Chameria: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 11:02, 2 May 2010 editAlexikoua (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers43,073 edits rv again, by user that never participates in discussion. As stated there is already one article with the settlements and with the correct names← Previous edit		Revision as of 16:40, 2 May 2010 edit undoPiasoft (talk \| contribs)171 edits rv Alexikoua. Article is not about the current prefecture of Thesprotia, but for the region of Chameria.Next edit →
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	===Current===		===Current===
	The exact number of Albanians still residing in the Chameria region is uncertain, since the Greek government does not include ethnic and linguistic categories in any official ]. According to the pro-Albanian<ref>Brian D. Joseph. . Ohio State University Press, 2003. ISBN 9780814209134, p. 281</ref><ref>. 2000, p. 34.</ref> author Miranda Vickers, ] Chams today are approximately 40,000.<ref name = Vickers/> Albanian is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in ].<ref name = P>Vickers, Miranda and Petiffer, James. ''The Albanian Question''. I.B. Tauris, 2007, ISBN 1860649742, p. 238.</ref> According to ], Albanian language is spoken as a mother-tongue by about 10,000 Albanians in Epirus and the village of Lechovo, in ]<ref>Raymond G. Gordon, Raymond G. Gordon, Jr., Barbara F. Grimes, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International, 2005, ISBN 155671159X, 9781556711596. </ref> According to a survey conducted in 1994 the language is dying fast, because it receives no kind of encouragement.<ref name = Winnifrith>Tom Winnifrith, Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania, TDuckworth, 2002, University of Michigan, ISBN 0715632019, ISBN 9780715632017</ref>		The exact number of Albanians still residing in the Chameria region is uncertain, since the Greek government does not include ethnic and linguistic categories in any official ]. According to the pro-Albanian<ref>Brian D. Joseph. . Ohio State University Press, 2003. ISBN 9780814209134, p. 281</ref><ref>. 2000, p. 34.</ref> author Miranda Vickers, ] Chams today are approximately 40,000.<ref name = Vickers/> Albanian is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in ].<ref name = P>Vickers, Miranda and Petiffer, James. ''The Albanian Question''. I.B. Tauris, 2007, ISBN 1860649742, p. 238.</ref> According to ], Albanian language is spoken as a mother-tongue by about 10,000 Albanians in Epirus and the village of Lechovo, in ]<ref>Raymond G. Gordon, Raymond G. Gordon, Jr., Barbara F. Grimes, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International, 2005, ISBN 155671159X, 9781556711596. </ref> According to a survey conducted in 1994 the language is dying fast, because it receives no kind of encouragement.<ref name = Winnifrith>Tom Winnifrith, Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania, TDuckworth, 2002, University of Michigan, ISBN 0715632019, ISBN 9780715632017</ref>

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	==See also==		==See also==

Revision as of 16:40, 2 May 2010

Chameria (Template:Lang-sq, Template:Lang-el Tsamouriá) is a term used mostly by Albanians for parts of the coastal region of Epirus in southern Albania and northwestern Greece associated with the Cham Albanians. Most of what is called Chameria is divided between the Greek prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza, the southern extremity of Albania's Sarandë District and some villages in eastern Ioannina Prefecture. The term is rejected in Greece due to its perceived connotation of Albanian irredentism, and because the Greek toponyms Epirus and Thesprotia have been established for the region since antiquity.

Name and definition

Etymology

The region is named after Cham Albanians, by adding the suffix -eria, which in Albanian language denotes "land of the Chams". Chameria was mostly used as a term for the region of modern Thesprotia, during the Ottoman rule and in modern times when speaking about the Cham Albanians. It is of uncertain etymology and it derives from the ancient Greek name of the Thyamis river, which in Albanian language is called Cham (Çam).

Boundaries

The region of Chameria, is an alternative name for the ancient and modern Thesprotia, as well as medieval Vagenetia. The region of Thesprotia, or Chameria, or Vagenetia lies north of Ambracian Gulf and west of the Ioannina mountains. But the northern borders have been changed during history.

In antiquity, the northern borders of Thesprotia was Thyamis river, but in medieval ages, this presumed borders were pushed to the north. Vagenetia, which was the name of the region, during the Middle Ages, included today's Sarandë District and Delvinë District of Southern Albania, bordering with Llogara mountains and Muzina mountains in the north and northeast, the same borders that Chameria had in early modern history.

But in modern times, it was reduced into the dialectological territory of Chams, including only two small municipalities in Southern Albania (Markat and Konispol), the prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza in northwestern Greece and a few villages in Ioannina Prefecture. The modern region of Thesprotia, which was used again, after the annexation of the region by Greece, differs slightly from the modern name Chameria, because includes only the prefectures of Thesprotia and Preveza, without Southern Albania. Konispol, Markat and other parts of southern Albania are known in Greece as Northern Epirus, a term used after the division of the wider region of Epirus between the two countries.

Geography and climate

The region is mostly mountainous, with valleys and hills concetrated in the southern part, while farmlands are in northern part. Most of them with gridded roads and ditches are within the valleys in the central, southern and the western part. There are five rivers in the region, namely Pavllo in the north, Acheron, Louros Arachthos and Thyamis. Four of them are in Greece, with only the first in Albania.

History

Antiquity

Main article: Thesprotians

In antiquity the region was called Thesprotia, named after the Greek tribe of the Thesprotians, which were the inhabitants. According to Strabo, the Thesprotians (along with the Chaonians and the Molossians) were the most famous among the fourteen tribes of Epirus, who once ruled over the whole region. The Chaonians ruled Epirus first while the Thesprotians and Molossians ruled afterwards. Plutarch tells us that the Thesprotians, the Chaonians and the Molossians were the three principal clusters of Greek tribes that had emerged in Epirus, and all three were the most powerful among all other tribes. An inscription of the mid 4th century BC indicates more data on the nature of the Thesprotian state organisation that was similar as the other Epirotic tribes.

Medieval Ages

In Medieval Ages the region, known as Vagenetia, was under the jurisdiction of the Roman and later Byzantine Empire. In 1205, Michael Komnenos Doukas, a cousin of the Byzantine emperors Isaac II Angelos and Alexios III Angelos founded the Despotate of Epiros, which ruled the region until the 15th century. Vagenetia as the whole of Epirus soon became the new home of many Greek refugees from Constantinople, Thessaly, and the Peloponnese, and Michael was described as a second Noah, rescuing men from the Latin flood.

During this period, are documented the first migration of Albanians and Aromanians into the region. The Despotate of Epiros had a number of conflicts mainly with Bulgarian Empire, Nicaea and Anjou dynasties. The Empire soon fell into a civil war between John V Palaiologos and John VI Kantakouzenos, and Epirus was conquered by the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan in 1348. During this time, two Albanian states were formed in the region. In the summer of 1358, Nikephoros II Orsini, the last despot of Epirus of the Orsini dynasty, was defeated in battle against Albanian chieftains. Following the approval of the Serbian Tsar, these chieftains established two new states in the region, the Despotate of Arta and Principality of Gjirokastër. Internal dissention eased the Ottoman conquest, which proceeded with the capture of Ioannina in 1430, Arta in 1449, Angelokastron in 1460, and finally Vonitsa in 1479, giving an end to the Despotate of Epirus and the newly established Albanian states, putting Vagenetia, under Ottoman rule.

Ottoman rule

During the Ottoman rule, the region was under the Vilayet of Ioannina, and later under the Pashalik of Yanina. During this time, the region was known as Chameria (also spelled Tsamouria, Tzamouria) and became a district in the Vilayet of Yanina.

In the 18th century, as the power of the Ottomans declined, the region came under the semi-independent state of Ali Pasha Tepelena, an Albanian brigand who became the provincial governor of Ioannina in 1788. Ali Pasha started campaigns to subjugate the confederation of the Souli settlements in this region. His forces met fierce resistance by the Souliotes warriors. After numerous failed attempts to defeat the Souliotes, his troops succeeded in conquering the area in 1803.

After the fall of the Pashalik, the region remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire, while Greece and Albania declared that their goal was to include in their states the whole region of Epirus, including Thesprotia or Chameria. Finally, following the Balkan Wars, Epirus was divided in 1913, in the London Peace Conference, and the region came under the control of Kingdom of Greece, with only a small portion being integrated into the newly formed State of Albania.

Modern history

When the region came under Greek control, its population included speakers of Greek, Albanian, Aromanian and Romani. In the aftermath of the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the region was settled by Greek refugees from Asia Minor. In 1936 the Ioannina prefecture where the area was included, divided into two parts and the new prefecture took the name Thesprotia which was its ancient name. Cham Albanians were given religious, but no ethnic minority status and there was little evidence of direct state persecution at this time.

Muslim Chams were counted as a religious minority, and some of them were transferred to Turkey, during the 1923 population exchange, while their property was alienated by the Greek government. Orthodox Cham Albanians were counted as Greeks, and their language and Albanian heritage were under pressure of assimilation.

During the Axis occupation of Greece (1941–1944), large parts of the Muslim Cham community collaborated with the Italian and German forces committing a number of war crimes. At the end of World War II, nearly all Muslim Chams in Greece were expelled to Albania, because of that activity. However, another part of Muslim Chams provided military support to the resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army, while the rest were civilians uninvolved in the war. Led by Zervas' former officer, Col. Zotos, a loose paramilitary grouping of former guerrillas and local men went on a rampage. In the worst massacre, in the town of Filiates on 13 March, some sixty to seventy Chams were killed.

Demographics

Main articles: Cham Albanians and Epirus_(periphery) § Demographics

Since the Medieval Ages, the population of the region of Chameria was of mixed and complex ethnicity, with a blurring of group identities such as Albanian and Greek, along with many other ethnic groups. Information on the ethnic composition of the region over several centuries is almost entirely absent, wirh the strong likelihood that they did not fit into standard "national" patterns, as the 19th century revolutionary nationalist movements wanted.

Historical

In Greek censuses, only Muslims of the region were counted as Albanians. According to the 1913 Greek census, 25,000 Muslims were living at the time in the Chameria region who had Albanian as their mother tongue, from a total population of about 60,000, while in 1923 there were 20,319 Muslim Chams. In the Greek census of 1928, there were 17,008 Muslims who had it as their mother tongue.

The only census that counted Orthodox population of the region of Albanian ethnicity, was an unreliable one made by fascist Italy in 1941. This census found that in the region lived 54,000 Albanians, of whom 26,000 Orthodox and 28,000 Muslim and 20,000 Greeks. After the war, according to Greek censuses where ethno-linguistic groups were counted, Muslim Chams were 113 in 1947 and 127 in 1951.

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Current

The exact number of Albanians still residing in the Chameria region is uncertain, since the Greek government does not include ethnic and linguistic categories in any official census. According to the pro-Albanian author Miranda Vickers, Orthodox Chams today are approximately 40,000. Albanian is still spoken by a minority of inhabitants in Igoumenitsa. According to Ethnologue, Albanian language is spoken as a mother-tongue by about 10,000 Albanians in Epirus and the village of Lechovo, in Florina According to a survey conducted in 1994 the language is dying fast, because it receives no kind of encouragement.

Villages and towns

References

^ Balkan Studies By Hetaireia Makedonikōn Spoudōn. Hidryma Meletōn Cheresonēsou tou Haimou Published by Institute for Balkan Studies, Society for Macedonian Studies., 1976
^ NGL Hammond, Epirus: the Geography, the Ancient Remains, the History and Topography of Epirus and Adjacent Areas, Published by Clarendon P., 1967, p. 31
The Antiquity of Epirus: The Acheron Necromanteion ; Ephyra-Pandosia-Cassope By Sōtērios Dakarēs, Solon B. Tzaferis Published by Apollo Editions, 1972
^ Fine, John Van Antwerp. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan Press, 1994, ISBN 0472082604.
^ An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation By Thomas Heine Nielsen, Københavns universitet Polis, Danish National Research Foundation Published by Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 0198140991, 9780198140993
^ Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History, I.B.Tauris, 1999, ISBN 1860645410, 9781860645419
Idia kai dêmosia: les cadres "privés" et "publics" de la religion grecque antique By Kentro Meletes tes Archaias Hellenikes Threskeias Colloque, Published by Centre international d'étude de la religion grecque antique, 2003
The Encyclopedia Americana: Complete in Thirty volumes; First published in 1829. By Grolier Incorporated, Inc Grolier Published by Grolier Inc., 1999
Report to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations / Greece. National F.A.O. Committee Published by , 1957
An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation By Thomas Heine Nielsen, Københavns universitet Polis centret, Danish National Research Foundation Published by Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 0198140991, 9780198140993
Pyrrhus by Plutarch (The Internet Classics Archive)
Boardman, John. The Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge University Press, 1923, p. 437.
PHI Greek Inscriptions
Hornblower, Simon. The Greek World, 479-323 B.C. Routledge, 2002, p. 199, ISBN 0415163269. "Even before about 385, the Molossian tribes had combined with the neighbouring Thesprotians and Chaonians to form a Molossian state with a king and officials called prostates (president), grammateus (secretary), and tribal representatives called demiourgoi; also hieromnemones some kind of cult figure. (See for all of this SGDI 1334-67; also SEG 23.471: fifteen synarchontes, federal officials. This inscription shows that Orestis was part of the federal organisation, that is the koinon or federation embraced an area which would later be Macedonian territory.)"
Kazhdan, Alexander (Ed.) (1991). Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6.
Survey of international affairs, By Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Veronica Marjorie Toynbee, Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by Oxford University Press, 1958
Fleming, Katherine Elizabeth. The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha's Greece. Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0691001944, p. 59.
^ Barbara Jelavich. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 0521274583, 9780521274586
Onur Yildirim, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations, 1922-1934, CRC Press, 2006, ISBN 041597982X, ISBN 9780415979825, p.121
Roudometof, Victor (2002). Collective memory, national identity, and ethnic conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian question. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-97648-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=Xoww453NVQMC
Fabbe, Kristin. "Defining Minorities and Identities - Religious Categorization and State-Making Strategies in Greece and Turkey". Presentation at: The Graduate Student Pre-Conference in Turkish and Turkic Studies, University of Washington, October 18, 2007.
^ Ktistakis, Yiorgos. "Τσάμηδες - Τσαμουριά. Η ιστορία και τα εγκλήματα τους" Cite error: The named reference "Ktistakis" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^ Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact on Greece, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2002, ISBN 1850656746, ISBN 9781850656746, p. 128
Meyer, Hermann Frank (2008) (in German). Blutiges Edelweiß: Die 1. Gebirgs-division im zweiten Weltkrieg . Ch. Links Verlag. ISBN 9783861534471. http://books.google.com/books?id=_Hpr-PK39UkC&dq=
Victor Roudometof, Collective memory, national identity, and ethnic conflict. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. ISBN 9780275976484, p. 182 "also the Cham collaboration with Germans is a fact, not a accusation.
Mazower, Mark. After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, 2000, ISBN 0691058423, pp. 25-26.
Brian D. Joseph. When languages collide: perspectives on language conflict, language competition, and language coexistence. Ohio State University Press, 2003. ISBN 9780814209134, p. 281
Jewish currents. 2000, p. 34.
Vickers, Miranda and Petiffer, James. The Albanian Question. I.B. Tauris, 2007, ISBN 1860649742, p. 238.
Raymond G. Gordon, Raymond G. Gordon, Jr., Barbara F. Grimes, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International, 2005, ISBN 155671159X, 9781556711596. Online version (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=als)
Tom Winnifrith, Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania, TDuckworth, 2002, University of Michigan, ISBN 0715632019, ISBN 9780715632017

v t e Cham Albanians
History	Pashalik of Janina Souliotes (Souliote Confederacy Catastrophe of Zalongo Assembly of Preveza Albanian Committee of Janina Këshilla
Issue	Cham Albanian Resistance during World War II 4th "Ali Demi" Battalion "Chameria" Battalion Cham Albanian collaboration with the Axis Këshilla Paramythia executions Expulsion of Cham Albanians Anti-Fascist Committee of Cham Immigrants Liberation Army of Chameria
Organizations	"Çamëria" Association Chameria Human Rights Association Party for Justice, Integration and Unity Democratic Foundation of Chameria Bilal Xhaferri Cultural Association Shoqata Çamëria Party of the Chameria Party for Justice and Integration Party for Justice and Unity
Culture	Cham Albanian dialect Music Iso-poliphony Song of Çelo Mezani Song of Marko Boçari Dance Dance of Osman Taka Dance of Zalongo Magazines Krahu i shqiponjës
Settlements	Chameria Konispol Konispol Markat Janjar Paramythia Filiates Igoumenitsa Katavothra Fanari Louros Kranea Derviziana Thesprotiko Parapotamos Mousiotitsa Sagiada Syvota Xarrë Anthousa Kanallaki Parga Pandalejmon Mavronoros Vrinë Perdika Margariti Kastri Karvounari
Individuals	Azis Tahir Ajdonati Aziz Çami Hamdi Çami Qamil Çami Thoma Çami Refo Çapari Ali Demi Musa Demi Niazi Demi Rexhep Demi Tahir Demi Abedin Dino Ahmed Dino Ali Dino Rasih Dino Shahin Dino Veli Gërra Muhamet Kyçyku Shpëtim Idrizi Tahir Muhedini Teme Sejko Dashamir Tahiri Hasan Tahsini Osman Taka Jakup Veseli Bilal Xhaferri
Settlements inhabited by communities known as Arvanites, and very rarely characterized as Cham

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