Conferință științifică internațională, Chișinău, 22-23 septembrie 2020, ediția a II-a ~ 459 ~ Stoica LASCU Prof., PhD, „Ovidius” University of Constanţa email: [email protected]

RECENT RESEARCH ON THE CULTURAL HERITAGE OF IN THE

Summary. Recent Research on the Cultural Heritage of Aromanians in the Balkans. The paper presents concerns of some researchers from (from Bucharest and Constanţa) regarding the knowledge and recording of the stage of the identity situation and cultural heritage of the Aroma- nians from the Balkans. It is a research project, spread over several years (2014–2019), initiated (by researcher Emil Ţîrcomnicu) by the “Constantin Brăiloiu” Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the Romanian Academy, completed – so far – by publishing six albums. The areas of Korçë, Sarandë and Gjirokastër, Plain of Muzachia, Gramsh, , and (all in ), Bitolia region, Ohrid, Struga, and Crușova (all in the Republic of Northern Macedonia) are also covered. Also, the volume of research recently published about the travelers of the philologist-Professor Nistor Bardu for the knowledge of the current situation of the mother tongue at the (A) in Albania. Keywords: Research, Cultural Heritage, Balkans, Aromanians, “Constantin Brăiloiu” Institute of Ethnography and Folklore.

In the last five years, fruitful research has been carried out in the areas inhabited by Aroma- nians in countries in the Balkan Peninsula (Albania1, Northern Macedonia, Bulgaria) – within a scientific project initiated and coordinated by researcher Emil Ţîrcomnicu, prolific author of volumes of Romanian ethnology2 (north and south-Danube), from the “Constantin Brăiloiu” Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the Romanian Academy. 1 Ten years ago, a well-known researcher of the history of the Balkan Romanians initiated a re- search project on the Aromanians in Albania, materialized in a substantial volume – Adina Berciu- Drăghicescu, Aromânii din Albania – prezervarea patrimoniului lor imaterial. Proiect realizat sub egida Bibliotecii Metropolitane Bucureşti şi a Departamentului pentru Românii de Pretutindeni de pe lângă Guvernul României. Coordonator proiect: Prof. Univ. Dr. ..., Bucureşti: Editura Biblioteca Bucureştilor, 2010, 26 p.; with the following table of contents – Adina Berciu-Drăghicescu, Românii din Peninsula Balcanică. Studiu de caz: aromânii din Albania (p. 21-40); Eadem, Institutul Român de la Saranda (p. 41-48); Virgil Coman, Fonduri arhivistice din patrimoniul Serviciului Judeţean Constanţa al Arhivelor Naţionale referitoare la aromânii originari din Albania (p. 49-72); Maria Magiru, Conside- raţii etnografice privitoare la românii din Peninsula Balcanică (p. 73-101); Dorin Lozovanu, Aromânii din Albania: Aspecte etnodemografice şi identitare (p. 109-121); Viorel Stănilă, Neoaromânismul în context politico-diplomatic sud-est european (p. 123-133); Anexe (p. 135-310). 2 Românii de la sud de Dunăre. Obiceiuri tradiţionale de nuntă. Studiu istoric şi etnologic, Editura Ziua (Coll. Românii de lângă noi), Bucureşti, 2003, 186 p. (coauthor: Iulia Wisoşenschi); Identitate româ- nească sud-dunăreană. Aromânii din Dobrogea. Sărbători, obiceiuri, credinţe, cultură şi viaţă comuni- tară, Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2004, 244 p.; Meglenoromânii: destin istoric şi cultural, Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2004, 100 p.; Minorităţi româneşti sud-dunărene. Studiul etnologic al aromânilor, Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2007, 278 p.; Românii dintre Vidin, Dunăre şi Timoc. Sărbători, obice- iuri, credinţe [Dictionary], Bucureşti: Editura Institutului Cultural Român, 2010, 128 p.; Românii bal- canici în paginile „Gazetei Transilvaniei” [1878–1913]. Volum îngrijit de Emil Ţîrcomnicu and Stoica Lascu, Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2012, 304 p.; Sărbători și obiceiuri. Românii din Bulgaria. Vol. IV. Considerente privind elaborarea Atlasului Etnografic Român. Românii din afara granițelor. Serie nouă, Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2014, 100 p.; Sărbători şi obiceiuri. Românii din Bulgaria. Vol. I. Timoc (Second edition completed), Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2017, 332 p. Patrimoniul cultural de ieri: implicații în dezvoltarea societății durabile de mâine ~ 460 ~

Iulia Wisoșenschi, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, Nistor Bardu, „Lecturi vizuale” etno- logice la aromânii din Albania – Zona Korçë. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu [Ethnological “Vi- sual Readings” on the Aromanians from Albania – Korçë Area. Memory, Tradition, Heritage] (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română [Macedonian-Romanian Culture Society]), Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2014, 144 p.; ill. The album „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Zona Korçë, is the result of field research in August 2014, within the project entitled Configurations of the ethnological discourse of Aromanians in Albania and Romania from the perspective of interdisciplinary scien- tific research (ethnofolkloric and linguistic), proposed by the Macedo-Romanian Culture Society in partnership with the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore “Constantin Brăiloiu»” and the Cultural Foundation “Muşata Armână” (Mihail Kogălniceanu Town, Constanţa County), with funding provided by the Policy Department for Relations with Romanians Everywhere of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Initially, the theme of the project was to study ethnofolk- loric phenomena from an interdisciplinary perspective by combining the efforts of Romanian and Albanian specialists in various branches of academic research (ethnography, literary folk- lore, linguistics, ethnomusicology) and a visual artist. The intention of the group of specialists – led by the researcher Emil Ţîrcovnicu – was to carry out a proper research, directly in the field, in which to capture the metamorphoses of oral discourse, starting from the primary source – a conservative community, with a living oral tradition (Aromanians from Corcea) and with coherent community life, towards a unique investigation in a new living environment, that of the Aromanian enclaves (some of them with Albanian citizenship), temporarily or definitively established in Romania. The purpose of the scientific approach was to materialize in the draft- ing of theoretical studies on field observations and investigations on the mental dynamics and identity-cultural reconfiguration of a community with a strong traditional profile in two different situational contexts. However, the financial conditions “diverted” the meaning of the primary research and ori- ented the approach towards a different, visual of ethnological photography. The photographic material of the album Visual readings ethnological among the Aromanians from Albania, Korçë area, “is a visual reading exercise, with many unique photographs, some with emblematic value, which capture the current state and social-community dynamics of Aro- manian groups (Farsherots) from the Corcea area, being supported by samples of ethnofolkloric dialectal material, doubled by a consistent historical information provided by approved bibli- ographic sources, accredited by the academic community”3. This album actually continues an older tradition, initiated by the Manakia brothers, and in the field of Romanian research of two reference names for the academic research area, Theodor Capidan and Tache Papahagi, namely that of capitalizing on the South Danube ethnofolkloric material and in the form of albums with visual ethnological information, and not only in theoretical syntheses and scientific working tools such as: dictionaries, bibliographies, collections and anthologies, chrestomathy, etc. The originality and timeliness of the information (the material is recorded in August 2014) and, at the same time, the modern way of highlighting the material and intangible cultural heritage of the Aromanians from the researched localities: Corcea, , Pleasa, Boboştiţa, Şipsca, “which we can categorize coherent communities in terms of a collective cultural identity, but in an obvious identity crisis, caused by the weakening and dilution of traditional milestones and landmarks in the context of the dynamics of today’s society, add value to the volume”.

3 Iulia Wisoșenschi, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, Nistor Bardu, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Zona Korçë. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu [Ethnological “Visual Readings” on the Aromanians from Albania – Korçë Area. Memory, Tradition, Heritage] (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română [Macedonian-Romanian Culture Society]), Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică, 2014, p. 4. Conferință științifică internațională, Chișinău, 22-23 septembrie 2020, ediția a II-a ~ 461 ~

Iulia Wisoșenschi, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Câmpia Muzachiei. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo- Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2015, 160 p.; ill. The research team’s interest was directed at another significant group of Aromanians in Al- bania, known as the Miuzacheans (Farsherots), namely those established in the fertile Plain of Muzechia / Myzeqeja (called in alb. Muzeche and Mizuchea in arom.), divided into Muzachia Mare (Muzeche e Madhe) and Muzachia Mică (Muzeche e Vogël). The authors shown that the Aromanians here “had to adapt both to the demands of a closed, communist society in the sec- ond half of the last century, but also to a society that had to recover democratically and economi- cally in the last twenty years”. Also, next to the Aromanian from Moscopole sedentarized in this agricultural space, descended from the mountain localities, the families of shepherds from the ancient Aromanian hearths, Moscopole, Corcea, Nicea, Grabova, etc., gradually sedentarized in the plains, you suffer, as a result of the movements metanastasice. Holders of a capital preserved in the collective memory and transmitted through oral communication channels, the Aroma- nians from Albania (Muzachia area: Diviaca, , (Vilardi arom.), Şchepuri, Vlorë (Avlona arom.), Seleniţa) activate and keep another living repertoire of folk categories, but in today’s high- tech society, with its fantastic technological equipment, information, etc., these human groups, living according to traditional norms and customs, fight for the legitimacy of specific values ​​and performances in the context of increasing assimilation the pressure of the socio-economic and cultural factors imposed by the current living environment”4.

Iulia Wisoșenschi, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromâ- nii din Albania – Sarandë și Gjirokastër. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2016,144 p.; ill., map. In the specialized studies, few in number, the information about the group of Aromanians from the Saranda – Arghirocastro area, which represents an important part of the total number of Aromanians in this area, known as rămăńi/migidońi and culuńiaţ, named after the place of origin (Megidei, today the town of Kefalovrysto in , and the Kolonia region of Albania), are stoning, insufficient and little clarified on the current socio-cultural and life context. Settled in the urban centers, such as Saranda and Arghirocastro (the Aromanian dialect name of the city of Gjirokastër), the sedentary Aromanians are engaged in commercial, craft and liberal ac- tivities, continuing on the one hand an old tradition of their professionalization, like merchants, silversmiths, bankers, builders of secular and ecclesiastical buildings, owners of inns, etc. On the other hand, they have adapted to the demands and challenges of a labor market imposed by the changes in post-communist Albanian society. Originally, Farsherots and from Moscopole who practiced transhumant pastoralism for centuries, the urbanized Aromanians from the works pre- sented in the album’s pages “are exposed to a slow, sure, why not, natural acculturation, being incorporated into the social texture of the Albanian majority”. In the historical destiny of the group, the installation of the communist regime of Enver Hogea “diverted the existential mean- ing of the peaceful groups of Aromanians that oscillated between the fertile pastures of the works in Corcea, in the summer season, and the warm shores of the Adriatic Sea. In the eight of the new communist society, the Aromanians from the Saranda – Arghirocastro region were forced to settle down, the herds were confiscated, and the labor force capitalized in the new agricultural cooperative structures”5. 4 Ibidem, p. 4. 5 Iulia Wisoșenschi, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Alba- nia – Sarandë și Gjirokastër. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2016, p. 4-5. Patrimoniul cultural de ieri: implicații în dezvoltarea societății durabile de mâine ~ 462 ~ Nistor Bardu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Gramsh, Elbasan, Pogradec. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2017, 164 p.; ill., map. Between September 25 and October 6, 2017, the regions surveyed were: Gramsh (Grắnşi), with the town of Gramsh and the village of Grabovë e Sipërme (Greava), Elbasan (city), Pogradec (Pogradeţ), the town with this name and the village of Llëngë (Lunca), with their surroundings. The three rural localities considered, Greava, Lunca and Nicea, are arranged in a triangle, like the legs of a noose (pirostrii), around the Valamare massif (Valea Mare), whose highest peak, Maja e Valamarës, reaches 2,373 m. These settlements are the last in the constellation of localities consisting of Moscopole, Linotope, Şipsca, Gramostea, etc., which reached the peak of flourish- ing and civilization two and a half centuries ago. “Being inhabited only by Aromanians, they are true treasures for ethnologists and linguists, due to their historical importance, the tangible and intangible heritage they hold and the native languages they​​ speak. If in Lunca there are 6 more families, and in Nicea about 20, we found that Greava still has demographic and material resources, and this is due to the quality of the people who insisted on staying and carrying on the cultural heritage of this village, once a famous city. All the people from Greava met in Albanian cities, businessmen or craftsmen of all kinds, look with nostalgia at Greava, and the place where their ancestors lived and where some of them spent their childhood”6.

Nistor Bardu, Stoica Lascu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, Ioana Iancu, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Regiunea Bitolia. Memorie, tradiție, grai, pat- rimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2018, 196 p.; ill., map. The situation of the Aromanians in the Bitolia region (the town is one of the largest cities in the Republic of Northern Macedonia) has changed dramatically in the last 100 years. Going through great transformations, produced by the , the First and Second World Wars, the destruction caused by them, the emergence of the borders of modern nation-states, many members of the Aromanian communities, true demographic sources once for the whole region, had to leave to other countries, thus drying up some of the villages and towns in which they lived for so long and which were often examples of worthiness for cohabitants of another ethnicity. The characteristic of the Aromanians to move as merchants abroad, at great distances from their place of birth, facilitated, in the tense historical moments – in the general context of the access to modernity –, the attraction to the new well-founded purpose of the families at home existence. Returning to one’s homeland has always been difficult, in the interwar period and in the decades after World War II. Today, the Aromanian communities in the region we are researching are much demographically diminished. Some settlements are almost completely deserted. The temp- tation of the exodus to better horizons encompassed more and more of them, especially after, in Bitolia, the performing industries of the past disappeared or were transferred to other cities in this country. “Given all these aspects, what I have tried to present in this album is a testimony to the presence of Aromanians in the region in question, in the last century and a half. Beyond the atmosphere of abandonment, abandonment and collapse that dominates many of their hearths today, I wanted the cultural and spiritual values, rediscovered in those left in the villages and homes where they were born, to be brought to light and to become indisputable testimonial evi- dence of their secular life in these lands”7.

6 Nistor Bardu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Albania – Gramsh, El- basan, Pogradec. Memorie, tradiție, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2017 p. 4-5. 7 Nistor Bardu, Stoica Lascu, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, Ioana Iancu, „Lecturi vizuale” etnologice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Regiunea Bitolia. Memorie, tradiție, grai, patrimoniu (Societa- tea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Etnologică, 2018 p. 5. Conferință științifică internațională, Chișinău, 22-23 septembrie 2020, ediția a II-a ~ 463 ~ Nicolae Saramandu, Manuela Nevaci, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, „Lecturi vizuale” et- nolingvistice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Ohrida, Struga, Crușova. Memorie, tradiție, grai, patrimoniu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Universității din București, 2018, 196 p.; ill., map. The new volume it’s dedicated to the Aromanians from the Ohrid, Struga, and Cruşova re- gions (the Republic of ). This area is loaded with a rich history of Aromanian communities who, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tried to assert their identity and cultivate in the Romanian language, founding, with the help of the Romanian state, a extensive network of schools and churches. Their traces are still present today, both in the places of worship and in the memory of the people. We exemplify with two close localities. Beala de Sus / Gorna Belica / Гopнa Бeлицa: The main occupation of the locals, Aromanians mbălóţ (in the past): merchandising (părmătichia); there were also many sheep owners (domni, masters). Some of the locals were made up of craftsmen (zănăcí): ráfţâ ‘t a i l o r s’, gunusári ‘tinsmith’, tinichigiá etc. The families offărşeróţ , recently established in the locality, deal with shepherding, being picurári (shepherds) and with agrotourism. “The pastoral way of practice presupposed transhumance and nomadism, each with its own characteristics”8. Beala de Jos / Dolna Belica / Дoлнa Бeлицa: For members of the research team, forming a unitary group, the information given for the packaged Aromanians from Beala de Sus is also valid for those from Beala de Jos. But, “A peculiarity is the fact that in Beala de Jos there is an important community of Muslim . Several Aroma- nian families have converted to the Muslim religion without leaving their mother tongue, which they keep very well. Beala de Jos is the only locality among those we visited in the Balkan countries where we met Aromanians of Muslim religion (our emphasis). The adoption of the new religion does not seem to be very old. The transition to Mohammedanism is a delicate subject, which the locals, embarrassed, avoid discussing. The explanation given by those in question is that they are, originally, Albanian Muslims who have mastered the language spoken by the Aromanians”9. About another famous Aromanian locality in North Macedonia – Cruşova / Kruševo / Кpушeвo –, founded by the Aromanians at the end of the 18th century, after the destruction by the Muslims of the two flourishing centers of the Aromanians, Moscopole and Gramoste (those in the first city were engaged in trade, crafts; flocks of sheep, grazing), the authors reveal that “The Moscopolians were, at the beginning, a heterogeneous group, illustrating the situation in the metropolis of Moscopole, with a population of Farsherots, Grabovians, Pindens, etc. Instead, the grammarians formed a unitary linguistic group. The results of this mixture can be seen to this day”10 – and the authors extensively exemplify the situation of the Aromanian dialect in Cruşova.

Nistor Bardu, La (a)românii de azi din Albania [At Today’s (A)Romanians in Albania], Edi- tura Etnologică (Colecţia de Lingvistică), Bucureşti, 2020, 348 p.; ill.11 A completely recent volume of a well-known Romanian Balkanologist today (b. 1950; Asso- ciate Professor, PhD, retired, at the Faculty of Letters of the “Ovidius” University of Constanţa) – specializing in Philology –, is the result of studies library, but also of repeated trips (to one of them I had the opportunity to accompany him) to our Aromanian brothers (the strains of the Moscopolians & Farserots) from Albania, contains rich and profound observations about the re- 8 Nicolae Saramandu, Manuela Nevaci, Emil Țîrcomnicu, Cătălin Alexa, „Lecturi vizuale” etnolingvis- tice la aromânii din Republica Macedonia – Ohrida, Struga, Crușova. Memorie, tradiție, grai, patrimo- niu (Societatea de Cultură Macedo-Română), București: Editura Universității din București, 2018, p. 109. 9 Ibidem, p. 123. 10 Ibidem, pp. 152-153. 11 In addition to the narrative text itself, the paper also includes short summaries – in Aromanian (Ndauă zboari pi grailu a nostru: p. 313-315), Albanian (Permbledhje: Tek aromunët e soteëm të Shqiperisë: 316-326), and English (Among the Aromanians in Albania: p. 327-338), Bibliography (p. 339-340), and Photos (p. 341-348). Patrimoniul cultural de ieri: implicații în dezvoltarea societății durabile de mâine ~ 464 ~ ality of these Balkan Romanians today. The interest of the philologist12 in the Aromanian dialect – himself a native Aromanian, with a family originally from Greava, settled in interwar Romania – focused mainly on settlements where Aromanians are still native speakers and retain their eth- nic specificity. On the other hand, he observes that the younger generations leave the language in which they were born, thus entering into an irreversible process of assimilation. Among the aspects that give originality to the work in question, we mention the combination of scientific elements regarding the Aromanian words heard and recorded largely in the tape recorder or in specialized notebooks, people’s occupations, habits and daily life, with those of an emotional na- ture, the author being a “son” of the world he describes and a leader of emotions. Thus, reading this book becomes pleasant, not only very interesting – both for linguists and for those interested in knowing the actual state of the settlements in which the Aromanians live in Albania. “But beyond the actual scientific interest, I had other reasons to vibrate when it came to Albania! ... My parents were born, raised, reached the peak of their age and married there, in Albania, in a mountain village, Greáva (Grabova, in the official name), populated only by the rest. They came to Romania for a wedding, in 1933, together with other families from their native village, all convinced that Romania is their country, the Mother-country. We, their children, all born in the new homeland, grew up telling us, in the moments of respite, stories from the life lived in their country of origin, recalling figures of their parents, brothers and sisters who no longer they had managed to come to Romania, and their concerns there. They told us about the high mountains, especially the Válea Máre mountain (alb. Valamare), at the foot of which, not far away, is Greáva, about șcắmbile (the huge cliffs) that guarded the old entrance to the village, about The fields (fields) they worked in the summer, about the pastures on the alpine heights, where the sheep of the village grazed, but also of the nomadic or semi-nomadic Aromanians, called by them caceaúń, who arrived and remained there with their flocks from spring to autumn, about their hard and almost continuous work, throughout the year ... We, the children, listened to them in shudders. Due to the distance in space and time, it seemed to us that the world evoked by them was a world of fairy tales and legends, and the stories told were assimilated to fabulous stories. In our children’s minds, those places became dream realms. From what I knew, I knew that I had a lot of first cousinsin ​​ Albania, and from my mother, who had left a sister and three brothers there, and from my father, whose three sisters had married and stayed in the country where they were born. How much we wanted then to get to see, not only with the eyes of the mind, but also live, that wonderful world of our imagination, or at least to talk to people who have just come from there! The study of Capidan and Burileanu’s book, read and observed during my studies, as well as the undergraduate work I did the following year on the Aromanian speech in Albania spoken by the people from Greáva who came to Romania, among others, further stimulated curiosity and the desire to see this country again and again”13.

12 He is the author of several volumes – Limba scrierilor aromânești de la sfârsitul secolului al XVI- II-lea (Cavalioti, Daniil, Ucuta). Partea I. Aspecte ale grafiei. Fonetica, Ovidius University Press, Constanţa, 2005 /224 pp./; Aрoмaнцитe вo вaлкaнcки кoнтeкcт. Cтуди и прилoзу. Издaниeщo вo ѝрирeъи: Димo Н. Димчeв (Unia di Culturã-a Armãnjlor dit Machidunii. Biblioteca Natsionalã Armãneascã “Constantin Belemace”. Colectsiea “Moscopoli” 19), Скопjе-Scopia, 2009, 184 p.; Stiluri și limbaje în limba română actuală, Constanţa: Ovidius University Press, 2011, 256 p. 13 Nistor Bardu, La (a)românii de azi din Albania [At Today’s (A)Romanians in Albania], Bucureşti: Editura Etnologică (Coll. Lingvistică), 2020 p. 10.