Mirdita
Mirdita ( Albanian also Mirditë ) is a mountainous region in northern Albania . Originally it was the settlement area of the Mirdites , one of the most important northern Albanian tribes . It is the core area of the municipality of Mirdita (formerly Mirdita district ); the original settlement area of the Mirdites expanded further north.
geography
The Mirdita area is separated to the west from the coastal plain and the sea by a mountain range (almost 1000 m above sea level ). Behind it lies a heavily furrowed and eroded plateau , which today is more likely to be described as a hilly country and especially in the east and north in higher mountain ranges up to 2100 m above sea level. A. passes. The average height of the landscape is around 400 m above sea level. A.
The Fan River drains the whole of Mirdita. In the far southwest of the region it flows into the Mat , which breaks through the mountains to the coast in a gorge.
The red earth indicates the occurrence of mineral raw materials that were also mined in various places. Of importance is in particular the copper - mining with mines in Rubik and Kurbnesh . The collapse of world market prices , completely outdated technology and a lack of investors allowed this industry to come to a standstill after the collapse of communism .
history
Meaning and origin of the name
Mirëdita in German means good day . The name of the region is often associated with it, referring to the location of the region. From the coast, Mirdita is in the east, where the sun rises. Mirdita is the place where the new day begins.
An old legend says that a man left three sons when he died. All his possessions consisted of a saddle and a sieve. The oldest took the saddle (Albanian: Shala ), the second oldest the sieve (Albanian: Shosha ). The youngest brother had no choice but to wish the other good day . And so the three tribes of the Shala, Shosha and the Mirdites got their names.
Center of the Kanun
For centuries the Mirdita was a center of the social and spiritual life of the northern Albanian tribes. At that time the center and main town was Orosh , where the heads of families of the Mirdites came together to form a council of elders, a kind of rural community, respectively. Thing , met. The Abbey of Orosh, from which today's diocese of Rrëshen arose, was also of great importance . Like the other tribes in the region, the Mirdites were Catholic , but they were the only ones to be purely Catholic. More than 90 percent of the population in the district is still Catholic.
The approximately 15,000 to 20,000 Mirdites in the middle of the 19th century were divided into five sub-tribes, so-called Bajraks (flags): Oroshi, Kushneni, Fandi, Dibrri and Spaçi. The former was the smallest, the latter the largest with three to four times as many relatives. A household consisted of an average of twelve people.
Although the northern Albanians did not recognize central rule, there was also some sort of secular authority in Orosh. The Kapedan ("captain"), who was provided by the head of the Gjonmarku family , was the leader of the Mirdites and the final authority in decisions and disputes. The rights of the privileged family and the role of the Kapedan were precisely defined in the Kanun . Every Mirdite who killed someone had to pay a levy to the Gjonmarku. Even the Ottomans , under whom the Mirdites suffered greatly, recognized the primacy of the Gjonmarku.
While the Mirdita enjoyed internal self-government during the Turkish period , the tribes provided auxiliary troops for the sultan's army . In 1896 there was still no school in the Mirdita.
Republic of Mirdita
After the First World War there was an internal power struggle in the Mirdita after the Kapedan died without male descendants. The unpopular and disinherited nephew Gjon Marka Gjoni tried anyway to come to power. He asked the Yugoslavs for (financial) support, which he also received, as Belgrade was interested in destabilizing the young Albanian state. He unsuccessfully urged the Mirdites to rise up against the "Turkish" (= Muslim ) government in Tirana . As a result, Gjon Marka Gjoni, who was unable to read and write, proclaimed the Republic of Mirdita in Prizren on July 17, 1921 , declared himself its president and demanded recognition from the League of Nations . The hopeless enterprise was soon no longer even supported by Yugoslavia, but Gjoni was still supplied with weapons and soldiers. Albanian government troops under Bajram Curri succeeded in repelling the foreign troops, which included only a few Mirdites. In November 1921 Gjon Marka Gjoni fled to Prizren again. After negotiations under the leadership of Ahmet Zogu, the Mirdites declared themselves loyal to the Albanian government.
As a remnant of the Republic of Mirdita, postage stamps of the Republic of Mirdita occasionally appear in stores.
industrialization
In the People's Republic of Albania , the Mirdita gained importance as a region rich in natural resources. In addition to the timber industry , copper mining, which started in 1928, was particularly important. For this purpose, the three cities of Rrëshen, Rubik and Kurbnesh were built in the 1960s . A metallurgical factory was built in Rubik. The construction of the railway line from Milot to Rrëshen followed later . The Albanian railway has meanwhile dismantled the line from Rubik. The A1 motorway has meanwhile been built on its route .
Some of the mining work in socialist Albania was done by prisoners, political prisoners and internees. So also in Mirdita. The Spaç mine in the north of Mirdita was one of the most notorious labor camps in Albania. The prisoners lived there under the most primitive hygienic conditions, received insufficient food and lived in accommodations that barely protected them from the winter cold. The work demands were extremely high. In addition, there was solitary confinement and often torture .
literature
- Peter Bartl: The Mirdites - Comments on the North Albanian Tribal History. In: Münchner Zeitschrift für Balkankunde , Volume 1, Munich 1978, pp. 27–69.
- Peter Bartl: The Abbey of St. Alexander in the Mirdita according to the reports of their abbot Prenk Doçi from the years 1888-1896. In: Münchner Zeitschrift für Balkankunde , Volume 10 a. 11, Munich 1996, pp. 7-83.
- German-Albanian Friendship Society (Hrsg.): Albanische Hefte . Main topic Mirdita. No. 1/2017 , November 2017, ISSN 0930-1437 , p. 23 f .
Web links
- Mirdita.net (Albanian and little English)
- Ecotourism Guide Mirdita (PDF; English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tirex Resources website. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 9, 2009 ; Retrieved October 15, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 41 ° 55 ′ 0 ″ N , 20 ° 5 ′ 0 ″ E