PRANIA E POPULLSISË ALBANE NË HAPËSIRËN GJEOGRAFIKE TË DARDANISË- KOSOVËS DHE TË MAQEDONISË VERIPERËNDIMORE GJATË MESJETËS, PARA PUSHTIMIT TË BALLKANIT NGA PERANDORIA OSMANE (Sipas burimeve sllave të shek. XIII-XIV dhe osmane-turke të shek. XV)
THE PRESENCE OF THE ALBANE POPULATION IN THE GEOGRAPHICAL AREA OF DARDANIA—KOSOVO AND NORTHWESTERN MACEDONIA—DURING THE MIDDLE AGES BEFORE THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE'S CONQUEST OF THE BALKANS (According to Slavic sources from the 13th–14th centuries and Otto

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, we have brought some data from both foreign and domestic researchers who have addressed the issue of the Albanian ethnic population. Their studies indicate that this population resided in the areal of Dardania during the medieval period, even prior to the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire. In addition to these findings, in this paper, we however introduce and analyze several new pieces of information that have not been published before. We provide insights into the remnants of certain churches and monasteries constructed by Albans [predecessors of Albanians] during the medieval era, many of which no longer exist today and some of which were appropriated during the occupation and rule of the medieval Slavic state of Raška and the Orthodox Church. Primarily, we have examined archival sources that offer evidence of the existence of settlements of ethnic Albans in the territory of Dardania during the medieval period, relying on historical toponyms as well as the traces of Christian monuments of cult built by nobles and merchants of Alban ethnicity, which clearly demonstrate their existence prior to the Slavic invasions in this geographical area. On the other hand, Slavic historiography, anthropogeography, and ethnology make maximum and ongoing efforts to deny the existence of Christian settlements and monuments of cult-such as churches and monasteries of the Alban [Albanian] ethnicity-during the medieval period in the territory of Dardania, which encompasses present-day Kosovo and Northwestern Macedonia. Some of these settlements, which bear Bulgarian suffixes, were named by the Bulgarian medieval administration; however, the Bulgarian records have since disappeared. Subsequently, a significant number of these toponyms, rooted in Proto-Albanian substrate, were replaced and translated into the Slavic lexicon of Serbian during the Slavic-Serbian rule. While a small portion of these names were calqued with Slavic doublets and suffixes. The majority of the ProtoAlbanian toponyms [prior – Slavic], were excluded from official use in daily life by the medieval Slavic administration, yet some of them have been preserved in the collective memory of the Albanian population until the late Middle Ages. Had these settlements been established by the incoming Albanian population, the central Arbëria following the establishment of the Ottoman administration in the areal of Dardania, they would have kept and been recorded with Turkish names and doublets. However, the Ottoman-Turkish administration came accros them during their surveys, they were already Slavicized and bearing Slavic names and doublets. This indicates that these settlements existed prior to the Ottoman incursion into the Balkans and certainly prior to the establishment of the Slavic Serbian administration in the 13th and 14th centuries within the geographical area of Dardania. The fabricated thesis of SlavicSerbian historiography and anthropogeography, which continues to be recurring by Slavic quasi-authors to this day, which claims that allegedly the Ottoman state brought the Albanian population to the sacred Slavic land at the end of the 17th century and the early 18th century. The assertion that when the Slavs arrived in Dardania, which they refer to as Kosovo, they found it empty and uninhabited is one of the greatest historical fabrications and falsifications, a narrative that has been repeated numerous times, yet this particular instance is the most famous in Slavic-Serbian historiography, lacking every documentary evidence.

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