The Albanians

A Modern History

Miranda Vickers

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857736550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

This is the first full account of a country that, following decades of isolation, has undergone unprecedented changes to its political system: the collapse of communism, the progression to multi-party elections and the upheaval that followed the March 1997 uprising. Miranda Vickers traces the history of the Albanian people from the Ottoman period to the formation of the Albanian Communist Party. She considers the charismatic leadership of Enver Hoxha; Albania's relationship with Tito and the alliance with the Soviet Union and then China; and the long period of isolation. Newly revised for this paperback edition, The Albanians considers the gradual process of reform and the fragility of the Albanian experiment with democracy, and includes a dramatic account of the days leading up to Sali Berisha's resignation of the presidency. It has now been updated to cover the crisis in Kosovo that has led to the first 'Western' war in Europe since 1945.

1

The Nature of Ottoman
Rule and the Rise of the
Great Pashaliks

For around 500 years the Balkan peninsula was governed, to varying degrees, by the Ottoman Empire. In general, up until the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state was remarkably tolerant towards its diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual population. The Empire was not always the stagnant oriental despotism it became known as in its closing years. In fact, the Ottomans managed to devise an extremely complex but effective social structure, combining established Muslim socio-political traditions with Turkic and Byzantine elements. Throughout the long years of Ottoman domination, Christian Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim societies lived side by side in relative peace. The main concern of the Porte at this time was the recruitment of support to maintain peace along a lengthy and vulnerable frontier. It was therefore in the interests of the Porte to practise a degree of tolerance towards the variety of religious and ethnic groups that comprised the European regions of the Ottoman Empire.

Following the establishment of Ottoman rule, no effort was made either to destroy or to unify all the diverse elements of the Balkan peninsula. Instead, national and local particularisms were enforced and deepened. In some localities Muslim, Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek villages existed side by side for centuries with little or no cultural or personal intermixing. Any monotheist who accepted the theoretical political supremacy of Islam and was willing to live in a Muslim state under stipulated conditions became a dhimmi, a ‘protected’ person. This protection extended beyond religious freedom; it involved a form of self-government that became institutionalised and known as the millet system. This was basically a minority home-rule policy based on religious affiliation. All Ottoman subjects were divided into groups, or millets, not according to their ethnic origin or language but according to their religion. By this system it was hoped a barrier would be created between the Empire’s Christian and Muslim elements. The Porte did not want a national consciousness to be formed in any part of the Muslim world, which might then challenge Ottoman rule. The millet system therefore provided a degree of religious and cultural continuity among the various ethnic groups, but also permitted their incorporation into the Ottoman administration. The first millet, the Orthodox (the others were the Armenian and Jewish), was established in 1454, as Mehmet II regarded the Papacy and Venice as his main enemies and sought, by granting rights and freedoms, to neutralize their influence among the Balkan Christians. The Byzantine Empire, although instrumental in extending Orthodox Christianity throughout much of the Balkans, had collapsed because, among other reasons, it had been unable to deal with the ethnic and religious diversity that characterized the region. Thus Sultan Mehmet II used the millet system to counterbalance these differences and secure a degree of harmony.

The land became the economic base of the cavalry, the Sipahis, which won the first great Ottoman military victories. In return for military or administrative services, an individual, almost always a Muslim, received a grant of land, a timar, which he held on a non-hereditary basis. The timar system remained effective as both an economic and a military support for Ottoman power until gunpowder was introduced, when the infantry soldier with a musket became a more efficient instrument of war than the horseman. Thereafter, the Janissary corps became the chief arm of the state.¹ The elite Janissaries were renowned as highly efficient troops. They were originally composed mainly of boys from rural Christian families, who were required periodically to donate one healthy male child to be converted to Islam and trained either for the Ottoman administration or the Janissaries. This practice, known as the devshirme or child levy, often proved a severe loss to peasant families, as infant mortality was extremely high and surviving healthy sons were rare. That all nationalities could rise to high office provided they adopted the Islamic faith was an important aspect of Ottoman rule. Muslims were accorded the highest status: they stood a far better chance in courts and paid lower taxes. The restrictions on the Christian population, in contrast, were many. They were not allowed to bear firearms, to wear conspicuous clothing, or to wear the colour green, which was sacred to Muslims. They were to dismount when passing a Muslim on horseback, their churches could not have bells and new ones could not be built. Although Christians were not encouraged to join the military forces, they were expected to provide taxes in support of them, together with the devshirme. Christian peasants thus paid taxes on the produce of their land and home industry, and on all their personal possessions, as well as a special head tax levied on all male Christians in place of the military service required of the Muslims.

The Beginning of Ottoman Decline

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the fortunes of the Porte began to wane. The defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 had marked the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. From then on the Porte was confronted by a succession of wars with either Venice, Austria or Russia. As the Ottoman forces suffered defeat after defeat, they found themselves constantly on the defensive in their European territories. War was no longer a lucrative source of revenue for the Sipahis and, later, the Janissaries, and so they frequently ignored the Porte’s call to arms. Most of the Janissaries by this time were in fact shopkeepers who held paper appointments in one of the regiments and only showed up at musters to receive pay. The Sipahis, who during the heyday of the Empire had been paid indirectly by the granting of fiefs (timars), had been driven off the land by inflation.² Unsure of the loyalty of its Christian subjects, the Porte encouraged conversions to Islam. In sensitive regions such as Bosnia, Slav conversions occured, whilst Muslim Albanians were encouraged to expand into lands vacated by Christians in the plain of Kosova-Methohija. Many former Albanian Catholics were resettled in the northern Kosova area. In 1690, unwilling to convert and fearing a massacre if they remained, the Orthodox Patriarch of Pec (Peja), Arsenije IV, led some 30,000 Serbian families to migrate from Kosova to Hungary. This considerably altered the ethnic composition of the region, the departure of the Serbs leading to large-scale immigration of Albanians into Kosova, which thus acquired an Albanian majority.

By the eighteenth century, therefore, the Albanian-inhabited areas presented a complex religious picture. The Catholics, by then the weakest group, were concentrated in an enclave centred on Shkoder, whilst the Orthodox were to be found principally south of the Shkumbi river, in the districts around Korca and Girokaster. Muslims lived throughout the country, but chiefly in the centre and the Kosova region. As a Muslim, the Albanian was the ally and equal of the Ottoman, who protected him from Slavic and Greek encroachment, offered him employment and paid him well for his military service. To those Albanians who chose to convert to Islam there were many opportunities to serve in high administrative positions. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a number of Ottoman governors and administrators were of Albanian descent. Among the most celebrated of these was Sinan Pasha, possibly the greatest architect of the Islamic world. He was born in about 1500 in the region of Topoyani, in central Albania, and rose to importance through the devshirme system. Five times appointed Grand Vizir, he could be ruthless and harsh (he allegedly destroyed the holy relics of Saint Sava, patron saint of Serbia), but he was also a major builder of caravanserais, bridges, baths and mosques. These included the town of Kacanik in Kosova, important buildings in Thessalonika and Belgrade, as well as in Istanbul and the countries of the Arab world.³

In the stifling climate of later Ottoman domination, commerce and manufacture stagnated, and Albanian-inhabited areas remained by far the most backward parts of Europe. During the mid eighteenth century, however, there was one notable exception to the general rule of decline. The town of Voskopoje in southern Albania, known in medieval times as Moskhopolis, enjoyed an exceptional cultural development, becoming a significant commercial and intellectual centre. Although the population was primarily Albanian and Vlach, the town became a centre of Greek culture.⁴ It was endowed with numerous richly decorated Orthodox churches, as well as the first printing press in the Balkans, which printed a large number of books in the Greek language. In 1744 a group of intellectuals founded an academy to provide higher education for Orthodox students. Nevertheless, despite its success Voskopoje could not withstand the comparative primitiveness of the surrounding districts, and the town suffered repeatedly from raids by itinerant robbers. The constant feuding caused Voskopoje to be plundered three times: in 1769, 1772 and 1780. Twenty years later, the French consul F. Pouqueville, who visited the town, wrote: ‘After ten years of devastation, rape and warfare, Voskopoje disappeared from the surface of Albania. A couple of hundred huts inhabited by poor shepherds is all that remains of this town and misery will soon bury these among the ruins where you can still detect its former splendour.’⁵ The tragic end of Voskopoje, a town of 40,000 inhabitants, is but one example of the feudal anarchy that plagued Albania in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

During the nineteenth century the growth of nationalism among the Empire’s Balkan and Asiatic peoples was to prove the most important factor in the destruction of the Ottoman state. It is difficult to say, however, to what extent, if at all, national feeling had developed amongst the Albanians by the early nineteenth century. To all the Balkan peoples religion was synonymous with a person’s ethnic and social identity. Religion also served to shape a linguistic national consciousness. Orthodox and Catholic Christians adopted the script of their respective churches. Thus the Serbs and Bulgarians used the Cyrillic alphabet; the Romanians, the Latin; and the Greeks used the Greek alphabet of their church. The religious diversity of the Albanians, however, resulted in the Catholic Albanians using the Latin script, Orthodox Albanians using the Greek alphabet, and the Muslim Albanians using the Arabic script. These religious divisions helped to deprive Albanians of a solid foundation for the development of any national awareness. By adopting the Islamic faith an Albanian was automatically classified a Turk. Bearing all this in mind, it is interesting to note that Lord Byron’s travelling companion, J.C. Hobhouse, found a willingness among Albanians to emphasize the fact that they were Albanian; he wrote,

There is a spirit of independence and a love of their country in the whole people, that in a great measure, does away with the vast distinction, observable in other parts of Turkey between the followers of the two religions. For when the natives of other provinces, upon being asked who they are will say ‘We are Turks’ or ‘We are Christians’, a man of this country answers ‘I am an Albanian’.⁶

We can assume then that for many Albanians the fact that the Ottoman administration classified them as either Catholics, Orthodox or Turks had little meaning to a people who lived on the fringes of the Empire in tightly knit tribes or clans known as fis. The fis was primarily a family grouping, headed by the oldest male of the parental or grandparental generation. In general the Albanians were perceived by the Ottoman administration as wild and lawless. Because of their distinct individuality, which appeared to defy control, the Ottomans were originally forced to modify their system to suit the peculiarities of the Albanians. Thus the Gheg highlanders and the Christian communities around Himara and Suli enjoyed virtual autonomy in return for the payment of a small, but regular, tribute to the Porte’s administrators. In the north, each tribe, Catholic or Muslim, was obliged to elect from among the Muslims of Shkoder a representative, a sort of consul, who mediated between the tribe and the Porte and acted as its advocate in the case any dispute. He was known as a Boulim-bashi, a well respected figure. This situation, however, contributed to the growth of rivalry and jealousy between the different clans and tribes – a state of affairs that was carefully fostered by the Porte in order to secure its own position in the area. Nevertheless, the majority of Albanians continued to view the Ottoman administration as providing security from their Slav and Greek neighbours. What struggles the Albanians did pursue at this time were concerned with the preservation of their traditional privileges, or the pursuit of local advantages. There is no evidence that nationalist impulses lay behind such struggles.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ottoman society underwent a profound transformation that altered the land tenure system, the army and the leadership of the millets. These fundamental changes were embodied in the rise of the ayan (notables). These were influential people (or more often families) of diverse origin. Some were Ottoman governors who had established a local power base, others were landowners or religious dignitaries.⁷ At the same time the towns witnessed the birth of new commercial elites and the rise of a secular intelligentsia. This structural differentiation acquired social and political significance as the latter two groups rose first among the non-Muslims. Islamic pressure on the Christian population began to increase with the Russo–Ottoman wars of the eighteenth century and the accelerating decline of the Ottoman Empire. This resulted in a notable decline in the previous Ottoman policy of religious tolerance, as Islamic pressure on the Christian population intensified. Russo–Ottoman war of 1768–74 almost led to the expulsion of the Ottoman administration from Europe, and the threat posed by this war encouraged the Porte to levy increased taxes on all non-Muslim subjects, whilst those who converted to Islam had their taxes lowered and were given grants of land.

Throughout their turbulent history Albanians had shifted with relative ease from one religion to another: Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim, according to momentary interests. During the late middle ages, their country had become the battlefield between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East: whenever the West was advancing, the Albanian feudal lords – often followed by their populations – espoused Catholicism; whenever Byzantium was the victor and the West retreated, they embraced Orthodoxy.

A notable example was Skanderbeg’s father, Gion Kastrioti, who had changed religion several times. He was a Catholic as an ally of Venice, and turned Orthodox as an ally of Stefan Lazarevic of Serbia.⁸ The Albanian saying ‘Ku eshte shpata eshte feja’ – ‘Where the sword is, there lies religion’ – is directly related to this history. Of all the Balkan subject peoples, the Albanians were most inclined to convert to Islam. The majority of converts, however, were men, whilst women often retained their Christian beliefs even when married to Muslims, and were a factor in maintaining goodwill between the members of the two faiths.⁹ At various times whole villages voluntarily renounced the religion of their forefathers for political advantage. The ability to gain a timar or avoid donating a precious healthy son to the devshirme were but two of many reasons for abandoning Christianity. The majority of conversions took place in the lowlands, around the Shkumbi river, where direct Ottoman pressure could most easily be exerted. Amongst the Albanians of Kosova there appears to have been a far greater readiness to accept Islam, perhaps because of the pressure of their close proximity to the Serbs, who by the 1830s had achieved their own autonomous state. Albanians who wished to retain their Christian faith after the Ottoman conquest often found it difficult to compete with those who had converted. To make their already difficult lives easier, therefore, many Albanians gradually adopted at least the outer signs of the Islamic faith, thus obtaining such privileges as the right to bear arms.

In 1809, Hobhouse quoted an observer of Albanian religious practices:

These people, living between Christians and Mahomadens, declare that they are utterly unable to judge which religion is best but to be certain of not entirely rejecting the truth, they very prudently follow both. They go to the mosques on Fridays and to the church on Sundays, thus making sure of the protection from the true prophet.¹⁰

A characteristic instance is the story of the Karamurtads, or inhabitants of 36 villages near Pogoniani, which was related to an English traveller by an Albanian in 1899:

Till about a hundred years ago these people were Christians but, finding themselves unable to repel the continual attacks of the neighbouring Moslem population of Leskoviki, they met in a church, solemnly swore that they would fast until Easter and invoke all the saints to work within that period some miracle which would better their miserable lot. If this reasonable request were not granted they would all turn Mohammedan. Easter Day came but no sign from saint or angel and the whole population embraced Islam. Soon afterwards they obtained the arms which they required and had the satisfaction of massacring their old opponents of Leskoviki and taking possession of their lands.¹¹

The Great Pashaliks of Shkoder and Janina

An effect of the extreme decentralization of the Ottoman administration was the emergence of certain native vested interests able to exploit their privileged position. The gradual but continuous weakening of Ottoman authority allowed the Albanian feudal lords, or beys, to rely more on their own personal power than on central Ottoman rule. These beys extended the limits of their pashaliks (land coming under the authority of a pasha or bey), thus increasing their reve...