A Man You Have Never Heard of and a Dish You Have Never Dreamed of
Some Famous Albanians
It used to be regarded as funny – or at least mildly amusing – to ask people to name five
famous Belgians. The task’s assumed difficulty (it is not really hard), always felt like a mean-spirited attempt to belittle our peaceful and
civilized neighbours who happen to produce some of the world’s finest beers. But
asking the question about Albanians - much further away and with fewer cultural
ties – feels less unreasonable.
Up to 10 million people identify as Albanian, roughly half being members of a diaspora covering
Europe, North America and more. Even the 4.3m who are not part of that diaspora, do
not all live in one country. 2.3m Albanians live in Albania itself (96% of the
country’s population), another 1.5m live in Kosovo (92% of all Kosovans) while
almost half a million live in North Macedonia, making up nearly a quarter of
the population.
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| Kosovo |
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| North Macedonia |
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| Albania |
And famous Albanians? I can offer one from each of the main communities.
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| The Balkans Every place mentioned in the text, whether major city or village is marked in red |
Mother Teresa (Saint Teresa of Calcutta) was well-known but not everybody knows where she came from. Tirana Airport is named for her, but she was born in
1910 in Üsküp in the Kosovo vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. So, was she Kosovan?
They like to claim her but Üsküp is now called Skopje and is the capital of
North Macedonia. Political turmoil in the Balkans meant that by the time she
was 8, and without moving from Skopje, she had been a citizen of 4 different
countries.
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| Mother Teresa Memorial House, Skopje, 2015 The house stands on the site of the church where Mother Teresa made her first communion. The church was destroyed in the 1963 earthquake. |
Kosovo’s Pristina Airport bears the name of Adem Jashari – a very different figure from St Teresa. One of
the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1991, he died in 1998 when Serbian
forces attacked his family compound and massacred 59 people, mostly Jashari’s
extended family. The dead included 28 women and children.
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| Awdem Jashari outside the remains of his bullet spattered compound |
And to represent the country of Albania itself, there is Skanderbeg.
Skanderbeg – Who He?
Skanderbeg may be little known in the English West Midlands, but he is huge in Albania.
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| Skanderbeg in Tirana's central Skanderbeg Square, 2019 |
A statue of Josef Stalin was erected here in 1951. Albanian leader Enver Hoxha fell out
with Stalin and replaced him with Skanderbeg in 1968, the 500th anniversary of
his death. Skanderbeg is still there; you can only find statues of Stalin and Hoxha
unceremoniously stored in a quiet corner of Tirana Castle
The Career of Skanderbeg
Skanderbeg, was born Gjergj Kastrioti in 1405.
The 14th century had seen the first of the Ottoman incursions into south-east Europe, which would eventually lead to the whole of the Balkans becoming part of their Empire. Albanians first came under Ottoman rule after The
Battles of Savra in 1385 and the Kastrioti and other noble Albanian families became
sworn vassals of the Ottomans. Young Gjergj, like many boys of his class, was
taken to Adrianople (modern Edirne), the Ottoman’s administrative centre, as a
hostage to ensure the family’s loyalty. At Adrianople he was converted to Islam
and received an excellent military training. His bravery and intelligence were
spotted early and as he rose through the ranks, he acquired the title
"Skanderbeg," - Lord Alexander - a reference to Alexander the Great.
By 1440 he was Sanjakbey (Ottoman military and administrative commander) of Debar district. Countries and borders did not
exist as they do now, but modern Debar is in North Macedonia, near the Albanian
border. It has a population of just over 10,000, three quarters of them Albanians.
We paused there for coffee in 2015 while driving from Ohrid back to Skopje, and
a short stroll led us to discover that they have a Skanderbeg statue in the local park.
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| Skanderbeg in Debar, 2015 |
In 1443 an army nominally led King Władysław III, King of Poland and Hungary, but commanded by John Hunyadi (also known by his Romanian name Ioan de Hunedoara.) headed south through what is now Serbia
looking for a confrontation with the Ottomans.
They met an Ottoman army, which included Skanderbeg commanding 300 Albanian cavalrymen, at the Battle
of Niš. The day was going badly for the Ottomans even before Skanderbeg and
his men absented themselves from the battlefield. Whether the desertion was
pre-planned or the consequence of Skanderbeg suddenly realising that he was on
the wrong side, is uncertain, but he could never have become an Albanian hero by
remaining an Ottoman administrator and junior commander.
Returning to Albania Skanderbeg reclaimed the fortress of Krujë by using a forged letter and raised his family's flag with its black double-headed eagle – now used on the flag of Albania.
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| Kastrioti Coat of Amrs |
In 1444, after reconverting to Christianity, he united the Albanian princes in the League of Lezhë, creating an alliance against the Ottomans. As its leader, he spent much the next twenty-five years at the head of a disciplined
but largely itinerant army of 10,000 Albanians, Slavs and Greeks, leading them
to a series of unlikely victories over the Ottomans. He died, probably of malaria,
in 1468 at the age of sixty-two. He may never have succeeded in setting up a
viable independent Albanian state, but his actions seriously impeded Ottoman
plans to expand into Europe.
Skanderbeg in Kosovo
The Kosovo War ended in 1999, so in 2001 Prishtina got its own Skanderbeg Square and statue. I have no good excuse for not having a satisfactory photograph of my own, but I have borrowed one from Wikipedia. It is the work of
Resnjari and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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| Skanderbeg in Skanderbeg Square, Prishtina |
Eating Skanderbeg
Menus in Kosovo restaurants vary little, and most offer a dish called ‘Skanderbeg’. It is, I read, a development of a Serbian dish but is in no way traditional and never cooked in homes. You might assume it was
designed for tourists, but surely there are too few of us to make it worthwhile.
On our penultimate evening, in Peja, I decided I needed to try it. There is no cannonical recipe, but my meal was described on the menu as a thin calf steak rolled around white cheese then breaded, deep fried, covered with a cream sauce and served with vegetables.
That sounded alright, but there were problems. Bread is one area where Kosovo excels, a variety
of fresh bread is available with every meal, but a few days earlier I had eaten
a schnitzel and discovered ‘breaded’ on an English language menu has little to
do with bread. It means a casing of unknown origin which is hard but not crisp.
The ensemble gave the impression that the minute (that is ‘60 seconds’, not ‘tiny’) steak had
been folded up and stuck inside the case, rather than the ‘breading’ being applied
to it. It was overcooked and dry, though partially redeemed by the vapourised
remains of the cheese. The cream sauce piped onto the outer casing had been reduced
to mere decoration in the cooking process.
It was a memorable meal, not for the culinary skills on display - which were minimal – but for its presentation.
Search ‘Skanderbeg, steak dish’ on Google images and you will find nothing quite like
it. This, it seems is unique to the restaurant of the Hotel Dukagjini in Peja.
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| This is what you get if you order Skanderbeg in Peja |
The waiter carried it through the large dining room like a trophy. Approaching from behind Lynne, he walked
round the table and placed it in front of me. I could feel his smirk on the
back of my neck. He knew exactly what I was thinking, and what Lynne was
thinking when she started laughing, and was enjoying it immensely.
I said, Skanderbeg is huge in Albania, clearly he is huge in Kosovo, too. Clearly he was a great man.