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Post by BigBlackBeast on Oct 27, 2008 6:04:14 GMT -5
Have you seen this study? www.igenea.com/index.php?content=132&st=178Albania: 30% Illyrians 15% Phoenician 14% Hellenen 18% Thraker 2% Vikings 20% Slavs Greece: 5% Macedonian (in north more than 18%) 10% Illyrians 10% Germanic 20% Slavs 20% Phoenician 35% Hellenen Bulgaria: 11% Macedonian 49% Thraker 15% Slavs 15% Hellenen 5% Pheonician Macedonia: 30% Macedonian 10% Illyrian 15% Hellenen 5% Phoenician 20% Germanic 5% Hunnen 15% Slavs This changes quite a few things for me. I still don't personally think I belong in the Macedonian group but genetic proof is now staring you in the face. What an absolute load of embarrassing sh.it. Defeated on every front the Fyromaniacs seem now to be resorting more and more to spurious genetic interpretations to prove they are related to the 'antic' Macedonians. Hey, retards there is no such thing as 'Illyrian', 'Hellenic', 'Macedonian' etc DNA. Where on earth could anyone even have extracted enough of a sample of ancient Macedonians to even compare? Stupid. Absolutely stupid. And it always amazes me how confidently (and foolishly) detected patterns can be ascribed to a particular historic group only to be contradicted by other studies and by other interpretations of what is observed. Whatever this particular study has detected as representing 30% of the Fyromaniac make-up and 5% of the Greek one cannot possibly be described as specific remnants/markers of the ancient Macedonians despite Igenea's apparent working assumption. First, the ancient Macedonians - and this applies to all the other groups for that matter - were not characterized as being members of a unique genetic group such that their genetic traits can so readily be detected. To my knowledge no other genetic study ever describes its results in such a manner; to even think this way is an enormous mistake. Second, if we were to look, hypothetically, for patterns/markers of the ancient Macedonians (for example) we would need to tidy up our methodology and to do our research better. The obvious thing to do is to first look at those areas most relevant to that ancient people. In the case of the ancient Macedonians this will have to include foremost the area in the foothills north of Olympus which historians are unanimous in accepting as the ancient homeland of the Macedonians and which - as it happens - was an area relatively undisrupted by later invasions thanks to its geography. Are there any detected genetic characteristics in this area? If yes ... we might tentatively ascribe it to the contribution of the ancient Macedonians. If no ... we may deduce that the ancient Macedonians in the strictest sense - being a relatively small and confined group of people - have probably not left us with any salient markers to speak of. On the other hand the interpereters of the study to which Nikolaa points seem to have first detected some genetic pattern (for arguments sake lets agree that they genuinely have done so) and, noticing that it described 30% of Fyromaniacs and 5% of Greeks (higher as a proportion only of northern Greece) concluded that it could usefully be labelled 'antic Macedonian' for no other reason than its apparent geography - certainly not because it resembled the DNA of ancient Macedonians. In other words the whole thing is approached backwards. Inma Pazos seems to be completely out of his/her depth when challenged by some of the more gifted posters to account for the source of this ancient DNA material on which deductions are supposedly based with one poster correctly pointing out how improbable it is to find viable DNA for study from ancient bones. Inma's evident incapacity to address the very pertinent questions posed by the more intelligent posters as well as the pathetic triumphalism and childish deductions of the Slavomacedonian posters actually makes for some entertaining reading...
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Oct 23, 2008 5:52:48 GMT -5
How unexpected …
Yes … yes … I’m aware of all this but it’s one thing to say that whatever we do we can’t stop them calling themselves Macedonians and another to intimate that they have equal ‘right’ to the name (lozonjare: “I think if Greeks can, then so can slavs.”)
The point is even if you don’t accept that the Macedonians of old were not originally Greeks – I believe you are wrong but you are of-course entitled to your view that they were hellenised instead – you certainly have no choice in having to concede that the overwhelming bulk of any remnant DNA must lie in Greek Macedonia. After all the homeland of the ancient Macedonians (even if we also count the originally Epirote ‘Upper Macedonian’ tribes), as opposed to areas to which they may have sent military garrisons and isolated colonies, was confined entirely to areas within this modern Greek region.
It might be alright for you that the Slavs of Macedonia think of themselves as the inheritors of ancient Macedonia’s name and heritage … but it is certainly not OK for us. We know very well who they are. We’ve observed these erstwhile Bulgarians mutating almost overnight into ‘Macedonians’ and have had to contend for some time now with their attempts to lay both territorial and cultural claims over the whole region.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Oct 22, 2008 8:28:49 GMT -5
Totally wrong. In the lands of todays fyrom there were no macedonians left so who exactly did they assimilate? Not to mention that the ones who supposedly assimilated someone were Bulgarians. How do you know there where none left? They didn't just magically disappear. Also, are you saying its wrong for Greeks to call themselves Macedonian? I think if Greeks can, then so can slavs. The Macedonian Slavs sit on lands that were inhabited in antiquity mainly by Thracian peoples (I include the Paeonians in this group) and to a somewhat lesser extent Illyrian peoples. Only a relatively small part of their lands were once inhabited by ancient Macedonians as locals, although these were specifically ‘Upper Macedonians’ who were actually originally Molossian/Epirote tribes and not Argead Macedonians (ie Macedonians proper). If by some chance any ‘ancient blood’ remains in the veins of the Slavs of Macedonia, it would either be Illyrian or, more likely, Thracian (as is the case with most Bulgarians). The scale of devastation and population movements brought about by the Slavonic invasions – which saw your own people almost disappear from the Balkans – makes any significant ancient survivals amongst the Slavs not very likely anyway. As Ruse points out, some further reading on this topic will do you good … The Macedonian Greeks on the other hand – particularly those of indigenous Greek-speaking background from Pieria and Emathia and also from the Aliakmon river basin and some other regions in Greek Macedonia – live in those very lands where the ancient Macedonians proper, as well as their Greek-speaking Epirote cousins (ie the ‘Upper Macedonians’), used to live in ancient times. One can easily argue here for continuity in good measure. The ancient Macedonians were the natives in these areas and not minority colonists and garrison troops amongst non-Macedonians as they were in other parts of their Balkan possesions including most of the FYROM. In other words they were far more heavily concentrated in what is Greek Macedonia (particularly those areas I mentioned above) than in any other part of their realm. This from a ‘biological’ point of view. The other point you seem to overlook is the fact that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks (Greek-speakers if you prefer … and no I don’t particularly care to debate this matter). It is therefore a bit rich for Slavs to claim them as their ancestors … especially in front of the Greeks of Macedonia – the indigenous members of whom represent the continued Greek presence in the core lands of the ancient Macedonians, through the ages. And if, in your opinion, Slavs can call themselves Macedonians as easily as Greeks can, then surely, with the same logic, the assorted Slavs of the western Balkans (Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, even the western Slavomacedonians) can lay claim to the Illyrian name and heritage as easily as the Albanians. In fact they can do so much more comfortably than the Macedonian Slavs can claim the name and heritage of the ancient Macedonians since the ‘Illyrian’ Slavs inhabit those very lands of the ancient Illyrians and indeed more of those lands that the Albanians … Ah, but they are Slavs you say … descendants of later invaders who dealt the Illyrians a devastating blow and confined their cultural/linguistic survivors to the mountains of what later became Albanian lands. How interesting …
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 3, 2008 23:29:04 GMT -5
Wrong forum Gognate ... try the Albanians ...
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Mar 2, 2008 8:15:19 GMT -5
I prefer these two versions which are more authentic in their execution: This one is quite an old one, retaining much of the natural 'rawness' of the dance: This one is a more recent but still satisfying from the 'authenticity' aspect:
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Mar 2, 2008 8:10:40 GMT -5
So you're saying they wore similar outfits? Wow ... that's unusual. People in the same region wearing similar clothes ... that's never happened before. I recall that there is a line in an old Pontian folk-song in which a wife recognizes her husband far in the distance even though he had been away for many years. She recognizes it is him because of the characteristic way in which he had tied his head-wear, each individual doing so in his own way. I think the song is an 'Akritic' one dated to about 1200 AD (not sure if this is right) but at any rate well before Turkish times. The point is, despite a natural tendency for peoples in a particular geographic area to influence each other culturally (dance; song; costumes; customs) the outfits worn by the Pontians (at least the head-gear) has been with them for a very long time ...
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 17, 2008 5:33:29 GMT -5
I forgot this one ... a beautiful version of a traditional Cretan classic of which many version exist:
!
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 17, 2008 5:31:00 GMT -5
I said this before and I`ll say it again. The best thing greeks ever did was to invent the kind of music they play in Crete. - this ROCKS! Some of my favourites from the Great Island. The first from the master Tzouganakis with a somewhat modern twist; the second a traditional Pentozali and the last a snippet from the medieval epic poem Erotokritos: Enjoy ...
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 9, 2008 8:36:40 GMT -5
What l found interesting was the SERVIANS and Albanians grouped with Greeks. Where do you see that Novi? The Greeks and Albanians are grouped together while the Serbs are in the 'Sclav' group but are also, strangely, placed as 'Servians' within Bulgarian territory.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 4, 2008 9:27:06 GMT -5
BBB, those slavs you keep on repeating, are vanished, if they were the minority,=> no slav toponyms =>(ATOPON), else no way to change their lang since they were MAJORITY, (taking into that the much weaker vlachs preserved their lang!) => Atopon also! So there was a massive migration in order to change the proportions??? HUH??? I say hell yes. Did those slavs leave? I'd say hell yes also. I mean in germany, the slavs persisted in the MOST HOSTILE environment (germans you know). For them to persist in Epiros would be a piece of cake. Also what about appearance, genes, etc??? In peloponese i agree that we have more blond ppl, but Epiros?? No funky way!!! I am half blond, and they considered me an "english or german" back in Konitsa. What about words? How come and the percentage of slavic words doesnt differ between Crete and Epiros? Your whole theory does not agree to common math logic. There is a BIG BLACK BEASTY piece missing from the puzzle P.S. BBB whats your native town/area in Greece? P.S.2 Lets examine what is happening now in Kosovo. Old Serbs dying, new albs are born till no Serb is alive. So i think the old slav ppl in Epiros just died away, whereas the new might have migrated to the north. But the above theory implies a greater civilazation, like the one Serbs had in Kosovo. That simplification about the barbarian slavic nomads (bla bla bla) makes no sense Obviously I agree that the Slavs in Epirus 'vanished' although I don't necessarily agree with your logic. Nor is there any way of determining the relative proportions of Greeks and Slavs in the early middle ages. Surely, you must agree, that there had to have been a time when both Greeks and Slavs lived in Epirus for how is it that the Slavs place-names were passed on to the Greeks who re-entered Epirus according to your theory? [BTW I have no great problem with the idea that Greek migrations into Epirus may have occurred during deep dark unknown recesses of history to have contributed to the eventual re-hellenization of the place]. OK, if there were no Greeks left there following the Slavic invasion ... and the resulting Greeks today stem from later Greek entrants into Epirus, we must still imagine that there was a population there to pass on the Slavic names of obscure villages to the newly arriving Greeks. So, again, Greek meet Slavs in Epirus ... and since this type of interaction is logically inevitable, it may as well be the case that native Greeks (majority; minority who knows?) actually remained in certain areas of Epirus after the Slavs invaded and settled in the place. It seems more logical to me that the successful re-hellenization of Epirus could have been effected much more effectively and thoroughly this way (perhaps with aid from immigrating Greeks) than entirely 'from the outside'. Your observations about the 'colouring' of the Epirotes is interesting as it accords with my observations also - at least with the relatively limited number I have met (including my immediate neighbours). Mind you, one can also detect 'Slav' types amongst them if one looks ... Anyway, it is approaching 1:30 am here in Melbourne ... I am tired and I am off to bed ... Και μια που ενδιαφερθηκες, γεννηθηκα στο Κρατικο Νοσοκομειο της Κοζανης ... απο χωριο της Επαρχιας Βοιου ... (δε βρισκω τα διαλυτικα!) Cheers
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 4, 2008 8:38:34 GMT -5
BBB said, "Actually Epirus did not receive many refugees after 1922 … I believe something less than 10,000 in all … " Guys, you try to find the answer on matters where you have zero intuition. 3,000 mikrasiates were settled in Anatoli (hence the name) near katsika, 5km outside of Giannena. In Konitsa (yes, i know, yet another "bayonet you say?" toponym from 700 AD), there was upper Konitsa for the locals, and lower Konitsa for the Mikrasiates (about 5,000). Hatziefraimidis, a long time Mayor of Konitsa was from lower Konitsa. And i dont have the time to write about Neokaisaria, Bafra,etc... in Giannena alone, i dont have an estimation, but i would rather multply 10,000 about 3-4 times P.S. Back to our toponyms problem, I didnt do a proper research, and demolished a large part of the work of many western idiots. I cant imagine what would happen if i spent about a week on the issue. But now back to work, i wasted enuf time already. It's not on intuition that I base my figures (do I really need intuition for this?) but on what statistics are available to me ... I have no reason to doubt the order of magnitude of refugee figures provided in this Wiki page (although I have issues with some details): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_refugees30-40,000 refugees for Epirus strikes me as too high a proportion ending up in that part of Greece. Χαιρε
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 4, 2008 8:21:59 GMT -5
BBB to be honest i didnt go thru your whole text too carefully, but i'd like to point out 1 thing: A travel thru Crete/Cyprus and one can see that the natives there KNOW the meaning of their toponyms. The same happens in Serbia. WHY DO WE THE EPIROTS DONT HAVE IT? d*mnIT? Is there a clever person to answer me this? Hasnt crete arabs, venezians conquerors? Why? BBB, with being a soft mind you dont achieve a thing. Might i ask the nationality of Cognate, Bible Riot, BBB? (if you have the slightest alb connection pls dont hesitate to say so). Thank you. P.S. No BBB the official greek view would be the one like your "we are statically ancient here, period". I love it too, but id doesnt explain a thing. The reason Epirotes cannot understand the meaning of so many of their toponyms is because they are Greeks while the people who gave these places their names were not. They were Slavs. The Arabs and Venetians, while military conquerors and masters of Crete, never actually settled there in any large numbers. That is to say, the island was never populated by any large 'mass' of their common people (Arabs or Venetians) as settlers and tillers over a large extent of its soil. If it will help you at all know that I am 100% Greek and unlikely to have any Albanian contribution in my 'bloodstream'. I will try and 'harden my mind' ... in order to achieve more ... Cheers
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 3, 2008 23:24:29 GMT -5
BBBVery interesting to follow your arguments about Epirus' demographic history. There is a matter though which caught my eye; Regarding the presence of Slav toponyms in Albania; how did you conclude that our territory has a larger share of these than Greece? One valuable note here to consider is the fact that in 1935, the Greek parliament initiated a reform which changed the names of non-Greek toponyms into Hellenic ones. This included Slav toponyms, but also Albanian ones which emerged as a result of the Arvanites settling large parts of Morea, Attica, Beotia, Central Greece and the Aegean Isles. Therefore, if one makes a comparison between Albania and Greece when discussing the matter of Slav toponymy, such a comparison must be made with Greece pre-1935. Furthermore, it is not impossible to find Albanian lands essentially free of Slav toponymy. One example is the mountainous Mirdita district north of Tirana where there is essentially no Slav toponym (all Albanian). Other similiar territories are Mati, Martanesh, Puka, Pulati etc. Slav toponymy follow a certain pattern. Although they penetrated into the highlands as well (to a lesser extent), their main depertation occured in the lowlands, such as south of Shkodër, Vjosa valley and so on. Ironically, there are more Slav toponyms in South Albania than the northern part adjacent to Montenegro. Linguists tend to point out, as you also concluded, that a majority of these toponyms are related to Bulgarian rather than Serbo-Croatian. The presence of Slav toponymy is not such an enigmatic topic as certain individuals would like to portray. Through linguistic research and contemporary documents, we can conclude that the proto-Albanians and their medieval descendants lived a pastoral life in the highlands. This is why our vocabulary which deals with pastoralism and the flora & fauna of high altitude is relatively pure of foreign borrowings. The Slavs on the other hand settled the plains. Due to some reason, such as over-population, famine or some other factors (or all combined), the Albanians started to expand into the lowlands somewhere around 1,000 AD, regaining lost lands which they had been isolated from ever since Roman times. It is during this time that we learned agriculture from our Slav neighbours; the presence of Slav vocabulary within the field of agriculture indicates this. But it is here that our language's important Slav influence ends. Many of the Slav loan-words have their own indigenous equivalents, so I would not exaggerate the impact Slav has had on Albanian. The relative absence of Slav loan-words in Greek is more related to the fact that Greek was a very established language with a long litterary tradition. There's no doubt that certain Greek dialects were more largely influenced by Slav than the modern, official language. I am not certain of this, but I am sure modern Greek took its present form through various reforms, which most probably included the filtering of the language from Slavisms. But back to the Albanians, the theory presented above gives us a picture of pastoral Albanians and farming Slavs. In the Albanian language, we have two words for village; katun and fshat. The former initially meant a pastoral settlement, which in old days (such as 1,000 AD) was equivalent to a temporary nomad settlement. Place-names of such katuns couldn't have been long-lifed, as opposed to the more permanent Slav settlements. Hence, Slav toponymy was also more persistant. This is why I believe that the high number of Slav toponymy was disproportionate to their actual numbers. This is obvious due to the fact that they 'vanished' early on. In his Chronicle about the Muzaka family history, the renegade Albanian prince John Muzaka (Gjon Muzaka in Albanian) wrote about his family estates, which included the very nucleus of Slav toponymy in Albania. John Muzaka mentions only one or two Slav settlements. In other words, the presence of Slavs was very small and its dissapperance was almost finalized in the Middle Age. Today, they're restricted to small isolated pockets; an Orthodox 'Macedonian' population by Lake Ohrid, a Muslim Slav minority in the Gora district in the northeast, and a small community of Montenegrins near Shkodër (they settled there in the 1700s fleeing a blood feud). Over-population drove the Albanians to re-conquor lost lands. They swept across the plains, either driving away or assimilating the Slav remnants, continuing towards Greece. Plenty were there numbers that they even settled Greece en masse, having a larger impact on Greece as a whole than some Slav immigration ever did; they settled in Acarnania, Aetolia, Beotia, Attica, Peloponessus, Euboea, Hydra, Spetsias, Andros and other isles. The Vlachs, who lived in symbiosis with our ancestors for quite some time, came also in relative numbers, taking over essentially all of Thessaly. The Albanians were known as Arvanites. They were the ones to introduce the speech of Arvanitika (Arbërishte) to Greece, to give names to Albanian toponyms which were erased in 1935, such as Liopesi ('cow-eye'), Kriekuqi ('red-head'), Kokla (from kokë liartë, i.e. 'high head', 'proud'), Skurta ('short') etc. And indeed it is… Donnie, the old toponymy in Greece is hardly lost to posterity and is not hard to retrieve for anyone who really wants to. Max Vasmer, for example, based his work – probably still the key study on the Slavic toponymy in Greece – to sources (literary; cartographic and other) that preceded the change-of-names initiated by the Greek government. On the basis of his work it is fairly easy to get an idea of the areas that received the heaviest influx of Slav settlers. These tend to be confined largely – but not exclusively – to western Greece (Epirus, western Thessaly, western Peloponnese, western Central Greece and of-course Macedonia). One significant conclusion that can be drawn from this simple situation alone, is that there must have been a sizeable Greek survival in Greek lands as a whole for in terms of overall population distribution those areas of western Greece have always contained a smaller population than eastern Greece. This is the case now and has probably always been the case. Eastern Greece, which displays a far smaller proportion of Slav place-names, was always better populated and has always had the larger urban centres. Had the Slavs spread throughout Greece in equal measure one would expect to find this reflected in the toponymic distribution with a greater showing in eastern Greece. Historians deduce from this that this relatively larger population would have acted to dissuade the Slavs or at least to effect an earlier ‘re-conquest’ than western parts of Greece. Documentary sources make reference to the fact that Byzantium retained, or quickly regained, control of these areas. But, of-course I’m talking in very general terms. Interestingly many Slav toponyms seem to have been introduced into Greece by the Albanians! This is an idea expounded by Aristides Kollias (although you will allow me to claim that I had independently formulated a similar hypothesis before reading his book). It is remarkable how closely Vasmer’s Slav toponyms in Euboia, for example, correlate with the settlement of Albanians – almost entirely restricted in southern Euboia and relatively absent in the more fertile and more populous northern part of the island. The presence of Slavic place-names in Attica is also quite remarkable in view of fairly categorical statements from the sources that the Slavs did not settle there. I never doubted it and your contention is apparently supported in these maps (I suspect you are already aware of them): www.kroraina.com/knigi/seli_sna/selish_map.htmlYet the Albanian areas in question are in absolute terms small and restricted from the point of view of ‘territorial depth’ (if I may borrow a military term) compared to those parts of Greece relatively free of Slavic place-names (not to mention Crete and the islands). Additionally, with respect to Albania as a whole, the overall proportion of the areas is smaller than the proportion of similar areas in Greece. The Albanians had to achieve their ‘re-conquest’ entirely on their own and on this basis alone probably had the more difficult task in re-asserting themselves; although their relative isolation would have aided the population re-stock necessary for the task. In contrast Greek lands were perhaps generally more accessible and vulnerable compared to northern Albania, and the Greek population, and its capacity to re-generate, probably more limited in relative terms. Of-course the Greeks had the benefit of the Byzantine Empire which was keen to re-establish its control in the Greek peninsula (at least) and which instituted military forays against the ‘Sklaviniae’ in Greece on more than one occasion, in addition to engineering population transfers from other parts of its domain to better achieve its aim. There is little that is ‘literary’ with respect to the most Greek dialects of which we have fairly good records. There is no reason to assume any real impact of the Greek literary tradition in the dialects and speech of people who were on the whole essentially uneducated and invariably divorced from any literary participation. As such there is remarkably little Slavic in Greek dialects that one would expect to have retained such an influence. Perhaps there is something else at work here … but the Slavic element is rather negligible. I find the idea that the remnant Illyrians/Albanians survived as pastoralists very fascinating and it leads me to wander whether the survival of Greeks in areas such as Epirus, for example, was also accomplished via pastoralists – the modern remnants of whom might very well be the Sarakatsani. Indeed such groups – on the evidence of the Vlachs – leave a relatively small toponymic footprint not in keeping proportionally with their actual numbers which tend to swell periodically/cyclically causing further migrations. Of-course the question is which Illyrian (and for that matter Epirote) groups continued to be pastoralists into the late Roman Empire. For it is a well-known phenomenon that a pastoral group can readily become a settled agricultural/urban one whereas a settled group would not readily forgo its material capital and become pastoralist when necessity dictates it should move. Rather settled groups would tend to migrate elsewhere where they could retain their mode of living. The Vlachs largely held the western plains of Thessaly. Their lands – that is in terms of compact settlements - eventually receded into the Pindus range. Despite the official policy initiated by the Greek State there are still quite a number of Albanian place-names strewn across the old Arvanite areas.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 3, 2008 20:42:13 GMT -5
As usual BR a beautifully crafted and succinct response … except for one little word appearing somewhat anachronistically in two separate places that is a little misleading. Also it is probably guaranteed to incite Pyrros in some way.
The incursions of the late 6th century into that part of the Balkans were not by ‘Bulgars’ but by a variety of Slavic tribes – with respect to Epirus it was the Bajuneti. As I understand it, relevant authorities consider the Slavs settling in Epirus and the rest of Greece, at least on the evidence of toponymy, to have belonged linguistically to the same Slavic sub-group that also underpinned the later 'Bulgars'… in contrast to another sub-group that found itself in the more north-western regions of the Balkans. That is to say, the first group shows affinities with the form of Slavic what would later be identified as being – or akin to – Bulgarian (and its dialects) while the later with ‘Serbo-croat’ dialects (for want of safer terminology). Of-course the originally non-Slav Bulgars who ultimately gave their name to the Slavs of old Thrace, Macedonia and neighbouring regions came on the scene later in the seventh century.
BR, when I first read your post I misread ‘disagreeing’ for ‘agreeing’ thinking you were happy with Hammond’s conclusion here. I remember thinking: ‘BR has lost it’! How these Slavs somehow magically came to ‘speak Greek’ seems not to have bothered Nicholas and in truth his formidable knowledge and remarkable insight always lay in the ancient period.
Actually Epirus did not receive many refugees after 1922 … I believe something less than 10,000 in all …
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 3, 2008 20:32:05 GMT -5
BBB, sorry to say but that is pure crap. I thought that i could find a good source of Info in you but nothing close to it. Toponyms reveal an ORGANIZED state. Serbs (or slavs as it seems for you to prefer) left the lists of towns/villages to the new occupiers (the turks). Simple as that. Remember that Slavs/Serbs tend to absorb and not to be absorbed. That theory of yours (the official greek one) is full of holes. I say, ZERO slavs remained in Epirus. We still have 2-3 Serb surnames in Giannena. They know they are Serbs, and the say it. Nothing tricky there. Absorbing needs a big differnce in numbers, in power, in civilazation. How come, the autochthonous were more numerous, more powerful, more civilized, but the toponyms serb? It does not make any sense, unless you have ZERO ambitions of intuitively verify the historical theories. Dry in bulgarian is "Suh", just like in Russian. Your theory about bulgars, is easily demolished by the case of "Souvotseli" alone, and remeber that was smth occasional, if we made substantial research a lot of other would be found. A girlfriend of my sister is from Doliani. My wife is also from another Dolijanj in Bosnia (now occupied by muslim bosniaks). No doliani in Bulgaria! No Grbovo in Bulgaria, etc.... In order to find out the truth it needs, a CLEVER person that has, education, common math logic, love for Epirus, love for truth, the ability to have critic spirit, to know the place very well and its people, and have knowledge of Serb and Turkish language, and access to both Serb and Turkish libraries. Unfortunately none of us has all the above, (altho i must say i feel a lot closer) P.S.1 Is it possible the toponyms to be from 600 AD, in a place (according to your theory) outnumbered by greeks and the toponyms to persist untill today? That is a royal contradiction by itself. P.S.2 That theory, slav invasions, settlement, absorption that supposedly explains the "slav" toponyms, is like future Jamaikans trying to explain the english toponyms in Jamaika, using a theory: "Long time ago some "germanic" tribes arrived, which were absorbed by the local population, bla bla bla" Just like now we the modern Greeks try to give Greek toponyms to villages, because thats better prounounced,and understood by us, and we can cause *we* rule, the same was done with the previous rulers. The question is WHY IS THERE NO MEMORY? How can you answer the above question by ultrasimplistic theories of random germans/english/etc??? I dont know the answer, but i know what is NOT the answer. I am just a poor Software Engineer/Comp Scientist/Sysadm and have limited time for historical research. Its just that i would expect smth better from the "professionals" PS3, also there is the problem with the Eponyms (surnames). 90% Of gianniotes dont know what their surname mean. All the above leaves 2 options really: 1) There is a continuity of Greek presence in epirus, but the quality of civilazation, number of words in vocabulary were SEVERELY limited, denoting a people which could not even talk to their childern -> no cummunication, a completely backwards and barbaric situation or 2) My migration theory. I would like to bet my money on 2) Pyrros, I am very sorry that I couldn’t ‘satisfy your needs’. However, if it’s alright with you I’ll stick to my ‘crap’, which I think is well supported by the available evidence, rather than the crap borne of your esoteric personal journey of discovery. You make some interesting points but also some rather major assumptions which are essentially self-serving. For instance, you present the idea that the Slavs ‘tend to absorb’ as if it is some sort of immutable law of nature. Your assumption might serve to bolster your argument but flies in the face of many instances of Slavs being absorbed … whether in the Peloponnese, in Bithynia, in Albanian lands, in the German periphery etc etc etc … and yes … also in Epirus. And what do you mean that the Serbs (or ‘Slavs’ as I supposedly prefer (?) ) left the list of towns/villages to the new occupier? Do you mean they actually handed over some sort of document to the Turks detailing the names of the villages to be found in their new domains? I doubt there was ever any such practice although I think I may be interpreting your comment too literally. The Serb despots, by the way, would not have been the ones to have handed anything to the Turks as they had previously been succeeded by a line of Italian despots who were the ones to ‘greet’ the Turks. Your comments also point to an apparent assumption on your part that I am choosing to ignore the Serbs by disguising them within the general label ‘Slav’. I am not doing this at all. There is a clear distinction in my mind between the Slav tribes that entered Epirus in the late 6th and 7th centuries and the Serb dynasts who briefly ruled the place in the 14th century. It was the Slavs who settled in Epirus in the sixth century who largely gave the region its Slavic toponymy not your Serbs some 800 years later. I have not confused the two. I don’t understand your insistence that it was the Serbs who gave Epirus its Slavic toponymy – this, apparently, accomplished all in a matter of just several decades! Dare I suggest that your Serb connection may have caused you to head a little too enthusiastically in that direction… Sure, the example you cite (Suv-; Suh-) may validate a point on that particular village’s name but it can hardly be definitive nor really is it crucial in my opinion. After all, it was neither Bulgars nor Serbs who entered Epirus and other parts of Greece in the early middle ages (6th and 7th centuries) but rather ‘Slavs’ – in Epirus’ case the Bajuneti. The language of these early Slav settlers no doubt carried features of Old Slavonic originally common to both Bulgar and Serbo/Croat before the later differentiation between these two groups. In evidencing that a particular place-name he observes in Greece is Slavic, Max Vasmer points just as readily to Bulgar examples as to Serb/Croat or indeed to other more northern Slav (Czech etc) – in fact probably more so. It is news to me that I am towing the official Greek line in these matters. I rarely base my views on this source and prefer to arrive at conclusions through independent research and after examining as many perspectives as I can. Is it the official Greek view about the level of Slav infiltration into Greece and the inevitable connotations concerning ‘ethnic purity’? You say that ‘zero SLAVS’ remained in Epirus – I don’t disagree in relation to the period under consideration (14th century) although it is pretty clear to me that we have a situation resulting in good part from hellenization. You apparently don’t see Slavs there in the 6th century and only from the period of Serb rule(?!). Now there is an idea that the Greek official view would probably be happy with! I’m not sure that I actually said this but … what are you proposing? That the toponyms appeared during the brief period of the Serb despots in the 14th century? I don’t think I said anything about relative numbers of Greeks and Albanians in Epirus in the 6th and 7th centuries - I don’t think it would ever be possible to determine numbers for such a period. I simply stated that there must have been Greeks there of sufficient number in order to effect the eventual hellenization of the Slavs who settled in the region. I believe the Albanian situation is a useful parallel/analogy as despite the similar abundance of earlier Slav place-names there, the Albanians were clearly able to eventually re-assert themselves, whether this took the form of absorption or eviction or whatever … That the Greeks were the main group in Epirus at the time of the Albanian invasion and that there were no Slavs to speak of (excepting of-course any Serbs brought in later - a small number), there can, in my opinion, be no doubt. I think that the conclusion that the Greeks similarly re-asserted themselves in Epirus over the preceding centuries is unavoidable. What is this memory thing you are hung up on? Memory is a very deceptive element and a wholly impractical criterion upon which to base an empirical study (at least solely). There is no glaring relative paucity of folk tales/culture from Epirus that I am aware of… the Epirotes have about as much ‘memory’ as other Greeks. I’m not sure what you mean. If the Greeks of Epirus arrived relatively later into a land that was entirely depopulated – in keeping with your theory - would they not have memories of this great folk wandering that led them to re-people the land? Do they? As far as I’m aware there is simply no inkling in any of the chronicles or other source material to suggest a recent arrival for the Greeks who are, on the contrary, quite evidently and unambiguously the major group established in the land receiving and witnessing the Albanian arrival. The Serbs are very much restricted to the immediate circle of the nobility although of-course there is nothing to exclude some level (no doubt quite minor) of Serbian immigration. The 2-3 Serb-surnamed individuals in Ioannina you describe could quite easily be the descendants of either group. There is simply no suggestion that the Greeks had recently arrived there in keeping with your theory. That toponymy requires an organized state as a pre-condition is hardly the case and is simply another of your self-serving premises which allows you to (attempt to) ascribe Slavic toponymy to the period of Serb rule in Epirus. Throughout history places are named by people and groups of people regardless of the existence there of an organized state; the blessing of such a state for names of places has rarely been a requirement until very recently. I’ll be honest with you I don’t think much of your migration theory at all … nor do I think much of the ‘only other’ option you propose. It is your theory that has little substance … in fact it is more holes than anything else ... The idea of a wholesale Greek re-peopling of Epirus is simply not supported by any existing evidence – indeed the available sources serve to reject such a view; nor do I think it is necessary to even postulate it. I’ll admit also that I can’t see the difficulty you are having in conceptualizing the situation. Am I right in thinking that according to you it goes something like this? :- the ancient Epirotes were a Greek people (I presume you hold this view); it is unclear whether you see a Slav invasion in the late 6th and 7th centuries; at some later stage, for some reason, Epirus becomes almost entirely de-populated(?); Serb rule introduces Slav toponyms – the prerogative of an organized state – although it is unclear to me who the Serbs are ruling over apart from the Greeks who are at about this time apparently returning to reclaim the land; equally it is unclear who was being ruled by the Greek ‘despots’ after the Fourth crusade. As I indicated before I prefer my view. A Greek native Epirote population from antiquity; an invasion of Slavs in the late 6th and early 7th centuries who are the agents for the Slavic toponymy of Epirus; survival of Greeks in the region although impossible to determine relative proportions of Greeks and Slavs; the surviving Greeks may largely have been transhumant pastoralist (as in Donnie’s outline of the Albanian case), modern remnants of whom are the Sarakatsanoi who were known to have later been displaced in large part by the Vlachs; by the time of the chronicles and the Albanian invasion the population was Greek to all intents and purposes. Actually this is phenomenon that I have always considered in my reasoning. We should also add the Arvanites to this formula as they are less vulnerable to the argument that the Vlachs retained their language because of their relative isolation. The Arvanites were not isolated and were able to maintain their language in the very heart of Greece starting to succumb only with the birth of the Greek nation state and the assorted state apparatus it would throw at them. Your observation can be turned on its head. It is precisely the fact (in keeping with the evidence) that the early Slavs in Greece were known to have disappeared and presumably hellenized in comparison to the situation of the Vlachs, and particularly the Arvanites, that allows us to reasonably draw conclusions about the extent and ‘intensity’ of their settlements. That their settlements were not as compact nor as impervious as those of the Arvanites, can be gauged by their linguistic (at least) fate. There must logically have been Greeks amongst them (separate to those of the island and coastal areas and areas of East Greece not settled by Slavs) such that the Slav settlements were relatively easy to eventually break up and hellenize. Compact and heavy Slav settlement probably began only from the central areas of Macedonia although further south there were some Slavic groups who were able to retain their identity for longer. Those exceptional cases were no doubt a product of the particular geography of their land coupled probably with a relatively compact initial settlement (I have already mentioned the Slavs of the northern Taygetus). I tend to agree with Donnie that in those areas at least where they settled, the Arvanites had a larger impact on Greece than the earlier Slavs did. One last thing, to a greater or lesser extent we in these forums are all amateurs. I may be able to string some words together but I never claimed to be an unassailable authority or a ‘professional’ as you put it in relation to the topics I write about. Yes, I have been trained in the historical method and I like to think that I have enough insight and logic to effectively analyse available evidence and place it in its proper context … but I don’t pretend to be an expert. I am constantly in a process of learning and indeed l have learned much in these forums. Because your pre-conceived views about how the thing ought to go (ie what the truth should be) have not been satisfied, does not really place you in the position where it is up to you to determine what answer is correct and what is, as you put it, pure ‘crap’.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 1, 2008 20:31:02 GMT -5
THANX!!! You seem to know a big deal of stuff regarding Epiros!! I found in Giannena "To chroniko tou Tokou", and i ask you, is this and the "Chroniko twn Iwanninwn" the same book? Now, since i take as granted the lack of massive historical cover of those times (Serbs rarely are named in greek books, but rather some undefined Slavs), i tried to follow a more intuitive approach. My wife is a serb, so in many cases when among friends in Giannena, *she* is *the* person to give explanations about the various toponyms. That means that *no* sufficient scientific research has been done at least on the field of toponyms (which would imply insufficient historical coverage in general). Some of our friends are from Dilofo (old souvoutseli). An older guy is writing a book (the first one), for the history of their village. He suggested that the word "souvoutseli" is turkish. My wife asked, if the village had a shortage of water. He said yes. So the name of the village "souvoutseli" means "Suvo Selo" = Dry Village !!! One side effect of the above is that this toponym is SERB and not e.g. Croatian or Bosnian. Croats would say "Suho Sijelo", and Bosnians "Suvo Sijelo", so the name was given by Serbs speaking the same language as in todays Serbia proper. The facts: a) No greek toponyms were kept from pre Dusan era b) The modern habitants (like me) have zero feeling of this toponyms c) lack of documentation makes me wanna give room to this theory i told you. Ofcourse what you say about massive migrations, etc... seems very rational from a scholar type of view, however the "everyday feeling" is much different. Why did the Turks keep the Serb toponyms? Why are there zero traces of Serb presence in the population? (very few serb words, dobros, glava which are used all over greece anyway) The latter in conjuction with the toponyms make believe we came from somewhere else. Otherwise, there at least should be more evidence of history printed on todays truth. but no. Pyrros, Firstly the Chronicle of Ioannina and the Chronicle of the Toccos are two entirely different ‘books’. I think I see now where you were going before when talking about the ‘emptying of Epirus’ and its later re-population by Greeks from other areas. What threw me off was your apparent conviction that this event occurred some time near the end of Serb rule in Epirus; that is, in the 14th century. In fact, with the obvious exception of the influx of Albanians, there was no major demographic change affecting the Greeks of the region in that period. I am fascinated with your observations but I believe you have inadvertently confused the issue. The ‘Serb’ toponyms you observe in fact are much older than the period of Serb rule in Epirus and, with the exception of possible minor alterations by the Serb dynasts of the 14th century, are unlikely to have any direct Serb affinity. To account for Slavic toponymy of Epirus and of many other areas of Greece (particularly western Greece) we need to be looking at a much earlier period, that of the initial Slav invasion and settlement of those regions which occurred from the late 6th century. This whole matter – the extent of the Slavic settlement in Greek lands - has pre-occupied many a scholar, pseudo-scholar and nationalist historian over the years and you would in fact be able to find enough reading material on this to satisfy your curiosity. Epirus was one of the regions that seems to have received a relatively heavy Slav inflow of Slav settlers during this period – from the very late 6th century – and accordingly there were many Slavic place names there. In his work ‘Die Slaven in Griechenland (the Slavs in Greece)’ the German scholar Max Vasmer identifies and briefly discusses 334 such toponyms in the Ioannina and Thesprotia regions; 44 in the Arta region and 34 in the Preveza region. Contemporary sources give the name of the Slav tribe that settled in Epirus, that of the ‘Vajoneti/Bayuneti’. Evidently this tribe gave its name to the region of Vagenetia about which the author of the Chronicle of Ioannina laments in that it was being cleared of its Greek population by the Albanians. Incidentally relevant experts identify the Slav toponymy of Greece with that of the eastern Balkans (ie areas covered by the ‘Bulgars’) rather than with the Serbs. You ask why there are zero traces of ‘Serb’ presence in the population (I think you will agree that ‘Slav’ is a more accurate term) and you point out that, short of toponymy, there are relatively negligible Slav cultural remnants in Epirus and in Greece in general. The obvious deduction from this is that the Slavs were eventually absorbed into the pre-existing Greek population which must have survived there in sufficient numbers to do the absorbing. No other explanation has ever convinced me. It is truly remarkable, in my opinion, how closely the re-established line of Greek speech (as evident from late 19th – early 20th century ethnography) snapped back to a situation resembling the line prior to the expansion of the ancient Macedonian kingdom – almost as if finding its natural irreducible minimum. I understand that modern genetic studies tend to indicate that the current population in many regions of the Balkans has by and large remained little altered. in my opinion the Albanian situation is a very useful parallel. Clearly the Albanians exist and are a survival of a pre-Slavic Balkan entity. I am certain, as are most authorities in this matter, that the Albanians are essentially of Illyrian origin, although perhaps more specifically of hinterland Illyrian origin (largely Dardanian?) with some Thracian admixture. I don’t think full accuracy in this regard will ever directly be accessible although the situation can be more than reasonably deduced by the experts on the basis of available evidence. Yet historic Albanian lands are very thickly peppered with Slavic toponyms – much more so than Greek lands – and the Albanian language has a relatively high proportion of Slav input; in Greek it is negligible. What does this mean? If we count only on the toponymic evidence we would have to deduce that the Albanians were not anywhere in the Balkan area (in fact we would have to search for an area of wholly Albanian toponymy to account for their whereabouts during the ‘dark age’ following the Slav invasion). The logical deduction is that the Albanians were still inhabiting parts of the old Illyrian area and evidently co-existed there to varying degrees with the Slav newcomers (Vlachs were also somewhere nearby, albeit near ‘invisible’). Kanaris provided the somewhat similar example of the Genoese and Greeks in Chios. This was also the case in Greece – including Epirus – where whole districts were effectively lost to Byzantine administration as a result of the disruption caused by the entry of Slavs into those areas. In most cases the Greek natives – like the Albanians – were able to get the upper hand and re-assert themselves. In the Greek situation this probably marched hand-in-hand (one assisting the other) with the re-establishment of imperial control. Interestingly, in emphasizing his conviction that the native Greeks of Epirus were unlikely to have any size-able Albanian input into their ‘racial’ make up, Hammond stated that in his opinion there was more Slav than Albanian input in that regard. I think this holds true - not counting of-course those areas in Epirus settled by Albanians who have since become hellenised. So in summary, the population of Epirus was Greek in antiquity; it received a relatively heavy Slav influx during the early middle ages; the Slavs of the area were pretty much absorbed by the later middle ages as they are absent in contemporary accounts (compare the existence of the Slav tribesmen in the northern Taygetus mountains in the 15th century); the Albanians and Vlachs entered an essentially Greek-speaking area during the 14th century.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Feb 1, 2008 7:58:37 GMT -5
BBB, where can one find the chronicle of Ioannina today? I have a theory of the ancestry of today's Epirots, but more studying is needed. That matter has really haunted me! I believe that Epiros was emptied from (whoever lived there), and we the modern Epirots came to the land from Peloponese? Pontos? Central Greece?(i dont know), and settled there near the end of the Serb rule (before the turks came). That theory explains a lot of things. Pyrros, I’m not sure how you formed this idea … For the reasons I very briefly outlined previously it is hardly possible that the Greeks of Epirus – who clearly constituted the native inhabitants of the land at the time of the Chronicle of Ioannina and that of the Tocco family (just to name two of our sources) – arrived there after the rule of the Serb despots in Epirus. A large-scale movement to Epirus (rather a troubled land at the time) from other parts of the Greek world to account for the dominant Greek population there would not be feasible during the best of times much less during that very turbulent period; understandably there is no evidence for this. I certainly don’t think there could have been any migration of any scale to Epirus from the Pontus (!) and even movement from the Peloponnese and Central Greece would be very problematic – I do not think there is any evidence for this whatsoever. It seems a little odd to imagine a large-scale migration from the Peloponnese and Central Greece towards Epirus at a time characterised by the large-scale movement of Albanians in the other direction. What are you proposing … that the Peloponnesians and Roumeliotes were doing a swap over of lands with the Albanians coming via Epirus? At any rate the sources make it clear that the Albanian by-passed the central zone of Epirus achieving entry into southern Greece by going around it … As for the Chronicle of Ioannina itself I have myself only read extracts from it as provided by secondary sources such as Nicol. Perhaps you could try your luck by visiting a well-stocked university library in Greece (I presume you do in fact live in Greece) – maybe in Ioannina itself. For your assistance Nicol supplies the following in reference to the edition of the Chronicle of Ioannina which you might best have a chance in locating: ed. L. I. Vranousis, To Chronikon ton Ioanninon kat’anekdoton démodé epitomen, Epeteris tou Mesaionikou Archeiou (Το Χρονικον των Ιωαννινων κατ’ανεκδοτον δημωδη επιτομην, Επετηρις του Μεσαιωνικου Αρχειου), XII (1962), 57-115 (text and demotic version). Good Luck.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Jan 29, 2008 4:27:00 GMT -5
I suspect this was probably have been a fifteenth century document (?could be wrong). At any rate I wouldn¢t place too much weight on the views of the author as it entirely contradicts contemporary ancient sources and I would always take the word of the ancients to errors of the 14th or 15th century. I suspect also these sort of half-digested views are the origins of the mythology linking the Albanians with the Epirotes particularly with the glorious achievements of Saknderbeg a few generations later that needed to be provided with some equally glorious historic antecedents (read Pyrrhus). The geography was near enough – particularly with the Albanian expansion into Epiros – so the link was good enough. The fact is the Chaones, Molossians and Thesprotoi were precisely those tribal groupings that comprised the old Epirotes to the exclusion of actual Illyrian tribes to their north.
Possible … wouldn¢t mind seeing this document in its entirety.
Which area?
An interesting view contradicted by many of Athanasios¢s (whoever he is) contemporaries. Ironically a map by the ¡Albanian colony¢ reproduced in H.R. Wilkinson¢s “Maps & Politics – A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia”, shows the central area of Epirus well and truly inhabited by Greeks. Of-course a Greek element in what would become south Albania is practically non-existent according to this same map.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Jan 29, 2008 4:22:28 GMT -5
AlbQ surely you¢re not imagining large population movements from those regions to Epirus!? There were certainly refugees Greek refugees fleeing from areas taken by the Latins in the wake of the fourth crusade they were political refugees largely restricted to the nobility. In the case of Epiros it included some members of the Doukas, Komnenoi and Angeloi family and no doubt many attendants. Likewise Nicaea and Trebizond received other members of the displaced Byzantine nobility. At no time is there reference to large-scale population movements of the general populace which, at any rate, would hardly have been a feasible accomplishment in those times without some pretty serious resources and organization thrown its way by a central government – which no longer existed. As we know from a myriad of other similar circumstances in history, the common people usually just make do and accept their lot with their new masters. It is entirely illogical that refugees from Constantinople, for example, would migrate in large enough numbers to distant ¡Albanian populated¢ Epiros thus giving that land its Greek population – a population that then strangely spoke as natives being invaded by Albanian outsiders in the chronicles! Surely any fleeing by Greeks from Constantinople and its environs would have been to Asia Minor and Nicaea – it was much closer after all. The fact is the population of Constantinople remained and 57 years later welcomed its new Greek emperor. Additionally, the particular modern Greek dialect spoken in Epiros cannot be explained through an in-flow of refugees from every other part of the Byzantine world.
Incidentally your reference to Theodore allying himself with the Albanian clans means very little. In the same sentence he is allying himself with Serbia. Both, at that stage were largely outside the Epirote domain. The name Doukas is a well-known Byzantine imperial name and is a common enough surname in Greece also.
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Post by BigBlackBeast on Jan 29, 2008 4:19:11 GMT -5
With respect, you guys (AlbQ/Teuta, Kasso etc) are seriously deluding yourselves if you believe the Albanians were natives to Old Epirus and that it was the Greeks who were the immigrants to that land. The sources are very clear; there are a multitude of accounts detailing the arrival of the Albanians and the distress this invariably caused to the local Greeks. On the basis of contemporary accounts we have a good picture of the nature of the Albanian entry into various regions of the Greek world (whether as invited cultivator settlers or unwelcome pillaging invaders) and we also have a fairly accurate account of the progress of this Albanian migration (although certain minor details still generate some debate).
When examining the sources, it becomes pretty bloody patently obvious that the Albanians advanced from regions north of Epirus and entered the old Greek world from about the early thirteenth century. This is a conclusion hard to avoid and is accepted by all authorities in this area of study (presumably except Albanian ones). Accordingly, it makes perfect sense to view a framework that has the Epirotes of antiquity as Greek-speakers upon whose body was later grafted an Albanian element. Such a frame-work accords perfectly with contemporary documentary and material evidence. That Epiros was an Illyrian/Albanian land that received a huge influx of Greeks that somehow then populated its major central core is contradicted on all fronts by the evidence which on the contrary witnesses the large scale arrival to Epiros of the Albanians during the dying days of the Byzantine world.
I mentioned authorities on the matter. One such is Donald M. Nicol a historian from the King¢s College at the University of London. Nicol is a scholar of impeccable reputation who bases his work, like all serious professional historians, on contemporary source material. The extracts below, including from the introduction, are from his work “The Despotate of Epiros (1267 -1479)” and can be taken as representative of the view of pretty much all (non-Albanian) authorities on the matter. It is a volume well worth having in your home library:
p. 1
Epiros means ¡the mainland¢. Surrounded by sea on the west and south and by high mountains on the north and east, its geography promotes a spirit of independence. At the beginning of the thirteenth century its independence became a fact. The rest of the Greek world was to be subjected to the Latins, to the French and Italian crusaders and their descendants. But Epiros was for a long time to remain free from their control and influence, Michael Doukas was not without experience as a provincial governor. In Epiros he took over the Byzantine administration which had been centred on the city of Arta, capital of the theme of Nikopolis. Included in his domain were the districts of Aitolia and Akarnania, Thesprotia and Ioannina, the provinces known as Old Epirus whose inhabitants were mainly Greek-speaking. New Epiros lay further to the north and comprised the theme of Dyrrachion (Durazzo) and the western section of the Via Egnatia, the trunk road which had for centuries linked the ports on the Driatic Sea with Thessalonica and Constantinople, Many (personally I would say ¡probably most¢ - BBB) of the inhabitants of New Epiros were Albanians who, by the thirteenth century, were beginning to form identifiable tribal units or clans.
p.80
The Catalans moved into Thessaly from the south. The emperor claimed it as the estate of his now widowed daughter, and his army made threatening nosies from Thessalonica in the north. The patriarch of Constantinople vainly exhorted the Thessalians to revert to their former and proper status within the empire. Otherwise he promised them ¡horrendous penalties¢. But the most ominous developments for the future was the infiltration into Thessaly, and also into Epiros, of bands of marauding Albanians dislodged from their mountain fastnesses in the north.
p. 127
The Despotate was thus for a few years reunited with Thessaly under the rule of Cantacuzene¢s deputy, John Angelos. The spirit of resistance in Epiros must have lost most of its force. But any protection may have seemed better than none. For the Serbians were now rapidly advancing into Macedonia and northern Epiros. As they came they encouraged the Albanians to move south into Greece. In the autumn of 1341, before war broke out, Cantacuzene had planned to take an army to the west to suppress the Albanians in the region of Pogoniani and Libisda to the north of Ioannina. Every day they had been raiding and plundering the towns as far south as Akarnania and Balagrita. The punishment that the Turkish mercenaries of Andronikos III had inflicted on them was soon forgotten. The Angevin duchy of Durazzo far to the north maintained its almost independent existence only by judicious deals and alliances with the leaders of the Albanian clans. But the Byzantine enclave in Berat, Valona and Spinaritsa was as good as lost by 1341.
p. 131
[The Chronicle of Ioannina is] … a mine of unique information about the settlement in Epiros of the Serbians and Albanians.
p. 136-7
Nikephoros was the last hereditary claimant to the Greek despotate of Epiros. The future of the Depotate was to be determined by those who had brought his downfall, the Serbians with whom he had flirted and the Albanians who had killed him. The story of his brief success and failure in Epiros and Thessaly is told almost as a piece of family history by Cantacuzene. … Rather more significant is the evident fact that by 1359 the Albanians were settled and organised in sufficient numbers as far south as Acheloos in Akarnania to be able to annihilate their opponents. … There is little record of what Nikephoros achieved in his short reign in Epiros. The Chronicle of Ioannina says that the country was depopulated, the Greeks having fled to escape the wicked Albanians, [rather different to AlbQ¢s suggestion that Greek numbers were brought in as refugees from elsewhere] and that the Despot sought to recall them and restore their lands to them.
p. 142
Ioannina was the home of numerous prosperous and well-bred Greeks and many of their kind had packed up and left the smaller and more vulnerable towns in Vagenetia to take shelter behind its walls. The locals and the newcomers banded together and sent a deputation to Symeon to beg him to find them a lord and leader of their own to preserve them from the Albanians.
p. 145
The people of Ioannina had appealed for a leader to protect them against the Albanians … Every year between 1367 and 1370 the Albanians attacked and blockaded the city [Ioannina].
P. 147
The Chronicle of Ioannina attributes this great triumph (during an abortive Albanian attack on Ioannina in 1379 – BBB) solely to the citizens and the Archangel. The Depsot Thomas receives no credit and no mention, at least until after the event, when his brutal treatment of the captured Albanians can be held against him. The pick of them he put in prison for ransom; the rest he divided among the archons and the people to be sold as slaves. Those who were rounded up on the island were also sold. But the Bulgarians and Vlachs who had been fighting with them had their noses cut off. The whole of Ioannina ran with blood. It seemed indeed as though Thomas had found his chance to fulfil his wish to go down in history as the Albanitoktonos, the slayer of Albanians. (Now this certainly would have been a strange ambition for the ruler of Epiros if his native subjects were in fact Albanians. The fact is the Albanians were invaders and enemies of the state such that the title 'Albanitoktonos' can be paralleled with the more famous nickname 'Bulgaroktonos' employed to describe the emperor Basil II in view of his war against the enemy Bulgarians - BBB)
p. 187
The nature of the achievement (the defeat by the Toccos of the Albanians and the restitution of southern Epiros including the old capital Arta - BBB) is presented by the chronicler in terms that might have seemed strange to the Tocco brothers themselves. The reunification of Arta with Ioannina, he writes, signified the reunification of all the Greek inhabitants of Epiros.
p. 188
The chronicler of Tocco¢s exploits firmly believed that the centre and the root of the Greek world in Epiros was the city of Ioannina. For him it was and always had been the capital of the Despotate. The Despots might choose to reside in Arta in the winter or during the hunting season. But Ioannina was their headquarters. This was the opinion of a local patriot. It was not shared by Carlo Tocco. It was true that Ioannina had always managed to keep the Albanians beyond its walls. In the early fifteenth century it was probably more Greek in character than Arta, where the long Albanian occupation must have reduced the size and influence of its Greek population. Carlo took to calling himself Despot of the Greeks, or Romaioi. He signed his documents in Greek and in the red ink of a Byzantine emperor. But he would not have offended the historical sensibilities of the Greeks of Arta by declaring Ioannina to be the first city of his Despotate.
p. 192-3
The Chronicle of Tocco, though it breaks off seven years before he died, must stand as the encomium and the epitaph of Carlo Tocco. Bessarion would not have approved of its vulgar language and its lack of finesse. But in its simple way it is more eloquent of the truth of Carlo¢s life and of the people whom he conquered and ruled than the sophistries and artificialities of the numerous encomia and epitaphs produced by more polished and learned Byzantine writers of the age. One of them, Isidore of Kiev, author of a lengthy panegyric of John VIII Palaiologos, devotes four of his sixty-seven pages to the achievements of Carlo Tocco. He was, says Isidore, a man of action, well trusted by the emperors and honoured by them with the title of Despot. His ancestral realm was insular, comprising the islands of Ithaka, Zakynthos, Leukas and Cephalonia. Little by little he added to it the Epirote portion of the Aitolians as far as the lands of the Thesprotians and the Molossians, and the area from Acheloos up to the Euenos river. The coastal parts of this territory, writes Isidore, eager to show off his erudition, are inhabited by Hellenes; but the interior and upper regions are peopled by barbarians … (among whom) are the Albanians, an Illyrian race of nomadic and wretched lifestyle, with no cities, castles, villages, fields or vineyards. The cities of Epiros, however, are still of pure Hellenic stock: Ambrakia (Arta), on the Gulf of that name, and the other (Ioannina) a city founded by one John, which stands on the Acherousian Lake and may have been the Ephyra of the ancient Thesprotians.
[Some apparent lapses in accuracy notwithstanding, Isidore makes some quite interesting comments about the inhabitants of Epiros - BBB]
The last Byzantine historian, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, describes with various inaccuracies, the rise to power of Carlo Tocco, the Italian from the islands who drove the Albanians out of Akarnania and Aitolia. In the north he succeeded the former Serbian hegemony over Ioannina and in the south he conquered the land as far as Acheloos and Aetos and Angelopolichne (Angelokastron), up to Naupaktos which is opposite Achaia; and he married the daughter of the lord of Athens and Corinth. He was, says Chalkokondyles, a man second to none of the rulers of his time in administrative and military ability.
P. 251
In Nicol¢s Epilogue
Finally there came the Albanians and the Turks. The first rulers of separatist Epiros in the thirteenth century had made treaties and alliances with the Albanian chieftains to the north of their domain. The Byzantine emperors had seen them as a threat to the peace and granted them privileges to buy them off. But in the fourteenth century they began to infiltrate into Epiros and Thessaly. Many found their way down into the Morea, where, by 1400, there was reckoned to be about 10,000 Albanians, and by 1450 as many as 30,000. The history and the demography of Epiros were permanently affected by the invasion and settlement of the Albanians. The city of Ioannina never succumbed to them. But the city of Arta and most of Akarnania were in Albanian control for over fifty years, from 1359 to 1416; and it was to protect their lands against the Albanians that the Despots of Epiros first called on the help of the Turks. The Turkish conquest of Epiros would surely have happened sooner or later. But it is a melancholy fact that the triumph of Islam was more helped than hindered by the actions of the last Christian rulers of Epiros.
Most of the particular extracts above are based on two contemporary chronicles. The Chronicle of Ioannina and the Chronicle of the Tocco family and can be taken to represent the situation at the time: Greek natives despairing at their lot with the old imperial structure crumbling around them leaving them at the mercy of fate and the depredations – above all – of the invading Albanians. Despite inevitable shortcomings in historical methodology which is, after all, the lot of all such chronicles, the very strong impression is given that the native Greeks are unhappily receiving Albanian immigrants into their land. The main theme of the Chronicle of Ioannina centres on the iniquity of its ruler Thomas Preljubovic against whom there is quite obvious prejudice shown. The chronicle makes it pretty clear that the Albanians were newcomers; despoilers of Epiros and invariably hostile. Of particular interest for me is the reference to the fleeing of Greek refugees (admittedly mostly the well-to-do ones) to Ioannina from the district of ¡Vagenetia¢ which generally speaking encompassed the area of the modern Thesprotia prefecture of Greece as well as the adjoining region of Albania (around Butrint, sarande, Delvibne). It is hardly coincidental that this was precisely the same area inhabited by the Chams in modern times.
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