Albania’s total area is 11,100 square miles. It borders Greece to the south, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Fyrom) to the east, Serbia and Montenegro to the north and northeast. The Adriatic Sea lies west of Albania. About 70 percent of Albania’s terrain is mountainous, and the fertile Adriatic coast comprises the other 30 percent. in the extreme mountainous terrain of the north lie the Dinaric Alps. Mount Korabit along the Macedonian border is Albania’s highest point at 9,066 feet. Albania’s rugged terrain has isolated Albania from neighboring countries, thus enabling the preservation of its culture. Albania’s most heavily populated region is the west coastal region, which consists of low hills and valleys that open up onto the coastal plain. This in turn is a key area for farming. The coastal climate has wet winters and dry summers, whereas Albania’s mountainous interior has
Albanians: nationality time line (continued)
1976 National Art Gallery is founded in Tirana.
1981 National History Museum is founded in Tirana.
1985 After Hoxha's death Ramiz Alia preserves Communist state.
1988 International Center of Culture is founded in Tirana.
1990 Independent political parties are established; Communist power dissipates; Western embassies give Albanians rights to foreign travel, and thousands flee country.
1991 Name of People's Republic of Albania is changed to Republic of Albania; Albanian leadership achieves Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia.
1997 Parliament elects socialist Rexhep Mejdani as president.
1998 Albania receives Kosovo refugees after Serbian attacks in Kosovo.
1999 International plan for peace is negotiated in Kosovo.
Severe winters and mild summers. The principal rivers are the Drin, Mat, Shkumbin, Vijose, and Seman, all difficult to navigate. The Drin is the longest, at 175 miles. The Shkumbin River divides the country into two distinct dialect groups, the Ghegs and the Tosks. The three major lakes, Lake Scutari, Lake Ohrid, and Lake Prespa, lie along the Albanian borders. Forests and swamps cover about one-third of Albania’s landscape, and pastures another one-third. Only one-fifth of Albania is cultivated.
INCEPTION AS A NATION
The tribes of southern lLLYRiANS, remaining culturally unified, established an early state that slowly came to be known as Albania (the name derived from a dominant group among the Illyrians). Slavs and Bulgars came to inhabit the region. The Ottoman Turks (see Turkics) occupied the Albanian territory in 1388. In 1912, after the First Balkan War, Serb, Greek, and Bulgarian forces defeated the Ottoman Empire, and Albania declared self-rule.
During World War II (1939-45) Italy invaded Albania and eventually Albania was turned over to Germany. After the war Albania became a communist state under Enver Hoxha. In 1991 the former People’s Republic of Albania established democracy and became known as the Republic of Albania.
CULTURAL IDENTITY
The Albanians are among those European peoples whose homelands caused them to be relatively isolated from socioeconomic trends developing elsewhere across Europe. The mountainous Albanian territory caused the Illyrian ancestors of the Albanians who lived inland from the coast to maintain fiercely independent clans in their isolated valleys. Meanwhile the coastal area participated in only a limited way in trade until Greeks established trading colonies in the region in the seventh century b. c.e. Traders from among the Mycenaeans had bypassed the eastern Adriatic coast because of its dangerous, rocky harbors and prevailing northeastern gales, while the Balkans prevented much contact with eastern and southern Greece, so that the Illyrians knew little of the cultural influences from the Near East that had fostered the rise of Mycenaean and then Hellenic civilization of the Greeks. Thus people in Albanian territory retained a relatively loose, tribal society based on clans while peoples elsewhere in the Mediterranean were developing powerful states. By the time Illyrians had begun to establish states of their own, they were outmatched by others, first the Macedonians and then the Romans, who made the region part of the Roman Empire, and later the Byzantines.
For these reasons, Illyrian, then Albanian cultural identity formed in a context of striving to keep their distinctness as a people alive, a struggle they have faced from the time of the Roman Empire to today. The isolation that made them relatively weak politically in turn fostered a powerful and vibrant ethnic culture, one that nevertheless has successfully absorbed influences from abroad. The visual arts of Albanians were strongly influenced by Byzantine art, and by the steppe tradition introduced to the Balkans by the Slavs and Bulgars. Later, art styles from Italy, just across the Adriatic, were important.
Cultural “conservatism” (in the sense of preserving traditional culture) caused Albanians to keep alive their oral narrative and poetic tra-
This 1923 photograph shows two Albanian boys in traditional clothing. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-92148])
Dition long after other peoples in Europe had left theirs behind for written literature. Tales were passed down through the generations in the form of heroic songs, legends, and epics. Some probably dated to Homeric times as part of the tradition out of which Homer’s epics emerged. The oldest known document in the Albanian language dates to 1462. During the 19th century Albanian traditional culture benefited from the rise of interest in the deep ethnic roots of cultures and the identification of these with nationhood. In the latter part of the century an underground literary movement promoted linguistic purity and Albanian patriotism.
Albanian folk music arose out of the same substrate as the oral poetic tradition—the two are actually indistinguishable—and it is highly likely that the Homeric epic tales that resemble Albanian tales were sung in the Greek Dark Ages by bards who accompanied themselves on the lyre. In modern Albania singers play the lahute (lute). The songs accordingly contain themes of honor, loyalty, and courage. In the south, where foreign influences are more prevalent, Albanians developed a more musically complex style of song or ballad called a lieder, which is accompanied by instruments. Also in the south saze (small orchestras) composed of four or five instruments play music for folk dancing on special occasions.
Throughout Albanian cultural productions, including theater and film, run the theme of resistance to foreign assimilation and the tension between old and new. Albanians call themselves Shqiptar, meaning “sons of eagles,” a reference to their soaring countryside and their fierce independence. Today with actual political independence, the government has made a conscious effort to encourage and preserve the nation’s rich folk life. There are some 4,300 cultural institutions of various sorts in the country.
See also Arvanites.
Further Reading
Robert Elsie. A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
Derek Hall. Albania and the Albanians: Albania into the 21st Century (London: Pinter, 1994).
Edwin E. Jacques. The Albanians: An Ethnic History from Prehistoric Times to the Present (London: McFarland, 1994).
Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd Jurgen Fischer, eds. Albanian Identities: Myth and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
J. Swire. Albania: The Rise of a Kingdom (New York: Arno, 1971).
Two Albanian shepherd boys play nose flutes. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-92140])
ALLOBROGES
Location:
Caucasus; France; Iberian Peninsula
Time period:
First to 13th century C. E.
Ancestry:
Indo-Iranian
Language:
Ossetian (Iranian)
Miranda Vickers. Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
Miranda Vickers. The Albanians: A Modern History (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995).
Raymond E. Zickel and Walter R. Iwaskiw, eds. Albania: A Country Study (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1994).
World History
