Skanderbeg is the national hero of Albania. The current national flag of Albania is said to have been his flag and his helmet was and is still shown on several Albanian symbols.
Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg (c. 1403-1468) was a member of the noble Kastrioti family, considered as originating from the hamlet of Kastrat, located on the plateau of Has, in northern Albania. Jean Kastrioti took control around 1400 of the region spreading from Tirana and Shkodra after a long struggle against the Balsha and Thopia family. Jean Kastrioti was defeated in 1422 by the Ottoman Sultan Muhrat II (1421-1451) and has to give him his son Georges as an hostage. Georges was military trained in Andrinople; he was such a good fighter that the Turks nicknamed him Iskander (Alexander). The Sultan appointed him sandjak-bey, that is reponsible of a military fief (timar) in his birth region, and then vali of the vilayet of Kruja. Muhrat's policy was to appoint beys of Albanian origin in Albania in order to control the country and increase his supporters.
In 1442, a Polish-Hungarian coalition attacked the western border of the Ottoman Empire; Skanderbeg took advantage of the confusion to seize the fortress of Kruja and organized the Albanian resistance to the Turks. On 28 November 1843, he proclaimed the Free Principality of Albania and raised the red flag with the black double-headed eagle, which was his family's standart. In 1444, the Albanian chiefs gathered in Lezha, then a Venitian possession, and appointed Skanderbeg their supreme chief. Skanderbeg gained the support, mostly nominal, of the Republic of Venice and also of King Alphonse of Naples, who saw him as the advanced defender of Southern Italy against the Ottomans. Moving from village to village, he increased his army and defeated the Ottomans for the first time in June 1444 and then in 1445 and 1446.
Skanderbeg challenged the local rule of Venice, which attacked him in 1447. A huge Ottoman army besieged Kruja in August 1450 but withdrew one month and a half later after several failed assaults. Skanderbeg became famous in Europe as the pioneer of the Christian reconquest against the Ottomans. When attempting to transform the League of Lezha into a unified and organized state, Skanderbeg was abandoned by two great Albanian families and betrayed by his own nephew, Hamza Kastrioti, who joined the Sultan. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans resumed their attacks against Albania. On 7 September 1457, Skanderbeg won the battle of Albulene, near Kruja, and the Congress of Mantova proposed him the leadership of an anti-Ottoman crusade. A third siege set up in 1467 was not more successful. Skanderbeg died from fever in Lezha on 17 January 1468 and was buried there in the St. Nicholas cathedral. The Albanians did not give up but the Ottomans eventually seized Kruja on 16 June 1478 and a few years later most Albanian cities. After the fall of Lezha, the Ottomans desecrated Skanderbeg's tomb, spread away his bones and transformed the cathedral into a mosque. In 1501, Skanderbeg's grandson landed near Lezha but was expelled by the Ottomans.
In 1968, the 500th anniversary of the death of the national hero was commemorated with the erection of an equestrian statue portraying him on the main square of Tirana, Skanderbeg Square. The statue was made by the sculptor Odhise Paskali, assisted by Andrea Mano and Janaq Paço.
Sources:
* Encyclopaedia Universalis
* Jean Durand-Monti. Albanie. Arthaud, 1990.
In 1576, Jacques Delavardin published in Paris Histoire de Georges Castriot, surnommé Scanderberg (sic), surely based on Barleti and Bardhi's books (see below). The famous poet Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) wrote as the preface to the book a sonnet dedicated to Delavardin, portraying Skanderbeg as follows (quote from Alexandre Zotos (Ed.) Anthologie de la prose albanaise. Fayard, 1984):
[...] Et Scanderbeg, haineux du peuple Scythien
Qui de toute l'Asie a chassé l'Evangile.
O très-grand Epirote ! Ô vaillant Albanois !
Dont la main a défait les Turcs vingt et deux fois [...]"
"[...] And Scanderbeg, hating the Scythian people
Which from all Asia has expelled the Gospel.
O! Mighty Epirote! O! valiant Albanian!
Whose hand defeated the Turks twenty-two times[...]"
The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) wrote in his Tales of a Wayside Inn (quoted by Smith [smi75b]):
The crescent banner falls
And the crowd beholds instead
Like a portent in the sky
Iskander's banner fly
The Black Eagle with double head [...]
More recently (1970), the epos of Skanderbeg and the sieges of Kruja have been related by the great Albanian writer Ismail Kadare in his novel The Rain Drums.
Marin Barleti, who exiled to Rome in 1479 after the fall of Shkodra, published c. 1508-1510 in Latin his History of the actions of
Scanderbeg, Prince of the Epirotes, which was translated in several languages and spread Skanderbeg's epos all over Europe. Frang Bardhi (1606-1643) published in 1636, also in Latin, his Scanderbeg, whose main goal was to refute the alleged Slavic origin of Skanderbeg (a theory still defended by Macedonian and Serbian nationalists). In order to prove that Skanderbeg did not belong to the Marnavić lineage, Bardhi quoted Barleti, who wrote that Skanderbeg's family emblem was "a double-headed eagle on a red background", an emblem never used by the Marnavić.
It is usually admitted that the eagle is of Byzantine origin. Petit Larousse Illustré 2004 claims that the Albanian eagle is of Austro-Hungarian origin, which is simply an anachronism; the flag section of that Larousse release is marred by mistakes and can unfortunately not be considered as a reliable source.
The eagle of the flag has often be related to the local name of Albania, Shqipëria, and of the Albanians, Shqiptar, formed on the Albanian root shqipe, the eagle. Albania is often named the Land of Eagles. The eagle was indeed highly estimated in Albania in very ancient times: the Epirot King Pyrrhos was nicknamed "The Eagle". However, the word shqiptar appeared only around 1555, in the oldest known documents written in Albanian, and only to designate the language spoken in the region then called Arbër. The Greek geographer Ptolemaus (IInd century BC) placed on his maps the city of Albanopolis, the capital city of the Albanoï. In th IX-XIth century, the Byzantine chroniclers used the names of Albanoi and Arbanites. In the Middle Ages, the Albanians called themselves Arben, Arbër or Arbëreshë their neighbours called them Arbanitoï, Arbanensis, or Arvanites, after the region of Arbanon, near Kruja, later called for long Arbeni. There is still near Tirana a village called Arbanë and the inhabitants of the region of Saranda call their region Arbër.
For the Byzantines, the Arbanites were Roman Catholic, whereas the Orthodox were called Gracci, and later Epirotes. The use of Albanians for a nationality appeared only in the XIVth century.
Source for this section: J. Durand-Monti, op. cit.
Ivan Sache, 10 May 2006
http://flagspot.net/flags/al.html
...pune te mrekullueshme po bejme te gjithe-te vazhdojme keshtu.
