International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations (IMIR) Albanian Identities Antonina Zhelyazkova 2000 Sofia 1303, 55, Antim I St., tel: (+3592) 8323112; fax: 9310-583; e-mail:
[email protected]; http://www.imir-bg.org Albanian Identities1 Historical background. Ethnogenesis. Like most of the Balkan nations, the Albanians, too, have a multifold and complex identity, as well as their own contradictory and difficult historical fate. Western historiography regards as "perplexing the ethnic variety in Southeastern Europe, which is the result of age-old processes of assimilation by local and foreign elements. What is more, in this case we do not have a succession of different ethnic groups, but rather different forms emerging from ascending layers". 1 Scholarship has embraced as sufficiently convincing the thesis that the origins of the Albanian ethnos go back to ancient Illyrians. Of course, this bottom layer was overlaid by Greek colonists' influence in the coastal area, and Romanisation imposed by the legions and the garrison towns in Macedonia and along the Dalmatian-Albanian seashore. The traces of the German tribes of Ostrogoths and Visigoths have been lost, but, on the other hand, the Slavs expansion in Southeastern Europe during the 6th century led to a substantial change in the ethnic map of the region.As a matter of fact, a legend has been told among the Albanians that they come from the same tribe as Alexander the Great - a megalomaniacal claim common to other Balkan nations too. He is attributed an order given during one of the wars between Macedonians and Greeks, put in a phrase used to date in the Albanian language: "Go, strike, slash, let no stone be left under your feet." To make this legend sound convincingly enough, Albanians assert that the quoted words have been cut into a stone of the Acropolis.