Arbëria

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The Italian regions of Italy where the Arbëresh Albanian minority lives

Arbëria (also: Arberia) is the name of the scattered settlement area of ​​the Arbëresh (long-established Albanian ethnic minority in central and southern Italy ) in Italy , which includes seven regions: Abruzzo , Basilicata , Calabria , Campania , Molise , Apulia and Sicily .

You can recognize the Albanian places by the retention of their language. They usually have two nomenclatures in Italian and Albanian (in the Arbëresh variant ). Today there are still fifty parishes , 41 towns and nine fractions with Albanian descent, culture and language. There is no reliable data on the actual number of Italo-Albanians. The last statistically reliable data is that of the 1921 census, when 80,282 Albanians were recorded, and that of a 1997 study by Alfredo Fernandes that puts a population of approximately 197,000. In 1998 the Italian Ministry of the Interior estimated the Albanian minority in Italy at around 98,000 people.

history

Until the 15th century Arbëria was the name of the territory of today's Albania , after which the Albanians took over the self-designation shqiptar , from the Albanian word shqiptoj : to speak intelligibly.

The settlement area of ​​Arbëria in Italy emerged between the 15th and 18th centuries, when many communities of Albanian refugees settled there and established numerous settlements or repopulated abandoned places.

The Albanian refugees brought their language (Arbëresh), their religious rituals , their traditions, their history, their customs and their unwritten rules of conduct, a purely oral culture, with them to their new homeland . All of this identifies the Albanian population of Italy.

See also

literature

  • Michele Famiglietti: Educazione e cultura in Arberia . Bulzoni, Rome 1979 (Italian).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A. Frega: Gli Italo-albanesi in cifre. In: Katundi Yne , n.21 (1976), nn. 22-24 (1977), n.25 (1978).
  2. ^ Alfredo Frega: Gli "arbëresh" dimenticati , n. 2–3, Milan 1996.
  3. ↑ Le minoranze etniche e linguistiche di Padania, Appenninia, Sardegna e Sicilia. freeweb.dnet.it/liberi/index.html, accessed on March 3, 2017 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Oliver Jens Schmitt: The Albanians. A story between Orient and Occident . CHBeck Verlag, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-406-71914-1 , p. 20 .