Robert Elsie

History of Albanian Literature

This comprehensive history of Albanian literature sheds light on an aspect of European culture which has remained virtually unknown until the recent dismantling of communism.

Studies in modern Albanian literature and culture

This text examines contemporary Albanian literature and culture from an outsiders perspective, bringing major Albanian literary works to a wide audience.

ALBANIAN LITERATURE IN THE MOSLEM TRADITION

On 28 June 1389, the Turks defeated a coalition of Balkan forces under Serbian leadership at Kosovo Polje, the plain of the blackbirds, and established themselves as masters of the Balkans. By 1393 they had overrun Shkoder, although the Venetians were soon able to recover the city and its imposing citadel. The conquest of Albania continued into the early years of the 15th century. The mountain fortress of Kruje was taken in 1415 and the equally strategic towns of Vlore, Berat and Kanine in southern Albania fell in 1417. By 1431, the Turks had incorporated southern Albania into the Ottoman Empire and set up a sanjak administration with its capital in Gjirokaster, captured in 1419. Feudal northern Albania remained in the control of its autonomous tribal leaders, though now under the suzerain power of the Sultan. The Turkish conquest did not meet without resistance on the part of the Albanians, notably under George Castrioti, known as Scanderbeg (1405-1468), prince and now national hero. Sent by his father as a hostage to Sultan Murad II, the young Castrioti was converted to Islam and was given a Moslem education in Edirne (Adrianople). The Turks called him Iskender and gave him the rank of bey, hence the name Scanderbeg. In 1443, Scanderbeg took advantage of the Turkish defeat at Nish at the hands of John Hunyadi to abandon the Ottoman army, return to Albania and reembrace Christianity. His first great achievement was to unite the feudal and independent-minded tribes of northern Albania into the League of Lezhe in 1444. By a ruse, he took over the fortress of Kruje and was proclaimed commander-in-chief of an Albanian army which, though independent, could be no match for the huge military potential of the Turks. In 1453, Constantinople itself fell to the forces of Mehmet II Fatih (the Conquerer), thus putting an end to the thousand-year-old Byzantine Roman Empire of the East. But Albania, though abandoned to its fate, was not to give up easily. In the following years, Scanderbeg successfully repulsed thirteen Ottoman