Albania, Sanjak of

Christian unity in the Balkans disintegrates as Albania is divided between Venice and the Ottomans, Constantinople’s emperor forges marriage ties with the Ottoman dynasty, and Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman breaks with the alliance of Slavic powers and accepts Ottoman suzerainty.

Andronikos IV predeceases his father, and his own son seizes Constantinople and the throne, as John VII, but the Turks again help Manuel and John regain it.

Manuel has been forced to live at the court of Bayezid as a submissive vassal, remaining there until his escape to Constantinople after learning of his father's death on February 16, 1391.

The forty-one-year-old Manuel has inherited an impoverished empire greatly reduced in size and strength, a Turkish overlord, and a frightened populace.

Ottoman forces have conducted campaigns that have succeeded in controlling vast Balkan territories, but Venetian advances in Greece, Albania, and imperial lands, together with the extension of Hungarian influence in Wallachia and Danubian Bulgaria, compel Bayezid to blockade Constantinople from 1391.

The Ottoman Turks invade Albania between 1385 and 1395, creating a power vacuum in the region and enabling Venice to acquire coastal territory.

The division of the Albanian-populated lands into small, quarreling fiefdoms ruled by independent feudal lords and tribal chiefs makes them easy prey for the Ottoman armies.

The Albanian ruler of Durrës, Karl Thopia, appeals in 1385 to Ottoman sultan Murad for support against his rivals, the Balsha family.

An Ottoman force quickly marches into Albania along the Via Egnatia and routs the Balshas.

The principal Albanian clans soon swear fealty to the Turks.

A combined army of Serbs, Albanians, and Hungarians, led by the Serb knez, or prince, Lazar Hrebeljanovic, and including a large Bosnian contingent sent by Tvrtko, meets Murad's forces in battle on St. Vitus' Day (Vidovdan), June 28 (June 15, Old Style), 1389, on the Kosovo Polje ("Field of Blackbirds") near Pristina.

Victory appears at first to be on the side of the Serbs when Murad is killed by a Serbian noble, Miloš Obilić (or Kobilic), who had made his way into the Turkish camp on the pretext of being a deserter and forced his way into Murad's tent and stabbed him with a poisoned dagger.

Murad's twenty-nine-year-old son Bayezid quickly quells the confusion, and succeeds in surrounding the Serbs and inflicting a crushing defeat on their army.

Lazar is taken prisoner and executed; the Serbs are forced to pay tribute to the Turks and promise to do military service in the Ottoman army.

The defeat of the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo seals the fate of the entire Balkan Peninsula, but will become hallowed in several great heroic ballads.

The vision of Lazar on the eve of the battle, the alleged betrayal by the Bosnian Vuk Brankovic, the killing of Murad by Serbian knight Miloš Obilić, the succor brought to the wounded on the battlefield by the Maid of Kosovo—these and other stories will be immortalized in Serbian folk literature.

Albanian chieftains gather on March 1, 1444, in the cathedral of Lezhe with the prince of Montenegro and delegates from Venice and proclaim Skanderbeg commander of the Albanian resistance.

All of Albania, including most of Epirus, accepts his leadership against the Ottoman Turks, but local leaders keep control of their own districts.

Under a red flag bearing Skanderbeg's heraldic emblem, an Albanian force of about thirty thousand men holds off brutal Ottoman campaigns against their lands for twenty-four years.

Twice the Albanians overcome sieges of Krujë.

In 1449 the Albanians rout Sultan Murad II himself.

Later, they repulse attacks led by Sultan Mehmed II.

In 1461 Skanderbeg goes to the aid of his suzerain, King Alfonso I of Naples, against the kings of Sicily.

The government under Skanderbeg is unstable, however, and at times local Albanian rulers cooperate with the Ottoman Turks against him.

When Skanderbeg dies at Lezhe, the sultan reportedly cries out, "Asia and Europe are mine at last. Woe to Christendom! She has lost her sword and shield."

The division of the Albanian-populated lands into small, quarreling fiefdoms ruled by independent feudal lords and tribal chiefs makes them easy prey for the Ottoman armies.

In 1385 the Albanian ruler of Durrës, Karl Thopia, had appealed to the sultan for support against his rivals, the Balsha family.

An Ottoman force had quickly marched into Albania along the Via Egnatia and routed the Balshas.

The principal Albanian clans soon swore fealty to the Turks.

Sultan Murad II launches the major Ottoman onslaught in the Balkans in 1423, and the Turks take Janina in 1431 and Arta, on the Ionian coast, in 1449.

The Turks allow conquered Albanian clan chiefs to maintain their positions and property, but they have to pay tribute, send their sons to the Turkish court as hostages, and provide the Ottoman army with auxiliary troops.

 

The Ottoman Turks had expanded their empire from Anatolia to the Balkans in the fourteenth century.

They had crossed the Bosporus in 1352, and in 1389 they had crushed a Serb-led army that included Albanian forces at Kosovo Polje, located in the southern part of present-day Kosovo.

Europe gains a brief respite from Ottoman pressure in 1402 when the Mongol leader, Tamerlane, at- tacks Anatolia from the east, kills the Turks' absolute ruler, the sultan, and sparks a civil war.

When order is restored, the Ottomans renew their westward progress.

In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II's forces overrun Constantinople and kill the last East Roman emperor.

Five centuries of Ottoman rule will leave the Albanian people fractured along religious, regional, and tribal lines.

The first Albanians to convert to Islam are young boys forcibly conscripted into the sultan's military and administration.

In the early seventeenth century, however, Albanians will convert to Islam in great numbers.

Within a century, the Albanian Islamic community will be split between Sunni Muslims and adherents to the Bektashi sect.

The Albanian people will also become divided into two distinct tribal and dialectal groupings, the Gegs and Tosks.

In the rugged northern mountains, Geg shepherds live in a tribal society often completely independent of Ottoman rule.

In the south, peasant Muslim and Orthodox Tosks work the land for Muslim beys, provincial rulers who frequently revolt against the sultan's authority.

In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans will try in vain to shore up their collapsing empire by introducing a series of reforms aimed at reining in recalcitrant local officials and dousing the fires of nationalism among its myriad peoples.

The power of nationalism, however, will prove too strong to counteract.

The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowers the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

At first, the feuding Albanian clans prove no match for the armies of the sultan.

In the fifteenth century, however, Skanderbeg unites the Albanian tribes in a defensive alliance that holds up the Ottoman advance for more than two decades.

His family's banner, bearing a black two-headed eagle on a red field, will become the flag under which the Albanian national movement rallies centuries later.