Pristina, 1858

On the morning of our arrival (November 1), we found everything covered in white, for snow had fallen during the night to the height of our feet. Winter, then, had arrived on this high plateau. And according to the statements of the natives, winter, at its first appearance, usually appears persistent, so it was more reasonable to expect it to worsen further than to ease. We were therefore forced to abandon our plan of entering mountainous Dardania from here, and to worry about descending as quickly as possible to more southern and lower regions. We stayed two days in the house of the mayor of the city, whose dark rooms were not at all suitable for raising our spirits, but our stay there became interesting in one respect.

From Manastir we traveled towards the city of Prishtina, which is located about an hour and a half in a northwest-northeast direction, again passing several valleys and branches of hills, because the city is neither located on a plain nor on its edge, but is embedded in a sub-valley, precisely at the place where the latter branches and is traversed by the streams coming from the two branches, which join a little further down.

According to our measurements, the city is 1776 feet above sea level. Twelve minarets and a clock tower rise above the mass of houses. Prishtina (Prisht, Slavic: gungë, kodrini) is, after Manastir, the main military center of the western half of the peninsula, and in all probability, its location among the restive Albanians of Dardania and Gegëria, as well as its proximity to the vicinity of Novi Pazar — which constitutes the only connection between Bosnia and the rest of the Empire and through which the Serbs have several times attempted to connect with the Montenegrins — was decisive for its selection as a military center. The city is therefore filled with soldiers of all arms, but it does not constitute an administrative center. It is subject to the pasha of Prizren and is the seat of a simple mudir. The present official, a small and elderly man, welcomed us attentively, but we had no close contact with the military authorities.

"The morning after our arrival we saw everything covered in white..."

On the morning after our arrival (November 1), we saw everything covered in white, because snow had fallen during the night to the height of the foot. Winter, therefore, had arrived on this high plateau. And according to the statements of the locals, winter, when it first appears, usually appears persistent, so it was more reasonable to expect it to worsen further than to soften.

We had therefore to abandon our plan of entering the mountainous Dardania from here, and to concern ourselves with descending as quickly as possible to the more southern and lower regions. We stayed two days in the house of the mayor of the town, whose dark rooms were not at all suitable for raising our spirits, but our stay there became interesting in one respect: the mayor’s elderly mother told us that European travellers rarely came here; the last she remembered were two young Frenchmen, who had come about eighteen years before, when her husband – who had also been mayor – was still alive. When I mentioned the names Boué and Viquesnel to her, she said she remembered only the former, and her physical description agreed with it. This is the only trace we have found of these men, to whom science is indebted for the first, closest acquaintance with these places, for to what extent these lands were and still are unknown to them, is shown by what they left behind to be collected—and how little substantial is what they collected! How much we had to leave for our descendants!

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In the northern province of Llap and in the southern province of Gollak

After winter had closed our way to the Dardanian mountainous regions, we tried in Pristina to at least get as much information about them as possible. It was there that we first heard of a major geographical division of the country located east of the Dardanian Plain: the northern region of Llap and the southern region of Gollak. However, it did not seem credible to us that from these elements the name Llap Gollak, by which the Dardanian Albanians are called by their brothers in old Albania, had arisen, because – as we have previously pointed out – this latter form seems to be related to Gollubinja, the old name of Vranje.

Gol in Slavic means “bare”; and Gollak, like Golesh, means a bare mountain, or rather a complex of mountains without forests. It is possible that the rocky character of Mount Mërkonjë and its two neighbors has brought about this name for the province, but we were unable to obtain any reliable information about this, as well as about its geographical extent, although we are convinced that its boundaries can be determined with great accuracy on the ground.

Dardanian Albanians are divided into tribes

The Llap region, on the other hand, takes its name from the river of the same name, a branch of the Sitnica river, and thus includes the territory along it, about which we tried in Pristina to obtain as much information as we could, since it is completely unknown. Each of these regions is divided into two subdivisions, as we understand from this note: In the upper Gollak there are 19 villages, which hold their popular meetings near the Prapashica mosque, while 21 villages of the lower Gollak gather in the village of Sfircë. Meanwhile, 20 villages of Pristina gather in Orllan, and 22 villages of Llap in Podujeva. This note also shows that the Dardanian Albanians also make agreements (dinges), as do the highlanders in their homeland, but unfortunately in Pristina we did not find a Franciscan like Brother Gabriel to describe to us the nature of these Dardanian popular gatherings in a clear and complete way, as he did for the gatherings in the Alpine region of

Albania, so we did not receive more information about them.

The Dardanian Albanians, like the Highlanders and Mirditori in their homeland, are divided into tribes, but the weakening of the tribal bond is clearly seen from the fact that revenge here is not a tribal but a family matter; the duty of revenge belongs only to the closest relative of the murdered, and likewise the responsibility for the blood passes only to the closest heir of the murderer. But whether the principle “he who inherits, takes revenge” is really so sacred according to custom, as we have been told, remains to be seen.

"The female heir actually inherits her father's land property as well"

We were also struck by another statement in Dediq, which was confirmed by Albanians in Pristina, that the female heiress actually inherits her father's land ownership as well. This property passes through her marriage to another tribe, because despite the wide distribution of tribes, custom does not allow marriage within the same tribe — however, this rule was denied in Pristina.

If the female heir has property rights and must marry outside her tribe, then one of the main attributes of the tribe is missing from the legal consciousness, namely the idea of ​​a closed tribal territory.

Tribe here is called, just like in the native country, Fis, and this word seems to be related to the Greek word

phyta. The hereditary head of the tribe is called Naser, a term we did not find in our native country;

probably of Turkish origin. The main ancestors are distributed in this way throughout the country: Of the 22 villages of Llapi, 20 belong to the Kelmend tribe (the other two are from the Batushë tribe). The Kelmends extend from Podujevo to Kuršumli and inhabit most of the villages around Dedić, while in the vicinity of Vranje and Gjilan there are no Kelmends. They consider all the Kelmends living in the Albanian alpine region and who are Catholics, as their tribe of origin, from which separate families have migrated to Dardania at different times.

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The Krasniq tribe makes up almost the entire Muslim population of the city.

The Krasniq tribe resides mainly in and around Pristina and constitutes almost the entire Muslim population of the city, for apart from them there are only 14 Emir houses, who consider themselves branches of the main tribe in Novo Brdo. These Emirs are the only Muslims in this country who come from Asia, or according to local usage, they are the only Osmanlli in the country. The main villages of the Krasniqs are in the Upper and Lower Gollak in the district of Pristina, where they face almost equal odds with the Kelmends. They are also present in Leskovac and Mitrovica, as well as in the district of Vranje.

In the district of Leskovac, along with the Krasniqës, there live branches of the Sopi, Berishë and Gashi tribes. The Sopis predominate in the Morava Valley, while almost all the inhabitants of Karadak are Berishës. The Gashës are also in the Masurica region, the greater part of which belongs to the Krasniqës. In the district of Leskovac, the Gashës live in six villages, but they have no connection with their tribe in Prishtina and Vranje. Their leader was formerly Latif Aga, known for his bravery, while now it is his eldest son, Reshid Aga, and the latter's brother, Emini, who commanded the garrison of five men at the Lebana guard post. Part of this information was given to us by Emini and one of his subordinates, Hajdari, who stood out to us because he was the only Albanian who showed us by his movements that he provided shelter to other beings.

Gases scattered everywhere

As the main tribes they mentioned to us, the Gashës — who are scattered everywhere — and the Shaljans, who constitute the greater part of the population in the district of Vushtrri and recognize the Catholic Shaljans settled in the Albanian Alpine node as their mother tribe. These seem to be the largest tribes that, besides a dozen smaller tribes, divide Albanian Dardania. They are divided into more or less sub-branches; for example, the Berisha tribe has seven branches, namely: 1. Askuri, 2. Ali Shiça, 3. Doda, 4. Mërturi, 5. Livoshi, 6. Kuçi, 7. Gjeci, and these branches are further divided into even smaller divisions. Since we were unable to obtain new information about these relations in Dardania, we limit ourselves to telling about what has been said in the Albanian Studies. For the determination of the total number of Dardanian Albanians, only one point of support is offered, which is found in a notification received from the General Command of the Military Corps of Rumelia, regarding the number of recruits that the Muslim population of the districts that make up Albanian Dardania provides in peacetime, in a first-class recruitment, according to the ratio of 5: 100 of the population forced to serve in military service. This also corresponds to the data that was given to us in the field through questions asked on the spot: Kursumli: 39, Leskovc: 84, Vranje: 80, Prokuplje: 45, Prishtina and Llapi-Gollaku: 82, Gjilan: 83, Total: 413.

This means a total of 8.260 Albanians forced into military service, since in these districts the Muslim population consists only of Albanians and there are no Christian Albanians. However, this does not serve our purpose, because everywhere we have asked in vain about the overall ratio of the population to the number of those forced into military service (i.e. to derive the total population from this number).

Fortunately, in Gjilan we received information that the number of houses in the district named after this city is a total of 3.800, of which 2.300 are Albanian-Muslim and 1.500 Bulgarian-Christian. This data thus provides us with a rough basis for our calculations.

"...for Albanian Dardania we can estimate a population of around 70 thousand inhabitants"

Considering the previously mentioned custom of keeping the family together as long as possible — a custom that the Albanian maintains even more strongly than the Serbian or Bulgarian due to the existence of blood feuds and the tendency to seize power — we think that the average number of members of an Albanian household should be at least six people.

According to this calculation, for Albanian Dardania we can estimate a population of about 70 thousand inhabitants. If the area of ​​this region is estimated at about 80 square miles, this would give approximately 900 inhabitants per square mile. The districts mentioned above naturally include several provinces that lie outside Llapi,

Gollak and the surrounding regions to the east, such as the Moravica Valley, the headwaters of the Morava, and parts of the Kosovo Plain. On the other hand, it can be safely assumed that the lists on which the military censuses were based, in this still semi-subjugated country, fell far short of accurately reflecting the true population.

For this reason, we think that our calculation is also an underestimate rather than an overestimate.

Taken from “Journey from Belgrade to Thessaloniki”, Vienna, 1868 (Original title “Reise von Belgrad nach Salonik”. Translated by Enver Latifi, prepared by Skënder Latifi. The title and the subheadings are the Editorial Staff’s.

The travelogue “Journey from Belgrade to Salonika” (Reise von Belgrad nach Salonik, Wien 1868), by the renowned German albanologist and diplomat, Johan Georg von Hahn (1811–1869), is perhaps his work richest in data on the places he visited, even with very detailed information. We say this, taking into account the time when the travelogue saw the light of day. Based on the figure and personality of Johan Georg von Hahn, who is well-known among Albanian scientific circles, but also beyond, we will provide the reader with a reflection of his journey, focusing more on the areas from which, twenty years later, the Albanian population was expelled. According to the author's own testimony, he began the journey on September 11, 1858. Part of his team were “Mr. Gottshild, philosopher from Jena, Franjo Zach, Commander of the Belgrade Military Academy”. 2 Undoubtedly, the most reliable man in Johan Georg von Hahn's team was the coachman, Jovan, an Albanian from Prizren, who, according to the author, had traveled almost all of Turkey in a carriage and held his eagle-like nose up high with such pride that everyone thought he was a Turk" (Skënder Latifi)