Population of Macedonia and Adjacent Areas

[Carlin]

Trifunoski's research is invaluable. I wonder, was there any real Albanan presence in Macedonia prior to Ali Pasha of Janina's conquests?

There was, but it might be hard to determine exact numbers. Definitely less than prior to the times of Ali Pasha.

On a related note, I read a while back that Ziadin Sela's ancestors hail from Northern Albania (he is from Struga).

Have also read about Albanization of certain Muslim families in Struga, as well as "merging" of Macedonian Muslims with Albanians with Macedonian being abandoned by the Muslims and mixed families. Will try to find more info on this, but I also recall reading specifics about it in the past.

[Carlin]

"Sirmium was captured by the Huns in 441 and remained for a century under barbarian rule. It changed hands a couple of times but is lost again to the Avars in 582. From a Novellae of Justinian (Novellae XI of April 14, 535) we learn that in the ancient times Sirmium held the administrative post of the province, where all civic and religious cases were dealt with. However, during Attila's time (after 441), due to devastation, the seat of the prefecture was moved to Thessalonica. Some people remained behind in Sirmium but others fled from the invaders to Thessalonica, including Apraemius, the prefect of Sirmium. We have here official documents attesting a movement of population (refugees) from Sirmium to Thessalonica, of unknown proportions."

-- Page 103, Memory, Identity, Typology: An Interdisciplinary Reconstruction of Vlach Ethnohistory, by Gheorghe Bogdan (BA, University of British Columbia, 1992).

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Study from the 1950's: Every Albanian family in Skopje has a migration background

URL:

https://history-from-macedonia.blogspot.com/2020/08/study-from-50s-every-albanian-family-in.html

The Macedonian newspaper Nova Makedonija with an article about the research of Dr. Jovan Trifunoski, who conducted research in Skopje and the surrounding area in the early 1950s (described in the text as Skopsko Pole = Skopje Valley). He came to the conclusion that there is not a single Albanian family in the valley that does not have a migration background. In short, the Albanians once immigrated to Macedonia.

Trifunovski researched further and came to the conclusion that most Albanians even know where they came from, who their ancestors are who immigrated to Macedonia and even the migration routes, i.e. possible intermediate stops of the family before they finally reached Macedonia, could be reproduced by themselves.

See link above for full article.

Note: Text passages that speak of "today, now, ..." refer to the research years 1951-1953.

A few extracts:

- "The Albanian population of Skopsko Pole are divided into real Albanians and Albanized Roma. There are 183 houses of the first and 106 of the other. According to the places of immigration, the Albanian-speaking population in the Skopsko Pole belongs to two main streams of immigration: Northern Albanian and Kosovar."

- "And now, at the time when we were doing this research, the Albanian population is rapidly descending from the surrounding mountain areas, but also from the Kosovo Valley to the Skopsko Pole."

- "The Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims settled in several villages in the Skopje Valley in Singjelič, Idrizovo, Aračinovo, Butel and Belimbegovo (today's Ilinden) and slowly merged with the Albanians."

- "Who are the Maljoci?

According to Dr. Jovan Trifunoski, the albanized Roma in the villages of the Skopsko Pole are known by the common name Maljoci: “The elders of this population claim they came from the Kosovo Pole, Metohija, Gorna Morava and Drenica. It is not known where they lived before, but it appears that some of their families stayed in northern Albania and then came to the Kosovar Pole from there. The people of Maljoci have dark skin. The Maljoci mockingly call their compatriots, the real Roma, and try to make the difference between them as big as possible. The cemetery is separate and there are no marriages between them. "Trifunovski wrote."

Trifunoski's research is invaluable. I wonder, was there any real Albanan presence in Macedonia prior to Ali Pasha of Janina's conquests?

[Carlin]

Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Volume 27, London, year 1843.

Pages 33 and 34:

- "The Wallachians are not confined to Wallachia; they inhabit Moldavia and parts of south-western Russia; they are very numerous in Transylvania and eastern Hungary; they form part of the population of the Bukowina, and they are very numerous in Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus. Their number has been estimated at three millions, but this estimate is rather low, and apparently does not comprehend the Wallachians of Macedonia and the adjacent countries, or the Kutzo-Wallachians, who form a very considerable part of the population in the countries mentioned above. As the Wallachian language is apparently derived from the Latin, it is generally supposed that the Wallachians are the descendants of the Roman colonists sent by Trajan into Dacia. But this is a mere hypothesis, and some well ascertained facts show that this opinion cannot be maintained."

- "In the beginning of the thirteenth century the inhabitants of Dacia were exterminated by the Mongols; and after the Mongols had withdrawn, numbers of foreign colonists, Bohemians, Moravians, Germans, and especially Wallachians, flocked, some to Transylvania, and others to the present countries of Moldavia and Wallachia, which thus received a new population. Sulzer states that the MS. chronicles of the Wallachians contain very good accounts of these migrations, which we also find mentioned in the Annals of Hungary and Transylvania, and it is always said that these Wallachians received certain lands to settle upon. It is in a document concerning a donation which King Bela IV of Hungary made to Knights of St. John, in 1247, that the names of some Wallachians first appear in the history of Hungary. These Wallachians were boyars, and lived in Transylvania."

- "... the inhabitants of Wallachia, Moldavia, and a great part of Transylvania and Hungary must be considered as descended from the Vlachi of Thrace, a Christian nation, belonging to the Greek church, and who used a kind of Roman language, as we still see from the Kutzo-Wallachians. That the Roman language was used in a considerable part of the Thracian peninsula is stated by the presbyter Diocleus in Stritter, who says that after the conquest of Macedonia by the Bulgarians, that is, in the twelfth century, these barbarians proceeded to the conquest of the 'Provincia Latinorum qui illo tempore Romani vocabantur, modo vero Morovlachi, hoc est Nigri Latini vocantur.'"

- "It cannot surprise us that the name of Blachi or Vlachi was given to these Romans before they emigrated to the north. From the seventh century, and even earlier, a great part of Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus and Greece was occupied by Slavonic nations..."

- "According to Thunman, one half of all the Wallachian words are Latin, and of the remaining half three-eighths are Greek, two-eighths Gothic, Slavonic, or Turkish, and three-eighths belong to a language which seems to be Albanian. The auxiliary verbs, the articles, the pronouns, the greater part of the prepositions, and the adverbs of place and time, as well as the numerals, the declensions, and the conjugations, are all Latin, and so is generally the groundwork of the language. The declension is thus: (1) Sing. Nom. kinele (the dog); Gen. a kinelui; Dat. kinelui; Acc. pe or pre kinele; Voc. kine; Ablat. de la kinele..."

[Carlin]

Study from the 1950's: Every Albanian family in Skopje has a migration background

URL:

https://history-from-macedonia.blogspot.com/2020/08/study-from-50s-every-albanian-family-in.html

The Macedonian newspaper Nova Makedonija with an article about the research of Dr. Jovan Trifunoski, who conducted research in Skopje and the surrounding area in the early 1950s (described in the text as Skopsko Pole = Skopje Valley). He came to the conclusion that there is not a single Albanian family in the valley that does not have a migration background. In short, the Albanians once immigrated to Macedonia.

Trifunovski researched further and came to the conclusion that most Albanians even know where they came from, who their ancestors are who immigrated to Macedonia and even the migration routes, i.e. possible intermediate stops of the family before they finally reached Macedonia, could be reproduced by themselves.

See link above for full article.

Note: Text passages that speak of "today, now, ..." refer to the research years 1951-1953.

A few extracts:

- "The Albanian population of Skopsko Pole are divided into real Albanians and Albanized Roma. There are 183 houses of the first and 106 of the other. According to the places of immigration, the Albanian-speaking population in the Skopsko Pole belongs to two main streams of immigration: Northern Albanian and Kosovar."

- "And now, at the time when we were doing this research, the Albanian population is rapidly descending from the surrounding mountain areas, but also from the Kosovo Valley to the Skopsko Pole."

- "The Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims settled in several villages in the Skopje Valley in Singjelič, Idrizovo, Aračinovo, Butel and Belimbegovo (today's Ilinden) and slowly merged with the Albanians."

- "Who are the Maljoci?

According to Dr. Jovan Trifunoski, the albanized Roma in the villages of the Skopsko Pole are known by the common name Maljoci: “The elders of this population claim they came from the Kosovo Pole, Metohija, Gorna Morava and Drenica. It is not known where they lived before, but it appears that some of their families stayed in northern Albania and then came to the Kosovar Pole from there. The people of Maljoci have dark skin. The Maljoci mockingly call their compatriots, the real Roma, and try to make the difference between them as big as possible. The cemetery is separate and there are no marriages between them. "Trifunovski wrote."

[Carlin]

- According to Stelian Brezeanu, among the toponyms attesting the presence of the Romanic element in the region, there are two that have an importance: Palaioblacoi and Stari Vlah. Palaioblacoi is attested in Thessaly (later Μεγάλη Βλαχία/Megali Vlahia) and the second toponym, Stari Vlah, is attested in the Medieval Serbia and in Herzegovina: “It was a region inside of the Kingdom of the Nemanids that attached the Kopaonik Mountains to the Romanija Mountains, around the city of Sarajevo. That region had as centre the Drina and the Lim rivers valley.”

Next to Stari Vlah it is Romanija. This area has the mountain still called Romanja. Therefore, the region of Stari Vlah belonged to a more extended area, intensively romanised at the end of the antiquity.Ştefan Stareţu writes that “it is clear that Stari Raska comes from Stari Vlaska, with a rothacism, and Raska from Vlaska (this is exemplified by the double name of Banat, as Vlaska or Raska)”. He also advances a hypothesis: “The Serbs and Vlachs are probably a single ethnic substance, constructed in the Balkan Peninsula as a unity in the 8th-14th century.”

- In the Middle Ages the Vlachs lived in most of the mountain areas in the western Balkans up to the Adriatic coast. In the Middle Ages, the territory between the rivers Lim and Drina in the west, and Raska and Studenica in the east, was called “Old Wallachia” (Stari Vlah), and the Orthodox Church province of the Rasca – “eparchy Old Wallachian”.

URL:

https://researchomnia.blogspot.com/2021/03/actual-neolatins-in-serbia.html

[Carlin]

Shepherds of the Romans

URL:

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

The identification of the lowlands east of the Middle Danube as pasturing lands was first recorded in Emperor Constantine VII's De administrando imperio ("On Administering the Empire") in connection with the towns of Dalmatia. The Emperor wrote that "the Avars had their haunts on the far side of the river Danube", adding that the Dalmatians saw "the beasts and men on the far side of the river" when they visited the borderlands. In contrast with the Byzantine Emperor, Odo of Deuil who marched through Hungary in 1147 mentioned that the lands west of the river were said to have been the pasturing lands of Julius Caesar.

According to an early 13th-century report by one Friar Ricardus, a lost Hungarian chronicle—The Deeds of the Christian Hungarians—stated that Hungary had been called the pasturing lands of the Romans before the Magyars conquered it.

The identification of Hungary as the one-time pascua Romanorum ("the Romans' pasturing lands") was also mentioned in the Rhymed Chronicle of Stična from the 1240s, in Thomas the Archdeacon's History of the Bishops of Slanona and Split, which was written after 1250, and in the Anonymi descriptio Europae orientalis from the early 14th century.

On the other hand, Simon of Kéza and the 14th-century Hungarian chronicles did not refer to Hungary as the Romans' pasturing land. Instead, they wrote of the "shepherds and husbandmen" or the "farm-workers and shepherds" of the Roman citizens of Pannonia, Pamphylia, Macedonia, Dalmatia and Phrygia who stayed behind when their masters fled from these Roman provinces after the arrival of the Huns. Both Simon of Kéza and the 14th-century identified these "shepherds and husbandmen" as Vlachs.

[Carlin]

Tsar Solomon and "Golden Age" of Tsar Simeon, By A. G. Vinogradov

Page 47:

- "The Wallachians inhabited Epirus. Wallachians are often mentioned in the 12th-14th centuries in Serbia, in Shar-Gory, in the mountains west of Beli Drina, near Ibar and Serbian Morava. In the 13th century, the Vlachs are mentioned in Macedonia in Skopje and Prilep. Many Vlachs lived in the Rhodope Mountains, where they are still present in Pernar and Nevrokop. In Anchial they are mentioned in 1095 and 1164, in Visa in Thrace in 1285. The Romans said about these Pontic Wallachians that they were descendants of Italian (Roman) colonists."

- "The Wallachian language in Thessaly was gradually replaced by Greek."

- "The Greeks in Macedonia were considered wicked cincars (vlachs)."

[Carlin]

Dimitrios Golnas (Димитриос Такис Голнас) was a Greek chieftain (of Vlach extraction) of the "Macedonian Struggle".

Golnas was born in the 1880s in Neveska (Nymfaio) of Lerin.

The spread of rumours that he was an agent of VMRO led the secret Greek organization "Athena" to issue an order for his extermination. When he learned of these rumours, he travelled to the Greek consulate of Bitola to ask for explanations from the Greek consul Nikolaos Xydakis. Golnas was declared innocent, but upon leaving the consulate, he fell into an ambush by an execution squad organized by the Greek Youth of Bitola*. Unaware of the latest developments, they attacked and seriously injured Golnas. He died during his transportation to the hospital, in 1908.

* - In 1905 the British Consul claimed that, although in about 70 percent of the houses the spoken language was Vlach, 'a very large majority' of them had received 'their instruction entirely in the Greek language and have come to regard themselves almost as belonging to that nationality'. [Public Record Office, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 195/2208, Young to O'Conor, Monastir, 29 October 1905, f. 286.]

PS:

- A report submitted by a leading Vlach merchant to the Greek consulate mentions that after the establishment of railways, traders from the nearby towns of Prilep, Tikves, and Exi-Sou had settled in Bitola and started businesses in every commercial sector. According to this report the "infiltration of such traders" was part of a malicious master plan designed by VMRO to challenge Vlach (i.e. Greek) economic supremacy. The most dangerous competitors were the merchants from Prilep, as the British said, self-sufficient, frugal, audacious, ready to offer unlimited credit, with commercial connections in Solun.

i. FO 195/2156, Biliotti to O’Conor, Thessaloniki, 7 May 1903, f. 536.
ii. GFMA, F. 1905 Monastir Consulate, Spyros Doumas’s report, 31 January 1905

[Carlin]

Vasil Zhurka (Greek: Βασίλειος Ζούρκας, Vasilios Zurkas) was a fighter who operated in western Aegean Macedonia and Thessaly in the second half of the 19th century, and participated in the rebellion of 1878.

Vasil Zhurka was born in 1844 in the Vlach Macedonian town of Neveska. His family moved to Kostur for safety reasons, where he spent his childhood.

In 1870, with their younger brother Petar and their friend Dimitar Dalipo from Besvina, they stayed with their father's friend, the priest Dimitrios Anagnostu, in the village of Kalamitsi, Grevena region. The passing Turkish bandit Ali aga raped the daughter of the priest Anagnostu and Vasil Zhurka shot him. Vasil and Petar Zhurka and Dalipo killed three Turks and fled to the mountains, where they become bandits (klepths).

In 1871, in Ohrid, Zhurka set fire to the house of the Turkish kadi, who oppressed the local Christian population, and killed three of his ten-member guards, leaving a note.

Folk Song about V. Zhurka per Kuzman Shapkarev:

https://liternet.bg/folklor/sbornici/shapkarev_1/382.htm

https://fr-fr.facebook.com/BitolaMK/posts/326643440748013/

ВАСИЛ ЖУРКА ГО УБИВА АЈДИТ МАЉА

Алал да му бидит на Васил Журка,
шчо ми собрал седумдесет мина,
седумдесет мина се млади момчиња,
се' млади момчиња и се' преспанчиња,
се' преспанчиња, се' Македончиња,
та шчо ми излегол млад арамија,
млад арамија во Преспанско Поле,
во Преспанско Поле, в Германска Планина.
Шчо се собрале сите Турците,
та ми отидоа во град Битола,
мезлич ми чинат жив да го фатат:
„Да се собериме до илјада души,
до илјада души се' башибозуци,
та да одиме во Преспанско Поле,
во Преспанско Поле, в Ѓерманска Планина".
Таман ќинисаа на пат да ми одат,
на пат да ми одат на Боунско Поле,
голем страв зедоа, назад се вратиа,
маана најдоа: туфеѕи немале.
Та што ми дочу тој Васил Журка,
от' по него идат илјада души,
илјада души се' башибозуци,
алал да му бидит пак на Васил Журка,
шчо ми написа онаа бела книга,
онаа бела книга, тоа црно писмо,
та си ја прати во град Битола,
дури во Битола, право на пашата:
„Да се соберите до десет илјади,
до десет илјади се' башибозуци,
ич страв немам од ваш башибозук!"
Од тука ми слезе тој Васил Журка,
од тука ми слезе во Корчанско Поле,
во Корчанско Поле, во селото Ѕвезда,
тука ми ги најде сите селани,
сите селани, сите чорбаџии,
та шчо нарача онај добар ручек,
онај добар ручек, до десет погачи,
до десет погачи, до десет преснеѕи,
ем рудо јагне и лута ракија.
Тие му рекоја: — „Да видит господ,
да видит господ од вас ајдути!
Сега овде беше тој ајдут Маљо,
нему му дадовме овај добар ручек!"
Тогај им рече тој Васил Журка:
„Ручек ви нејќум, право ми кажите,
право ми кажите за ајдут Маља,
за ајдут Маља каде отиде?"
„Сега ми слезе згора над лозјана."
Та шчо ми ојде тој Васил Журка,
та шчо му викна на ајдут Маља:
„Каде си го нашол овој добар ручек,
овај добор ручек и љута ракија.
А тој ајдут Маљо ракија ми пијат,
песна ми пеит, оро ми играт,
оро ми играт, нему му се смеит.
Алал да му бидит на Васил Журка,
шчо му наврти московска мартинка,
шчо ми го удри по десната страна.
Од тука откина пак ајдут Маљо,
та ми отиде во турска куќа.
По него трчат тој Васил Журка
каде отиде трага да ми најдит;
Трагата му најде во турската куќа,
умрен го најде, в земја закопан;
Та шчо натера тој домаќинот
од земја да г' извајт, с' јаже да го врзит.
Од земја г' изваде, с' фортома го врза,
кучиња му кладе него да го тргает;
Шчо го обеси на високо дрво,
на високо дрво тишки да го јадет.

Преземено од книгата: БИТОЛА БАБАМ БИТОЛА
Народни песни во кои се спомнува Битола,
Издадена: Битола, Октомври 1969 год

[Carlin]

URL:

http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf

Page 144:

"Many barbarians were enlisted in the military, indeed in the later Empire barbarian colonies were planted within the depopulated lands under Roman rule. Height requirements for military recruits were lowered."


Page 147:

"Contemporary records indicate that, more than once, both rich and poor wished that the barbarians would deliver them from the burdens of the Empire. While some of the civilian population resisted the barbarians (with varying degrees of earnestness), and many more were simply inert in the presence of the invaders, some actively fought for the barbarians. In 378, for example, Balkan miners went over en masse to the Visigoths. In Gaul the invaders were sometimes welcomed as liberators from the Imperial burden, and were even invited to occupy territory. To ensure doubtful loyalty of frontier areas, the government was an occasion forced to make up local deficits of grain.

Zosimus, a writer of the second half of the fifth century A.D., wrote of Thessaly and Macedonia that '...as a result of this exaction of taxes city and countryside were full of laments and complaints and all invoked the barbarians and sought the help of the barbarians' (quoted in Mazzarino [1966: 65]). 'By the fifth century,' concludes R. M. Adams, 'men were ready to abandon civilization itself in order to escape the fearful load of taxes' (1983: 47).

[Carlin]

Hierissos was established around this period (late 800s, early 900s) which coincides with the arrival of a group from the North, mentioned in Greek sources as "Sclav Bulgarians" (which may also mean slave Bulgarians).

According to A. Kaldellis, "... that odd composite designation - 'Slav Bulgarians' - suggests that the Roman state distinguished between its own Slavs and Slav settlers from the Bulgarian empire."

Page 143, "Romanland" A. Kaldellis.

[Amphipolis]

A testimonial dated June 982 regarding an agreement between the inhabitants of Hierissos and John the Iberian, the founder of the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos, bears the signature of numerous persons with following names: Basil Stroimir, Vlasios Vladko, Nicholas Detko, Antony Rokovina. In addition, one of the signatures is in Glagolitic letters.

Hierissos was established around this period (late 800s, early 900s) which coincides with the arrival of a group from the North, mentioned in Greek sources as "Sclav Bulgarians" (which may also mean slave Bulgarians).

[Carlin]

All Greek to me.
Any copy of the document available?

Unfortunately, no.

Above quote is from Florin Curta's book "The Edinburgh History of the Greeks", page 174.

[Risto the Great]

A testimonial dated June 982 regarding an agreement between the inhabitants of Hierissos and John the Iberian, the founder of the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos, bears the signature of numerous persons with following names: Basil Stroimir, Vlasios Vladko, Nicholas Detko, Antony Rokovina. In addition, one of the signatures is in Glagolitic letters.

All Greek to me.
Any copy of the document available?