Now, let’s hear from more Albanian historian disputing revision of the European history.Prof. Adrian Vebiu QUOTE #1:
First, we have no strong historical ‘me’. We had five centuries under Turkish occupation, and at that time, we had a Turkish identity, not an Albanian identity, except for our language. We as Albanians didn’t have a real history during these five centuries. Our history was linked to the Turkish Empire. This is one of the reasons I could say that our nationalism started very late…
Traditionally, the society was organized into clans, families, tribes. And our Christian law—the so-called “Canon of Lek Dukagjini”—was called by one of the popes the least Christian law in the world. It was firmly linked to the blood feud. And Albanians could defend only their own house, their own family, their own tribe, and they didn’t care about others.
QUOTE #2:
Question:
Undeniable is the fact that in Albania the toponyms are, say, without exception – Slavic. To what is that owed?
On the territory of today’s Albania, as has already been confirmed by the most distinguished world scholars, from whom I have already mentioned some,
first settled the Slavs. In 548 A.D., they enter also in Durrachium. The Albanians come via Transylvania (Romania) and Bulgaria much later, IX-X century. In the meantime, understandably, the Slavs have already named all mountains, valleys, rivers, towns and villages, and built some new ones, giving them their own names.
When the Albanians arrive on the Balkan and today¹s Albania, there is nothing else they can do except to take those toponyms. A large part of Albania is flooded with Serbian and Macedonian toponyms. Just as an example, I wish to mention the towns of Pogradec, Kor?a (Korcha), (Chorovoda), Berat, Bozigrad, Leskovik, Voskopoja, Kuzova, Kelcira, Bels and others.
Already in 1995 at the University of Skopje, it became clear to me that there will not be peace on the Balkan until the Albanian question is clarified. For that reason I switched rom the law faculty to the albanological studies and here, contrary to what was being said and written not only by the Albanian, but also by our, Yugoslavian scholars, contrary to what is being taught not only in the Albanian language schools (in Albania, as well as in Macedonia), but also in the schools of ³south-slavic² languages, I discovered that not only the Albanians are not autochthonous people, but they are also not related in any way to the Pelasgians or the Illyrians. Understandably, not one of the professors in Albanology has said this to me. They continued with the tale that allegedly Albanians are autochthonous Pelasgoillyrian descendants.
I discovered that by chance, studying the Albanian language, which, all agree, is of the type SATEM. According to that global division of languages, researching the Illyrian language I discovered that it is of the type KENTUM. The most elementary logic was saying to me that one SATEM language can not be a direct descendant, not even a kind of derivative of some KENTUM language, without a change of its substrate.
Since the Albanian language does not have any changes in its substrate, that means that the Albanians can¹t be, under any circumstance, genealogical descendants of the Illyrians. Later I discovered this, as well, in the works of the world renown professors and scholars…
Paul,
Hirt,
Vaigand,
Tomashek,
Georgiev,
Pushcariu
…and many others, who with numerous scholarly arguments, linguistic and historical, have proven that the Albanians not only do not have anything in common with the Illyrians, not only that they are not autochthonous at any place in the Balkan, but they are not even autochthonous in the territories of modern day Albania.
Vaigand for example has formulated 12 arguments. To all of those I’ve added another five. Unfortunately, these scientists are not being mentioned in (the study) Albanology, nor in Albania, nor are they mentioned in Yugoslavia, or in Macedonia, because the Albanian professors consciously hide the truth about the origins of the Albanians and, instead of (the truth), to their pupils and students they serve up the lies about their autochthony and Illyrian origin.
Via those lies, they poison the whole nation. This is not done accidentally, but with the aim to incite the Albanians against the neighbouring nations, thus, hooking them on the ³fishing line² of some invented, wide ethnic territories, to use them as cannon fodder for the interests of some criminalised leaders and the international Capital.
The primary motive that inspired me to oppose the Albanian pseudo science about their Illyrian origin was the truth, the love for the truth, my special inclination towards it, but second and equally as important motive was the fact that, watching the Albanians being breast-fed with chauvinism and racism, are being encouraged to fight their neighbouring peoples (nations), I was hoping that if the truth is explained to them, they will move away from the tales, legends and myths about their autochthony and illyrom, thus ceasing with their inexcusable and baseless hatred towards their neighbours.
Since in the publication ³YLBERI² (comes out since 1993, in Geneva) and especially through my albanological collection THE ILLYRIANS AND THE ALBANIANS I demonstrated in written form my points of view, the Albanian academic Vincent Golleti, in the printed media stated: “The stances of Kaplan Burovich about the albanological problems, especially on the problem of the origin of the Albanians, need to be greeted most warmly, while the studies which he publishes in relation with those problems should be propagated throughout the whole of the scholarly world”.
After him followed the Albanian scholar Dr. Adrian Qosi who in the middle of Tirana openly opposed the hypothesis about the Illyrian origin of the Albanians. With me agreed, via the printed media, several other younger scholars of whom I would especially mention Fatos Lubonja, Prof. Adrian Vebiu and others.
I can say that today appear a group of new Albanian scholars who do not agree with the false myths and courageously accept the scientific truth. I am proud that I lead this group and that they took up from me the necessary scholarly courage. Because, believe me, that is not easy at all, as the extreme Albanian nationalists, chauvinists and racists led by Ismail Kadare, through the most severe forms of chicanery and satanising are attempting to silence us at any cost.
They mentioned Dr Adrian Qosi when he stated that the hypothesis for the Illyrian origin of the Albanians is unfounded, added: ³But it is better not to talk about that because they will declare us anti-Albanians². And they did.
SERBS, CROATS OPEN FIRST SCHOOLS IN ALBANIA:
The oldest evidenced text in an Albanian language is “Formula paleximit” (Formula for communion), translated from Latin in 8-11-1462 by the Serb Pavle Angelic, whom the Albanians have albanised with the name Pal Engjylli. The first book in Albanian is ³Meshari² (The Book of Thoughts), a manual for religious sermons, dates from 1555 and is written by the Croatian Ivan Buzuk and published in Montenegro. And, understandably, they albanise him with the name Gjon Buzuku. For your information, the first primer in Albanian, after the proclamation of the Albanian independence is a work of ³Slavs² and Vlachs. Dositej Obradovich is the first in history who opens a school in Albanian language, while it was exactly Serbia, which was the first state to recognise independent Albania.
MACEDONIANS DEVELOP CULTURE IN ALBANIA:
The Macedonians have a significant input in the development of the Albanian culture. For example, one of the oldest publishers in Albania is the Macedonian Petar Budi (1566-1622) who has published three books in Albanian, and also a Macedonian is Jovan Kukuzel, whom the Albanians have claimed as their own and have albanised with the name Jan Kukuzeli, although it is known that when he was born in Drach, XI century, here there still is not even one Albanian. Let me remind you also of Grigor Prlichev (1830-1893) who for some time is a teacher in Tirana and published the wonderful poem ³Skenderbeg². Undeniable is the fact that always at the forefront of all of their positive processes the Albanians had namely non-Albanians.
QUOTE #3:
There is an Illyrian myth, with which Albanian culture has been flirting for at least 150 years, and as a myth it can’t be questioned (for it has all the answers). There is also a very tentative Illyrian science, based mainly on archaeology, and on some data transmitted by Ancient Greek and Latin Historians.
These inscriptions, being totally alien to Albanian, show that the Illyrian question is extremely complicated, and that it isn’t likely to be resolved, unless fundamental epigraphic discoveries are made.
The great Illyrologist Hans Krahe himself was no supporter of the Illyrian theory about the origin of Albanians. In his late years he came to understand that most of his paleolinguistic theories were generally wrong. Krahe started by finding Illyrian traces everywhere in Europe, but then it was made clear that all he had found were Indo-European traces — and nobody had any doubt that Indo-European tribes had been in Europe for a long many years.
Onomastics is of no great help in settling linguistic and ethnogenetic issues. Let’s have a look at some important place names in Albanian territories, like Dajti, Shkodra, Durresi, Vlora, Burreli, Drini, Shkumbini, Tirana, etc. Are they Albanian? We can’t say that, for there are no Albanian words that would explain them (as we explain, for example, Kruja with “krue” – fountain).
This might well be true, but seems pathetic in front of the fact that we can’t explain through Albanian words the place names we currently use, let alone the Illyrian ones. So what?
Let’s move up in time, and reach the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages the Albanians were somewhere there, though their first mention is in the 11th century (or 12th, I’m not sure). Where were they living? Where are the places they have named after their common words (technically called appellatives)? The south is full — literally full — of Slavic place names, especially the areas of Vlora, Tepelena, Skrapar, Mallakaster, Gramsh, Cermenike, Moker, Korce, Erseke.
My personal opinion is that the issue of Albanians descending or not from Illyrians doesn’t deserve the interest it has traditionally aroused. There is absolutely NO Illyrian cultural legacy among Albanians today. In a certain sense, Illyrians (with their less fortunate fellows, the Pelasgians) are a pure creation of Albanian romanticism.
QUOTE #4:
Not long ago, for example, I wrote of myths and mentioned Skenderbeg and the Battle of Kosovo. I told of how the Albanians have forgotten that Skenderbeg was a Slav. I was attacked by Ismail Kadare, incensed at how I could possibly say that Skenderbeg was a Slav and that the history and culture of Albanians is on the level of Serbs.
That’s the way it is with our culture, which is mythomaniac, national-communist, romantic, self-glorifying. You can’t say anything objective without people getting angry. The Albanians are a people who still dream. That is what they are like in their conversations, their literature…In light of Hoxha and ‘pyramid schemes, Albanians are a people who still dream. That’s just the way they are
QUOTE #5:
Lets mention, as well, at this opportune time only Georgi Kastriot Skenderbeg, of an undeniable Slavic ancestry, Naim Frasheri (a Vlach, an Albanian national poet) or Fan Noli (a Greek, whose real name is Theophanous Mavromatis), Petar Bogdan, a Serb, or Ismail Kemali, a Turk who was proclaiming the Albanian independence in 1912
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Rest of your opinions you are trying to pass as facts that have been subjected to revisions are as follows.
Uour propaganda that persistently repeats the fallacy that Serbs militarily took and “occupied” Kosovo and Metohia in 1912, as if that was some separate, Albanian political and territorial entity. Within the international political public at least four issues have been presented falsely. First of all, the Kosovo villaet [Ottoman governing unit] was only one among few dozens of such administrative regions within the [occupying] Ottoman Empire. This was not “an Albanian villaet” and it included Raska region, Kosovo, Metohia and the Skopje-Tetovo region.
Secondly, the Albanians did not constitute a majority in this villaet, the majority were the Serbs and other Slavs. Thirdly, in 1912 Serbia did not go to war against Arbanassi [Albanians], instead, together with other Balkan Christians, Serbia went to war to free itself from the Ottoman Empire. Fourth, alongside the Ottoman troops, Albanians have fanatically fought against Balkan Christians until the end of the war.
The Christian Europe knows that Serbs played a significant role in halting the Ottoman march towards the rest of Europe since the end of 17th century. This fact, at some point, motivated Henry Kissinger to point to the centuries of clashes between Islam and Christianity as the basis for the crisis in Kosovo-Metohia.
Although Turkey was pushed out of Europe by the Balkan Christians, it apparently wants to return to the Balkans. Albania and Turkey have an agreement on the military alliance since 1992. Turkey rushed to immediately recognize the self-proclaimed statelet on the territory of Serbia. The former Turkish President Ozal emphasized that the borders of the former Ottoman Empire in the Balkans belong to the Turkish sphere of interest. Some researchers point that the United States entrusted Germany and Turkey with governing the Balkans’ relations.
Regarding the historical background, the Austro-Hungarian Empire took the key role in solving the Balkan and Eastern question at the Berlin Congress in 1878. Vienna’s main goal was banishing the Russian influence and establishing its own control, not only over the western, but also the eastern part of the Balkans. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was, even at the cost of war, working to prevent the creation of a larger, compact, Serbian and Slavic state, but most of all against the Serbian unity. One of the leading ideologues of the Austro-Hungarian Balkan strategy was Benjamin Kalaj, Belgrade consul (1868-1875) and the occupational governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1882-1903). The accent was on creating a system of the mutually hostile small satellite statelets in the Balkans, with the smallest possible Serbian state. Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Andrássy called this strategy a “programme for the future”. Already in June 1880, Vienna assessed that the Albanians could be used as a “destructive force” in the southeast, where they should play the role of “the Romanians of the southeastern Balkans”.
Historian H. D. Schanderl believes that, at the start, Great Britain had the leading role in organizing the Albanian national movement. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice asserted in April 1880 that it is in the interest of Europe to create “strong Albania” which would include the Skadar, Janjina, Kosovo and Bitola villaet, under the Sultan’s sovereignty. That role was later taken over by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What else does today’s policy of West and USA represent, if not the policy of creating the “strong Albania” which is, in fact, the “Greater Albania”
In the Yugoslav Kingdom and later republic, as we can see today, quite a few unfriendly states played the card of the Albanian minority.In the first place, there is an obvious manifold instrumentalization of the Albanian minority for the purpose of destroying the Yugoslav and Serbian state, and spreading of their [Western] influence. Remember that NATO bombarded Serbia to, allegedly, protect the Albanian minority, but we now see that at the core of the issue is seizure of the cornerstone of the Serbian state and cultural identity. The so-called free and democratic world is absolutely unconcerned with the means Albanian separatist movement employs in Kosovo-Metohia, from the individual crimes and ethnic cleansing, to the terrorist actions of [Albanian] kachaks between the two World Wars, or those of KLA at the end of 20th century.
The platform for solving the Albanian national question of the Albanian Academy of Science in Tirana is constructing, since October 20, 1998, among else, some kind of “historical Kosovo” which, alongside present Kosovo and Metohia, includes Vranje Valley [central Serbia] they call an “eastern Kosovo”, then the Kumanovo-Skopje region [FYR Macedonia] – “south Kosovo”, and parts of the northern Montenegro they refer to as the “western Kosovo”. The capital of such Kosovo, which is simply invented as a region, ought to be Skopje [FYR Macedonia] since, they say, that was the capital of the ancient province of Dardania.
: Today’s policy of the leading EU states and the USA toward the Serbs and the southeastern Europe largely echoes the concept of the Great Mitteleuropa of Friedrich Neumann from 1915 (the system of the “satellite states” in the Balkans, though Serbia doesn’t ‘deserve’ to be even a satellite), and in one part it also reminds of certain ideas of the Great German Reich. A society for the southeastern Europe founded in Vienna in 1940, created elaborate work at the end of 1941 for “the Balkans’ order of peace”. We know all too well what their “order of peace” meant.
Doesn’t this irresistibly remind of the years of persistent presenting the destruction of Yugoslavia and dismemberment of Serbia as an effort to “establish stability and peace in the Balkans”? Ahtisaari’s deputy Albert Rohan, at one point an executive director in the Office of the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, exhibited the obvious revanchism toward the Serbs and Serbia. In an interview to Politika (June 21, 2006) he said: “I wouldn’t want to talk abut the Serbian crimes, I would rather mention the role of Serbia in the First World War. Serbia most certainly has no right to renew its former rule over Kosovo, that must be accepted.”
Serbia was equally demonized in 1914, in 1941 and in 1991, as a factor of disorder that has to be eliminated. United States has now stepped at the helm of that kind of policy. The final goal is reducing Serbia to the borders since before 1912, and perhaps even narrower. In order to install the satellite quasi-statelets on the territory of Serbia, NATO bombarded and was cruelly destroying Serbia in 1999. One would expect that it is clear to everyone today that their aim was not “preventing the humanitarian catastrophe” and “democratization of Serbia”, but mutilation of Serbia.
This is the collapse of the international law and of the system of international relations built during the 20th century. Kosovo and Metohia is the internationally recognized part of Serbia, and afterwards of the Yugoslav state, by the Ambassadors’ Conference in London in 1912/13, by the Bucharest Peace Agreement in 1913, by the Versailles Peace Agreement in 1919, by the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and by the score of other international agreements. The violence over Serbia can only be compared to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier, which forced Czechoslovakia to hand its Sudet region over to Germany. At the time, Hitler declared that Germany has no other territorial desires in Europe. Today, almost all the leading Western officials are saying that Kosovo is a “unique case” and will not represent a precedent. This only serves to deceive the world public.
Since the time of the Albanian League (1878-1881) certain influential circles in Europe and in the U.S. are exhibiting the strong anti-Slavic orientation. On the other hand, the Albanians are very skillfully presenting themselves as an obstacle to the alleged “panslavism” in the southeastern Europe. The Albanian writer Ismail Kadare claims that “Kosovo is the land where the Slavic surge has been stopped in the early mid-century. It has destroyed the panslavic dream: conquering and slavicizing of the main European peninsula.”
Unlike Germany, Turkey or Austria—attitudes of which reveal revanchism toward the Serbs and Serbia—United States views the Serbian question in the wider context of its policy from Baltic to Mediterranean. The main target is Russia, and within that strategy, the Near and Mideast and Middle Asia. Aspiring to redivide the world anew, they view Balkans as important in the context of establishing complete control in the rear of the great “penetration to the East”.
It is interesting that Albanians never accepted alliance with other Balkan nations in the war against Turkey. They were always an extended arm of one of the great powers which wished to dominate the Balkans. They think that now the moment has come for creation of the “Great Albania” and they are supported by the West in those plans. So, they emphasize the alleged historical and ethnic “Illyrian-Albanian identity” supposedly existing since the era of an ancient Dardania.
The similarities between the Austro-Hungarian, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany policies from the first half of 20th century on the one side, and the policies of the leadership of the Western powers gathered around NATO and led by the United States from the end of the previous and beginning of this century, on the other, are astounding. All this involves the wider military-strategic and political-religious projects towards the southeastern Europe, Middle East and Middle Asia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Berlin Gottfried Hohenlohe believed that “support for development and strengthening of the Albanian factor as a counterbalance to Slavs in the Balkan peninsula” is one of the “main pillars” of the Hapsburg monarchy. During the First Balkan War, in 1912, when Kosovo and Metohia were liberated, minister of the foreign affairs Leopold Berthold considered Austro-Hungarian “vital interest” was to create a strong Albania as a “counterbalance to two Serbian sister states”, borders of which have to be pushed “as much as possible eastward, at the expense of the Serbs”.
But since you are calling on working on common cause ( whatever that means) I say, to you and other onlookers in the USA Dear Mark lets forget the myths, history, Turks, invaders, battles, losses, victims… Let me try to explain what hurts the most and explain it in the language you understand: WE HAD A DEAL AND YOU BROKE IT. As you know, Serbia did not fight Albanians in Kosovo. Yes, there was an insurgency. But it was US and Serbia that fought the real war. And it is true: Serbia lost. Serbia lost when it pulled UNTOUCHED AND UNCHALLENGED army from the most sacred part of its country. In my opinion it was a good idea to stop the violence and the killing. However, we had a deal. The deal that in some way, in some small, insignificant way Serbia will return to Kosovo. Not as a ruler but as a helper. Nine years later, when we, democratic, open Serbia ousted Milosevic in the streets, when he is dead in the Hague you have broken that deal. This is the new Serbia you lied to! Why? Because of what happened in the 1990 or 1998 or while Milosevic was alive? Why can’t the US & UK get over Milosevic? When will you stop looking into the past? When will you GET OVER IT?
