Formidable barriers frustrate Albanian leaders' efforts to…

Formidable barriers frustrate Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity.

Divided into four vilayets, Albanians have no common geographical or political nerve center.

About eighty delegates, mostly Muslim religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman vilayets, meet on June 10, 1878, in the Kosovo town of Prizren.

The delegates set up a standing organization, the Prizren League, under the direction of a central committee that has the power to impose taxes and raise an army.

The Prizren League works to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.

The Albanians' religious differences force nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienates religious leaders.

The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacks a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet.

Each of the three available choices, the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts, imply different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population.