Kosovo: Albanian Anti-Ottoman Revolt 1690

It is claimed by Serbs (and repeated by some western historiography) that in 1689-90 in Kosovo there were almost no Albanians and that only
after a Serbian revolt against the Ottomans during the Austrian-Ottoman wars the Serbs were pushed out and replaced by Albanians from Northern Albania.

Yet according to sources back then, gathered by the historian Noel Malcolm, the people that revolted against the Ottomans in Kosovo and joined the Austrians are mentioned as Albanian by Austrians themselves and other sources at the time.

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One early account states that in Prishtina 5,000 Arnauts, having thrown off the Turks and many leaders of the surrounding places ... swore fealty to the Emperor.

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Count Veterani, the commander of the Austrian campaign in this part of the Balkans in 1690, wrote in his memoirs of 20,000 Arnauts reduced to loyal obedience to the Emperor by Piccolomini

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An anonymous history of the war, written in Italian (and surviving in manuscript in two forms: the full Italian text in the French Foreign Ministry archives, and an extract in German translation, entitled 'Annotationes und Reflexiones, in the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna), refers to more than 20,000 Rascians or Albanians. Some other early texts by writers who apparently had acces to original dispatches and documents specify Albanians: for example Franz Wagner, in his history of the region of Leopold I, used the words 'Arnautae' and 'Epirotae' - the latter being a term normally used to distinguish the Albanian language (and its speakers) from the Slav, ''Illyrian'', one.

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And one of Piccolominis own officers, Colonel von Strasser, reported to Ludwig von Baden that Piccolomini had gone to Prizren in order to treat with 'The Albanians, Arnauts, and others (mit den Albanesernen, Arnauten und anderen')

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Among the papers of Ludwig von Baden in Karlsruhe, there is a copy of an intercepted letter, in French, written by a secretary of the English Embassy in Istanbul on 19 January 1690: it reports that the 'Germans' in Kosovo have made contact with 20,000 Albanians who have turned their weapons against the Turks.

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Most of this evidence points then towards the conclusion that the bulk of the people who rallied to Piccolomini in Prizren - both the 5,000 who came to the town to greet him, and the others who made up the total of 20,000 - were, by our modern criteria, Albanian

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The demographics show that Kosovo had a large Albanian population before 1690. Western/Central Kosovo had an Albanian majority. Yet the Serbs and
some other historians claim the demographics started changing into Albanian only after 1690, after a ''Serbian'' revolt which resulted in a large Serbian migration yet the texts I have provided throughout this thread from that time and before show that this is nonsense. Noel Malcolm in his book about Kosovo has also demonstrated further that this demographic growth did not occur as a result of mass immigration from Northern Albania, using Ottoman records of population movements in the 1400's and 1500's into the region and North Albanian Catholic records in the 1600's that recorded families migrating in and out of the region.


I got it from Noel Malcolm's new book: Rebels, Believers, Survivors: Studies in the History of Albanians.


He talks about 'The Great Migration of Serbs in 1690' and further demonstrates most of the Serbs that migrated with Arsenije to Habsburg territory did not come from Kosovo but from Belgrade and other areas.

You can drop the comedy with your fake account.

If you don't have anything valuable to add to this discussion then I suggest stay out of this, please and don't derail this thread. Serbian historians, aware that the people in this revolt were mentioned as Albanian, basically claimed later that these Albanians were Serbs and not really Albanians, without any evidence. Yet when Albanians are mentioned fighting alongside Ottomans Serbs seem to have no doubt that it's Albanians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaut - Arnaut was a Turkish word for Albanian.

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Originally Posted by Baki

historian Noel Malcolm,

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Noel Malcolm is Albanian and Bosnian Muslim lobbyist. All his "works" is anti-Serb propaganda.

https://i.imgur.com/rAHaUlQ.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Malcolm

The Austrian historian, Johann Georg Von Hahn, mentioned the same thing later in the 1800's, studying sources from 1690.

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An interesting fact emerges from these historical events – that in 1689 Dardania had a plentiful and warrior Albanian population, because it is highly unlikely in my view that the Albanians mentioned here came over from Albania itself to join Imperial forces. The question as to whether these Albanians were Christians or Muslims is not answered in the above-mentioned work. An edition of source material about the Dardanian campaign of Imperial troops would provide a substantial contribution to our knowledge of this region and its inhabitants and would also be of great interest for our military history because names like Starhemberg and Veterani appear in it. No one would be better suited for this than the biographer of the former.

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1858
Johann Georg von Hahn: Travels in Dardanian Albania


I am not sure what comedy you people are talking about. This was clearly an Anti-Ottoman Albanian revolt, only adopted later by Serbs and claimed as a purely Serbian revolt.

Regarding the 'Great Migration of Serbs in 1690' the historian Noel Malcolm claims most of these people did not come from Kosovo:

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This essay examines both the historical facts concerning the migration of Serbs from Kosovo in 1690, and the claims made about that migration by subsequent historians—claims which, at their most extreme, suggested that hundreds of thousands of Serbs departed, with huge effects on the ethnic composition of the region. This essay demonstrates that there was no large-scale organized exodus of Serbs under the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, Arsenije Crnojević: his departure from Kosovo in early 1690 was extremely hasty, and he had not, in any case, been leading organized resistance to the Ottomans. A large number of Serbs did move with the Patriarch to Hungarian territory later in that year; he himself gave their numbers as 30,000 or 40,000. But they had gathered, from many areas, in the Belgrade region, and only a small proportion were from Kosovo itself. One unsupported claim was made many years later, by a Serbian monk, that the Patriarch had brought 37,000 families to Hungary; and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many Serb writers interpreted that figure maximally, while also assuming that all those people had come from Kosovo. This essay analyses the ideological influences (operating primarily on Serbs within the Habsburg territories in the nineteenth century) that helped to shape that interpretation; it also criticizes excessive claims made by modern Albanian and Turkish historians.

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Great Migration Of Serbs - 1690

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Originally Posted by Dušan

Noel Malcolm is Albanian and Bosnian Muslim lobbyist. All his "works" is anti-Serb propaganda.

https://i.imgur.com/rAHaUlQ.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Malcolm

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What I found odd about Malcolm is he published his book two months after the war in Kosovo began. There would be no reason (in other words not profitable) to write a book for the English speaking public about an obscure region that 99.9% of the English speaking world would have no interest unless there was a conflict.

The book was written and suspiciously published very quickly as you would expect of a work of propaganda.

To confirm even further that these people were Albanian we can just look at the demographics of Kosovo at that time or before the whole Austrian-Ottoman wars.

For example, according to the Turkish traveler Evliya Celebi who travelled Kosovo in the 1660's, Western and Central Kosovo had an Albanian majority:

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Pulaha noted most Christians in Opoja in 1591 had Albanian names[57].Catholic bishop Pjetër Mazreku noted in 1624 that the Catholics of Prizren were 200, the Serbs (Orthodox) 600, and Muslims, almost all of whom were Albanians, numbered 12,000.[58]In his 1662 work, Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi noted that the residents of Vushtrri were mostly Albanians.[59].In 1660's he noted most of western Kosovo as inhabited by Albanians

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This was like 30 years before Austrian-Ottoman Wars which confirms further these people revolting against Ottomans were Albanians.

This is what I have been saying for years. Most of the Serbian claims on that place are completely nonsense. They are claims invented in the 19th-20th century during the Balkan state formation process and form of nationalism. They started accusing Albanians of having all co-operated with the Ottomans, genocide Serbs etc without no evidence. They adopted the first battle as some national defining moment, despite there were Albanians fighting in that battle on the Serbian side, and in the second battle the Serbs actually became Ottoman vassals and went against anti-Ottoman Albanian troops. Battle of Kosovo (1448)

They expelled 60,000+ (Some claim up to 150,000 Albanians were expelled out of their homes) Albanians out of Nish and Leskovac which they had captured from the Ottomans despite these Albanians were peaceful people. Expulsion of the Albanians 1877–1878

This grew Albanian hatred towards Serbs and actually started the whole conflict. These Albanians became refugees in Kosovo which was then still Ottoman territory. As a result there were revenge attacks by some of these Albanians, they expelled Serbs and Kosovo from then on gained an absolute Albanian majority. From there Kosovo became an Albanian enclave. There
was again an Anti-Ottoman Albanian revolt there in 1912 and in Macedonia which the Albanians won. The Serbs took advantage of a defeated Ottoman Empire and invaded and started massacring Albanians. Albanian revolt of 1912

The Serbs also started pushing into Macedonia and Albania where they massacred the Albanian population. Skopje which had a population of 70% Albanian ended up losing half of it's Albanian population. They also historically claimed Macedonia and Albania.

Western powers ended up giving them Kosovo despite Italy and Austria voted to give it to Albania. It was a huge mistake as from 1912 to 1939 the Serbs murdered and expelled Albanians and started colonizing it with Serbs. See the colonization of Kosovo. World War II stopped the colonization and then Tito took over Yugoslavia. He gave Albanians more rights and made Kosovo an autonomous province.


It was also planned by the Serbs to colonize Macedonia.

Regarding Nish, except that it was inhabited by Illyrians and Thracians for thousands of years, it was also Bulgarian for hundreds of years. I wonder what claim do the Serbs have to
that city ?

Same with Kosovo, out of entires Kosovo's history, the Serbs held Kosovo only for like 250 years or so.

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History, for the Serbs, started in the early 7th century, when they settled in the Balkans. Their power base was outside Kosovo, which they fully conquered in the early 13th, so the claim that Kosovo was the "cradle" of the Serbs is untrue.

What is true is that they ruled Kosovo for about 250 years, until the final Ottoman takeover in the mid-15th century. Churches and monasteries remain from that period, but there is no more continuity between the medieval Serbian state and today's Serbia than there is between the Byzantine Empire and Greece.

Kosovo remained Ottoman territory until it was conquered by Serbian forces in 1912. Serbs would say "liberated"; but even their own estimates put the Orthodox Serb population at less than 25%. The majority population was Albanian, and did not welcome Serb rule, so "conquered" seems the right word.

But legally, Kosovo was not incorporated into the Serbian kingdom in 1912; it remained occupied territory until some time after 1918. Then, finally, it was incorporated, not into a Serbian state, but into a Yugoslav one. And with one big interruption (the second world war) it remained part of some sort of Yugoslav state until June 2006.

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Is Kosovo Serbia? We ask a historian

They also never legally annexed it. Then it was only incorporated into a Yugoslav State.

Macedonia never even had a Serb majority yet during the Balkan Wars the Serbs also went for Macedonia. It was held by various different empires. They planned to colonize it like they did with Kosovo.

They also went for Albania which was held by various empires. What historical claims did Serbs have to Albania ? They went for Albanian inhabited parts
of Montenegro. Tim Judah tried to justify Serbian claim on Shkodra, a city which was Illyrian for thousands of years and at the Serbian occupation had an Albanian majority.


Most of these Serbian historical claims to these places is completely nonsense and certainly have nothing to do with ancient hatreds. It's basically Serbian expansionism
at display. They were looking to push their borders and started an ethnic conflict.

The Serbs were basically just some Slavic tribe, that thanks to the Romans/Byzantine and Croats, were settled in the Balkans.
Had it not been for this they would of never even stepped foot in the Balkans. Thanks to Croats and Romans/Byzantine.

Their earliest homeland, interesting enough, was recorded in the Caucasus:

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The Serboi (Ancient Greek: Σέρβοι, romanized: Sérboi) was a tribe mentioned in Greco-Roman geography as living in the North Caucasus, believed by scholars to have been Sarmatian.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serboi

Their homeland was also recorded in 'White Serbia' in Central Europe

Meanwhile the name where Albanian comes from has been mentioned in the Balkans by ancient Greek historians since before Jesus Christ

There is also inscription found dating to the Roman period in Skopje, Macedonia:

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In the archaeological record, the Albanoi and Albanopolis have been directly attested on two funeral inscriptions. The toponym Albanopolis has been found on a funeral inscription in Gorno Sonje, near the city of Skopje (ancient Scupi), present-day North Macedonia.[14] It was excavated in 1931 by Nikola Vulić and its text was curated and published in 1982 by Borka Dragojević-Josifovska. The inscription in Latin reads "POSIS MESTYLU F[ILIUS] FL[AVIA] DELVS MVCATI F[ILIA] DOM[O] ALBANOP[OLI] IPSA DELVS" ("Posis Mestylu, son of Flavia, daughter of Delus Mucati, who comes from Albanopolis"). It dates to the end of the 1st century CE and the beginning of the 2nd century CE. Dragojević-Josifovska added two lines to the existing reading: VIVA P(OSUIT) SIBI/ ET VIRO SUO. Delus Mucati is an Illyrian name and his home region was Albanopolis (domo Albanopoli). Dragojević-Josifovska proposed that like others he had settled in Macedonia from southern Illyria.[15]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanoi

Skopje was the capital of Dardania which included modern day Kosovo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardania_(Roman_province)

Yet interesting how the Serbs claim they supposedly lived in these lands first ?

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Originally Posted by Baki

This is what I have been saying for years. Most of the Serbian claims on that place are completely nonsense. They are claims invented in the 19th-20th century during the Balkan state formation process and form of nationalism. .

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Did Noel Malcolm say Albanians were a minority in Kosovo during the Middle Ages?

I don't even know how you can try and argue against all this evidence. These people started claiming that place only in the late 19th century. It wasn't even part of their country but illegally occupied with an Albanian majority. Even if the Ottomans hadn't come, the Serbian Empire was crumbling, that's why they became Ottoman vassals, Albanian principalities were becoming stronger, that's why Albanians were one of the last people in the Balkans to be conquered by the Ottomans, Albanian principalities were always operating around the mountains of Western Macedonia and Western Kosovo and could of easily eventually expanded it's territory further, there were also some Albanians there from before. This is also how the Serbs managed to expand from 'Rashka' into Kosovo etc they exploited Byzantine weakness.

Western Macedonia was held by Albanian Gropa family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropa_family

Some sources claim Western Kosovo was held by the Albanian Dukagjini: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Dukagjini (Although little is known about this period)

We know the Kastrioti family operated around Prizren in Kosovo and Dibra.

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Serbian historians explain the growth of an Albanian population in Kosovo during the early Ottoman period in terms of physical immigration: it is suggested that Albanians from the Malesi were encouraged by the Ottomans to settle in Kosovo, that many of these turned to Islam to gain the advantages of superior status, and that those Slavs who became Muslims were not merely Islamicized but, sooner or later, Albanianized as well.

The Ottoman officials usually noted which heads of family were new arrivals in their places of residence; out of 121 new arrivals in the nahiye of Pec in 1485, the majority had Slav names. In the sancak of Prizren in 1591, only five new arrivals out of forty-one bore Albanian names; and in a group of Kosovo towns in the 1580's and 1590's there were twenty five new Albanian immigrants and 133 with Slav names - several of them described as coming from Bosnia. This evidence counts strongly against the idea of mass immigration from northern Albania. Other more general arguments against that idea are based on relative population sizes and rates of growth. The population of Kosovo during this period was much bigger than that of northern and central Albania, and its rate of growth was actually lower. This is not what one would expect if a large overflow from the Albanian Malesi were flooding into Kosovo.

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And the evidence also suggests that, while there was a steady flow of Albanians from Northern Albania into Kosovo, a major component of the Albanians demographic growth there was the expansion of an indigenous Albanian population within Kosovo itself.

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Of course there were also mention Rascians / Serbs revolting. And these Serbs joined Albanians and revolted together. But in Serbian histography this revolt is entirely claimed as Serbian despite the bulk of the people that joined Piccolomini against the Ottomans seem to of been Albanian. And this also said by one of Piccolominis own officers, Colonel von Strasser as I quoted in the OP.

I'll ask again: Did Noel Malcolm say Albanians were a minority in Kosovo during the Middle Ages?

You can say whatever you want, dude, I am not even reading your posts because I know what guy you are. You claimed Kosova as a mafia state despite it's a country that has changed government several times and political oppositions winning. You mostly post articles from 10 to 20 years ago. I don't even need to read your nonsense.

This revolt by the Austrian themselves was mentioned as Albanian, I quote again:

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And one of Piccolominis own officers, Colonel von Strasser, reported to Ludwig von Baden that Piccolomini had gone to Prizren in order to treat with 'The Albanians, Arnauts, and others (mit den Albanesernen, Arnauten und anderen')

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This was from Piccolominis own officer!!

Yet they claim this was a Serbian revolt. This is not the only thing that has been falsified in that place.


This whole Kosovo thing would of been avoided has that place been given to Albania back in 1912. The Albanians in Kosovo were murdered and their land was stolen from 1912 to 1939:

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Between 1918 and 1921, Serbian forces killed 12,346 civilians, burned 320 villages, looted 50,000 houses, imprisoned 22,16 and burned roughly 6000 houses.[44] Between 1913 to 1920, Serb colonists were given special privileges by the authorities to settle in areas, previously inhabited by Albanians, who had been vanished or killed numbering 60 000.[45]

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This was only from 1918 to 1921.

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After 1918, all Albanian schools in Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo were closed and around 400,000 ethnic Albanians were denationalised.[46] According to Vladan Jovanovic, Yugoslav authorities opened Turkish schools and not Albanian. Around 60% of Albanians were left without an income as a consequence of Yugoslav policy. Public services were closed to them and religious offices were politicised.[47] Yugoslav authorities also intended to replace Albanians in the region with Chetniks, war veterans and police men, as well as border police, refugees and party activists. In 1930, there existed no Albanian schools in Kosovo.

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You claim Russians are being murdered in Ukraine yet claim there has been no genocide on the Albanians in Kosovo.



These Serbs have absolutely no right or claim to that place. It's nothing but falsification of history and that's pretty much the end of it. They entirely turned it into an Albanian enclave thanks to their policies back in the 1870's and the conflict was further instigated in 1912. This was admitted by a Serb intellectual himself Dimitrije Tucovic who took part and witnessed the massacres.

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Originally Posted by Baki

You can say whatever you want, dude, I am not even reading your posts because I know what guy you are.

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I'm just asking you what your own source for 90% of what you're saying here said about Albanians in Kosovo during the Middle Ages.

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I don't even need to read your nonsense.

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You don't know what Noel Malcolm wrote? He's your guy, isn't he? Did you just skip that part of the book? Do you want me to post it and then ask you to explain it?

Either way, it's going to be posted and so it's up to you.

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Originally Posted by Baki

You claim Russians are being murdered in Ukraine yet claim there has been no genocide on the Albanians in Kosovo.

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You're clearly low IQ. First off, what happens in one place isn't related to another. Why would either be related?

Also, I never claimed Russians were being genocided in eastern Ukraine. I said civilians were killed. You're stupid and so you think dead civilians automatically means genocide.

There was no genocide in Kosovo. No serious person believes so. Some dead civilians aren't the same as large scale systematic murder of an ethnic group. Otherwise, you'd have to include the KLA as committing genocide against their own people (Albanians with different political opinions), Roma, and Serbs.

The 20,000 insurgents who met Piccolomini in Prizren were Albanians. Prizren was an Albanian city already in 1621

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In 1624, Pjeter Mazrreku reported that Prizren had roughly 200 Catholic inhabitants and 600 Serviani. But the great bulk of the population - 12,000 people in 1624 were Muslims, almost all of them Albanians.

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No doubt the 5,000 who came out to welcome Piccolomini did include many of the local Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox but they can hardly have accounted for more than a fifth of that crowd. It is surely significant that one of the earliest printed accounts of these events, an anonymous text based on original documents, refers to Piccolomini being greeted
at Prizren by '5,000 Arnauts' who were partly Christian Albanians and partly Muslims.' And the anonymous Italian manuscript history which was also clearly based on dispatches and other documents kept in Vienna says that there stood outside Prizren 6,000 and more Albanians including the same ones who were previously paid wages by the Turks and who
are called Arnauts.

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In Serbian historiography they have claimed that these Albanians who met Piccolomini were not really Albanians but Serbs

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One modern historian, Rajko Veselinovic, argued on those grounds that the Albanians referred to in the early
accounts of Piccolomini's dealings at Prizren were the mountain clans of Montenegro which were Slav speaking and mostly Orthodox but enough independent historical evidence exists of the actions of these clans during 1689-90 to make this claim unconvincing.

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But it's something that is impossible

They claim the archbishop mentioned in Prizren was Arsenije yet there is evidence to show it was not Arsenije but Bogdani, Arsenije was in Montenegro at that point.

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As for the fighting men who subsequently brought
the total (at least in theory) to 20,000 some of these
may also have been inhabitants of Prizren (which in
1670 had a population of roughly 50,000) but the evidence
suggests that others were drawn from further afield. Contarini's
account refers to Piccolomini, on his sickbed in Prizren,
receving the 'chiefs of the neighboring peoples
who came to pay tribute to the Emperor with oaths of fealty.
If, as seems likely, some of these chiefs had been summoned
by Bogdani, we might expect them to have included the leaders
of Catholic clans in the nearby parts of the Malesi and
indeed an Ottoman document written in February 1690 does
refer to a large group of mostly Catholic clans from that
area (including the warlike Fandi) who had allied themselves
with the Austrians. But the pledged total of 20,000 may well
have included other Albanians from areas close to Prizren
who were no longer Catholic, having been converted to Islam
within theprevious two three generations - for example,
the Shulla or Has region, where as Pjeter Mazrreku reported
in 1634 there had previously been 50 Catholic parishes but
were now only five. Mazrreku also noted that the conversions
to Islam was quite superficial: in 1671 another report on this
area stated that '28 years ago there were many Christians
now there remain 300 women and very few men, the rest having abjured
their faith in order to escape impositions and taxes.

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the evidence shows that the Austrians also were all not so friendly, for example Holstein is reported to have burned down Slavic villages in Prizren and that there were Serbs and Albanians
fighting on the Ottoman side. There was some Austrian hostility towards the local population, both Albanian and Serb.

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One early account described Mahmut Begollis army as consiting of Rascians as well as Albanians some of these Rascians may also have been Orthodox Slavs

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Regarding the so called 'Great Migration' :

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Austrian rule in Kosovo was extremely short-lived.
After the disastrous defeat at Kacanik on 2 January 1690
(which is attributed by some early accounts to disaffection
among the Arnauts on the Austrian side though the
most direct evidence we have makes no mention of this),
the Austrians withdrew in confusion and a joint Tatar-Ottoman
force entered the region. Arsenije fled northwards from Peje
also making a rapid retreat to the north were the Austrian
troops, plus some Rascians and Arnauts who had been stationed
in Prizren, together with the Catholic priest Toma Raspasani.
As he later explained, the rest of the population stayed behind:
Nobody was able to get out of Prizren or Peje, they all remained
there as prey to the barbarian. The popular idea, promoted
by nineteenth century writers and still encountered in the
modern historical literature, that Arsenije led a great
'exodus' of his people out of Kosovo is thus simply false.
He travelled to Belgrade, and spent most of the summer
there, this strong hold, still under Austrian control, was a
natural destination for many Serb refugees, and those
who gathered there during 1690 presumably included people
from those parts of Kosovo (mainly the eastern half)
from which it had been possible to escape from the
Ottoman-Tatar incursion but the majority of the
refugees to escape from the Ottoman Tatar incursion: but
the majority of the refugees there were probably from other
areas. (in the record of a meeting of Serb dignitaries held
in Belgrade in June, the names of people from many parts of
the Serb lands are specified but as it happens no one from Kosovo
apart from the Patriarch himself. Finally in the last month
of 1689 (the chronology is unclear but the process must have begun
before the fall of Belgrade in early October). a mass refugees
together with the Patriarch moved northwards into Hungarian
territory settling in the area between Buda and Komarom (Komarno)

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In Serbian historiography they claim this as a purely Serbian revolt but it's impossible , demographically and historically. There were both Serbs and Albanians fighting against Ottomans
on the Austrian side and some from both sides joined the Ottomans. The evidence also shows that some of the Austrians were hostile to the local Serb and Albanian population.

As for Arsenije it is impossible that he could of led a large crowd of people out of Kosovo. He went to Belgrade where most of the people that settled Habsburg territory with him came
from that area. That these people came from Kosovo is also something demographically impossible.

It's interesting for example how they claim the demographics in these regions changed because of Ottoman occupation (We don't know what would of happened if not for it anyway) but how was that any different than the Slavs being allowed to set foot in the Balkans thanks to Roman/Byzantine occupation. This changed the demographics of the Balkans much more than anything.

For example Noel Malcolm claims the Romanians/Aromanians originated in the West-Central Balkans and only pushed south and later north by the Slavs. There were Albanian migrations into Greece before Ottoman occupation too. And there were other Vlachs such as Istro-Romanian that settled Croatia and Megleno-Romanians more south of the Balkans. All before the Ottoman occupation.

The Bulgarians and Byzantines who held Kosovo for hundreds of years built churches and historical monuments but most of these were burned down. They were never restored like in the case for the Serbian churches, they were also destroyed during the entire Ottoman Occupation but they were restored again thanks to a Bosnian Serb Muslim convert. If it had not been for this there would be no Serbian churches there either.


Notice also for example how these texts mention the word 'Rascian' , it comes from 'Rashka' which was the early homeland of the Serbs in the Balkans
around Montenegro somewhere, north-west of Kosovo.

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Originally Posted by Baki

If you don't have anything valuable to add to this discussion then I suggest stay out of this, please and don't derail this thread. Serbian historians, aware that the people in this revolt were mentioned as Albanian, basically claimed later that these Albanians were Serbs and not really Albanians, without any evidence. Yet when Albanians are mentioned fighting alongside Ottomans Serbs seem to have no doubt that it's Albanians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaut - Arnaut was a Turkish word for Albanian.

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It's such a shame you got banned after you removed Russian flag from your profile.

He's not really saying it was a pure Albanian revolt either, he's saying among those Albanians there were probably many Serbs with them and that they basically revolted together.
He's saying ethnic hatred between Albanians and Serbs is a 19th-20th century creation.

Nowhere does it say that both side revolted neither did he say that actually since I read several times now. If we go by the texts, this was mostly an Albanian revolt that was later adopted into Serbian historiography as a Serb revolt where they claimed 20k Albanians that revolted as Serbs. So yes, mostly an Albanian revolt. Claiming there were Serbs among these Albanians would just be an assumption.

Something I found about Novo Brdo, in Kosovo.

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Ragusan documents attest to the presence of a significant number of Albanians living in Novo Brdo throughout the 14th and early 15th centuries, including members of the Catholic Albanian clergy with names such as Gjergjash and Gjinko, Gjini, son of Gjergji, the presbyter (1382); the reverend Gjergj Gega, Nikollë Tanushi, Gjergj Andrea Pellini and Nikolla Progonovic. In the book of debtors belonging to Ragusan merchant Mihail Lukarevic, who resided in Novobërda during the 1430s, 150 Albanian household heads were mentioned as living in Novo Brdo with their families. They worked as miners, artisans and specialists in the mines of Novo Brdo. The anthroponomy of these figures is characteristically Albanian; distinctive Albanian names such as Gjon, Gjin, Tanush, Progon, Lek, Gjergj and Bibë are mentioned

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Regarding the demographics of Kosovo before the Ottoman-Habsburg wars or the events of 1690, Arnavudluk was a Turkish word for 'Albania' as was 'Arnaut' , 'Arnavud' etc.

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The seventeenth-century Ottoman notable arid author Evliya Çelebi, who wrote a massive account of his travels around the empire and abroad, included in it details of local society that normally would not appear in official correspondence; for this reason, his account of a visit to several towns in Kosovo in 1660 is extremely valuable. Evliya confirms that western and at least parts of central Kosovo were ‘Arnavud’. He notes that the town of Vučitrn had few speakers of ‘Boşnakca’; its inhabitants spoke Albanian or Turkish. He terms the highlands around Tetovo (in Macedonia), Peć, and Prizren the ‘mountains of Arnavudluk’. Elsewhere, he states that ‘the mountains of Peć’ lay in Arnavudluk, from which issued one of the rivers converging at Mitrovica, just north-west of which he sites Kosovo’s border with Bosna. This river, the Ibar, flows from a source in the mountains of Montenegro north-north-west of Peć, in the region of Rozaje to which the Këlmendi would later be moved. He names the other river running by Mitrovica as the Kılab and says that it, too, had its source in Aravudluk; by this, he apparently meant the Lab, which today is the name of the river descending from mountains north—east of Mitrovica to join the Sitnica north of Priština. As Evliya travelled south, he appears to have named the entire stretch of river he was following the Kılab, not noting the change of name when he took the right fork at the confluence of the Lab and Sitnica. Thus, Evliya states that the tomb of Murad I, killed in the battle of Kosovo Polje, stood beside the Kılab, although it stands near the Sitnica outside Priština. Despite the confusion of names, Evliya included in Arnavudluk not only the western fringe of Kosovo, but also the central mountains from which the Sitnica (‘Kılab’) and its first tributaries descend

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Anscombe, Frederic F, (2006). "The Ottoman Empire in Recent International Politics – II: The Case of Kosovo". The International History Review. 28.(4): 767–774, 785–788.

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It was in reaction to the revival of the old exaggerated claims about the 'Velika Seoba' - including a programme on Belgrade television which stated that 400,000 Serbs had left Kosovo in 1690 - that the Kosovar historian Skender Rizaj published the first explicit attack, from an Albanian point of view, om the Serb historiography of these events: while accepting that some Serbs did support the Austrians, he argued that the majority of Piccolominis 20,000 volunteers were Albanian
And although the detailed breakdown of that total which he gave seems to have been speculative , his argument was based on a larger knowledge of the ethnic and demographic situation in 17th century Kosovo, derived from Ottoman sources. Overall the position adopted by Rizaj seems to have been substantially correct

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In the documents of the Austrian High Command, for example, in the promemorie on Albania of the General Marsiglio, a high ranking member of the Austrian General Staff dated April 1, 1690, in the letters of the Catholic Vicar of the Shkup, Thoma Raspasan who had substituted the leader of the Albanian uprising, the Archbishop of Albania, Pjetër Bogdani, it said clearly that “Prizren was the capital of Albania,” that “Peja and Shkup were parts of Albania,” and that in the area of Kosova people spoke the Albanian language.

When his armies entered into Kosova, the Emperor of Austria, Leopold I remarked that his armies were fighting in Albania. There were no reasons for Leopold I to alienate Serbs if they were as they say, the majority in Kosova. The Archbishop Pjetër Bogdani is called “Archbishop of Albania,” and the Bishopric of Shkup was included within Albania. In numerous works of Austrian and Italian historiography that also rely on these documentary sources, it is unequivocally admitted that the territories of Kosova were inhabited by Albanians and these territories were included within the territories of Albania.

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On the Autochthony of Albanians in Kosova and the Postulated Massive Serb Migration at the End of the XVIIth Century

Selami Pulaha Institute of History

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Evliya Celebi, travelling Kosovo in the 1660's, included Western and Central Kosovo and the Llapi region in North-Eastern Kosovo within 'Albania'[82][83][84][85]

Sources from the 16th-17th century indicate the towns in Kosovo such as Peja, Prizren, Prishtina, Gjakova, Vushtrri and others were mainly Albanian.[86][87][88][89][90]

During the Great Austro-Turkish War, Albanian Catholic leaders Pjetër Bogdani and Toma Raspasani rallied Kosovo Albanian Catholics and Muslims to the pro-Austrian cause. Sources from the period make mention of 20,000 Albanians in Kosovo that had turned their weapons against the Turks.[91] 5,000 Muslim Albanians in Prishtina are mentioned 'who had risen against the Turks'.[92][86] There stood outside Prizren 5,000-6,000 Albanians.[93] After the Austrians were forced to retreat, reprisals on the population followed as a result. In the 1690s Raspasani wrote that many of the Catholics in Kosovo had fled to Budapest where most of them died of hunger or disease [94], and that "I escaped from the Turks by the skin of my teeth, they made a special attempt to capture me" and that "Nobody was able to get out of Prizren or Peja, they all remained there as prey to the barbarian"[95]

Gjergj Bogdani, a nephew of Pjeter Bogdani, wrote later: 'My uncle, being found already dead and buried, was dug up from his grave and put out as food for the dogs in the middle of Prishtina'.[96] Catholic tribes from Northern Albania and the highlands of Gjakova also took part in the revolt on the Austrian side such as the Gashi, Krasniqi, Morina, Fandi etc and were punished after the defeat of the Austrians.[97][98]

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Yes, nice fake history :lol:

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The only major factor that might have led to a greater decline in the Serb population overall is the fact that the eastern areas, from which—as the statistics of those villages show—flight had been comparatively easy, had a population containing a higher proportion of Orthodox Slavs. But on the other hand there is evidence of a quite large drop in the population of the towns, most of which did not regain their pre-1690 levels until the nineteenth century; and the towns—of which this part of the Balkans possessed an unusually dense network—were overwhelmingly populated by Muslim Albanians. (Jovan Cviji¢s claims about the departure of 35-40,000 Serb families from Kosovo were implausible not only on numerical grounds, but also because he described those families as mostly urban.)**

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On such grounds I previously suggested, offering a very rough estimate, that it was unlikely that more than one quarter of the Serbs who arrived in Hungary had come from Kosovo. Since then I have looked more closely at accounts of the Serb population in central Hungary after 1690. Lists survive of the heads of household of the Serb community in Buda in 1702 and 1720, which in some cases give the person's place of origin. An analysis of these by Dusan Popovié gives the following totals: 70 from Serbia (excluding Kosovo); c.30 from Kosovo; c.20 from Montenegro; 11 from Bosnia; 4 from Macedonia; 1 from Bulgaria. In this sample, therefore, the Serbs from Kosovo make up 22 per cent of the total.*°

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(In the record of a meeting of Serb dignitaries held in Belgrade in June, the names of people from many parts of the Serb lands are specified, but, as it happens, no one from Kosovo apart from the Patriarch himself.) Finally, in the last months of 1690

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Given the facts we have considered, the claim that Kosovo was emptied of its Serb population would seem plausible only if that population had been remarkably small in the first place, or geographically limited to villages in the area between Trepca, Vushtrri and Prishtina. Serb historiography is reluctant—rightly—to endorse either of those views.

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https://archive.org/details/rebels-b...e/142/mode/1up

Albanians truly fought the hardest that’s why we were considered the best in war by everyone