One of Europe's most mysterious countries, Albania is only just begining to throw off the shackles of the communist era. With the economic outlook now much brighter, Albania hopes to join the EU and NATO within the next few years and this in turn, they hope, will help to boost tourism in the country. And with a long dramatic history, Albania might become a future tourist hotspot.

Population: 3.614.913

Largest Cities (over 100,000 inhabitants):

Tirana - 753.105, Durres 115.314, Elbasan 101.290

Total area: 28,748 sq km
land: 27,398 sq km
coastline: 1,350 sq km

Tirana

Tirana (Albanian: Tiranë) is the capital and largest city of Albania. Located on the Ishm River, it is Albania's chief industrial and cultural centre. Tirana was founded in 1614 by the Ottoman general Sulejman Pasha, who built a mosque, a bakery and a Turkish sauna, and named it "Tehran", as a tribute to his military victory at Tehran in Persia (now Iran). The small town was selected as the temporary capital of Albania (as a compromise between South and North Albania) by the provisional government established at the Congress of Lushnjë (January 1920). The Et'hem Bey Mosque, which was begun in 1789 by Molla Bey and finished in 1821 by his son, Haxhi Et'hem Bey, great-grandson of Sulejman Pasha is a significant landmark. Another landmark located near the Ethem Bey mosque in Skanderbeg Square is the clock tower (Kulla e Sahatit) which was built in 1830. In 2001, the construction was finished on the biggest church of Tirana, Catholic Church of Saint Paul. Tirana also features the University of Tirana, founded in 1957, and many governmental and social buildings such as the Albanian Institute of Sciences, the Academy of Arts, the Agricultural University, the Military Academy, the Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the People's Assembly, and the High Court.

During recent years pollution has also become a very big problem for Tirana as the number of cars has increased by several orders of magnitude. These are mostly older, diesel cars that pollute way more than the newer models in circulation elsewhere in Europe. Additionally, the fuel used in Albania contains larger amounts of sulphur and lead than is allowed in the EU countries.It is worth mentioning that there is a unique trait to the city, that effectively moderates the impact of air pollution: The Saint Prokopi park - a very vast forested park in the outskirts of the city, that absorbs and purifies much of the polluted air.The current mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, has tried to beautify the city scape by cleaning up the banks of the Lana and painting old buildings.

 

A brief history of Albania

In the area that is today Albania, human activity has been present since the beginning of human history. The earliest inhabitants were probably part of the pre-Indo-European populace that occupied the coastline of most parts of the Mediterranean. However, their physical remains are scarce and concentrated in the coastal region. Soon, these first inhabitants were overrun by the Proto-Hellenic tribes that gradually occupied modern-day Greece, southern Macedonia and the southern part of present-day Albania. This process was completed over the second millennium BC and did not really affect northern or central Albania, an area that at the time presented the image of a political vacuum (in essence a historical paradox).

The name Albania probably derives from the ancient Indo-European root albho, meaning "white". From this root may also have come the name Albion, the ancient name of Britain. Alternatively, Albania may derive from the same source as the name of the Alps, the etymology of which is uncertain. The first known occurance of the word Albanoi as the name of an Illyrian tribe in what is now north-central Albania goes back to 130 AD, in a work of Ptolemy.

Illyrians were relative latecomers to the Balkan arena. Though their presence can be traced back to 900 BC, their political structure was formulated in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Excellent metal craftsmen and fierce warriors, the Illyrians formed warlord based kingdoms that fought amongst themselves for most of their history. Only during the 6th century BC did the Illyrians venture significant raids against their immediate neighbours, the Greek kingdom of the Mollosoi in northern Epirus (present southern Albania), the kingdom of Macedonia and the kingdom of Paionia (now in northern Republic of Macedonia). Probably their most important success was the slaughter of Perdiccas III, king of Macedonia. Unfortunately for the Illyrians, Perdiccas was succeeded by Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, who effectively terminated the Illyrian aggresion.

In reality, though, the Illyrians were mostly peaceful traders of agricultural products and metal works. The Illyrian culture was influenced by the Greek-Macedonian culture (mainly the south Illyrian tribes). Albania is also the site of several ancient Greek colonies.

After being conquered by a number of nations, mainly the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Illyria lost most of its original population and finally became a part of the Ottoman Empire in 1478. For many years before their final victory, the Turks had been applying pressure to the Albanian rulers. Obliged by the Ottomans to pay tribute to the Empire, and to ensure the fidelity of local rulers, Gjon Kastrioti's sons were taken by the Sultan to his court as hostages in 1423. He attended military school and led many battles for the Ottoman Empire. He was awarded for his military victories the title Iskander Bey (Albanian transliteration: Skënderbeu, English transliteration: Skanderbeg). In Turkish this title means Lord or Prince Alexander (in honor of Alexander the Great). Skanderbeg soon switched sides and came back to his native land to successfully defend Albania against the Ottoman Empire until the time of his death.

Gjergj Kastrioti (1405–1468), better known as Skanderbeg, was an half Albanian half Serbian prince who united the tribes of Epirus and Albania and resisted the expanding Ottoman Empire for 25 years. It is Skanderbeg's 25 year defiance of the Ottoman Empire that perserved Christianity in Albania to this day. Today he's considered the national hero of Albania.

Upon the Ottomans' return, a large number of Albanians fled to Italy, Greece and Egypt and many of the Albanians who remained (about two-thirds of the Albanian population), converted to the Islamic faith. Many Albanians won fame and fortune as soldiers, administrators, and merchants in far-flung parts of the empire. As the centuries passed, however, Ottoman rulers lost the capacity to command the loyalty of local pashas, who governed districts on the empire's fringes. Soon pressures created by emerging national movements among the empire's farrago of peoples threatened to shatter the empire itself. The Ottoman rulers of the nineteenth century struggled in vain to shore up central authority, introducing reforms aimed at harnessing unruly pashas and checking the spread of nationalist ideas.

After the First Balkan War, Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, becoming a principality. From 1928 on, the country was ruled by King Zog I until 1938, when it became a puppet of Italy.

The communists took over after World War II, in November 1944, under the leader of the resistance, Enver Hoxha. From 1945 until 1990 Albania had one of the most repressive governments in Europe. The communist party was created in 1941 with the direction of Bolshevik Communist Parties. All those who opposed it were eliminated. Enver Hoxha became the leader of this party. For many decades of his domination, Hoxha created and destroyed relationships with Belgrade, Moscow, and China, always in his personal interests. The country was isolated, first from the West (Western Europe, Canada, USA) and later even from the communist East.

In 1985, Enver Hoxha died and Ramiz Alia took his place. Initially, Alia tried to follow in Hoxha's footsteps, but Eastern Europe was already changing: Mikhail Gorbachev had appeared in the Soviet Union with new policies (glasnost and perestroika). The totalitarian regime was pressured by the US and Europe and the hate of its own people. After Nicolae Ceauşescu (the communist leader of Romania) was executed in a revolution, Alia knew he would be next if changes were not made. He signed the Helsinki Agreement (which was signed by other countries in 1975) that respected some human rights. He also allowed pluralism, and even though his party won the election of 1991 it was clear that the change would not be stopped. In 1992 the general elections were won by the Democratic Party with 62% of the votes.

In the general elections of June 1996 the Democratic Party tried to win an absolute majority and manipulated the results. In 1997 the fraud of the pyramid schemes shocked the entire government and riots started. Many cities were controlled by militia and armed citizens. This anarchy and rebellion caused the socialist party to win the early elections of 1997.

Since 1990 Albania has been oriented towards the West, was accepted in the Council of Europe and has requested membership in NATO. The workforce of Albania has continued to emmigrate to Greece, Italy, Europe and North America. Corruption in the government is becoming more and more obvious. The politicians have not fulfilled the people's hope for a short and not too painful transition.

Albanian culture

Music, poetry and fine regional cuisine all have a long history in Albania. Often it has been through their culture that the Albania people have kept their unique identity alive. Recently, novelist Ismail Kadare has had his work internationally recognised for it's contribution to Albanian and world culture. Music has always been a potent means of national expression for Albanians. Under Hoxha's regime, this was channeled into songs of patriotic devotion to the party; since the arrival of democracy in 1991, lyrics have come to focus on long-suppressed traditions like kurbet (seeking work outside of Albania) and support for various political parties, candidates and ideas. Pop musicians have developed too, long banned under the socialists, with Ardit Gjebrea being one of the most popular artists. Folk music was encouraged to some degree under the socialist government, who promoted a quinquennial music festival at Gjirokastër provided that the musicians expressed frequent support for the party leaders. After the fall of socialism, Albanian Radio-Television launched a 1995 festival in Berat that has helped to continue musical traditions.

Albanian or Gjuha shqipe is a language spoken by more than six million inhabitants of the western Balkan peninsula (Albania, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece) and by a small number of people in Calabria and Sicily, southern Italy. Albanian was proved to be an Indo-European language in the 1850s. The Albanian language is on its own branch of the Indo-European language family. Some suggest that Albanian may be the survival of an Illyrian language once spoken in the southwestern Balkans. Others suggest Albanian may be related more to the ancient Dacian language once spoken in Moesia and Dacia. It is unclear whether Dacian and Illyrian were on different branches of the Indo-European family, but most scholars consider that they were. Albanian split from the Proto-Indo-European language about 4000 years ago and most of the basic words are derived directly from it. Some of these words have cognates in Romanian and there is a theory that the language spoken by the Dacians before the Romanization was a language related to proto-Albanian.

It is not certain whether ancient Greek influenced the early Albanian language. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, Latin, more specifically, the Balkan Latin (which was the ancestor of Romanian), would exert a great influence on Albanian. Examples of words borrowed from Latin: qytet < civitas (city), qiell < caelum (sky), mik < amicus (friend).

After the Slavs arrived in the Balkans, another source of Albanian vocabulary were the Slavic languages, especially Bulgarian. Like for all Balkan languages, the rise of the Ottoman Empire meant an influx of Turkish words. The Albanian alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the letters ë, ç, and nine digraphs to account for certain sounds in pronunciations. Until 1908, when the Latin alphabet was introduced in Albanian, the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, and the Ottoman Turkish version of the Arabic alphabet had been used to write Albanian.