In the official scientific circles today, two currents represent opposing opinions on the ethnic origin of Albanians:

1) Or that they are directly descended from the (surviving and unassimilated) Balkan indigenous Illyrians (after the migration of the Slavs to the Balkans).

2) Or that they are originally from the Caucasus (so immigrants and not natives).

From a qualitative-methodological point of view, this “Caucasian” theory has more scientific foundations because it is based on at least some historical sources, unlike the first “Illyrian” one (whose most ardent supporters are Albanians for completely understandable political reasons). Namely, it is certainly known in historical science that in ancient times (e.g., during the time of Alexander the Great) there was a country of Albania in the Caucasus whose ruler brought gifts to Alexander when he was passing through northern Iran chasing the Persian king Darius III.

The key medieval source that tells us about the arrival of Albanians in the Balkans is the Byzantine chronicler and civil servant Mihailo Ataliota, who described the Byzantine history from 1034 to 1078. According to his writings, the Byzantine commander of Sicily, George Maniak, set out with his army in 1043 with the intention of taking the throne of Constantinople by force. In his army, there were also Sicilian Albanians (settled in Sicily from the Caucasus by the Arabs) with their wives and children. After a military defeat by the legitimate imperial commander at Lake Dorjan (today on the very border between North Macedonia and Greece), the Sicilian Albanians asked the local Serbs to allow them to settle in the nearby mountains, which they did. Thus, according to this Byzantine source, the Caucasian-Sicilian Albanians (in Turkish Arnaut – “those who did not return”) settled in the area northeast of the city of Elbasan (today in Albania).

Post WW I

The Albanian language is mentioned in historical sources for the first time late: only in 1285 as “lingua albanesesca” in a Dubrovnik manuscript. However, Byzantine sources from the 9th century tell us that the ethnonym “Albanian” does not have to be associated only with the Albanians/Arnauts known to us today, in which the ethnonym “Albani” refers to the Slavic inhabitants of the area around the city of Durrës (today in Albania).

It is quite understandable why Albanian science of Albanology rejects “Caucasian” and speaks only of the “Illyrian” origin of Albanians – in addition to the ethnic origin, they want to cement the rights over Kosovo province of Serbia (whose toponyms are almost exclusively Slavic-Serbian) and based on such “older” historical rights in relation to the Serbs before the international scientific public to claim that Kosovo is not Serbian, but Albanian.

Nevertheless, the “Caucasian” theory about the ethnogenesis of Albanians has one (but scientifically valuable) advantage over the “Illyrian” theory: it is based on at least two direct, reliable historical sources, while the theory about the “Illyrian” origin of Albanians is not based on any.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Cham Albanians in Filiates in 1915, by Fred Boissonas (PD-US)

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