjoni, the Nobel Prize winner Ferid Murad, the Olympic athlete Klodiana Shala, the Roman Catholic missionary Mother Teresa and Pope Clement XI.Other well known individuals include the prime minister of the Ottoman Empire Ferhat Pasha and Mehemet Ali the viceroy of Egypt. John Belushi and his brother Jim Belushi were of Albanian parents who immigrated in the USA after WWII. Also the American actress Eliza Dushku is born of an Albanian father and a half-Danish mother.

Reading

Edith Durham, The Burden of the Balkans (1905)

See also

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External links

• Albanians in Turkey
• Albanian Canadian League Information Service (ACLIS)
• Albanians in the Balkans U.S. Institute of Peace Report, November 2001