Cfare mendojne te huajt per Shqiptaret?

[Meriamun]

1774, Leipzig, Johan Tunman, “Kërkime në historinë e popujve të Evropës Lindore”.

Asnjë popull tjetër i botës në të cilën ne jetojmë, nuk është aq i panjohur për evropianët e perëndimit për sa i përket prejardhjes, historisë dhe gjuhës, sa shqiptarët.”E megjithatë, ata janë popuj kryesorë, të lashtë e të rëndësishëm, që çdo historian do të dëshironte t’i njihte: historia e tyre do të plotësonte zbrazëti të mëdha në historinë e vjetër e të re të Evropës. Por… ata sot nuk luajnë më ndonjë rol të veçantë. Ata janë të nënshtruar, ata janë fatkeq dhe historiani shpesh është po aq i padrejtë, sa dhe njeriu i zakonshëm; ai nuk i përfill ata që nuk i ka prirë fati

[Meriamun]

Montenegrins `Races of Europe’ Carlton S. Coon Chapter 14: The Greeks 1939

The Montenegrins, who are the tallest people in Europe… are linguistically Serbs, but there can be no question that they are to a large extent Slavicized Albanians; the cultural continuity between the two peoples is striking, the only real differences being those of language and religion.

[Meriamun]

But of all the regions I have seen, the Arnaut seems to me the most particular. They are natives of Arnaoutlich, the ancient Macedonia, and still retain something of the courage and hardiness, though they have lost the name, of Macedonians, being the best militia in the Turkish empire, and they only check upon the janissaries. They are foot soldiers; we had a guard of them, relieved in every considerable town we passed: they are all clothed and armed at their own expense, generally lusty young fellows, dressed in clean white coarse cloth, carrying guns of a prodigious length, which they run with on their shoulders as if they did not feel the weight of them, the leader singing a sort of rude tune, not unpleasant, and the rest making up the chorus. These people, living between Christians and Mahometans, and not being skilled in controversy, declare that they are utterly unable to judge which religion is best; but, to be certain of not entirely rejecting the truth, they very prudently follow both and go to the mosques on Fridays and the church on Sundays, saying for their excuse, that at the day of judgement they are sure of protection from the true prophet; but which that is, they are not able to determine in this world. I believe there is no other race of mankind have so modest an opinion of their own capacity. These are the remarks I have made on the diversity of religions I have seen…”

Letters from the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 1709 to 1762. Ed. By Ernest Rhys, Everyman’s Library, Essays. London etc.1925, p. 109.

[Meriamun]

"The Albanians have been born to resist and disobey."

Dursam Bey, during the second siege of Kruja.

[Meriamun]

"They are Nietzsche's over-men, these primitive Albanians — something between kings and tigers."-

Henry Noel Brailsford.

[Meriamun]

"The men who marched to Babylon , Persia and India were the ancestors of the Albanians..."

Wadham Peacook.

[Meriamun]

"Scanderbeg exceeds all the officers, ancient and modern, in the conduct of a defensive army. I met him in Turkish history but nowhere else.''

Major General James Wolfe, commander of the English army at the siege of Quebec, Canada, writting to Lord Sydney.

[Meriamun]

There is much difference of opinion as to the proportions of various nationalities and races among the inhabitants of modern Greece. It is alleged by some that a very large proportion of the population is Sclavic Albanian and it is certain that a considerable majority of the people living in Attica Messenia and Bceotia and a goodly number of those living in Laconia and parts of Achaia Elis Salamis Corinth Argolis Arcadia and Achaia are Albanians. Yet it is probable that the Albanian Greeks do not constitute more than from one fifth to one sixth of King George's subjects These Albanians are however the most thrifty and enterprising of the dwellers in Greece and form the large body of the farmers They are strong and patient men sedentary keeping close to their affairs and their ambition does not extend to the holding of office. Every evening says Edmond About at sunset you will meet near Athens long processions of Albanians returning with their wives from the labors of the fields. They almost all live at the foot of the Acropolis where the Pelasgians lived of old. The Albanians speak an original tongue which does not mix with any of the other Sclavic idioms.

Modern Greece By George Makepeace 1877

[Meriamun]

The Italian tribes closely related to the Hellenic held the greater part of Italy in the dawn of recorded history but they were probably preceded by the Pelasgians During the earlier part of the Bronze Age it is probable that the Etruscans had the supremacy in Italy and that both Italians and Pelasgians were at first tributary to them or became mingled with them in some parts of Italy The Pelasgians were widely distributed over the two peninsulas and the Thracian land Their place in the Aryan family is still unsettled Donaldson thinks they were Slavs but the general opinion is that they were an early tribe of the same blood with the Hellenic and Italic races in an inferior stage of development. Professor Pott calls them Illyrians, Rev FW Farrar Albanians both agreeing in considering them an offshoot of the yet undivided Graeco Italic stock. They seem to have held the Grecian peninsula at the time of the first Hellenic settlements.

THE
SOUTHERN MAGAZIN XIII
VOL XIII JULY TO DECEMBER 1873
BALTIMORE TURNBULL BROTHERS page 397



DR FLIGIF R ON THE PELASGIANS

The ethnographic position of the Pelasgians has been discussed for the last one hundred years by the most learned antiquarians but the arguments were not such as to arrive at a result acceptable to the majority of scientists. Aug Boeckh paid much attention to this question he thought this people were the racial ancestors of the later Greeks and their name was but another form of the term (pelasgian in written in pelasgian letters, I think lol, my notes)ancient. Dr Fligier thinks that the purely philological method of research must be abandoned in inquiring after the origin of the Pelasgians. In his recent article published in the "Archiv d'Anthro pologie vol 13 No 4 188O entitled Die Urzeit von Hellas und Italien 50" pages 410 he rests his argumentation not merely on the statements transmitted to us by antiquity but also on those furnished by modern linguistic ethnographic and anthropologic research. The Pelasgians had scattered over the whole of Hellas and the Peloponnesus over eight of the Egean islands through Thessaly the coasts of Macedonia Thracia and Asia Minor. They spoke a language which was not Greek but the people afterwards became hellenized in several districts Fligier thinks they were lllyrians or the ancestors of the present Albanians. The people of Epirus were Pelasgic also and the ancient colonists in southern Italy for instance the Japygians Peuketians Messapians just as well. They held the whole of what is now Greece and must be considered as the aboriginesl But early prehistoric immigrants from the Leleges and Carians reduced their territory. Thracians and Phrygians formed a second immigration and the four divisions of the Hellenes, or Greeks a third one. Thus the Pelasgians lost their independence by the overpowering influx of allophylic nations and fell into a condition of bondage. The Italian peninsula was originally inhabited by a pelasgic population similar to that of Greece. Fligier attempts to prove it linguistically by the identity of local names in both countries.

The
American Antiquarian
And
Oriental Journal

Volume V- January -October 1883
Edited by Rev. Stephen D.Peet
Chicago, Ill:
Jameson & Morse, Publishers 1883.

[Meriamun]

Very different from these Greeks are the Albanians with whom they have often been confounded. This people called by the Turks Arrnauts and by themselves Shkipeturs Mountaineers are 1,300,000 in number and inhabit the coast of the Adriatic between Servia and the kingdom of Greece. According to Herr von Hahn whose theory is now adopted by most ethnologists the Albanians are descended from the ancient Pelasgi who in Greece assimilated the Hellenic element in Southern Italy the Italian and in Illyria and Albania the Slavonian. They are a proud and martial people and have but little sympathy either with the Slavonians or the Greeks against both of whom they have frequently fought under Turkish generals Indeed they have preserved a sort of semi independence ever since the days of Pyrrhus whom as well as Alexander the Great they claim as their countryman. They were never thoroughly subdued by the Romans and when they were conquered by the Servians a number of them embraced the Roman Catholic faith in order to preserve the distinction between them and their conquerors. The Turks too found in Albania a more determined resistance than in any of the other provinces of the old Servian empire. The Albanian hero Scander beg (Prince Alexander) defeated them in twenty two battles and it was not until after his death in 1467 that the Albanians submitted but only on condition that they should be allowed to keep their arms and be exempt from taxes. To this day the Catholic Albanians or Mirdites who inhabit the northern part of the country enjoy a sort of independence under a hereditary prince and in the south the native pashas rule more like tributary sovereigns than the officials of a central government. The Mahometan Albanians have, it is true been the most devoted defenders of the Porte against the Greeks and have provided the sultans with some of their ablest and most energetic ministers but they never cease to strive afier their own independence. At home says Madame Dora d'lstria, they are troublesome vassals who only think of shaking off the Ottoman yoke,

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW
EDITED BY
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
VOL VI August 15 TO DECEMBER 1866

EUROPEAN TURKEY AND ITS SUBJECT RACES pg615.