Robert Elsie
Texts and Documents of Albanian History
Albanian History
1800 — 1899
A British military man tours southern Albania in 1804 and 1805.
François Pouqueville, French consul in Janina, gives an account of his travels through Epirus and southern Albania at the time of Ali Pasha of Tepelena.
The English poet writes home describing his meeting in Janina with the formidable tyrant, Ali Pasha of Tepelena, and the attempts of the tyrant’s son to seduce him.
Lord Byron’s friend and travelling companion, John Hobhouse, describes their meeting with Ali Pasha of Tepelena in October 1809 and provides an account of the pasha’s life.
Danish archaeologist Peter Oluf Brønsted narrates his meeting with Ali Pasha in Preveza in late 1812.
British travel writer Henry Holland offers a biography of Ali Pasha and a description of his journey from Janina to Tepelena.
Two English gentlemen travel through southern Albania and Epirus in 1813.
British archaeologist and writer Charles Cockerell narrates his visit from Preveza to Janina, then in southern Albania, and his meeting with Ali Pasha.
A by no means flattering description of the early nineteenth-century Albanians, as encountered by an Alsatian soldier and writer at the court of Ali Pasha of Janina.
An early 19th-century French diplomat leaves his impressions of the Albanians as fighters and soldiers.
Benjamin Disraeli, later to be British prime minister, describes his journey to Arta and Janina, then in southern Albania, and his awe at entering the divan of the Great Turk.
Scottish political figure David Urquhart visits southern Albania in November 1831 and gives an account of his journey overland from Gjirokastra to Tepelena, Berat, Kavaja and Durrës.
A German geography book reveals the level of general knowledge of Albania in 1833.
English scholar Robert Curson passes through Paramythia and Janina, then in Albanian Epirus, on his way back from the Levant.
The German-Austrian geographer Ami Boué travelled much in European Turkey and made several journeys back and forth across Kosovo in the years 1836-1838.
A then controversial study of the 13th-14th century migration of Albanian tribes to southern Greece and their settlement in the Peloponnese.
Umstrittene Studie zur Einwanderung albanischer Stämme in das südliche Griechenland und deren Ansiedlung im Peloponnes im 13.-14. Jahrhundert.
A German botanist makes his way on foot from Prizren to Shkodra and describes an unknown land.
A first-hand account of the highland tribes of Albania and Montenegro, given by a Montenegrin author.
Description des tribus dans la région frontalière entre l’Albanie et le Monténégro par un auteur monténégrin.
The French scholar Cyprien Robert gives a description of the Albanians as he sees them (1842).
Dr Joseph Müller was an Austro-Hungarian military physician from Prague who served as medical commissioner in Albania and Rumelia around 1838. The following excerpts reflect the level of general knowledge of the Albanians and their language in the first half of the nineteenth century.
English poet and painter Edward Lear, on an originally unplanned painting tour of Albania, gives us an account of his visit to Elbasan and Tirana.
Scottish diplomat James Henry Skene provides an ethnological study of the Albanians, as they were seen in the mid-19th century.
English travel writer Edmund Spencer narrates his overland journey through central and southern Albania.
English writer William Frederick Wingfield provides an account of his brief visit to Shkodra in Ottoman Albania.
Von Hahn, remembered as the father of Albanian studies, gives a detailed and informative rendering of his journey through central Albania (Myzeqeja, Durrës, Kavaja, Tërbuf, Peqin, Elbasan, Tirana, Kruja and Shijak) in 1850.
A description of Plava [Plav] and Gucia [Gusinje] in southeastern Montenegro in 1858.
Description of a journey through Kosovo in 1858.
A Breton geographer ventures into the northern Albanian mountains and Kosovo in the mid-nineteenth century.
Detailed account of the presence of the Albanians in central Greece in the mid-nineteenth century, of the Albanian origin of the “fustanella,” and of the tragic fate of the Suliot Albanians at the time of Ali Pasha.
Two British ladies, travelling through the southern Balkans, describe their stay in Ottoman Prizren.
Henry Fanshawe Tozer (1829-1916) was a British writer, teacher and traveller. He is the author of the travel book “Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, Including Visits to Mounts Ida, Athos, Olympus, and Pelion, to the Mirdite Albanians, and Other Remote Tribes” (London 1869), which contains a detailed account of his journey through Albania in 1865.
A French diplomat, serving as consul in Shkodra, describes the Catholic diocese of Lezha and Mirdita in the mid-19th century.
Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, later to become Emperor of Mexico, gives an account of his visit to the rather run-down port of Durrës.
Description by a French consul of his journey through Ottoman Albania in 1875.
British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, writes a letter about his visit to the port of Durrës in May 1877.
A group of early English tourists venture into the mountains of northern Albania and get more of an adventure than they bargained for.
Early appeal for Albanian autonomy and independence, sent to Prime Minister Disraeli at the Congress of Berlin.
Albanian political figure and writer Pashko Vasa, also known as Wassa Effendi, sent this memorandum to the British government as a reaction to the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878.
Albanian leaders gathered in Prizren to oppose the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin that had ignored the rising Albanian wish for self-determination. The League of Prizren, that passed these Resolutions, marked the start of the thirty-year struggle for Albanian independence.
Fanny Janet Blunt, wife of the British vice-consul in Skopje, Sir John Elijah Blunt, published a two-volume study of ‘The Peoples of Europe’, including this chapter on the Albanians.
British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, reports from late 19th-century Kosovo, a land “plunged into apparently hopeless anarchy.”
A nineteen-year-old Austrian lad hikes from Podgorica in Montenegro over the border to Scutari (Shkodra) in Ottoman Albania in the summer of 1883.
Présentation de la première histoire de l’Albanie et de son auteur, l’enseignant Jean-Claude Faveyrial, qui était prêtre de la Mission Lazariste à Monastir (Bitola) en Macédoine.
Extracts on Chameria from Sami bey Frashëri’s monumental Ottoman Turkish lexicon “Kamus al-a’lam.”
Extracts on Kosova (Kosovo) from Sami bey Frashëri’s monumental Ottoman Turkish lexicon “Kamus al-a’lam.”
A French classical scholar describes his journey through Ottoman Albania (Durrës, Kavaja, Peqin and Elbasan) in 1890, on his way to Macedonia.
The Austrian scholar Theodor Ippen describes his journey through the Sandjak of Novi Pazar and Kosovo in the late Ottoman period.
Naim Frashëri’s profession of faith, the Bektashi Notebook, for the first time in a good English translation.
The German geographer Kurt Hassert describes his travels through the mountains of northern Albania in 1897, from Shkodra to Mirdita and Prizren, and to the rapacious Shala tribe.
The German geographer Karl Oestreich travelled through Ottoman Kosovo in the late summer of 1898. While sojourning in Mitrovica, he wrote the following entry in his diary about his visit to the home of the Kosovo nationalist figure and guerilla fighter, Isa Boletini.
Major manifesto of the Albanian national movement for full autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.
A memorandum on the nationalist movement, with notes on its leading figures, as drafted Faik Bey Konitza for the Austro-Hungarian authorities at the turn of the last century.