THE
ALBANIAN LANDS UNDER OTTOMAN DOMINATION, 1385-1876
The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowered
the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
At first, the feuding Albanian clans proved no match for the
armies of the sultan (see Glossary). In the fifteenth century,
however, Skanderbeg united the Albanian tribes in a defensive
alliance that held up the Ottoman advance for more than two
decades. His family's banner, bearing a black two-headed eagle
on a red field, became the flag under which the Albanian national
movement rallied centuries later.
Five
centuries of Ottoman rule left the Albanian people fractured
along religious, regional, and tribal lines. The first Albanians
to convert to Islam were young boys forcibly conscripted into
the sultan's military and administration. In the early seventeenth
century, however, Albanians converted to Islam in great numbers.
Within a century, the Albanian Islamic community was split
between Sunni (see Glossary) Muslims and adherents to the
Bektashi (see Glossary) sect. The Albanian people also became
divided into two distinct tribal and dialectal groupings,
the Gegs and Tosks. In the rugged northern mountains, Geg
shepherds lived in a tribal society often completely independent
of Ottoman rule. In the south, peasant Muslim and Orthodox
Tosks worked the land for Muslim beys, provincial rulers who
frequently revolted against the sultan's authority. In the
nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans tried in vain to shore
up their collapsing empire by introducing a series of reforms
aimed at reining in recalcitrant local officials and dousing
the fires of nationalism among its myriad peoples. The power
of nationalism, however, proved too strong to counteract.
The
Ottoman Conquest of Albania
Equestrian
statue of Skanderbeg on Skanderbeg Square in central Tiranë
Courtesy Charles Sudetic
The
Ottoman Turks expanded their empire from Anatolia to the Balkans
in the fourteenth century. They crossed the Bosporus in 1352,
and in 1389 they crushed a Serb-led army that included Albanian
forces at Fushë Kosovë , located in the present-day
Kosova. Europe gained a brief respite from Ottoman pressure
in 1402 when the Mongol leader, Tamerlane, attacked Anatolia
from the east, killed the Turks' absolute ruler, the sultan,
and sparked a civil war. When order was restored, the Ottomans
renewed their westward progress. In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II's
forces overran Constantinople and killed the last Byzantine
emperor.
The
division of the Albanian-populated lands into small, quarreling
fiefdoms ruled by independent feudal lords and tribal chiefs
made them easy prey for the Ottoman armies. In 1385 the Albanian
ruler of Durrës, Karl Thopia, appealed to the sultan
for support against his rivals, the Balsha family. An Ottoman
force quickly marched into Albania along the Via Egnatia and
routed the Balshas. The principal Albanian clans soon swore
fealty to the Turks. Sultan Murad II launched the major Ottoman
onslaught in the Balkans in 1423, and the Turks took Janina
in 1431 and Arta on the Ionian coast, in 1449. The Turks allowed
conquered Albanian clan chiefs to maintain their positions
and property, but they had to pay tribute, send their sons
to the Turkish court as hostages, and provide the Ottoman
army with auxiliary troops.
The
Albanians' resistance to the Turks in the mid-fifteenth century
won them acclaim all over Europe. Gjon Kastrioti of Krujë
was one of the Albanian clan leaders who submitted to Turkish
suzerainty. He was compelled to send his four sons to the
Ottoman capital to be trained for military service. The youngest,
Gjergj Kastrioti (1403-68), who would become the Albanians'
greatest national hero, captured the sultan's attention. Renamed
Iskander when he converted to Islam, the young man participated
in military expeditions to Asia Minor and Europe. When appointed
to administer a Balkan district, Iskander became known as
Skanderbeg. After Ottoman forces under Skanderbeg's command
suffered defeat in a battle near Nis, in present-day Serbia,
in 1443, the Albanian rushed to Krujë and tricked a Turkish
pasha into surrendering him the Kastrioti family fortress.
Skanderbeg then reembraced Roman Catholicism and declared
a holy war against the Turks.
On
March 1, 1444, Albanian chieftains gathered in the cathedral
of Lezhë with the prince of Montenegro and delegates
from Venice and proclaimed Skanderbeg commander of the Albanian
resistance. All of Albania, including most of Epirus, accepted
his leadership against the Ottoman Turks, but local leaders
kept control of their own districts. Under a red flag bearing
Skanderbeg's heraldic emblem, an Albanian force of about 30,000
men held off brutal Ottoman campaigns against their lands
for twenty-four years. Twice the Albanians overcame sieges
of Krujë. In 1449 the Albanians routed Sultan Murad II
himself. Later, they repulsed attacks led by Sultan Mehmed
II. In 1461 Skanderbeg went to the aid of his suzerain, King
Alfonso I of Naples, against the kings of Sicily. The government
under Skanderbeg was unstable, however, and at times local
Albanian rulers cooperated with the Ottoman Turks against
him. When Skanderbeg died at Lezhë, the sultan reportedly
cried out, "Asia and Europe are mine at last. Woe to
Christendom! She has lost her sword and shield."
With
support from Naples and the Vatican, resistance to the Ottoman
Empire continued mostly in Albania's highlands, where the
chieftains even opposed the construction of roads out of fear
that they would bring Ottoman soldiers and tax collectors.
The Albanians' fractured leadership, however, failed to halt
the Ottoman onslaught. Krujë fell to the Ottoman Turks
in 1478; Shkodër succumbed in 1479 after a fifteen-month
siege; and the Venetians evacuated Durrës in 1501. The
defeats triggered a great Albanian exodus to southern Italy,
especially to the kingdom of Naples, as well as to Sicily,
Greece, Romania, and Egypt. Most of the Albanian refugees
belonged to the Orthodox Church. Some of the émigrés
to Italy converted to Roman Catholicism, and the rest established
a Uniate Church. The Albanians of Italy significantly influenced
the Albanian national movement in future centuries, and Albanian
Franciscan priests, most of whom were descended from émigrés
to Italy, played a significant role in the preservation of
Catholicism in Albania's northern regions.
Albanians
under Ottoman Rule
The
Ottoman sultan considered himself God's agent on earth, the
leader of a religious--not a national--state whose purpose
was to defend and propagate Islam. Non-Muslims paid extra
taxes and held an inferior status, but they could retain their
old religion and a large measure of local autonomy. By converting
to Islam, individuals among the conquered could elevate themselves
to the privileged stratum of society. In the early years of
the empire, all Ottoman high officials were the sultan's bondsmen
the children of Christian subjects chosen in childhood for
their promise, converted to Islam, and educated to serve.
Some were selected from prisoners of war, others sent as gifts,
and still others obtained through devshirme, the tribute of
children levied in the Ottoman Empire's Balkan lands. Many
of the best fighters in the sultan's elite guard, the janissaries
were conscripted as young boys from Christian Albanian families,
and high-ranking Ottoman officials often had Albanian bodyguards.
In
the early seventeenth century, many Albanian converts to Islam
migrated elsewhere within the Ottoman Empire and found careers
in the Ottoman military and government. Some attained powerful
positions in the Ottoman administration. About thirty Albanians
rose to the position of grand vizier, chief deputy to the
sultan himself. In the second half of the seventeenth century,
the Albanian Köprülü family provided four grand
viziers, who fought against corruption, temporarily shored
up eroding central government control over rapacious local
beys, and won several military victories.
The
Ottoman Turks divided the Albanian-inhabited lands among a
number of districts, or vilayets. The Ottoman authorities
did not initially stress conversion to Islam. In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, however, economic pressures and
coercion produced the conversion of about two-thirds of the
empire's Albanians.
The
Ottoman Turks first focused their conversion campaigns on
the Roman Catholic Albanians of the north and then on the
Orthodox population of the south. For example, the authorities
increased taxes, especially poll taxes, to make conversion
economically attractive. During and after a Christian counteroffensive
against the Ottoman Empire from 1687 to 1690, when Albanian
Catholics revolted against their Muslim overlords, the Ottoman
pasha of Peja, a town in the south of present-day Yugoslavia,
retaliated by forcing entire Albanian villages to accept Islam.
Albanian beys then moved from the northern mountains to the
fertile lands of Kosova.
Most
of the conversion's to Islam took place in the lowlands of
the Shkumbin River valley, where the Ottoman Turks could easily
apply pressure because of the area's accessibility. Many Albanians,
however, converted in name only and secretly continued to
practice Christianity. Often one branch of a family became
Muslim while another remained Christian, and many times these
families celebrated their respective religious holidays together
As
early as the eighteenth century, a mystic Islamic sect, the
Bektashi dervishes, spread into the empire's Albanian-populated
lands. Probably founded in the late thirteenth century in
Anatolia, Bektashism became the janissaries' official faith
in the late sixteenth century. The Bektashi sect contains
features of the Turks' pre-Islamic religion and emphasizes
man as an individual. Women, unveiled, participate in Bektashi
ceremonies on an equal basis, and the celebrants use wine
despite the ban on alcohol in the Quran. The Bektashis became
the largest religious group in southern Albania after the
sultan disbanded the janissaries in 1826. Bektashi leaders
played key roles in the Albanian nationalist movement of the
late nineteenth century and were to a great degree responsible
for the Albanians' traditional tolerance of religious differences.
During
the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Albanian lands remained
one of Europe's most backward areas. In the mountains north
of the Shkumbin River, Geg herders maintained their self-governing
society comprised of clans. An association of clans was called
a bajrak. Taxes on the northern tribes were difficult if not
impossible for the Ottomans to collect because of the rough
terrain and fierceness of the Albanian highlanders. Some mountain
tribes succeeded in defending their independence through the
centuries of Ottoman rule, engaging in intermittent guerrilla
warfare with the Ottoman Turks, who never deemed it worthwhile
to subjugate them. Until recent times, Geg clan chiefs, or
bajraktars, exercised patriarchal powers, arranged marriages,
mediated quarrels, and meted out punishments. The tribesmen
of the northern Albanian mountains recognized no law but the
Code of Lek, a collection of tribal laws transcribed in the
fourteenth century by a Roman Catholic priest. The code regulates
a variety of subjects, including blood vengeance. Even today,
many Albanian highlanders regard the canon as the supreme
law of the land.
South
of the Shkumbin River, the mostly peasant Tosks lived in compact
villages under elected rulers. Some Tosks living in settlements
high in the mountains maintained their independence and often
escaped payment of taxes. The Tosks of the lowlands, however,
were easy for the Ottoman authorities to control. The Albanian
tribal system disappeared there, and the Ottomans imposed
a system of military fiefs under which the sultan granted
soldiers and cavalrymen temporary landholdings, or timars,
in exchange for military service. By the eighteenth century,
many military fiefs had effectively become the hereditary
landholdings of economically and politically powerful families
who squeezed wealth from their hard-strapped Christian and
Muslim tenant farmers. The beys, like the clan chiefs of the
northern mountains, became virtually independent rulers in
their own provinces, had their own military contingents, and
often waged war against each other to increase their landholdings
and power. The Sublime Porte attempted to press a divide-and-rule
policy to keep the local beys from uniting and posing a threat
to Ottoman rule itself, but with little success.
Local
Albanian Leaders in the Early Nineteenth Century
The weakening of Ottoman central authority
and the timar system brought anarchy to the Albanian-populated
lands. In the late eighteenth century, two Albanian centers
of power emerged: Shkodër, under the Bushati family;
and Janina, under Ali Pasha of Tepelenë. When it suited
their goals, both places cooperated with the Sublime Porte,
and when it was expedient to defy the central government,
each acted independently.
The Bushati family dominated the Shkodër
region through a network of alliances with various highland
tribes. Kara Mahmud Bushati attempted to establish an autonomous
principality and expand the lands under his control by playing
off Austria and Russia against the Sublime Porte. In 1785
Kara Mahmud's forces attacked Montenegrin territory, and Austria
offered to recognize him as the ruler of all Albania if he
would ally himself with Vienna against the Sublime Porte.
Seizing an opportunity, Kara Mahmud sent the sultan the heads
of an Austrian delegation in 1788, and the Ottomans appointed
him governor of Shkodër. When he attempted to wrest land
from Montenegro in 1796, however, he was defeated and beheaded.
Kara Mahmud's brother, Ibrahim, cooperated with the Sublime
Porte until his death in 1810, but his successor, Mustafa
Pasha Bushati, proved to be recalcitrant despite participation
in Ottoman military campaigns against Greek revolutionaries
and rebel pashas. He cooperated with the mountain tribes and
brought a large area under his control.
Ali Pasha (1741-1822), the Lion of
Janina, was born to a powerful clan from Tepelenë and
spent much of his youth as a bandit. He rose to become governor
of the Ottoman province of Rumelia, which included Albania,
Macedonia, and Thrace, before establishing himself in Janina.
Like Kara Mahmud Bushati, Ali Pasha wanted to create an autonomous
state under his rule. When Ali Pasha forged links with the
Greek revolutionaries, Sultan Mahmud II decided to destroy
him. The sultan first discharged the Albanian from his official
posts and recalled him to Constantinople. Ali Pasha refused
and put up a formidable resistance that Britain's Lord Byron
immortalized in poems and letters. In January 1822, however,
Ottoman agents assassinated Ali Pasha and sent his head to
Constantinople. Nevertheless, it took eight more years before
the Sublime Porte would move against Mustafa Pasha Bushati.
The sultan sent an Ottoman general to Bitola (then called
Monastir, in Macedonia), where he invited 1,000 Muslim Albanian
leaders to meet him, and in August 1830 Reshid Pasha had about
500 of the Albanian leaders killed. He then turned on Mustafa
Pasha, who surrendered and spent the rest of his life as an
official in Constantinople.
After
crushing the Bushatis and Ali Pasha, the Sublime Porte introduced
a series of reforms, known as the tanzimat, which were aimed
at strengthening the empire by reining in fractious pashas.
The government organized a recruitment program for the military
and opened Turkish-language schools to propagate Islam and
instill loyalty to the empire. The timars officially became
large individual landholdings, especially in the lowlands.
In 1835 the Sublime Porte divided the Albanian-populated lands
into the vilayets of Janina and Rumelia and dispatched officials
from Constantinople to administer them. After 1865 the central
authorities redivided the Albanian lands between the vilayets
of Shkodër, Janina, Bitola, and Kosova. The reforms angered
the highland Albanian chieftains, who found their privileges
reduced with no apparent compensation, and the authorities
eventually abandoned efforts to control them. Ottoman troops
crushed local rebellions in the lowlands, however, and conditions
there remained bleak. Large numbers of Tosks emigrated to
join sizable Albanian émigré communities in
Romania, Egypt, Bulgaria, Constantinople, southern Italy,
and later the United States. As a result of contacts maintained
between the Tosks and their relatives living or returning
from abroad, foreign ideas began to seep into Albania.