Kosovo: Albanian Anti-Ottoman Revolt 1690

[Baki]

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.

[Russki]

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.

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

[Bleach]

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.

[Wizz]

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.

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

[Wizz]

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.

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

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.

[Wizz]

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

[DamCz]

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.

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

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]

Yes, nice fake history

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.)**

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.*°

(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

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.

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