Are Albanians related to Greeks?

Gjergj_Arianiti,
Please refrain from using abusive language.
Simple statement of your arguments is enough.
You can hurt somebody's feelings by building strong arguments, but not vulgarities.
Thanks.

phaaa

Albanians the old in BALKAN but greek are not

Costumes greeks are albanian, food are turkish

Language homerike are albanins language not greeks

long live Albania-Illyrtia

 History of Illyria
-Jennifer Wallace-

Pjesa I

Throughout history., little has been known about the land of Illyria. 'As "savages" or "barbarians" on the northern periphery of the classical world'., the historian John Wilkes writes., 'even today the IUyrians barely make footnotes in most versions of ancient history., and more often than not they are simply ignored.'1 Shut in by mountains., north of the better-known Greece and covering roughly the area of modern-day Albania., Macedonia., and Bosnia^ Illyria has remained a closed world to outsiders., dismissed as barbarian in ancient times and remembered in more recent centuries only as an unexplored outpost of the Ottoman or Hapsburg Empires. As a result, Illyria has become a place of mystery., the site of myth and legend as much as of historical civilization-building or battles, a by-word for the realm of the imagination. Oscar Wilde summed up the popular association of Illyria with fiction when., in a review of an amateur production of Twelfth Night, he wrote with characteristic succinctness: 'Where there is no illusion there is no Illyria.'2
In his recent book The Ilyrians, John Wilkes attempts to reverse this ignorance by stripping away the accumulated legends., or 'illusion'.,
 
about the Illyrian people and unearthing, in their stead, painstaking detail about the reality of their civilization. But this strategy seems to reduce the overall picture of the identity of Illyria. For Illyria has always been a place where fact and fiction meet, where myth is substituted in the absence of knowledge and later becomes a geographical or historical reality, mapped onto the physical landscape or the territory's political borders. Illyria has also always been a threshold between the known and the unknown world, a threshold internalized by the Illyrian peoples themselves, sometimes considered 'Western' - and even Greek - but at other times thought to be barbarian and different. It is a liminal space which dramatizes the problems of our conventional polarizations of ethnic identity.
In many ways, the study of Illyria, its myth and history, serves as an analogy for the study of Greece. Greece, too, comes with almost as much mythical baggage as historical facts. In the lesser known, and lesser loved, example of Illyria, we have a parallel land combining a powerful mixture of ancient stories and dimly remembered historical details to forge its independence in the nineteenth century. But Illyria is interesting because throughout history it has served, not only as a parallel for Greece, but also as a counterpoint to it. From Herodotus to Byron, Illyria has been cited as the opposite of Greece, used to illuminate, by contrast, the particular qualities of Greece. This contrast has by no means been straightforward, since it has not always been obvious where Greece stops and Illyria begins. Indeed Illyria serves to highlight the fact that the conventional polarization between Greek and barbarian/other, which persisted through ancient Greek history and has been revived since independence in 1830, created as much anxiety and lack of distinction as it did clarity. Thus the history of Illyria and its literary appropriation raises the issue of Greek ethnicity - both ancient and modern - and sheds light upon the uneasy relationship between national myth, politics, and geography which still troubles the Balkan area today.
Ancient Model
The mountainous land of the ancient Illyrian tribes stretched down the Adriatic coast from modern-day Trieste to the Rhizonic gulf. The ancient Greeks considered the Illyrians to be barbarians. They were non-Greek speakers and they had different customs; they were made up of various tribes. Herodotus refers to the Eneti tribe in Illyria and their habit of taking their daughters to the marketplace to sell them for marriage, a custom which he compares with that of the Babylonians, another barbarian people.3 Yet the clear distinction between the Greeks and barbarians with different customs is made more complicated by the observation that all of Greece was once populated by barbarians. Herodotus comments early in his history that Greece was originally occupied by Pelasgians who spoke a non-Greek language.4 This notion of the barbarian origins of Greece was corroborated centuries later by Strabo in his Geography:
Now Hecataeus of Miletus says of the Peloponnesus that before the time of the Greeks it was inhabited by barbarians. Yet one might say that in the ancient times the whole of Greece was a settlement of barbarians, if one reasons from the traditions themselves. . . . And even to the present day the Thracians, Illyrians, and Epeirotes live on the flanks of the Greeks (though this was still more the case formerly than now); indeed most of the country that at the present time is indisputably Greece is held by the barbarians -Macedonia and certain parts of Thessaly by the Thracians, and the parts above Acarnania and Aetolia by the Threspoti, the Cassopaei, the Amphilochi, the Molossi, and the Athamanes - Epeirotic tribes.5
According to this argument, the Hellenic Greeks had either emerged or arrived after the original barbarians and had civilized them and the land. The Illyrians and the Greeks were therefore thought to have shared a common origin, even if they had subsequently drifted apart. The Illyrians were closer to the primitive beginnings of the land, while the Greeks, like their Olympian gods, represented a later, and possibly higher, civilization. Beyond ancient myths of ethnic origin, the Illyrians were also deeply involved with the Greeks in the historical period. Strabo refers to the fact that 'the Thracians, Illyrians, and Epeirotes live on the flanks of the Greeks'. In fact much of Thrace, Illyria, and Epirus was colonized by the Greeks, with the inevitable mingling and merging of the peoples. The largest Greek colony in Illyria was Epidamnus, the later Durazzo. It was here, according to Thucydides, that the first sparks of the Peloponnesian War caught fire. In 435 B.C., the aristocrats of Epidam¬nus were expelled by a newly emerged democratic group of people in the city. Anxious to regain their power, they allied themselves with the neighbouring people, 'a barbarian tribe, the Taulantians, of Illyrian race (ethnos)\6 'Making common cause with the barbarians', Thucydides writes, the aristocrats 'plundered those who were in the city both by land and sea'.7 The besieged democrats sought help from Corinth, the city of their original founder, while the now outnumbered aristocrats were soon aided by the newer colonizers, Corcyra. Athens and Sparta were quickly drawn into the feud, as the different political alliances spread, and the Hellenic world began the process of tearing itself apart.
The Illyrians had a role to play later in the war in the battle of shifting alliances which characterized the campaigns. Since the Illyrians lived on the 'flanks' of Greece, as Strabo commented, it was unclear to con¬temporaries whether they supported Athens or Sparta in the war, whether indeed they were sufficiently Greek to express support for either city. In one particular campaign, described by Thucydides, Brasidas the Spartan general believes that his ally Perdiccas, who leads a troop of Macedonians, has elicited the support of the Illyrians, only to discover that they have deserted and gone to help the opposition. The Illyrians, suddenly become enemies, present a frightening prospect to the Spartans, precisely because they are barbarian and different. Brasidas feels the need of a rallying speech:
Now as for these Illyrians, for those who have had no experience of them, the menace of their attack has terror; for their number is indeed dreadful to behold and the loudness of their battle-cry is intolerable, and the idle brandishing of their arms has a threatening effect. But for hand-to-hand fighting, if their opponents but endure such threats, they are not the men they seem; for having no regular order, they would not be ashamed to abandon any position when hard pressed; and since flight and attack are considered equally honourable with them, their courage cannot be put to the test.8
Brasidas defines the otherness of the Illyrians by pointing both to their excessive violence - their war-cry and their arms - and at the same time to their weakness - their tendency to retreat. What is not stressed is the fact that until the news of the Illyrian betrayal, Brasidas was prepared, and hoping, to fight alongside the men he now condemns so vehe¬mently. Greek alliances, and thus to an extent Greek identity, are forged by such whims and exigencies of war.
In the third century B.C., the Romans began their conquest of the area, and two centuries later they had succeeded in establishing command. They named the province Illyricum. The place, and the name, lasted until the sixth or seventh centuries A.D. when Slav invasions changed the character of the whole region. Many Illyrians are thought to have died or to have fled. The others were absorbed by Slavic settlers. The name for the actual geographical place disappeared for the next thousand years. It left the space free for the fictionalizers.
 
Literary Metamorphoses
The most well-known literary representation of Illyria occurs in Shake¬speare's Twelfth Night. Viola finds herself shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria at the start of the play, and the subsequent comedy of the plot derives from the fact that she comes from a strange world beyond the naive isolation of Illyria and therefore her identity is unknown. Shake¬speare's story is drawn from the tangled comic narratives of Plautus and most directly, it is thought, from the Italian play GV Inganni.9 There is no mention of Illyria in these plays. But one source for Shakespeare's Illyrian setting has been suggested - Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid describes Cadmus and Harmonia being washed onto the Illyrian shore after shipwreck and the turmoil of losing their daughter:
Compelled with grief and great mishappes that had ensewed together And strange foretokens often seene since first his coming thither. He utterly forsakes his towne the which he builded had, As though the fortunes of the place so hardly him bessad And not his owne. And fleeting long like pilgrims, at the last Upon the coast of Illirie his wife and he were cast.10
Besides Homer's description of the shipwreck of Odysseus in Odyssey 5, Cadmus' wreck upon Illyria had become one of the chief literary models for shipwreck in classical literature and therefore a clear source for Shakespeare's account. Besides, there is in the notion of the metamor¬phosis which comes over Cadmus and Harmonia on landing upon Illyria (they become snakes), a particular resource for comedy. The humour of Twelfth Night is based upon the saturnalian possibilities of the festive season to change identities and to turn hierarchies upside-down. Viola cross-dresses, Malvolio is fooled and mocked by the socially inferior members of the household. Comedy indeed is licensed to offer a topsy¬turvy mirror to the world. But the dark side of the play, such as Feste's mournfully reflective songs or the loss of Viola/Cesario's freedom as she reverts back in Act V to the meekly feminine Viola, also owes something to Ovid's Illyria in the Metamorphoses. Cadmus and Harmonia as snakes, or in Golding's translation 'Dragons', live in wistful remembrance of their past: 'now remembering what they were themselves in tymes forepast / They neither shonne nor hurten men with stinging nor with blast.'11 Illyria offers the chance to explore the irrevocable, tragic consequences of change as well as the comic.12
 
But besides a place of comic or tragic metamorphosis, Shakespeare's Illyria is a traditional paradise. The connection between Illyria and paradise is highlighted in Viola's opening scene:
Viola: What country, friends, is this? Captain: This is Illyria, lady.
Viola: And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium.
Illyria and Elysium are linked through alliteration. It is as if Viola has died and been washed ashore onto her own Elysium, Illyria. Later the parallel becomes even stronger when it is discovered that Sebastian, Viola's brother, has also survived the shipwreck and has landed in Illyria. His Elysium is also Illyria; Viola's opening words have proved false and yet strangely truer than she realises. Both siblings achieve Elysian happiness with the lovers they meet in Illyria.
In Matthew Arnold's poem Empedocles on Etna (1852), Illyria returns to Ovid's model in that it is again the setting for the story of Cadmus and Harmonia. While Empedocles agonizes about his sense of alienation from society on the mountain peak, Callicles sings the 'soothing' song of Cadmus and Harmonia in the valley below. Unlike Ovid's account, Arnold's Cadmus and Harmonia, 'far in the Illyrian brakes', do not remember their past:
Therefore they did not end their days
In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away,
To where the west-wind plays,
And murmurs of the Adriatic come
To those untrodden mountain-lawns; and there
Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
Wholly forgot their first sad life, and home,
And all that Theban woe, and stray
For ever through the glens, placid and dumb.13
Illyria becomes the site of forgetfulness, almost of troubling erasure. There are echoes, in Cadmus and Harmonia's 'placid' state, of the Lotos Eaters portrayed by Arnold's contemporary, Tennyson. Indeed it is tempting to think that the ancient mapping of the Illyrians and the Lotos Eaters side by side, beyond the boundaries of the known world, must have filtered down to the Victorians.14 The peaceful Illyrian landscape, with its soporific power to quell awkward resistance and anxiety, provides one controversial answer to Arnold's anxious but fascinated questioning of his contemporary world.15

Romantic Quest
At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century - the so-called Romantic period - Illyria once more assumed a historical and geographical specificity, albeit one influenced by the mythical associations of the name which had developed. The key figure in this alteration was Napoleon. By the treaty of Schonbrunn in 1809, the lands bordering the Adriatic were ceded by Austria to the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy. Napoleon chose to call these newly acquired lands - then known as Trieste, Croatia, Carinthia, Istria, and Dalmatia - the 'Illyrian Provinces', a term not used since ancient times. As in his other campaigns, notably the one in Egypt, Napoleon was using ancient history to justify his military appropriation and reconstruction. Lands once acquired by him were 'liberated' from recent historical oppression and degeneration, according to the current rhetoric, and restored to their original identity and splendour, albeit under the French aegis.16 Restoring the name Illyria for the territory north-west of Greece was part of this strategy. And even though in 1815, with Napoleon's defeat, the land returned to Austrian rule, the consciousness of an ancient identity had by then been raised. The area, under the Hapsburg Empire, became known as the 'kingdom of Illyria'.
The nineteenth-century Slav independence campaign, which carried the name the Illyrian Movement, appropriated the myth which had been fabricated by the West, by outsiders, and used it for a new, nationalist purpose. Like the Greeks in their campaign for independence, the southern Slavs devoted much energy to asserting their descent from the ancient Illyrians. The mysteriousness and the elysian qualities of the Illyrians of western legend became transformed into a vision of their former purity and perfection. The chief agitator for independence, Ljudevit Gaj, for example, urged the purity of the Illyrian language which must be re-acquired or re-invented. Writing in 1835 at the start of the campaign, he attempted to inspire dissenters:
Brother Illyrians, when will we, inhabitants of the old, great and world-famous Illyrica, throw away our prejudices and self deception and follow the glorious examples of our neighbours. . . . Books for the common people can be written in the local dialects but let educated and cultured Illyria have a mature and sweet language and a simple literature as her neighbour, Italy.17
Western travellers to Greece also became interested in Illyria after Napoleon's re-awakening. Chief among the travel writers was William Martin Leake, whose 'principal object [in writing] was a comparison of the ancient and modern geography, by confronting the information contained in the ancient authors with the actual state of the country'.18 His main concern was Albania, whose people, he argued, were des¬cended from the ancient Illyrians. Indeed, according to his thesis, the Albanians had originally been one of the Illyrian tribes and had now blossomed to inhabit the vast mountainous territory in modern-day north-west Greece, Albania, and southern Yugoslavia. The Albanians were of interest to Leake partly for political reasons. They lived within the Napoleonic Empire, although never physically invaded or con¬quered by Napoleon, and thus offered a mediating vision of the enemy. Leake writes in the preface of 1814:
Subsequent events, which have checked the torrent of French ambition, may have diminished the political importance of Albania, but at the time these Researches were made, its dialect had received an additional claim to notice from the changes which had brought the country where it is spoken into contact with our own enemies, who then made no secret of their design of seeking a road through Albania into Greece. Under these circumstances it became doubly interesting to obtain some knowledge of the language . . .
Once again, as in ancient times, Illyria/Albania was serving as a buffer between the known and unknown world, between the allies and the enemies.
But Leake was also interested in the Albanians because they seemed purer and therefore possibly more Greek than the Greeks. They were uncontaminated by invasion and were fiercely nationalistic. Leake described them as
irregular and undisciplined as soldiers, but possessing a perfect familiarity with the use of arms; ferocious and ignorant and uncivilised, but cherishing an enthusiastic partiality for their native mountains, and adding to the advantages of a country, which opposes the strongest natural obstacles to an invader, that determination to resist all foreign intruders, and that confidence in their ability to defend themselves, which had, until that period of the war, been found very deficient in soe more civilised nations of Europe.19

 

Edited by AlbanianTriology

ALBANIAN MYTHOLOGY 

by       
Jonathan Michael         

Unknown Albania: Much more than guns and eagles   

Some Illyrian goddesses         

When I celebrated last year my birthday in Tirana, my friends Pandi and Vona offered me the head of a goddess. This is Dea, they said, she is the goddess of love.  How practical, I thought ... Well, Dea       

is  just the Latin word for goddess, and it is also due to the calm, introverted  traits of the little white head you can read everything into that Dea seems to  me like the representation of all female deities which were venerated in ancient  Illyria, a part of which is the modern Albania. So let me invite you to the world of Illyrian goddesses, which are quite unknown outside Albania and even inside the nowadays extremely patriarchal country. If you like, let’s have a cup of balm tea, which in German is called Melisse - you will see why...       

The Illyrians had gods and goddesses of their own; besides, Greek and Roman influences had their effect on Illyrian religiosity. So the well-known gods of ancient mythology found a new home in the land which is today Albania - a process which also took place in Germany -, they got acculturated to the new surroundings by undergoing sometimes radical changes.           

In my opinion, Illyria was a society of transition (as they also call modern Albania), a transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Although fundamentally patriarchal, that society still conserved many matriarchal elements. So women were in a relatively strong position compared to Greece or Rome, and still today many Albanian girls are named after the Illyrian queen Teuta, which led the resistance against the Roman conquerors. This high importance of women in social life corresponded to a high presence of the female in religious life, in other words: goddesses. Those of you who are familiar with ancient mythology may find some old friends among them, whereas others are quite new and by now are not yet to be found in the ever growing pile of popular books about goddesses.       



Ilitia         

Ilitia or Eilitia, a daughter of Zeus and Hera, was sent by her mother to all women who gave birth, in order to help them through these difficult and decisive moments.  In the Albanian mosaic called Beauty of Durrës and elsewhere, she is represented as a young girl surrounded by an ocean of flowers and carrying a lighted torch symbolising the new-born child. Ilitia was the universal metaphor of survival, writes the Albanian archaeologist Moikom Zeqo, who discovered the identity of the goddess shown in the Durrës mosaic, the contrary of death and oblivion.   

Ilitia is the main representative of the Auras, goddesses of the air. They look like pagan angels with their wings on their shoulders, and they are all surrounded by flowers.       

According to Barbara Walker, Ilithyia or Eileithyia is the epithet of the Great Goddess in her function of the divine midwife. During birth, women prayed to her as the liberator who freed the child from the womb.         



Demeter         

The veneration of this well-known goddess of the earth, with her mystery plays in  Eleusis, was also quite common in Illyria. Albanologists claim that her name has to do with the Albanian word dhe, earth. Demeter, also called Damater, is  thus literally Mother Earth, what describes exactly her role. It also corresponds to the Illyrian myth of creation, where the Earth as the basis of life gives birth to everything.     

There is an inscription found near Plovdiv, Bulgaria, dedicated to Demeter, which, according to the albanologist Eqrem Çabej, can best be explained by means of the Albanian language derived from the Illyrian. It is a formula of Demeter’s cult, the cult of the Earth seen as universal mother, and means: Earth, hold me / hold on to me! I invite you to try out this part of spirituality rooted in ancient Albania. Pronounce or sing these magical words, if possible outside, in touch with Mother Earth. Use it as a prayer or a mantra, as a guideline of your meditation, in order to come back to earth from your spiritual flights or when you are stressed, in order to feel better that we all are a part of this globe  and to feel the security and power that emanates from the Earth. Be careful:  these words may have strong effects.           

The ritual words of Demeter’s cult are: DA DALEME.           



Melissa

We find the echo of matriarchy in the figure of Melissa and in the legend of the place of her union with the god of the sea, a maritime cult place, writes Zeqo about the foundation of the town of Durrës. Her worship was very popular among the Illyrian inhabitants of the town and its surroundings.     

The legend tells that in a place called Melisonion, a certain Melissa was seduced by the god of the sea, Redon in Illyrian, and then gave birth to Durrah, one of the legendary founders of the seaport. Melissa, according to Appian, was the daughter of Epidamn, the first founder of the town. However, Melissa is more than just a simple girl. Zeqo adds that Melissa is the Greek word for bee, an animal which figures on old Illyrian coins, and calls her a nymph. Here we must bear in mind the fact that during the process of ideological  patriarchalisation, female goddesses and divinities, in order to be replaced by  male gods, either became a negative image (like the holy snake, which represents  wisdom and the forces of the earth and which played a predominant role in  Illyrian mythology) or were downgraded and thus denied importance. According to Walker, Melissa or queen bee was the title of Aphrodite’s Highest Priestess.  Also the above mentioned Demeter was connected with bees, the honey-producing animals. Honey, a female-associated substance, besides its sweet and healing qualities, was considered as a substance for resurrection magic and is linked with rituals of many peoples’ mythologies. As for Aphrodite, originally she was not only the love goddess, but the threefold Great Goddess, the trinity of virgin, mother and old woman. She was said to be older than time and ruled the world according to matriarchal natural law.

These data throw a different light on the status of Melissa. We may even speculate about the Melisonion as being originally the place of a hieros gamos  (holy wedding) ritual, where the union of the Goddess and the sea god created a  town on the meeting point of land and sea, linking these two spheres.         

By  the way, Melissa tea, especially if you add honey, is a very healthy drink,  calming you down and having a healing effect on a large scale of symptoms.   



Diana     

Every year in early spring, the German town of Heidelberg celebrates in a symbolical way the victory of spring over the winter king, who has to die and is burnt, represented by a straw puppet. This event is called Summer Day reminding a time where people distinguished only between two seasons, the cold and the warm one. The same day, with the same name Summer Day, is also celebrated in Albania, especially in the Central Albanian town of Elbasan. Here, however, the celebration is hold in the honour of the goddess Diana.

Diana or Artemis was a goddess of highest importance in Illyria. Her adoration shows the still relatively strong matriarchal character of Illyrian society.  Near Elbasan there was a temple of Diana, marking the accomplished transition between Illyrian paganism in natural temples without walls and roofs (for example the Melisonion) and the classical Roman and Greek paganism with their built temples.       

It is said that Diana took over the functions of a local goddess of vegetation and fertility and the seasons. Originally, however, Diana was not only the pretty  virgin who goes hunting in the woods, but a representation of the Great Goddess,  too, the trinity of the moon virgin, the mother of all beings and the destroying  hunter.   



Ika 

It seems that Ika, a nymph or better river-related goddess with the attributes of Aphrodite, is the favorite goddess of many an Albanian nowadays, because in modern Albanian ika means I went away, I left... 

So before I leave you, I hope you enjoyed this little trip to ancient Illyria and some of the matriarchal roots of Albania. I invite you to join Ilitia, Demeter, Melissa, Diana and her colleagues in real Albania, the country which is  characterised on postcards as a beautiful nature, a powerful spirit. If you go there with an open heart, you will notice, too, that it is a land full of magic and full of surprises...           

Silke Blumbach           

Main sources:   

Barbara G. Walker, Das geheime Wissen der Frauen, München: dtv, 41997   

Moikom Zeqo, Motive arkeologjike dhe shkrime të tjera, Tirana: 8     

Nëntori, 1990.

Moikom Zeqo, Panteoni ilir, Tirana: Globus R, 1995. 

Civilizations the world over have developed and perpetuated myths as a means of explaining natural phenomena and the mysteries of life and death itself. Though widely unknown, Albanian Mythology holds an intriguing blend of tales and legends, most dating back to the pagan beliefs of Ancient Illyria. Others have incorporated more blends of fictional beings addressing the many complexities of morality, good, and evil. At the beginning reside the Illyrian divinities of nature, constructed by our ancestors as a means of comprehending the world which surrounded them.           

Many pan-cultural influences can be noted in some Albanian mythological characters. The lubi, --a monster  holding the head of a lion, body of a goat, and tail of a serpent—is to the  Greeks a chimera, while the ghostly kukuth holds similar powers to the  Slavic vila. Even a variation of the very English Tom Thumb can be noted as resting akin to the Albanian tale of Kacilmic. Such similarities also exist between Illyrian Gods and Goddesses with those of other cultures. The Illyrian Goddess Diana,  accompanied by a female goat  (alb. dhia goat),  was directly adopted by the Romans and holds a host of qualities to the Greek’s  Artemus. Other divinities remained highly local. Enji, the God of fire (Agni in India), Surd, the God of weather, and Bindus that of water, were all creations of Illyrian reverence to the awesome powers of nature. Goddesses such as Medauras and Prema were held as the supreme beings to heal ailments and spawn fertility. Strangely, unlike the mythology of others, the Albanian strain developed without the cosmogenic view of how the world was created, nor the eschatological prophecies of how the world would end, and remained firmly terrestrial and centered on those things that could be touched  or felt firsthand. The advent of Christian and Islamic lore brought belief in such deities to the end of their epoch in Albania and elsewhere. Myths such as  Persius saving Andromeda from the Hydra for the most part were replaced by  related religious ventures such as Saint George saving the princess of Sylene  from being sacrificed to the dragon. If not for the work of such astronomers as Ptolemy Llagos of Illyria, who placed such stories literally into the heavens through the naming of constellations, such mythology would be even less recalled today.         

Supplementing the acts of the Gods and Goddesses rests the mythology of the common man and the world?s evil they must face. Albanian Mythology is filled  with a variety of monsters, ranging from mighty giants called Baloz, to  tiny gnomes called Thopc who take delight in teasing people by turning  them into animals. In such tales live witches known as shtrigas which cast spells and the Syni I keq. Female nymphs known as oras, whose  glance can turn a man into stone, vampire-like lugats which live off  human blood, and karkanxhols—half-man, half-wolf , which hunt shepherds  under the full moon—are among the mythological personifications of evil in  which folklore and superstition abound. Indeed, though made famous by the Germanic minority of Wallachia who were subjugated to the horrors of ruler Vlad Dracul, then later by the author Bram Stoker, it was Lord Byron who first related tales to Western Europeans of vampires. These tales were inspired by the folklore and tales he encountered while visiting Southern Albania.       

To such vestiges of horror as lugats came the need for heroes with ingenious methods to combat them. Such heroes might themselves take the form of mere mortals, or those figures of mythology which were adhered to as good. Zanas, female mountain spirits which dwell near streams, have often been called upon to protect Albanian warriors. The deadly acts of kulshedras,  a fire-breathing serpent with seven heads that pollutes the water, air, and  soil, have for time immemorial been slain by drangues; human-like  warriors with wings under their arms. When lacking such mythical interventions, Albanians have taken it upon themselves to combat evil with assorted amulets, herbs, magical stones, rings, and through such practices as shooting at the moon to ward off wolves. It is still the belief that to spit in a fire is taboo, and that one will be petrified if he breaks an oath made on a pledge stone.     

Aspects of more modern and tangible calls for courage are highly represented in more recent forms of Albanian folklore, whereby the acts and deeds of real individuals become legendary, and take on almost mythical proportions. Typical  in Southern Albania are the heroics of noble sons, burri I dheut, who  took to battle against the overwhelming might of the Turk, as well as faithful  women, bukura e dheut, who chose to jump to their death off of cliffs,  their babies in arm, rather than be taken or even touched by the invader. The tales of Northern Albania generally focus on the common man’s battle with their Slavic neighbors. Songs and tales surround such characters as Muj, a shepherd who gains great powers by capturing three goats with golden horns, and in turn defeats the Slavs in battle. Upon his death, the enemy challenges him in his grave, from where he calls on his brother Halil to defeat them and return him to life. Other figures of mountain lore such as Oso Kuka, Marash  Uci, and the brave maiden Tringa have been immortalized in the works  of such writers as Gjergj Fishta, and represent battles for freedom and  survival which are unfortunately still very prominent in the lives of the  Albanian people to this day.     

zzzzzzzzzzzz

AlbanianTriology,
I have reported you to the Moderators for inflammatory posts and for attempting to start a flame-war.

Aeolus

Don't cry guy sorry gay from hell-ass  

ok good luck  

Amazing. I give him a 2/10 for originality. Hell-ass... what a riot. I give him a couple of days at most before he is banned.

Anyway, as I have said to this guy before, Albanians are a mix of the actual Albanian people and the native Illyrians. That is about as far as I can say to anyone so influenced by propaganda. However, as he said to me, I am just a know-nothing Filipino, which is not racist at all . Forgive me moderators, I am usually civil, but what he said to me was a severe personal attack.

Hey, where is Iskenderani anyway? I miss how he could take on five forumers at once.


Edited by Belisarius

Dear Phallanx
for the first of all, I want to be sure, whon you understand (or accept?? sorry for my english isn't an offensive mode) something:

1)
Dyqanxhi(storekeeper) isn't an albanian word. is an turkish word
Exist dyqan for 'Store, shop' in albanian, but is an word loan from turkish
list of translate
Store - Alb. sh*tore, dyqan
Storekeeper - Alb. sh*tes
Merchant - Alb. Tregtar

2)
You have write:
ill     serb    & nbsp;    alb          english
metu -  medju  -  ndermjet  -  between
ndermjet (Nder - Mjet) Nder is equivalent of the Inter in(Intermediary)
The correspondent word of metu in albanian is mjet (an archaic form)

3)
You have write
Illyrian-"barba"= (a swamp) Albo -"MOÇAL"
In albanian exist also another word for swamp soil "berrak" and "balta" for soil. I look an connection.

4)
ill.    serb    alb    eng
lugo     -  lug    - pelg   -  pool
In albanian exist the term Lugata (and this is an Archaic form) for pool.

5)
You have said
phallanx Posted: 15 July 2005 at 1:11am wrote:
]I never said names match, I said you use similar sounds such as SQ, SHQ, which are not common in any IE languages
CHECHENIA=ICHQERIA
ALBANIA=SHQIPERIA

"Shqiperia" is formed from the root "Shqip"
Shqip (or Shkip) initially is transformed in "Shqipni"(this form exist in the geg dialect) and last is transformed in Shqiperi (rhotacism n-->r, an common transformation in IE Languegges)
The sound SHQ and the Sound Q begin to entry in the common Albanian from XV siecle
they replace shk and kl
modern albanian "quhem" -- archaic albanian "kluem" BUZUKU 1455
the proces of transform the soud shq in shk is stil in ongoing. This is proved from the two form of the word 'slither'
Rreshkas and Rreshqas



I Wait with faith your conferm. Because I have same argument to discute for the place name and maritime terminology of Albanian

with respect
Neritan

I see a huge difference here.
Look at AlbanianTriology and then look at neritan.
One is full of anger and hate and the other keeps his cool and makes analyses.
I think that neritan is one that I would like to disagree with in these forums, whereas AlbanianTriology is one that I would rather see him out the door.