Tag Archives: albanian

Celebrating my birthday in Kosovo

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My birthday is on VE Day (8th of May). In 1990, I celebrated it in the former Yugoslavia. That year, I was driving around Serbia in a rented car with my friend from Belgrade, Raša Raičević. His birthday was the day following mine. Before I rented the car, my friend Raša, a very wise fellow, advised me to rent a car from one particular company because its cars carried Slovenian registration plates, rather than Serbian. This proved to be sound advice.

On the seventh of May, Raša and I booked into the comfortable accommodation provided at the beautiful Prohor Pčinjski monastery in the hills of southern Serbia. We decided to stay there two nights in order to celebrate our birthdays.

My birthday wish was to drive into the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija, which was populated by a high percentage of Albanians. Then as now, I was greatly interested in all matters connected with Albania and the Albanian diaspora. Both Raša and I had separately visited the area in the 1970s. We were both keen to see it again.

Old hammam in Prizren, Kosovo

Raša, a Serbian, had some reservations about driving into Kosovo, where there had been some unpleasant violent incidents between the Serbian and Albanian communities some months earlier. However, he decided that he would accompany me for two reasons. One was that our car bore Slovenian plates, not Serbian. The other related to his excellent command of the English language. He said he would only speak in English in Kosovo, not a word of Serbian.

We set off, driving through the relatively empty Serbian countryside. The boundary of Serbia and Kosovo was at the summit of a low mountain pass. As soon as we entered Kosovo, we discovered that, unlike the part of Serbia we had just left, the countryside of Kosovo was relatively crowded with people, by the road side and in the fields. The landscape was liberally dotted with recently constructed homes and other buildings. This was quite different from what we recalled of our earlier visits.

We drove into Priština (Prishtinë), the capital city of the autonomous region. The main road was filled with a sea of people. We inched forward. The crowds parted slowly to allow us to proceed. Raša advised, nay forbade, me to sound the car’s horn. He did not want to upset anyone. I had never before driven through such crowds. Four years later, I did it again, but in the central market area of Bangalore in India. There, I and other motorists sounded horns incessantly, but nobody paid the slightest notice to them.

We parked in the centre of the city in a car park that looked like it was the site of a large, demolished building.

I was keen to buy recordings of Kosovan Albanian music for my ever-growing collection of music from all over Yugoslavia.  The best supplier turned out to be a tiny kiosk that sold cigarettes, magazines, and newspapers. I bought about fifteen cassettes, the kiosk’s entire stock, but had no bag to carry my haul. The enterprising shop keeper saw my plight. He opened a couple of cartons that each contained twenty packs of cigarettes and emptied the packs onto his small counter. Then, he carefully packed my cassettes into the cartons.

After lunch in what seemed to be the grandest hotel in the city, we drove to see the beautiful Serbian Orthodox monastery at Gracanica.  Then we wended our way back towards Serbia, stopping for coffee at Gnjilane (Gjilan). There, I spotted a kebab shop that used a logo identical to the well-known McDonalds ‘M’. When I pointed this possible breach of ‘copyright’ to my friend, he shrugged his shoulders and said:

“This is Kosovo. Anything goes.”

We reached Prohor Pčinjski, where we ate a lavish and tasty dinner. The following day, Raša’s birthday trip was a drive through parts of Yugoslavian Macedonia. After passing some rice paddy fields, we were stopped by a policeman with a speed measuring device. He fined me the equivalent of £1 Sterling for speeding. My friend was fined half of that for not wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, we had a good day, visiting an attractive small town, Kratovo, and the Roman ruins at Stobi by the River Vardar.

The following day, we drove back into Kosovo, stopping at the small town of Prizren. On both the 1990 and my 1975 visits, Prizren captured my heart more than any other place in Kosovo. Recently taken photographs I have seen show that it is still a delightful place.

From Prizren we drove to a dramatic pass that led from Kosovo into southeastern Montenegro.  We spent the night in Rozaje, a small Montenegrin market town. Thus ended a memorable double birthday celebration.

Soon after we visited Kosovo together, it was time for me to fly back to England. Raša accompanied me to Belgrade airport. Just before I entered the secure departure area, I waved to him and experienced a weird sensation. I felt that Raša knew that we would never meet again.

My sensation was not without basis. Soon after I left Yugoslavia, the country began its painful dismemberment. Visiting my friends in Belgrade and elsewhere in Yugoslavia became inadvisable.  Sadly, by the time that uneasy peace began to reign again in what was once Yugoslavia, Raša had passed away.

VE Day marked the end of hostilities between the Axis and Allied powers in Europe on the day that was to become my birthday a few years later. The imposition of socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe that followed did not put an end to festering sores that had been troubling the Balkans and elsewhere since the decline of the Ottoman and Austro Hungarian empires, which had already begun at the beginning of the twentieth century.  This was certainly the case in what was Yugoslavia. During the ‘reign’ of Marshal Tito, a semblance (or maybe more) of unity was achieved in his country. However, after his death, as if recovering from a general anaesthetic, old unresolved conflicts reawakened. President Milošević did little to resolve these, but instead helped to exacerbate them. Hailed by some Yugoslavs, mostly Serbs, as the new hero of Yugoslavia, this assessment was not shared by many, especially the Albanian folk in Kosovo.

All said and done, I cannot forget the warmth, hospitality, and friendship shown to me by ordinary people living in the former Yugoslavia, Serbians, Croatians, Bosnians, Albanians, and many others during the 1970s and 1980s. They did not deserve what befell them during  much of the 20th century.

Read more about Yugoslavia as it used to be in my book “SCRABBLE WITH SLIVOVITZ”, which is available from Amazon:

A hair-raising discovery in rural Italy

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WHILE HAVING MY hair trimmed recently by an Albanian barber, who came to London from Prishtina in Kosovo, I  recalled a visit to a barbershop in rural Italy.

Before and after

It was in the 1980s and I was driving through northern Italy on my way to visiting my sister, who lived further south. I decided that I  should have my hair tidied up before I  saw her, and stopped my hired car outside a hair cutting establishment in a small village.

I entered the parrucchiere and was summoned to a chair by one of the barbers. He began cutting my hair, and then stopped suddenly.  Throwing his hands up above his head, he exclaimed operatically:

“Forfore!”,

Which is the Italian  word for ‘dandruff’.

Hearing this, other customers sitting in the shop, awaiting their turn, looked alarmed, and covered their heads with their hands.

Without asking me, the barber applied a lotion to my head. Whatever it was, it felt as if it was boring its way into my skull. This medication added an extra 5000 lire (£4 at the time, but about £10 in today’s  money) to my bill (those were the days before Italy adopted the Euro).

Well, I am pleased to report that today my barber from Kosovo did not feel it necessary to throw up his hands and exclaim in  Albanian:

“zbokth!”

There was trouble in the Indian Ocean

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EVER SINCE ROMAN times (and probably before), people in Europe yearned for products from Asia. Before 1498, highly prized goods such as spices and precious stones reached Europe from India and places further east via the Indian Ocean, and then overland, passing through places in the Middle East like Egypt and Turkey, before crossing the Mediterranean. Another route used for transporting these wares between India and Europe involved the use of rivers and overland caravan trails that carried them to the Caspian and Black Seas, and thence to Europe. At many points along these routes, the goods attracted taxes, which greatly increased the prices that people in Europe had to pay to purchase them.

In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (c1460s – 1524) discovered a sea route from Portugal to India via the Cape of Good Hope. This discovery allowed Portuguese vessels to carry the highly prized goods from India to Europe by sea without having to pass through the lands where hitherto they had attracted high taxes and customs duties. Thus, the Portuguese were able to import the spices and other precious goods from the Orient at much lower prices than prior to Vasco’s discovery of the Atlantic route.

However, the Portuguese found that they were not the only traders making use of the Indian Ocean during the 16th century. Their competitors included Gujaratis, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks, and many others. It was not long before the Portuguese instituted measures to stifle competition and monopolise trade in the Indian Ocean. Naturally, this upset the merchants of other nations who traded in this sea. To stifle competition, the Portuguese resorted to harsh measures designed to make it almost impossible for their competitors to trade by sea. Over many years during the 16th century, attempts were made to oppose the monopolistic measures being forcibly imposed by the Portuguese, whose military and naval prowess was very formidable.

In 1508, a man called Khwaja Safar travelled from Egypt to begin trading in the Sultanate of Cambay (now ‘Gujarat’). Born in the south of Italy, his parents were Albanians. Having fought in armies in Europe in his youth, he was well-informed about the latest military techniques of European armies. By 1530, he began offering his services and military advice to the Sultan of Cambay. It was not long before he became involved both with negotiating with the Portuguese in India whilst simultaneously plotting against them. With the military experience he had gained as a young man in Europe, he became the commander of forces that repeatedly attacked the Portuguese, particularly in their important stronghold on the island of Diu – a place from which the Portuguese were able to watch and exert control on shipping to and from India.

My book, “An Albanian in India”, follows Khwaja from his birth in the ‘Heel of Italy’ to Egypt, then to Yemen, from there to Gujarat where he became a man of importance, and then to his untimely end during the attack on a Portuguese fortress on the coast of Gujarat. My book is available from Amazon, e.g.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D7HX2B8Q

Two Albanian heroes

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JUST AS THE ALBANIAN Skanderbeg (Gjergj Kastrioti: c1405-1468) heroically resisted the invasion of his country by the Ottomans in the 15th century, Khwaja Safar, also an Albanian, bravely led forces opposed to the Portuguese, who were attacking his adopted country India during the 16th century. Both were forcibly converted to Islam. One remained a Muslim, and the other returned to Christianity.

Khwaja Safar was a soldier; a merchant; the treasurer of Cairo; advisor to the Sultans of Egypt and Gujarat; and the Governor of the city of Surat. His parents were Albanian, yet he is remembered by a name which is not Albanian. You can discover why this is when reading my book about his extraordinarily fascinating life. “An Albanian in India” is available both as a paperback and a Kindle (eBook) from Amazon:

An Albanian who fought the Portuguese in India during the 16th century

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MY NEW BOOK IS ABOUT THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF AN ALBANIAN HERO WHO FOUGHT THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA DURING THE 16TH CENTURY

“AN ALBANIAN IN INDIA” is available

as a paperback and a Kindle eBook from Amazon:

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Albanian, known as ‘Khwaja Safar’, was born in southern Italy. Just as the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg fought the invaders of Albania, Khwaja Safar valiantly opposed the invaders of his adopted country – Gujarat.

After serving as a soldier in Italy, he went to sea as a trader, and was successful. While sailing in the Red Sea, he was captured by an Egyptian admiral, and taken to Cairo. He was presented to the Sultan. Khwaja rose rapidly to become the treasurer and trusted advisor ruler of Egypt’s ruler. From Egypt, he travelled to Yemen, and then to Gujarat in western India, where he became a formidable opponent of the Portuguese, who were aggressively attempting to monopolise trade in the Indian Ocean. With his knowledge and experience of the tactics of European armies, he became Portugal’s most formidable opponent in 16th century western India.

My book (also available as a Kindle eBook), “AN ALBANIAN IN INDIA”, is illustrated with pictures and maps. It describes Khwaja Safar’s extraordinarily exciting life and my visits to places where he made his mark in India.

CLICK BELOW TO REACH THE AMAZON PAGE FOR MY NEW BOOK:

Three informative, illustrated books about Albania and the Albanians

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In the last few years, I have published 3 books about Albania and the Albanians:

ALBANIA ON MY MIND

This book describes Albania as I saw it when I made a trip there in 1984. Then, the country was being ruled by the isolationist, Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha. The country was even more isolated from the rest of the world than is the case with North Korea today.

REDISCOVERING ALBANIA

This is a description of a visit I made to Albania in 2016. The book describes Albania as we found it then, and compares it with what I saw in 1984. It also contains descriptions of Albania made by other travellers at various times in the last 300 years.

FROM ALBANIA TO SICILY

This is one of the few books in English to describe the past and present of the Albanian-speaking people who migrated to Sicily in the 15th century to escape from the Ottoman armies that were invading the Balkans. It provides an in-depth study of the lives of this interesting group of people.

These three books are available as paperbacks and as Kindles from Amazon

An artist in Turkey with a famous Albanian ancestor

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ALI PASHA OF TEPELENE (1740-1822) was born an Albanian in what is now Albania. He ruled the Ottoman pashalik of Yanina (Ioannina in Greek) with a large degree of autonomy. One of his descendants was Naciye Hanim. She married Lieutenant Colonel Abdurrahman Ziya Bey,

Naciye and her husband had only one child, a daughter called Melek, who was born in 1896 (in Istanbul) and died in 1976 ( in Munich, Germany). She became a renowned painter, sculptor, and writer (books and articles). I would not have heard of her had we not visited the magnificent Sakip Sabanci museum of art at the village of Emirgan on the European shore of the Bosphorus. At this place there was an excellent exhibition of Melek’s life and works. With information both in Turkish and English, it was an enlightening experience.

From an early age, Melek showed signs of artistic ability. She was brought up in an intellectual atmosphere. The Turkish poet Niğar Hanim encouraged her to take up painting. Her first lessons were with her uncle the soldier and painter Kâzim Bey. Later, she attended the Académie Julian in Paris. She also attended the School of Fine Arts for Women in Istanbul. While in Paris, Melek worked with various well-known French artists in their studios. Soon, she was recognised as an accomplished artist. This is evident from the many portraits and still-life’s on display in the exhibition.

In addition to painting and sculpting, Melek was a prolific writer of articles and books. She was also involved ed with Turkish politics during the period when the Ottoman Empire was dying and Ataturk’s modern Turkey was in its infancy. Her first book was published in 1938. In 1959, she published a book in French to introduce western readers to the delights of the Topkapi Palace complex in Istanbul. Many of her publications are on display alongside her paintings and one sculpture.

Melek married twice. First with Mr Celal in 1917. They had a son, and Celal died soon after that. In 1956, she married Dr Lampé, a physician. He died before she did. Melek died whilst being treated in a hospital in Munich.

Melek was one noteworthy descendant of Ali Paşa of Tepelene. There were others, who became famous Turkish intellectuals, including the writer Ebüzziya Tevfik(1849-1913), another writer Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar (1887-1963) and the author and poet Nâmik Kemal (1840-1888). These people of Albanian descent were not alone in shaping Turkey – both Ottoman and modern – in various ways, both peaceful and otherwise. I had heard about some of them, but Melek and her art are a wonderful discovery.

An Albanian born in Italy and buried in Gujarat

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KHWAJA SAFAR SULEMANI (1500 – 1546) was born in either Otranto or Brindisi. He entered life as a Christian, named Cosa Zaffar in Italian. But later, after being converted to Islam, his first name became Khwaja Safar. I have written about him before because his most likely heritage interests me. He is most likely to have been the son of Catholic Albanian parents, who fled to Italy to escape the Ottomans who had invaded what is now Albania.

Khundhavan Khan Rojo – a detail

Khwaja was captured by an Ottoman general at sea when he was 15. The Sultan in Istanbul was impressed by him. To cut a long and complicated story short, he was put in charge of vessels to attack the ships of the Portuguese, who were trying to monopolise trade between India and Europe. The Ottomans carried goods from India to places in their Empire on the coasts of Egypt and the Arabian peninsula. From there, they were carried overland to Europe. Their competitors, the Portuguese, carried goods from India to Portugal via the Cape of Good Hope, thereby bypassing transit through lands held by the Ottomans. This proved very damaging to the economy of the Ottomans.

During the Ottoman attack on the Portuguese colony of Diu (on the south coast of Saurashtra – part of modern Gujarat state), Khwaja, whose fighting skills were highly regarded by his opponents, was killed by a cannon ball near, or in Diu. Interestingly, the Portuguese, with whom he joined forces briefly before turning against them, erected a monument in his honour. It stands in Diu, and I have seen it.

And that summarises all I knew until we visited the superb museum housed in the restored fort of Surat. There, I learned that Khwaja’s body was brought from Diu to Surat, where it was buried.

After his burial, a mausoleum was built over his grave. Probably established by his eldest son, Rajab, this lovely edifice, called the Khudhavand Khan Rojo (or Rauza), contains architectural features typical of 15th century mosques in Ahmedabad. It includes structural elements that were influenced by Hindu and Jain temples. By the way, Khwaja became known as ‘Khudhavand Khan’, the title he was given when Sultan Mahmud III made him Governor of Surat.

I entered the domed mausoleum, which contains six gravestones, all covered, as is usual, with coloured cloths. None of these is the grave of the man who was born of Albanian parents in the south of Italy. His body lies somewhere beneath the mausoleum.

As is often the case when I visit India, I come across completely unexpected things. Although I had known about Khwaja’s death in Diu, it was a delightful surprise to come across his final resting place in Surat – a city across the sea from Diu, but not too distant from it.

At first sight, it seems ironic that Khwaja’s Albanian parents fled from the Ottomans, yet their son became prominent in the Ottoman Empire. However, it is not so strange. Many Albanian boys (including Skanderbeg) were abducted, or taken as hostages, by the Ottomans, and later both served in the empire’s army, some of them becoming high officials.

A Marian mix-up and Mother Teresa

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IN THE MID 1970s, I attended a series of evening lectures given by the art historian Ernst Gombrich. They were held in the Mary Ward Centre in London’s Bloomsbury.

Sign post at Loreto House School

In January 2023, we visited Sister Marilla, who works for Loreto House School and College in Middleton Row in the heart of Kolkata. My wife attended the school for several years in the 1960s. The two educational establishments are part of a larger organisation, the Loreto branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (‘IBVM’). When Sister Marilla told us that the IBVM was founded by Mary Ward (1585-1645), I immediately thought of the Mary Ward Centre in London, and was a bit surprised because I had always assumed that the Centre was named after a 19th century woman.

My assumption was correct. The Centre is named after the novelist Mary Augusta Ward (1851 – 1920), not the Mary Ward, founder of the IBVM.

The earlier Mary Ward (b 1585) was born in Yorkshire – Roman Catholic during the time that Roman Catholicism was outlawed in England. She felt the need to take up holy orders and instead of becoming yet another Catholic martyr, she wanted to do something worthwhile and practical. She went to Flanders where she joined the Poor Clares in St Omer.

To cut a long story short, she became, to oversimplify a lot, a female version of a Jesuit, but not a member of the Jesuit Order. After leaving St Omer, she founded the Poor Clare House for English women at Gravelines. There, and later elsewhere, she taught women about the Roman Catholic faith. In about 1609, she returned to England, where she gathered women to teach girls about the banned faith. Mary Ward suffered many hardships, including imprisonment in Germany, before succumbing to ill health in England

Leaping ahead in time, this group founded by Mary Ward, which had to surmount much criticism from the Jesuits and members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, was the seed that germinated to become the officially recognised IBVM in 1877.

Followers of the group she had founded in 1609, established the Bar Convent in York in 1686. It was from here in 1821 that the IBVM Loreto branch was founded in Dublin by Teresa Frances Ball.

On the 12th of October 1928, 18 year old Albanian Agnes Gonxha from Skopje (now in North Macedonia) joined the IBVM at their Loreto Abbey at Rathfarnham in Ireland. She left Ireland on the 1st of December 1928, and landed at Kolkata on the 6th of January 1929. From there she travelled to Darjeeling, where on the 24th of May 1931, as a novice, she made her First Profession in Darjeeling’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. In this church she made her Final Profession on the 24th of May 1937.

Next, Agnes was sent to the Loreto Convent at Entally in Kolkata. At first, she taught catechism and geography at Loreto St Mary’s Bengali School, which was on the campus of the convent. Eventually, she became the school’s headmistress.

On the 10th of September 1946, whilst travelling to a retreat in Darjeeling, she decided that her true calling was to work with the poor in the slums of Kolkata. By that time, she was known not as Agnes Gonxha but as the now much more familiar Mother Teresa. The order she founded, The Missionaries of Charity, maintained a warm relationship between it and the IBVM. Internationally famous, she died in 1997.

Had it not been for our visit to Sister Marilla and the informative booklets she gave us, it might have been a long time before I discovered the two Mary Wards and the connection that one of them had with both my wife’s school and Mother Teresa.

Seeing double at the pub

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I DO NOT KNOW why there is a huge Albanian flag hanging outside The Cow pub in Notting Hill’s Westbourne Park Road. The large red flag decorated with a double-headed eagle has been fluttering outside the pub for several weeks, if not longer.

I walked into the colourfully decorated pub, for many years a local favourite both for drinkers and diners, and asked two members of staff if they knew anything about the flag. They did not have any real idea, but suggested that it might be because at least one long-serving member of the pub’s current staff is Albanian. A quick search of the internet revealed nothing.

The flag was put up long before the 28th of November, Albania’s Flag Day commemorating the founding of independent Albania in 1912, and is still flying. Maybe, one of you out there can tell me more about the reason that The Cow has an Albanian flag.