Many Albanians had begun to leave their troubled homeland in the fourteenth century, and had migrated southward into the mountains of Epirus and to the cities and islands of Greece.
Albanian exiles also have built communities in southern Italy and on the island of Sicily.
Internal power struggles had further weakened the Eastern Roman Empire in the fourteenth century, by which time Serbia, a realm to the northeast, had already established a dynasty at Shkodër to take control of northern Albania.
Stefan Dušan, a powerful Serbian king, had in the mid-thirteen-hundreds, conquered much of the western Balkans, including all of Albania except Durrës.
Dušan had drawn up a legal code for his realm and crowned himself "Emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Albanians" but ion 1355 had suddenly died while leading an attack against Constantinople
His empire had quickly broken apart, and Serb and Albanian noblemen had divided his lands.
Strong families came to the fore, especially the Balshas in the north and the Thopias in the center.
Southern Albania fell in 1367 to a Serbian chieftain, Thomas Preliubovich, who had been succeeded in 1385 by a Florentine noble.
The constant warfare in Albania has caused poverty and deadly famines.
The division of the Albanian-populated lands into small, quarreling fiefdoms ruled by independent feudal lords and tribal chiefs, make them easy prey for the Ottoman armies.
The Albanian ruler of Durrës, Karl Thopia, had in 1385 appealed to the sultan for support against his rivals, the Serb Balsha family.
An Ottoman force had quickly marched into Albania along the Via Egnatia and routed the Balshas in the Battle of Savra.
The principal Albanian clans had soon sworn fealty to the Turks.
