Self-definitions: Albanians' non-Slavic labels and points of origin

Perceived through an Orientalist/Balkanist lens and as a non-Western society, Albanian nationalist elites demanded that their community resemble their Western counterparts, which served as a source of reference for "modernization" and "progress" during the processes of modernization in the 18th and the 19th century (Todorova, 1996). Nathalie Clayer states that Albanian nationalism in the Balkans has been a product of political transformations permeating the Ottoman Empire (Clayer 2012). In their writings, Rrapaj and Kolasi periodized the curious development of Albanian nationalism into three main phases;

a) The first commences with the highly symbolic publication of the first Albanian alphabet in 1844 and ends with the collapse of the League of Prizren (1881) or the publication of Sami Frashëri's⁵⁵ nationalist Manifesto in 1899.

b) The second phase intensifies after the crushing of the League of Prizren by the Sublime Porte, and especially after the Greek-Ottoman crisis in 1897 and continues even after the declaration of independence, because of the amorphous state structure.

c) The third phase of the spread of nationalism to the masses started only after 1920, with the establishment of a proper state structure and political stability (Rrapaj and Kolasi, 2013; 195).

This general periodization is also supported by Clayer (Clayer 2012; 137), who corroborates that, like most of the Balkan nations, Albanians also embarked on a quest for their pre-Christian lineage that, in their case, was constructed as being Pelasgian and later on as Illyrian. One of the main propagators of this idea, which was then adopted by Albanian activists, was the Austrian von Hahn, who in 1854 published in Vienna a book entitled,

"Albanische Studien," which among other things says that the Albanians are autochthonous

55 Sami Frashëri (1850 - 1904) was an Albanian writer, philosopher, playwright and a prominent figure of the Rilindja Kombëtare, the National Renaissance movement of Albania.

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because they descend directly from the Illyrians, as do the people of Macedonia and Epirus, all stemming from prehistoric Pelasgians (Hahn, 1854). As the first step in their

"modernization," as they sought to differentiate themselves from other populations in the Balkans and, obviously, "non-Slavic," Albanians started to view themselves as descendants of the Illyrians. The main reason for this, according to Dukagjin Gorani, is that the process of society's "Westernization" entailed the simultaneous exercise of their "de-orientalization”; thus one's "Westernness" could have only been measured through the prism of one's "non-easternness" (Gorani, 2011, 77). Even nowadays modern Albanians consider the idea of Illyrian heritage as part of their shared heritage.⁵⁶ Wilkes book, "The Illyrians" (1995), highlighted the notion that the lands between the Adriatic and the Danube River, now Yugoslavia and Albania, were the home of the peoples known to the ancient world as Illyrians. This is one of the few books in English which focuses solely on these ancient peoples and their province and, as such, it carries a lot of weight, but it also raises a lot of problems and disputed historical conclusions (Wilkes, 1995). There are historians, such as John V.A. Fine, who have concluded that Albanians are descendants of populations of the prehistoric Balkans, such as the Illyrians (Fine 1991; 10), whereas studies in genetic anthropology, which should not be disregarded, show that Albanians share the same ancestry as most of the other European peoples (Belledi, S. Poloni, Casalotti, Conterio, Mikerezi, Tagliavini and Excoffier, 2000).⁵⁷ However, very little evidence of pre-Christian Albanian culture survived, although their mythology and folklore are of Paleo-Balkanic origin and almost all of their elements are pagan (Bonefoy 1993; 253). The legitimacy of these claims has been contested and has led to a conflict between Balkan ethnic groups (Kelley, 2012l 7).

56 The theory that Albanians were related to the Illyrians was proposed for the first time by Swedish historian Johann Erich Thunmann in 1774.The scholars who advocate an Illyrian origin of Albanians are numerous.

57 Michele Belledi, Estella S. Poloni, Rosa Casalotti, Franco Conterio, Ilia Mikerezi, James Tagliavini, and Laurent Excoffier. "Maternal and paternal lineages in Albania and the genetic structure of Indo-European populations."

European Journal of Human Genetics, July 2000, Volume 8, Number 7, pp. 480-486. "Mitochondrial DNA HV1 sequences and Y chromosome haplotypes (DYS19 STR and YAP) were characterized in an Albanian sample and compared with those of several other populations from the European continent that speak Indo-European languages. No significant difference was observed between Albanians and most other Europeans, despite the fact that Albanian is a distinct branch within the Indo-European language family. The authors observe a general lack of a uniformly distinct genetic structure among Indo-European-speaking populations for both maternal and paternal polymorphisms, as well as low levels of correlation between linguistics and genetics, even though slightly more significant for the Y chromosome than for mt DNA. Altogether, the results show that the linguistic structure of continental Indo-European-speaking populations is not reflected in the variability of the mitochondrial and Y chromosome markers. This discrepancy could be due to very recent differentiation of Indo-European-speaking populations in Europe and substantial amounts of gene flow among these populations" (Belledi, S. et al 2000).

39 In tandem with the production of their claims of Illyrian non-Slavic identity, Albanians went about shedding their connection to their Ottoman past. Ottoman words were thrown out from Albanian language dictionaries,⁵⁸ and Albanian-born Grand Viziers⁵⁹ and other important officials who ruled the Ottoman Empire went unmentioned in official Albanian historical records. In addition, history textbooks started treating the Ottoman period of Albanian history as dominated by violence. Recently, there were heated debates when the Turkish government requested that Albania and Kosovo make certain interventions and remove inappropriate words describing the Ottomans. For instance, in a 12th-grade history textbook, it was suggested that the phrase on page 48, "stirred hatred against Ottoman rule,” be replaced with "caused dissatisfaction with Ottoman rule," etc.

(Gashi, 2015; 2).

Tirana-based sociologist Enis Sulstarova notes that the combination of being positioned as the Illyrians, as well as being counted as one of the "Westernized" nations, has led some Albanian intellectuals and politicians to emphasize Albania’s early conversion to Christianity, declaring it to be the "true religion of Albanians" or the "religion of forefathers" (Sulstarova, 2012). Sulstarova also justifies this approach by saying that

"creating a Western identity was a matter of survival for Albanian elites in the late 19 century" (Sulstarova, 2006; 9). Such history-telling started during the 19th century as part of the nation-building process known as the "national revival," which portrayed the Ottomans as the enemies of the Albanians. However, the practice of considering the legacy of the Ottoman Empire as responsible for almost every economic, cultural or political ill that the Albanians encountered throughout their history has continued throughout the entire 20th century and into the present. It is the position of this chapter that other reasons affected the survival of this tendency to dismiss the legacy of the Ottoman past. First, people may find it convenient to blame the Ottomans for today's problems by claiming that if the Ottomans had not invaded "us," we would have been a developed Western nation today.

58 It is noted that every Balkan standard language did this, and modernizing Turkey actually did the same thing with much of this vocabulary, as it was of Arabo-Persian origin. This was first observed in: Kazazis, Kostas. 1972.

The Status of Turkisms in the Present-Day Balkan Languages. Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change.

Contributions to the International Balkan Conference Held at UCLA, October 23-28, 1969, ed. by Henrik Birnbaum and Speros Vryonis, Jr., 87-116. The Hague: Mouton.

59 In the Ottoman Empire, the “Grand Vizier” was the Prime Minister of the Ottoman Sultan, with the absolute power of attorney and, in principle, dismissable only by the Sultan himself (see Collins English Dictionary.

Copyright © Harper Collins Publishers).

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This could also be considered as a sort of nesting Balkanism by the Albanians vis-à-vis the Ottomans.

Second, there is the fact that the political elites that ruled Albania after the First and Second World Wars, led by King Ahmet Zogu (1928-1939) and communist dictator Enver Hoxha (1945-1985), were brought to power with the initial agreement and support of Serbia.

Thus, these Albanian rulers needed someone to blame for the fact that their political agreements with the "real enemy" made Albania one of the states that left half of its nation outside of its borders.

A third reason that should be considered as an important factor influencing these anti-Ottoman approaches toward history and national mentality – especially during communism, which itself had a revisionist character – was simply that the official ideology dictated that any reality created by foreign rule must always be considered as dark and hated.

However, Albanian cultural anthropologist, historian, and philologist Rigels Halili, in one of his valuable comments about this chapter, considers the social factors, or the materialist interpretation of history as a long chain of class struggle, to be the most important factors influencing the Albanians’ predilection for dismissing the legacy of their Ottoman past.

Halili emphasizes that Ottoman rule was perceived as the rule of the aristocratic class over the people. Such an approach emerges directly from a Leninist approach to history. Even though communication between Albania and Yugoslavia was also difficult for Albanians, ethnic Albanians living in Yugoslavia were still very much affected by Albania's approach toward national, historical and identity definitions and approaches. It is mainly because of this impact that literature in the Albanian language produced and shaped in Albania also influenced the Albanians who were living outside of its borders.

However, there are ongoing debates in Albanian society about the necessity to re-interpret, change or improve historic materials from which Albanian pupils and students learn history in schools and at universities (Telegrafi, March 2013). Dritan Egro, an Ottoman-era historian, explains that this "softening" towards the Ottomans is the result of a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to social sciences combined with a renewed general curiosity about the period.⁶⁰ All these circumstances and tendencies to erase or

60 Dritan Ego’s interview is available here: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albanians-question-negative-view-of-ottomans [Last accessed on 07/02/2019]

41 ignore four or five centuries of history lead us toward the reasonable concludion that, so far, history has been a lesson Albanians have been taught in a particular way.

Other intellectuals also agree that Albanian historical records were influenced by nationalistic propaganda during the 19th century’s "national revival" and the communist regime of the second half of the 20th century (Albphilosopher and reporteri August 2014).

Other elements that made Albanians "look different" from others living in Yugoslavia were their religious diversity, strong sense of national identity and their distinctly non-Slavic language. In contrast to all of the other constitutive “nations” living in Yugoslavia, who used religion as one of the most important identifiers, this did not hold true among Albanians. It should be underscored that while the national identity of South Slavs was strongly based on religion, in the case of Albanians, national identity was constructed rather on the basis of such elements as language, territory, history, and culture, while the role of religion did not play a central role. As Gorani puts it, "the nation retained the position of a genuine religion for Albanians" (Gorani 2012; 279). Bakić-Hayden also highlights that religion did not shape Albanians' strong sense of national and "non-Slavic" identity (M.

Bakić-Hayden 1995; 926).

Isa Blumi theorizes that such an identity was politically mobilized and that it was culturally opaque and ideologically fluid prior to the 1912 Balkan Wars. In relation to the competition among various state and power structures, be it in the shape of a great power intervention or attempts at building new national identities, Blumi has shown that Ottoman reforms were successful in encouraging most subjects of the empire to commingle local interests with the fate of the empire, meaning that parochial concern for the survival of the immediate community, as it transformed over time, was directly linked to the survival of the Ottoman state (Blumi, 2011).

Thus, Albanians in Yugoslavia were perceived first as the national "other" and then, depending on who was looking at them, as the religious other. Even though they were seen as part of another nation and not necessarily as Muslims, which was reserved for Bosnians, giving priority to Albanian – linguistic and ethnic – identity still presented a reasonable approach, taking into consideration the fact that Albanians were one of the Balkans’ most religiously diverse. It can be argued that another reason, which influenced prioritizing national rather than religious identity, is the fact that until the 20th century there were instances when Albanian Muslims were regarded by other communities living within

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Yugoslavia as "Turks;" Albanian Orthodox were regarded as "Greeks;" and Albanian Catholics as "Latins." This is confirmed not only by oral sources who lived during the Yugoslav era, but may also be found in such written sources as Pashko Vasa⁶¹ in 1879 and Sami Frashëri, who, in 1899, wrote about this phenomenon in those very same terms.Trying to cope with their anxiety about being considered Turks or Greeks, etc., as well as to unify and strengthen national identity from the Ottoman era and onwards, Albanian elites followed a process of replacing religious differences with a common, language-based national identity that was neither Turk nor Greek nor Latin.