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The present volume endeavours to throw light on a corner of Europe which is often ignored by historians. The book is not a history of early Albania, but rather a collection of important historical documents and texts from the 11th to the 17th centuries, which will add to an understanding of the early history and development of Albania and its people. The vast majority of these works has never been published in English before. The first section of the book focusses on the emergence of the Albanians as a people and provides the reader with the earliest documents which make reference to them. The second, and main section of the volume provides a broader view of history and geography and, in particular, of life in Albania from the 12th to the 17th centuries. It relies primarily on the reports of travellers and chroniclers, many of whom offer fascinating, firsthand information on what they saw and experienced during their travels in the country.
A personality of Mother Teresa's calibre and global reach does not come about by chance. To provide a well-rounded portrait of this influential figure, this book approaches her in the context of her familial background and ethnic, cultural and spiritual milieus. Her life and work are explored in the light of newly-discovered information about her family, the Albanian nation's spiritual tradition before and after the advent of Christianity, and the impact of the Vatican and other influential powers on her people since the early Middle Ages. Focusing on her traumas, ordeals and achievements as a private individual and a public missionary, and her complex spirituality, this book contends that Mother Teresa's life and her nation's history, especially her countrymen's relationship with Roman Catholicism, are interconnected. Unravelling this interconnectedness is essential to understanding how this modern spiritual and humanitarian icon has come to epitomise her ancient nation's cultural and spiritual DNA.
''We ourselves, at the outset of the war, received from a responsible Serbian source this frank announcement: "We will extirpate the Albanians." Now that this system of annihilation is being persisted in without modification, despite all European protests, we deem it our duty to reveal the designs of the gentlemen of Belgrade without more ado... In this matter facts speak more loudly than any confessions could. Since Serbian troops crossed the borders last autumn and occupied districts there inhabited by Albanians, one blood-bath has followed another in sequence. In isolated cases the conqueror may have been forced in self-defence to proceed with all martial vigour against an Albanian village from which his troops were perhaps fired on from behind. But to raze hundreds of villages to the ground, to butcher tens of thousands of non-combatants, men, women, and children, these are deeds which no martial law, no precept of self-preservation enjoins..."
The Canadian scholar and writer Robert Elsie, who was born in Vancouver in 1950, has been working and publishing in the field of Albanian Studies for about thirty-five years. The present book is a compilation of his major articles and essays on Albanian culture (history, literature, philology, religion, etc.), a reflection of his constant endeavour to make the tiny Albanian nation better known in the world.
This is the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and multilingual bibliography on "Women and Gender in East Central Europe and the Balkans (Vol. 1)" and "The Lands of the Former Soviet Union (Vol. 2)" over the past millennium. The coverage encompasses the relevant territories of the Russian, Hapsburg, and Ottoman empires, Germany and Greece, and the Jewish and Roma diasporas. Topics range from legal status and marital customs to economic participation and gender roles, plus unparalleled documentation of women writers and artists, and autobiographical works of all kinds. The volumes include approximately 30,000 bibliographic entries on works published through the end of 2000, as well as web sites and unpublished dissertations. Many of the individual entries are annotated with brief descriptions of major works and the tables of contents for collections and anthologies. The entries are cross-referenced and each volume includes indexes.
Albania is a fascinating country about which far too little is still known outside its borders. Even years after the media and countless travel blogs have supposedly revealed the secret of this natural paradise, which has long been almost inaccessible. The true soul of up-and-coming Albania is still a mystery to most of us. The unpolished jewel with so many rough edges is torn between tradition and modernity, incredibly ambitious and at the same time touchingly old-fashioned. It is still a mysterious country full of riddles, stories and questions, a place about which countless prejudices and clichés have been created over the decades that still need to be dispelled or clarified. This book takes up 99 facts from all areas of life in the country and its inhabitants. ‘Excuse me? Where to?’ clears up misconceptions and provides well-founded, informative, honest, entertaining and humorous information about the small country in the Western Balkans and its people. A perfect, in-depth companion to all the (serious) Albania travel guides currently available.
Albanian communities have been in existence in Sicily for over 500 years. Albanians have been living in Sicily since the 15th century. They have preserved their language and and traditions that pre-date the arrival of the Ottomans in the Balkans. This volume is about the descendants of the Albanians who left their Balkan homelands when they were invaded by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. Known as the Arbëreshë in Sicily and the other parts of Italy where they settled, many of the descendants of these refugees have managed to continue their Albanian traditions, culture, and language whilst integrating harmoniously with their Italian neighbours. In this book, Adam Yamey describes his visit to the Sicilian Arbëreshë people and illustrates it with a profusion of fascinating photographs. Combining personal observation with in-depth research, this - at times entertaining, and always informative - personal travelogue is one of only a few books in English about Sicily's Albanians.
In Kosovo: History in Maps, the story of Kosovo's history is told through maps which take us through space and time, from antiquity to the present day. Placed at the intersection of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Serbian Empires, Kosovo attracted the attention of cartographers and mapmakers from various imperial and cultural circles. Each of them embodied and circulated ideas of Kosovo and its geographical space in their own way, creating different visions of state power, historic memory, identity, imperial and national borders, and territoriality. In this regard, the book delineates the geographical reality of Kosovo in different contexts, namely war space, historical space, travel space, and sacred space. Moreover, Kosovo: History in Maps examines the diffusion of geographical knowledge and maps on Kosovo, contributing to the growing historiography on the circulation of knowledge and the translation of culture.
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