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Post by Novi Pazar on Dec 20, 2008 0:57:45 GMT -5
I'll be referencing many historical texts and there will be some Serbian authors.
It begins:
It has never been precisely stated what one is to understand by the expressions "Macedonia" and "the Macedonian people." All we know is that ancient Macedonia was not a state with an ethnically and culturally homogenous population. According to Strabo, the Thracians and Illyrians made up the Macedonian people, while Leopold von Ranke states, "the mutual influence of the Macedonian and Greek ways of life constitutes the main theme of Macedonian history." Dr. Otto Hoffmann is of the opinion that the ancient Macedonians were ethnically Greeks, "but," he adds, "the Macedonian empire, which they founded, was in existence before the time of King Archelaus as a union of various peoples under the leadership and rule of the Greek Macedonians and their tribe." The same view is put forward by the writer of the article on Macedonia in the Paulys-Wissowa Real Encyclopadie: the Macedonians were of Greek provenance and inhabited Northern Thessaly. Dr. Karl Oestrich asserts that the ancient Macedonians were nearer to the Greeks than to the Thraco-Illyrian people. "They [the Macedonians] should be regarded as a nation closely realted to the Hellenes which, later on in the ancient period, became completely Hellenized. From Roman times on, there are no more Macedonians." Referring to this problem, Joachim H. Schultze asks in some perplexity, "....the Macedonians. They gave the land their name, but who were they? What do they signify nowadays? Do they exist at all? And what about the 'Macedonian Slavs'?". He goes on to say that the meaning of the term "Macedonian" as a territorial concept was frequently modified, and points out that the Arabian geographer Idrisi spoke of Rhodope and the Balkans as "Macedonian mountains" (gebel al-Maqedoni). James Barker remarks that with the fall of Perseus Macedonia lost its national character. The land was divided into four regions, the people enslaved and trade hampered. The British Universities Encyclopedia states: "The ancient kingdom of Macedonia extended in a northwesterly direction from the Aegean Sea. Originally occupying a small area, it streched, at the time of its greatest extent, from Haemus [i.e., the Balkans] in the north to Thessaly, and to the Aegean in the south, and from Epirus and Illyria in the west to Thrace in the east." In 168 B.C., the Romans turned it into a province which included Thessaly and Illyria. At the division of the Empire in 396 A.D., this province fell to the Eastern part. The fame of Macedonia was created by Philip and Alexander. Indeed, it is their achievements that impressed the name of Macedonia so deeply in the consciousness of its later inhabitants. According to Alexander Randa, Macedonian patronage of arts and letters lies at the foundation of the progressive activity of Hellenism.
More to be added later........
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Kralj Vatra
Amicus
Warning: Sometimes uses foul language & insults!!!
20%
Posts: 9,814
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Post by Kralj Vatra on Dec 20, 2008 1:02:14 GMT -5
"should be regarded as a nation closely realted to the Hellenes which, later on in the ancient period, became completely Hellenized."
I think this is just a manner of Speech. In dodona (20km from where i was born) all the scripts were in Dorian. Dorian and Ionian were so close (like Bosnian and Serbian) one could automatically transform one phrase from one dialect to the other. Dorian: H TAN H EPI TAS Ionian: H THN H EPI THS
So there is nothing to "hellenize", in the mean time untill the 70s, in order to get by bus from Ioannina to Athens, you needed 10 hours.... imagine what was like in 200 BC
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Post by Novi Pazar on Dec 20, 2008 1:19:09 GMT -5
^ your 100% correct Pyrro, don't worry bro we all know that the ancient Macedonians are Hellenic. But my aim here pyrro is to inform us that misinformed historians were even calling regions up to Bosnia as Macedonian regions .....this is what happens, then people pick up on it, you'll see with further additions to my first post here.
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Post by Novi Pazar on Dec 21, 2008 20:40:05 GMT -5
continues from the first post.....
Dr. Gustav Weigand is of the opinion that in ancient times Macedonia was understood as signifying a somewhat smaller region than we associate today with the term: "Originally it was the only district on the lower reaches of the Haliakmon [Bistrica] and the Aksios [Vardar] under the rule of local kings who came from Orestis, i.e., the land around the kastoria Lake." According to Jirechek, "medieval Macedonia consisted of two regions with somewhat differing histories: one, which embraced the Byzantine coast in the neighborhood of Salonica and Serrai, and another, without access to the sea, which, from the seventh century on, was occupied by Slavs and which, from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, was for the most part under the influence and domination of the Greeks." Mentioning Basil the Macedonian, whio was born in the village near Jedren and as a boy taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, Jirechek says that the name "Macedonian" should not cause surprise, for "in the Middle Ages the whole of present-day Rumelia was often called Macedonia."
Theodor von Sosnosky pointed out that "after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the name [of Macedonia] disappeared completely from the map, and when it was mentioned at all it always referred to the empire of Phillip and Alexander. With the collapse of Alexander's world empire it ceased to play an independant role in history. Then, however, it suddenly appeared on the lips of the whole world......Only the name, admittedly, for it signifies only the lan, not the same people." "The name 'Macedonia,' " says Horand Horsa Schacht, "disappeared with the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Otherwise applied only as an historical designation, it reappeared in the national struggles of the Balkan people.....Under the Turks, there was no Macedonia. For this reason, the Turkish government spoke only of the Rumelian question.' " For Dr. Oestreich, too, Macedonia is no more than an "historical designation which originally covered an area further to the south, including the plain of Salonica,.....and, as a term whose meaning had not been clearly defined and could be stretched at will, was arbitrarily applied to the hinterland." Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the extent of Macedonia has been variously defined. Von Gruber states that it lies between the Balkans and Athos, on both sides of the Vardar and the Struma, and that it covers an area of 1,720 square miles inhabited by a population of 500,000. "Geographically," he says, "it is normally divided into two sanjaks- those of Salonica and Chustendil. In accordance, however, with the recent information, we shall abandon this practice and mention the best-known places: Salonica, the chief meeting-place of commercial routes connecting European Turkey with the rest of Europe (from here Vienna and Smyrna trade in money exchange); then Seres [Serrai], Karaferija [Verija], Vodin [Edessa], Jenisa, St.Orfano, Emboli, Filibi [Philippopolis, Plovdiv] and Chustendil." Of Bulgaria, he says that it lies on the Black Sea between the Balkans and the Danube, and that it embraces an area of 1,740 square miles with a population of 1,800,000. According to him, Bulgaria was at that time divided into four sanjaks-those of Sofia, Nicopolis, Silistria and Vidin. To Serbia, von Gruber assigns the sanjaks of Kratovo, Skopje and Novi Pazar. R. Walsh, who traveled around Bulgaria in the late 1820's, states: "Modern Bulgaria stretches from the mouth of the Danube, along this river, to the point above Vidin where it is joined by the Timok. The Danube constitutes its entire northern boundery, as the Balkan chain does its southern. The whole of the area within these limits is over a hundred hours' distance long and about sixteen hours across. The Bulgarians have, however, spread far beyond these artificial limits." A.F. Heksch also considered that "Bulgaria proper" extended "from the lower Danube to the main ridges of the Balkans and the Black Sea," and that ethnically, it "still embraces the district of Sofia also." Hugo Grothe was extremely cautious in defining the geographical concept "Macedonia": considering the question what was considered as constituting Macedonia under the Turks, he says, "From the point of view of state law, only three vilayets-those of Salonica, Bitolj and Skopje [Kosovo]-may today be regarded as constituting Turkish macedonia.....It is doubtful whether so-called Old Serbia-the sanjaks of Prizren, Pristina and Srem [?]-belongs to Macedonia." Gerhard Schacher gives the following boundaries of Macedonia: "In the southwest of the Balkan Peninsula is situated a territory with an area of 65,000 square kilometers-therefore not quite twice the size of Holland-which is enclosed in the south by the Aegean Sea, in the west by the Pindus Moutains, Gramus, Mokra and Stogovo, and in the north and east by the Shar Planina and Crna Gora and the spurs of the Osogovo, Rila and Rhodope Mountains respectively." Wladimir Sis, who was definitely biased in favor of Bulgaria, defines the frontiers of Macedonia thus: "It [Macedonia] borders in the north on Old Serbia and the pre-1913 Serbian kingdom, in the northeast and east on Old Bulgaria, to which in 1878 was added its northern part-i.e., the districts of Chustendil and Dupnica-in the southeast on Thrace, in the south on the Aegean Sea, Thessaly and Epirus, and in the west on Albania." "In the Turkish empire," says Schultze, "the name 'Macedonia' disappeared. According to the political division carried out in the twentieth century, our country belongs to the vilayet of Salonica, and, within the limits of the latter, to the sanjaks of Serrai and Drama. The eastern frontier was the lower Nestos; the northern frontier included Nevrokop, and the western frontier Melnik and Dzhumaja."
Jovan Cvijich (watchout readers, a serb) traced the fontiers of Macedonia in the south across a turn in the Bistrica, in the north along the northern boundary of the sanjak of Novi Pazar, in the west along the Crni Drin, and in the east along the Mesta. According to this frontier, both countries lie between 39 56' 50" and 43 38' 25" North, and the between 54 14' 31" and 60 7' 26" East of Greenwich. The average meridian is 55 21', while the average degree of latitude is approximately 41 50'. The total area of Macedonia and Old Serbia is 74, 709 square kilometers, which is 26,000 square kilometers greater than that of Serbia and 24,000 square kilometers less than that of Bulgaria.
As a result of his reasearches, Cvijich came to the following conclusion: "On the majority of older maps [i.e., from the sixteenth century], and a few of later date in which the classical nomenclature, the name 'Macedonia' was confined to the coastal region around Salonica and the surrounding plain-that is, to Campania and the district west and northwest of it near to what is now the Meglen basin. The chief towns of this region of Macedonia proper are Edessa and Pella. At the end of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth centuries, many lands of the Balkan Peninsula, because of erroneous recollections of classical world, were, mostly by local writers, called Macedonia - even Old Serbia, Zeta (Montenegro), Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina." The geographically ill-informed author of the folk poem about Prince kaica places the Danubian town of Smederevo in Macedonia. Two versions of Dushans legal code, those of Ravanica and Sofia-both from the seveenth century-call Dushan emperor of Macedonia. The Sofia version reads: "The pious and Christian Stefan, Emperor of Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Dalmatia, while that of ravanica says simply: "The pious, faithful and Christian Emperor of Macedonia, Stefan." In a record of 1561, written at the monastery of Zavala, in Hercegovina, it is stated that this monastery lies "in the shelter of Mount Velezh, which is in the Macedonian lands." Bozhidar h-Podgorichanin says of himself that he comes from "Diocletian lands, in Macedonia, from the town of Podgorica." Certain pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher, Vukovoj, Gavrilo, Sava, Jovan and Sekule, state on two occasions that they are from "the Macedonian lands, from the land of Zahumlje, known as Hercegovina." In 1569, a certain Jakov says that he is from "the Macedonian lands, from the place called Sofia." In 1615, it was stated that the monastery of Moracha is situated "in the region of Hercegovina, in the western lands, in the Macedonian lands." It was on account of such statements that Vuk Stefanovich Karadzich observed that "all our people's lands are called Macedonia." Heinrich Muller's Turkish Chroncile, published at Frankfurt-on-Main in 1577, contains an interesting passage on Macedonia which reads: "However valiantly the Serbian people fought in Macedonia, the Sultan nevertheless occupied the Serbian towns of Serrai, Strumica, Philippopolis and Veles......Bajazit also collected a great army against the powerful ruler Marko of Macedonia, which land is the most fertile of all Serbia." The unknown writer who continued the work of Archbishop Danilo, in the section entitled "On the Enthronement of the Second Patriarch, the Serbian Kir Sava, "took one part, and the other Vukashin, who, in claiming the kingdom, cared nothing for the curse of Saint Sava. And Ugljesha took the Greek lands and towns. After this, having gathered together, they went into Macedonia, were killed by the Turks and thus met their end." As may be seen, the term "macedonia" signifies merely a geographical concept which has been insufficiently defined and which has no ethnographical sigificance.
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Post by Novi Pazar on Dec 21, 2008 21:02:19 GMT -5
References:
Leopold von Ranke, Weltgeschichte, Vol. 1, 1928, p.326 Otto Hoffmann, Die Makedonien, ihre Sprache und ihe Volkslum, Gottingen, 1906, pp.260-61 Paulys-Wissowa Real-Encyclopadie, Vol. XXVII, p.690. Karl Oestreich "Die Bevolkerung von Makedonien", Geographische Zeitschrift, 1905, Vol.1, pp.273-74 Joachim H. Schultze, Neugriechenland, Gotha, 1927, p.128. James Barker, Turkey, New York, 1877, p.248 Bristish Universities Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI, p.804 Alexander Randa, Der Balkan: schlusselraum der Weltgeschichte, Graz-Salzburg-Vienna, 1949, p.116 Gustav Weigand, Ethnographie von makedonien, Leipzig, 1924, p.2 Th.Capidian, Die Mazedorumanen, Bukarest, 1941, p.52 Constantin Jos. Jirechek, Das christliche Element in der topographischen Nomenkaltur der Balkanlander, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien: Philologischistorische Classe, Vol. CXXXVI, p.42 Th.von Sosnosky, Die Balkanpolitik Osterreich-Ungarns seil 1886, Vol.II, pp.118-19 Honard Horsa Schacht, Die Entwicklung der mazedonischen Frage um die jahrhundertwende zum Murzsteger Programm, Halle, 1929, p.14. Karl Oestreich, reseeindrucke aus dem Vilajet Kosovo, Vienna, 1899, p.331. Carl Anton von Gruber, Das osmanische Reich, p.24 R.Walsh, reise von Konstantinopel durch Rumelien,....Dresden-Leipzig, 1828, pp.203-04. Alexander F. Heksch, Donau, von inhrem Ursprung bis an die Mundung, Leipzig, 1884, p.51. Hugo Grothe, Auf turkischer Erde, Berlin, 1903, p.358 gerhard Schacher, Der Balkan und seine wirtschaftlichen Krafte Stuttgart, 1930, p.240 Wladimir Sis, mazedonien, Zurich, 1918, p.7 Jovan Cvijich, grundlinien der Geographie und Geologie von Mazedonien und Altserbien, Gotha, 1908, p.38
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Post by chalkedon on Dec 22, 2008 6:19:21 GMT -5
i always agreed with defining macedonia as a geographic qualifier....I mean thats what they were = greeks from macedonia. Just like a bavarian is a german from bavaria. Bavarians are not an seperate ethnic group. So North Macedonia is fine w/ me. Hell, they can even call their language " macedonian "...anybody that has half a brain knows that anc. macedonians spoke greek...macedonian as a language is non-existant.
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ioan
Amicus
Posts: 4,162
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Post by ioan on Dec 22, 2008 8:11:41 GMT -5
So we have here again some foreigners that didnt know anything about the Balkan states. Otherwise who with their mind would call Plovdiv or Sofia "Serbian". Obviouslly all those didnt know what they were tal;king about and we have to believe them about Macedonia? Also the only sourse that gives bigger teritory to Bulgaria is called biased towards Bulgarians. Alot of reliable sources are not mentioned here. It seems like a messy compliation of ignorant people that didnt care to research what they were talking about. Novi, wasnt Novi Pazar Bulgarian town at some point?
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Post by ljubotan on Dec 22, 2008 18:08:07 GMT -5
Edlund,
I recall you had some interesting information a few yrs back regarding Bulgarians of Kosovo. Do you still have that link?
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Post by Novi Pazar on Dec 25, 2008 19:18:16 GMT -5
"i always agreed with defining macedonia as a geographic qualifier....I mean thats what they were = greeks from macedonia."
Yep, l agree 100%.
"So North Macedonia is fine w/ me. Hell, they can even call their language " macedonian "...anybody that has half a brain knows that anc. macedonians spoke greek...macedonian as a language is non-existant."
Sorry expat, l disagree completely. The problem is that most people don't have half a brain. In my opinion its still danagerous to even call them North Macedonian.
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Post by besarab on Jan 5, 2009 12:37:43 GMT -5
pazar hahah i can show you a document that doesnt estimates a single serb in kosovo in 1911....only bulgarians ,albanians turks and gypsy... and it makes sense becouse the local dialect of the kosovo ,,serbs ''is actually bulgarian..but you know this
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Post by besarab on Jan 5, 2009 13:21:54 GMT -5
i wonder why cant i upload here the source is in italian and english and it presents data from the last official census in the otoman empire -year before the bolkan wars.it concerns 6 municipalitys [vilaets ] of the empire-odrin,solun,skodra,yanina,kosovo and manastir
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