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Albania
THE ALBANIAN LANDS UNDER OTTOMAN DOMINATION, 1385-1876
The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowered the Balkan Peninsula
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At first, the feuding
Albanian clans proved no match for the armies of the sultan (see
Glossary). In the fifteenth century, however, Skanderbeg united
the Albanian tribes in a defensive alliance that held up the Ottoman
advance for more than two decades. His family's banner, bearing
a black two-headed eagle on a red field, became the flag under
which the Albanian national movement rallied centuries later.
Five centuries of Ottoman rule left the Albanian people fractured
along religious, regional, and tribal lines. The first Albanians
to convert to Islam were young boys forcibly conscripted into
the sultan's military and administration. In the early seventeenth
century, however, Albanians converted to Islam in great numbers.
Within a century, the Albanian Islamic community was split between
Sunni (see Glossary) Muslims and adherents to the Bektashi (see
Glossary) sect. The Albanian people also became divided into two
distinct tribal and dialectal groupings, the Gegs and Tosks. In
the rugged northern mountains, Geg shepherds lived in a tribal
society often completely independent of Ottoman rule. In the south,
peasant Muslim and Orthodox Tosks worked the land for Muslim beys,
provincial rulers who frequently revolted against the sultan's
authority. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans tried
in vain to shore up their collapsing empire by introducing a series
of reforms aimed at reining in recalcitrant local officials and
dousing the fires of nationalism among its myriad peoples. The
power of nationalism, however, proved too strong to counteract.
Data as of April 1992
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