1913 Baron Franz Nopcsa: The Congress of Trieste

1913
Baron Franz Nopcsa:
The Congress of Trieste

Franz Baron Nopcsa (1877-1933), was born the son of Hungarian aristocrats at the family estate in Szacsal near Hatzeg in Transylvania. He was able to finish his schooling at the Maria-Theresianum in Vienna with the support of his uncle and godfather, Franz von Nopcsa, who was headmaster of the court of the Empress Elisabeth. Nopcsa developed quickly into a talented scholar. He travelled extensively in the Balkans and lived in Shkodra for some time in the early years of the twentieth century. He soon became one of the leading Albania specialists of his times and was even a candidate for the Albanian throne in 1913.
His fifty-four publications in the field of Albanian studies from 1907 to 1932 were concentrated primarily in the fields of prehistory, early Balkan history, ethnology, geography, modern history and Albanian customary law The list of Nopcsa’s publications includes over 186 works, primarily in the fields of palaeontology, geology, and Albanian studies. Suffering from depression, Baron Nopcsa committed suicide at his home in Vienna on 25 April 1933 and killed his longtime Albanian secretary and lover Bajazid Elmaz Doda (ca. 1888-1933). His memoirs “Reisen in den Balkan: die Lebenserinnerungen des Franz Baron Nopcsa” (Travels in the Balkans: The Memoirs of Baron Franz Nopcsa), Peja 2001, from which the following extract is taken, were published posthumously. This text deals with the Albanian Congress of Trieste in 1913 and with Nopcsa’s candidacy for the Albanian throne.
The Congress of Trieste, Alb. “Kongresi i Triestit,” was convened in early 1913 to show solidarity among Albanians from Albania and abroad for their country following the declaration of independence in Vlora on 28 November 1912. About 150 representatives from Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Egypt, Turkey and the United States attended to discuss the affairs of the nation. The congress recognized the provisional government set up by Ismail Qemal bey Vlora and discussed the various candidates for the new vacant throne. Among the candidates being discussed at the time were Ferdinand François Bourbon Orléans-Montpensier of France, Albert Ghika of Romania, Count Urach of Württemberg, the Egyptian prince Ahmed Fuad, and the son of the Marchese Castriota from Naples. Austria-Hungary promoted the congress, in particular to ensure the selection of a prince of its choice.








Juan Aladro Castriota, a candidat for
the Albanian throne. Postcard 1913.

From 27 February to 6 March (1913) I took part in the Albanian Congress of Trieste. This congress was a strange affair. The Albanian throne was vacant in the spring of 1913 and Albanian affairs were under the direction of Ismail Qemali who had first met with Berchtold in Budapest at the home of Excellency Hadik Janos and had then journeyed to Vlora, entrusted by him and with his support. There he formed the provisional government of the newly founded Albanian state. As a long-term friend of the Greeks and as their paid agent, he also promised to facilitate their occupation of Janina if he remained head of Albania. It is obvious that Ismail Qemali wished to remain at the head of the provisional government because such positions usually bring in a lot of money. Less obvious was the fact that Berchtold, after a tête-à-tête with Ismail Qemali, was convinced that he could outmanoeuvre the Albanian leader. And of course he failed. I was easily able to foresee that Ismail Qemali would betray Albania to Greece because Stead had told me much about Qemali’s relations with Greece in 1911 and because the writer Alexander Ular, author together with Enrico Insabato of the book ‘Der erlöschende Halbmond’ [The waning crescent], Frankfurt 1909, had revealed to me a number of details about Ismail’s conduct as Governor of Tripoli. When Berchtold asked me what I thought of Ismail Qemali two weeks after he had founded the provisional government, I said to him quite literally, “Ismail Qemali is an ass.” Ismail Qemali’s betrayal of Albania was confirmed to me completely by Eqrem Bey Vlora, who was himself the son of the Albanian ambassador in Vienna, Sureja Bey, and the nephew of Ismail Qemali. I do not know what the Greeks intended to do with Ismail Qemali once they had occupied Janina. Perhaps they wished to proceed according to the old saying, “The Moor has done his duty, the Moor may now depart.” At any rate, intensive propaganda campaigns were being waged in Europe on behalf of the various pretenders to the Albanian throne while the provisional government was being headed by Ismail Qemali, who was open to bribery, though only with large sums of money.

Albert Ghica, who had been a pretender to the Albanian throne himself, had managed to interest the Duke of Montpensier [Ferdinand François Bourbon Orléans-Montpensier] in the Albanian throne. He ceded his ‘rights,’ which were recognized by no one as a matter of fact, to the duke and began to campaign on his behalf in exchange for an appropriate remuneration. Montpensier easily won over the miserly Fazil Pasha Toptani and a number of other Albanians, and thus arose the plan to have Montpensier proclaimed King of Albania at the Congress of Trieste. Montpensier was at the same time to break through the Greek blockade and take possession of Vlora and of Ismail Qemali. Because our Monarchy, in view of Montpensier’s relatives, was expected to resist this choice, it was shown to be expedient for the Albanian Congress to be supported by Austria-Hungary. A decision was then taken to hold the congress in the Monarchy in order to lay a real diplomatic cuckoo’s egg. As a strawman for convoking the conference, skilled use was made of the kind, but dumbwitted Stefan Zurani, who suspected nothing. Curani was naive, ambitious and well viewed at the foreign ministry, and out of pure vanity claimed to the foreign ministry that he himself had had the idea of convoking the Albanian Congress in Trieste. Since the foreign ministry enjoyed the idea of Albanians in the Monarchy demonstrating on behalf of their country, the plan was accepted and supported by Vienna. Aside from the Albanians themselves, the Italo-Albanians also turned up at the congress, and with them came Marchese Castriota from Naples with all of his sons. Also present was Albert Ghika, Baron Dungern, who was a university professor and historian from Czernowitz, two Christian-Socialist Members of Parliament, Count Taaffe and Mr Panty from Vienna, as well as the Rome correspondent of the ‘Reichspost,’ Cavaliere Mayerhöfer, and myself. I brought with me Dr Leo Freundlich, a former Socialist Member of Parliament from Vienna who, at the very moment Albania became ‘in,’ had skilfully founded the periodical ‘Albanische Korrespondenz’ and was now on about ‘imperialist power politics.’ Hasan Arnauti was in Trieste, too, as my private detective. The press was represented by various newspapers. Also in Trieste was a certain Mr Jovo Weis from Belgrade who, it was said, wanted to sell rifles to the Albanians at a price of 90 crowns a piece, but who in reality was a Serbian agent.

Representing the Austrian Government was Makavetz, a calm, intelligent and energetic figure who never lost his composure. After welcoming ceremonies the first evening, Marchese Castriota was chosen as honorary president of the congress and Faik Bey Konitza was elected chairman. Hilë Mosi, Fazil Toptani and Dervish Hima were also elected to the chair. The nomination of Konitza was not to the liking of Ghika since, when the latter was on the point of bringing up the issue of candidates to the Albanian throne, his old rival Faik prevented him from doing so. In order to have an ace in his hand, Ghika, who like many a Romanian had a long career as an impostor behind him, had cunningly succeeded in getting control of Ismail Qemali’s retarded son. Before the congress started, he travelled to Nice, where the Qemali family resided in virtual poverty, and, as Qemali himself was unable to attend, invited the son Tahir to the Albanian Congress in Trieste at his own expense, or, to be more precise, at the expense of Montpensier. Since Tahir did not have a penny to his name and had to have everything, even his cigarettes, bought for him by Ghika and as such could not do anything without Ghika or his representative, he had virtually become Ghika’s prisoner. What Ghika intended to do with Tahir only became clear at a later date...

Since the many Italo-Albanians attending the congress were becoming over-bearing with their Italian-language speeches, I had myself introduced at the opening by Faik as an old friend of the Albanians. I had but a few minutes to think of my reply, mounted the podium and held a spontaneous speech in Albanian. With the exception of Kral and a few other Austro-Hungarian and Italian consuls, I don’t think many a central European would be in a position to repeat that feat.

All in all, there was nothing but hot air at the congress, aside from a dispute between the Vlachs and Albanians, during which the little nation of Vlachs, not even officially born yet, gave substantial proof of its fanaticism and Balkan megalomania, and from a further clash between the chairman Faik Bey Konitza and the rather crooked Nikolla Ivanaj, who endeavoured unsuccessfully to challenge the authority of the chairman simply in order to draw attention to himself. The day before the congress was to end, I therefore felt compelled to call Faik Bey Konitza aside and inform him that the congress had as yet done no work at all and that the least one could expect from a political congress was a resolution. Faik agreed and I dictated to him a resolution which the congress was to telegraph to all the Great Powers the next day. The matter was attended to within half an hour, and the next day, Faik presented the document to the congress as a resolution. After a debate on the position of the Vlachs at the congress and in a future Albania, which Faik overcame in favour of the Albanians by presenting the Vlachs more or less with an ultimatum, the resolution was accepted and, as such, my text was sent to the Great Powers as the congress resolution.

During the congress, Cavaliere Mayerhöfer learned from Tahir, the son of Ismail Qemali, that Montpensier was preparing a putsch. He informed me, but aside from this no one else found out, not even Freundlich and Dungern. The two of us informed Makavetz, who told the foreign ministry. All necessary countermeasures were prepared. Ghika’s plan to bring the throne question up at the congress had failed, but another coup was in the making since Montpensier disposed of a yacht ready for sail. We spent two days in Trieste waiting to find out what Vienna thought of Montpensier’s candidacy, in particular in view of his relationship with the Archduchess Maria Dorothea. The Albanians, among whom Faik Bey, began to ask us how they should react to the candidacy. I said to them on my own behalf, “In a hostile manner, for I do not believe that Montpensier is a candidate for Vienna.” In the end, the reply arrived, confirming my suspicions. We were now free to act against Montpensier. As it happened, the Viennese Members of Parliament were holding a banquet for the congress at the Palace Hotel. I interrupted a pause in the conversation by saying in an audible voice, “I hear that Montpensier wants to become King of Albania and that proclamations have already been printed! Does anyone of the gentlemen here happen to have one in his pocket? You know, gentlemen, I am a great collector of printed material on Albania.” Tremendous surprise and a stunned silence. Fan Noli forgot himself, drew a proclamation out of his pocket and gave it to me. Montpensier’s secret was divulged. That evening the proclamation was in the mail on its way to Berchtold. Our worries were less now, but not done away with entirely.

The next day there occurred a dramatic moment at the congress when rumours suddenly began to fly that a messenger from the Provisional Government of Albania had arrived in Trieste from Vlora. A few minutes later a tall, but stooped and awkward-looking old man, exhausted from his journey, was conducted into the hall, causing great commotion. It was the Albanian minister, Kristo Meksi. He had arrived straight from Vlora. There was frenetic applause, the atmosphere was electrified. Faik turned pale for he realized that the chair had now lost all influence over the congress. It was now the Provisional Government that was in the chair. He did not know what message Meksi had brought with him. If Meksi, as a result of some secret agreement as an emissary of the Provisional Government in Vlora, were to proclaim the Duke of Montpensier as King of Albania, he would certainly be elected. I sat down next to the representative of the Austrian Government, Makavetz, and said, “You know, if Kristo Meksi proposes Montpensier as a candidate, we are lost because he will be proclaimed unanimously.” Makavetz remained externally calm but every hair on his head was raised. He was prepared to let the scandal happen and to end the congress. Kristo Meksi began to speak. He conveyed to the Albanian Congress the best wishes of the Provisional Government and informed those present that the members of the Government were all well. Then, without even realizing what decision was in his hands, he left the podium to the frenetic applause of the auditorium. The storm had passed. We realized that Ismail Qemali had not yet been informed of Montpensier’s plan.

Now it was simply a matter of freeing Tahir from the clutches of Ghika. A coincidence facilitated our plan. Ghika did not wish to pay Tahir’s hotel bill and had turned to others to solve the problem for him. As such, an Albanian patriot soon made his appearance. I believe it was Mark Kakarriqi or Koci who approached me and explained that Tahir, the son of the president of the Albanian Government, was in financial difficulties. Knowing me to be a friend of the Albanians, the patriot asked me if I would be willing to assist by paying Tahir’s debts, adding that, if the matter became known to the public, it would put Albania in a bad light. Tahir needed 500-600 crowns and, I was told, was too embarrassed to approach me directly. I declared myself willing to assist immediately and promised to pay his expenditures that very afternoon. At noon I dined with Tahir and Mayerhöfer and succeeded in making it clear to Tahir that he was being used as a tool and was in fact a hostage in Ghika’s hands. His father in Vlora could be compelled to resign from the Provisional Government in favour of Montpensier in order to save his son’s life. Tahir was of course dumbfounded and told me everything he knew, admitting, however, that he had no money to free himself from Ghika. I promised to arrange everything. I paid Tahir’s hotel bill that afternoon and left enough money for his expenses until the next day. I later met the Albanian patriot who had demanded 500-600 crowns and told him that I had already paid Tahir’s debts, but that he had made a mistake, the debt being a mere 190 crowns and not 500-600. An Albanian patriot was thus deprived of a sum of 300-400 crowns! I also invited Tahir to supper that evening and, in order to prevent him from talking to Ghika, who was staying at the same hotel, I got him drunk. At midnight I returned him reeling to his hotel where we met Ghika in the lobby. He understood what was going on and realized that he had lost out as far as Tahir was concerned. At my insistence, Tahir told him that he was leaving for Vienna, where he would be staying with me. All further contact between Ghika and Tahir was thus rendered impossible. The next morning I had Tahir’s luggage picked up and he set off for Vienna, this time as my prisoner, and once again without a penny to his name. I put him up at a hotel and subsequently bought him a train ticket to Nice, gave him some travelling money and sent him back to his mother. The Austrian Foreign Ministry also sent Mrs Ismail Qemali a larger sum of money to help her with her financial difficulties, in order that such a problem not occur again. In order to describe the level of Tahir’s intelligence, it is sufficient to note that he had been a Turkish naval cadet under Abdul Hamid. This tells it all. This was thus the extent of my involvement at the Albanian Congress of Trieste....



From Trieste I returned to Vienna, where I urged Berchtold to ensure that the recently created Albanian throne be occupied as quickly as possible because I foresaw the negative consequences of leaving it vacant for too long. He complained that he was unable to find a suitable candidate for the throne. There were in fact a good number of candidates. Foremost among them was Count Urach of Württemberg. An Egyptian prince, Ahmed Fuad, and the son of the Marchese Castriota of Naples had also made their candidacies known.





Baron Franz Nopcsa,
ca. 1928.

At this moment I resolved to take a step which could easily have made me a laughing stock and have put all my activities on behalf of Albania in a bad light. Nonetheless, I decided to go through with it. I informed Excellency Conrad verbally that I would be willing to join the list of candidates for the throne if the Foreign Ministry would support me and told him that, to have myself proclaimed King of Albania, I would simply need the one-time payment of a larger sum of money in order to buy the support of the so-called Albanian patriots which, as I learned from the Montpensier putsch, was no problem at all. Once a reigning European monarch, I would have no difficulty coming up with the further funds needed by marrying a wealthy American heiress aspiring to royalty, a step which under other circumstances I would have been loath to take. I was sure of the support of the inhabitants of the northern part of the country in view of the stance I had taken in the years 1910 and 1911 and Vienna could expect to overcome any difficulties caused by Ismail Qemali who was being supported by Berchtold...

My candidacy may have been ridiculed in competent circles. Be that as it may, I grew disgusted a few weeks later and withdrew from all further activities concerning Albania. Some of those in the know said that I only did so because my highfalutin plans had not come about. I for my part gave as my reason [for withdrawing my candidacy] that the Albania created by the Conference of London was a stillbirth. I did not even attempt to contradict the slanderous allegations which my opponents revelled in, because I knew that events to come would prove to be my best defence. The collapse of the Albanian State in 1914 showed that I was right to get off the sinking ship in time in 1913. My only ‘mistake’ was to have recognized what was to come long before my opponents did. Prince Wied ascended the Albanian throne while the Conference of London was still underway...

Soon after the Albanian Congress I resigned from the Albanian committee because of the borders set forth by London, and withdrew from all further political activity...

Baron Franz Nopcsa and his contribution to Albanian studies

The Viennese scholar who almost became King of Albania:

Baron Franz Nopcsa
and his contribution to Albanian studies

On 26 April 1933, the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna published the following article:

Bloody drama in the Singerstrasse
Scholar commits murder and suicide

"As we have already reported, the fifty-five year old lecturer Baron Franz Nopcsa shot his longtime secretary, the forty-five year old Albanian Bayazid Elmas Doda, yesterday morning in his fourth-storey apartment in house No. 1 of Singerstrasse 12 and then committed suicide at the desk of his study by shooting himself through the mouth. The autopsy showed that the secretary received two gunshot wounds at almost the same spot on his left temple and that these bullets went right through his skull and came to rest in the polstering on the back of the armchair.

Nopcsa seems to have prepared the deed carefully. A number of sealed messages of farewell were found, as were a sealed will addressed to a Viennese lawyer and a few other documents. That material motives may also have been involved can be deduced not only from testimony from his maid, who had not received her salary for four months and from the fact that Franz Nopcsa, who was devoted to his books and collections, had been planning to sell off his extensive library containing many a unique volume.

... a letter to the police, "The motive for my suicide is a nervous breakdown. The reason that I shot my longtime friend and secretary, Mr Bayazid Elmas Doda, in his sleep without his suspecting at all is that I did not wish to leave him behind sick, in misery and without a penny, because he would have suffered too much. I wish to be cremated."

Thus ended the life of Baron Franz Nopcsa of Felsöszilvás (1877-1933), one of the most prominent researchers and scholars of his day. Nopcsa was born the son of a family of Hungarian aristocrats on 3 May 1877 at the family estate in Szacsal (Sacel) near Hatzeg in Transylvania. He was able to finish his schooling at the Maria-Theresianum in Vienna with the support of his uncle and godfather, Franz von Nopcsa, who was head master of the court of the Empress Elisabeth. The perhaps decisive event of his younger years took place during an outing near Szentpéterfalva in 1895. There he and his sister Ilona discovered some fossilized bones belonging to a dinosaur, which he sent to the geologist and palaeontologist, Professor Eduard Suess in Vienna. From graduation in 1897 to 1903, Nopcsa studied under Suess at the University of Vienna, which was a leading centre of palaeontological studies at the time.


Baron Franz Nopcsa
in northern Albanian costume, ca. 1916


The Nopcsa family manor
in Szacsal,Transylvania

Nopcsa developed quickly into a talented scholar himself. On 21 July 1899, at the age of twenty-two, he held his first lecture at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on Dinossaurierreste in Siebenbürgen (Dinosaur remnants in Transylvania) and attracted much attention with it. He is considered one of the founders of palaeophysiology, in particular because of his internationally renowned studies on reptile fossils. Well known were his hypotheses on the 'running proavis,' on the warm-bloodedness of pterosaurs, and on the significance of a number of endocrine processes which he considered to have had an important influence on the evolution and extinction of dinosaurs. Not all of his theories were accepted at the time, but they did succeed in advancing and stimulating a wide range of fields of palaeontology. Equally important were Nopcsa's achievements in the field of geology, for example, his research into the tectonic structures of the western Balkan mountain ranges, where he defended some rather unusual theories.

In later years, he also became one of the leading Albania specialists of his times. His publications in the field of Albanian studies from 1907 to 1932 were concentrated primarily in the fields of prehistory, early Balkan history, ethnology, geography, modern history and Albanian customary law, i.e. the Kanun. His early works such as Das Katholische Nordalbanien (Catholic northern Albania), Budapest 1907, Aus Šala und Klementi (From Shala and Kelmendi), Sarajevo 1910, and Haus und Hausrat im katholischen Nordalbanien (House and household in Catholic northern Albania), Sarajevo 1912, and Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte und Ethnologie Nordalbaniens (Contributions to the prehistory and ethnology of northern Albania), Sarajevo 1912, contain a myriad of fascinating observations, even though from a modern perspective the material may not always seem well organized. In his later years, when he had settled down and was no longer travelling in the Balkans, he produced ambitious works of sounder scholarly quality. Among the best known of these are Bauten, Trachten und Geräte Nordalbaniens (Buildings, costumes and tools of northern Albania), Berlin and Leipzig 1925, and, in particular, the 620-page Geologie und Geographie Nordalbaniens (Geology and Geography of northern Albania), Öhrlingen 1932, which may be considered the magnum opus of the Albanological studies he published during his lifetime.

The list of Nopcsa's publications includes over 186 works, primarily in the three above-mentioned fields of palaeontology, geology and Albanian studies. At least fifty-four of these works are related specifically to Albania.



Nopcsa's early death, however, left some important works unpublished. The scholarly works of a palaeontological nature from his estate were donated to the British Museum in London. The Albanological part of his estate went to his colleague, the equally renowned specialist in Albanian studies, Professor Norbert Jokl (1877-1942) of Vienna. In a letter written on 24 April 1933, the day of his death, Nopcsa gave Jokl a list of the manuscripts he was leaving him and asked him to contact Count Paul Teleki in Budapest to arrange for their publication. For financial reasons, these major works were never published at the time. Since Jokl's murder at the hands of the Nazis in early May 1942, the Albanological manuscripts have been preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Austrian National Library in the Hofburg in Vienna.



Five manuscripts from this estate are of particular significance. Firstly is the 510-page study Albanien: die Bergstämme Nordalbaniens und ihr Gewohnheitsrecht (Albania, the mountain tribes of northern Albania and their customary law), Ser. nov. 9392, which has fortunately been published recently, in part at least by Fatos Baxhaku and Karl Kaser in their book Die Stammesgesellschaften Nordalbaniens, Berichte und Forschungen österreichischer Konsuln und Gelehrter, 1861-1917 (The tribal societies of northern Albania, reports and research by Austrian consuls and scholars, 1861-1917), Vienna, Cologne & Weimar 1996. Secondly, mention must be made of his Religiöse Anschauungen, Sitten und Gebräuche (Religious views, habits and customs), Ser. nov. 9393, a 242-page study of Albanian folklore, of which the first fifty-eight pages are unfortunately missing. Thirdly are the Gedichte des Colez Marku, 1895-1932 (Poems of Colez Marku, 1895-1932), Ser. nov. 11912, a 110-page volume of modest German verse containing 160 poems. Fourthly is the 36-page fragment of a Dialektstudie (Dialect study), Ser. nov. 11918, of the northwestern Geg dialect of Shkodra. Last but certainly not least are the memoirs of Baron Nopcsa under the title Reisen in den Balkan (Travels in the Balkans), Ser. nov. 9368.

The five-part monograph 'Travels in the Balkans,' often erroneously known as Nopcsa's diary, consists of 456 typed and partially handwritten pages which the author went through several times with corrections. Indeed there are corrections in ink of five different colours. It can be assumed that Nopcsa began writing his memoirs before the end of the First World War. He compiled them from the notes made in the diary books he kept with him during his Balkan travels and which until recently were considered lost. I had the good fortune in 1990 of finding seven original volumes of these diaries, six on Albania and one on Bulgaria, in the National Library in Tirana. They contain copious notes, pencilled landscape drawings, travel route sketches, and calculations of travel expenditure, a total of 2,700 pages in the Albanian volumes alone, which date from 1905 to 1913.

These seven octavo volumes, with presumably many other works from Nopcsa's library, were offered for sale after the author's death by the antiquarian bookshop Buch- und Kunst-Antiquariat Heinrich Hinterberger in the Hegelgasse 17 in Vienna for 150 Swiss francs and found their way into the collection of Albanian writer and politician Mid'hat Bey Frashëri (1880-1949), also known as Lumo Skendo. Mid'hat Bey, who is said to have possessed the largest library in Albania at the time, some 20,000 volumes, served as leader of the anti-Communist resistance movement Balli Kombëtar during the Second World War, and as such was forced to flee the country for southern Italy when Enver Hoxha took power in Albania in 1944. He left behind his famous library, which was confiscated by the new Communist authorities and which eventually found its way into the newly created National Library, forming the core of the Albanian studies department. It need not be mentioned to anyone who knew Communist Albania that the pre-war collections of the National Library were available to very few scholars during the long years of the dictatorship.

Nopcsa's memoirs, as recorded in the manuscript 'Travels in the Balkans,' comprise a twenty-year period from 1897 to 1917, when the author turned forty. In a letter to Jokl on 8 October 1928, Nopcsa tells us that he had lost his 1918 diary, which explains the sudden end to the memoirs in 1917. The memoirs seem to have been completed around 1929, at the time when Nopcsa had been planning to publish them. Indeed, the Stadium Press in Budapest had offered to publish a Hungarian translation of the memoirs and Kálmán Lambrecht, later appointed librarian at the Geological Institute in Budapest, was appointed to do the translation and subsequently to get the publisher's approval for Nopcsa's innumerable last-minute changes, something which was even more difficult. After much ado, the publisher withdrew his offer and, as such, negotiations for an edition of the German-language original broke down, too. The memoirs thus remained unpublished in manuscript form for the next seven decades (1).

In the first section of the memoirs, entitled Studien und erste Reisen, 1897-1905 (Studies and initial travels, 1897-1905), we encounter the young baron in the wild northern Albanian mountains for the first time, in a region which few foreigners had ever glimpsed... and survived. On his return from Greece after finishing his doctorate at the University of Vienna in the summer of 1903, Nopcsa travelled from Skopje via Prizren right through the heart of the Albanian Alps to Shkodra in order to visit the Austro-Hungarian consul there, Baron Bornemisza Gyula. His first days in Albania began with a truly Albanian experience:

"From Skopje I thus set off for Prizren. There I was given three zaptiehs for the trip to Shkodra. I spent the first night in the han of Brut and, having departed at the break of dawn the next morning, I was shot at from close range out of some bushes on the right hand side at a bend in the road. The bullet went right through my hat and grazed my head, but did not injure me. I leapt off my horse, sought shelter and wanted to fire back, but was unable to catch sight of the criminal. At that moment, I had the very unchristian feeling of being a hunter laying in wait to shoot game. My Mannlicher Karabiner, equipped with a field-glass, which I had kept loaded in my saddle had thus been of no use to me at all. The rest of the journey, from the Vizier's Bridge to Shkodra, passed without event."

Subsequent travels in the northern Albanian mountains went off better and Nopcsa learned to love the country and its headstrong tribes. He gives us the following description from his first major research trip in the summer of 1905:

"I was deeply impressed by an episode which occurred in the Cem valley near the Tamara Bridge in Kelmendi country. I had asked for a glass of water at a house but, instead of water, the head of the household, whom I did not know at all, gave me a bowl of buttermilk, which I drank to the very last drop. I had just finished drinking when the brother of the homeowner, also unknown to me, happened to come home. As it was evening by this time and he was tired from his long journey, he asked to have some buttermilk. All that he found of course was an empty bowl. When the owner of the house told him who had drunk all the buttermilk, he was not upset, as one might have expected, but rather happy and relieved that I had reached the house before he had, because his family had thus been spared the shame of letting guests depart without having offered them something to eat."

It was not simply for personal and scholarly reasons that Nopcsa spent much of his time in northern Albania at the beginning of the century. He was also active in politics, often to the great bother of the Austrian foreign ministry. During the so-called Annexation Crisis of 1908-1909, Nopcsa was involved in the preparation of an 'action in Albania' to be undertaken against Serbia and Montenegro. Before and during the first Balkan War in 1912 he interfered actively in Austrian foreign affairs and took part in the First World War as a volunteer in Albania. In 1916, Nopcsa was commander of a company of Albanian volunteers, which was, however, soon dissolved when Austria-Hungary conceded defeat in the Balkans.

Of particular historical interest are Nopcsa's notes on the Albanian Congress of Trieste in 1913 and on the selection of a European noble to become the crowned head of the newly independent principality of Albania. I quote here at length from the memoirs:

"From 27 February to 6 March (1913) I took part in the Albanian Congress of Trieste. This congress was a strange affair. The Albanian throne was vacant in the spring of 1913 and Albanian affairs were under the direction of Ismail Qemali who had first met with Berchtold in Budapest at the home of Excellency Hadik Janos and had then journeyed to Vlora, entrusted by him and with his support. There he formed the provisional government of the newly founded Albanian state. As a long-term friend of the Greeks and as their paid agent, he also promised to facilitate their occupation of Janina if he remained head of Albania. It is obvious that Ismail Qemali wished to remain at the head of the provisional government because such positions usually bring in a lot of money. Less obvious was the fact that Berchtold, after a tête-à-tête with Ismail Qemali, was convinced that he could outmanoeuvre the Albanian leader. And of course he failed. I was easily able to foresee that Ismail Qemali would betray Albania to Greece because Stead had told me much about Qemali's relations with Greece in 1911 and because the writer Alexander Ular, author together with Enrico Insabato of the book 'Der erlöschende Halbmond' (The waning crescent), Frankfurt 1909 (2), had revealed to me a number of details about Ismail's conduct as Governor of Tripoli. When Berchtold asked me what I thought of Ismail Qemali two weeks after he had founded the provisional government, I said to him quite literally, "Ismail Qemali is an ass." Ismail Qemali's betrayal of Albania was confirmed to me completely by Eqrem Bey Vlora, who was himself the son of the Albanian ambassador in Vienna, Sureja Bey, and the nephew of Ismail Qemali. I do not know what the Greeks intended to do with Ismail Qemali once they had occupied Janina. Perhaps they wished to proceed according to the old saying, "The Moor has done his duty, the Moor may now depart." At any rate, intensive propaganda campaigns were being waged in Europe on behalf of the various pretenders to the Albanian throne while the provisional government was being headed by Ismail Qemali, who was open to bribery, though only with large sums of money.

Albert Ghica, who had been a pretender to the Albanian throne himself, had managed to interest the Duke of Montpensier (3) in the Albanian throne. He ceded his 'rights,' which were recognized by no one as a matter of fact, to the duke and began to campaign on his behalf in exchange for an appropriate remuneration. Montpensier easily won over the miserly Fazil Pasha Toptani and a number of other Albanians, and thus arose the plan to have Montpensier proclaimed King of Albania at the Congress of Trieste. Montpensier was at the same time to break through the Greek blockade and take possession of Vlora and of Ismail Qemali. Because our Monarchy, in view of Montpensier's relatives, was expected to resist this choice, it was shown to be expedient for the Albanian Congress to be supported by Austria-Hungary. A decision was then taken to hold the congress in the Monarchy in order to lay a real diplomatic cuckoo's egg. As a straw man for convoking the conference, skilled use was made of the kind, but dumb-witted Stefan Zurani, who suspected nothing. Curani was naive, ambitious and well viewed at the foreign ministry, and out of pure vanity claimed to the foreign ministry that he himself had had the idea of convoking the Albanian Congress in Trieste. Since the foreign ministry enjoyed the idea of Albanians in the Monarchy demonstrating on behalf of their country, the plan was accepted and supported by Vienna. Aside from the Albanians themselves, the Italo-Albanians also turned up at the congress, and with them came Marchese Castriota from Naples with all of his sons. Also present was Albert Ghika, Baron Dungern, who was a university professor and historian from Czernowitz, two Christian-Socialist Members of Parliament, Count Taaffe and Mr Panty from Vienna, as well as the Rome correspondent of the 'Reichspost,' Cavaliere Mayerhöfer, and myself. I brought with me Dr Leo Freundlich, a former Socialist Member of Parliament from Vienna who, at the very moment Albania became 'in,' had skilfully founded the periodical 'Albanische Korrespondenz' and was now on about 'imperialist power politics.' Hasan Arnauti was in Trieste, too, as my private detective. The press was represented by various newspapers. Also in Trieste was a certain Mr Jovo Weis from Belgrade who, it was said, wanted to sell rifles to the Albanians at a price of 90 crowns a piece, but who in reality was a Serbian agent.

Representing the Austrian Government was Makavetz, a calm, intelligent and energetic figure who never lost his composure. After welcoming ceremonies the first evening, Marchese Castriota was chosen as honorary president of the congress and Faik Bey Konitza (4) was elected chairman. Hilë Mosi (5), Fazil Toptani and Dervish Hima (6) were also elected to the chair. The nomination of Konitza was not to the liking of Ghika since, when the latter was on the point of bringing up the issue of candidates to the Albanian throne, his old rival Faik prevented him from doing so. In order to have an ace in his hand, Ghika, who like many a Romanian had a long career as an impostor behind him, had cunningly succeeded in getting control of Ismail Qemali's retarded son. Before the congress started, he travelled to Nice, where the Qemali family resided in virtual poverty, and, as Qemali himself was unable to attend, invited the son Tahir to the Albanian Congress in Trieste at his own expense, or, to be more precise, at the expense of Montpensier. Since Tahir did not have a penny to his name and had to have everything, even his cigarettes, bought for him by Ghika and as such could not do anything without Ghika or his representative, he had virtually become Ghika's prisoner. What Ghika intended to do with Tahir only became clear at a later date...

Since the many Italo-Albanians attending the congress were becoming over-bearing with their Italian-language speeches, I had myself introduced at the opening by Faik as an old friend of the Albanians. I had but a few minutes to think of my reply, mounted the podium and held a spontaneous speech in Albanian. With the exception of Kral and a few other Austro-Hungarian and Italian consuls, I don't think many a central European would be in a position to repeat that feat.

All in all, there was nothing but hot air at the congress, aside from a dispute between the Vlachs and Albanians, during which the little nation of Vlachs, not even officially born yet, gave substantial proof of its fanaticism and Balkan megalomania, and from a further clash between the chairman Faik Bey Konitza and the rather crooked Nikolla Ivanaj (7), who endeavoured unsuccessfully to challenge the authority of the chairman simply in order to draw attention to himself. The day before the congress was to end, I therefore felt compelled to call Faik Bey Konitza aside and inform him that the congress had as yet done no work at all and that the least one could expect from a political congress was a resolution. Faik agreed and I dictated to him a resolution which the congress was to telegraph to all the Great Powers the next day. The matter was attended to within half an hour, and the next day, Faik presented the document to the congress as a resolution. After a debate on the position of the Vlachs at the congress and in a future Albania, which Faik overcame in favour of the Albanians by presenting the Vlachs more or less with an ultimatum, the resolution was accepted and, as such, my text was sent to the Great Powers as the congress resolution.

During the congress, Cavaliere Mayerhöfer learned from Tahir, the son of Ismail Qemali, that Montpensier was preparing a putsch. He informed me, but aside from this no one else found out, not even Freundlich and Dungern. The two of us informed Makavetz, who told the foreign ministry. All necessary countermeasures were prepared. Ghika's plan to bring the throne question up at the congress had failed, but another coup was in the making since Montpensier disposed of a yacht ready for sail. We spent two days in Trieste waiting to find out what Vienna thought of Montpensier's candidacy, in particular in view of his relationship with the Archduchess Maria Dorothea. The Albanians, among whom Faik Bey, began to ask us how they should react to the candidacy. I said to them on my own behalf, "In a hostile manner, for I do not believe that Montpensier is a candidate for Vienna." In the end, the reply arrived, confirming my suspicions. We were now free to act against Montpensier. As it happened, the Viennese Members of Parliament were holding a banquet for the congress at the Palace Hotel. I interrupted a pause in the conversation by saying in an audible voice, "I hear that Montpensier wants to become King of Albania and that proclamations have already been printed! Does anyone of the gentlemen here happen to have one in his pocket? You know, gentlemen, I am a great collector of printed material on Albania." Tremendous surprise and a stunned silence. Fan Noli (8) forgot himself, drew a proclamation out of his pocket and gave it to me. Montpensier's secret was divulged. That evening the proclamation was in the mail on its way to Berchtold. Our worries were less now, but not done away with entirely.

The next day there occurred a dramatic moment at the congress when rumours suddenly began to fly that a messenger from the Provisional Government of Albania had arrived in Trieste from Vlora. A few minutes later a tall, but stooped and awkward-looking old man, exhausted from his journey, was conducted into the hall, causing great commotion. It was the Albanian minister, Kristo Meksi. He had arrived straight from Vlora. There was frenetic applause, the atmosphere was electric. Faik turned pale for he realized that the chair had now lost all influence over the congress. It was now the Provisional Government that was in the chair. He did not know what message Meksi had brought with him. If Meksi, as a result of some secret agreement as an emissary of the Provisional Government in Vlora, were to proclaim the Duke of Montpensier as King of Albania, he would certainly be elected. I sat down next to the representative of the Austrian Government, Makavetz, and said, "You know, if Kristo Meksi proposes Montpensier as a candidate, we are lost because he will be proclaimed unanimously." Makavetz remained externally calm but every hair on his head was raised. He was prepared to let the scandal happen and to end the congress. Kristo Meksi began to speak. He conveyed to the Albanian Congress the best wishes of the Provisional Government and informed those present that the members of the Government were all well. Then, without even realizing what decision was in his hands, he left the podium to the frenetic applause of the auditorium. The storm had passed. We realized that Ismail Qemali had not yet been informed of Montpensier's plan.

Now it was simply a matter of freeing Tahir from the clutches of Ghika. A coincidence facilitated our plan. Ghika did not wish to pay Tahir's hotel bill and had turned to others to solve the problem for him. As such, an Albanian patriot soon made his appearance. I believe it was Mark Kakarriqi or Koci who approached me and explained that Tahir, the son of the president of the Albanian Government, was in financial difficulties. Knowing me to be a friend of the Albanians, the patriot asked me if I would be willing to assist by paying Tahir's debts, adding that, if the matter became known to the public, it would put Albania in a bad light. Tahir needed 500-600 crowns and, I was told, was too embarrassed to approach me directly. I declared myself willing to assist immediately and promised to pay his expenditures that very afternoon. At noon I dined with Tahir and Mayerhöfer and succeeded in making it clear to Tahir that he was being used as a tool and was in fact a hostage in Ghika's hands. His father in Vlora could be compelled to resign from the Provisional Government in favour of Montpensier in order to save his son's life. Tahir was of course dumbfounded and told me everything he knew, admitting, however, that he had no money to free himself from Ghika. I promised to arrange everything. I paid Tahir's hotel bill that afternoon and left enough money for his expenses until the next day. I later met the Albanian patriot who had demanded 500-600 crowns and told him that I had already paid Tahir's debts, but that he had made a mistake, the debt being a mere 190 crowns and not 500-600. An Albanian patriot was thus deprived of a sum of 300-400 crowns! I also invited Tahir to supper that evening and, in order to prevent him from talking to Ghika, who was staying at the same hotel, I got him drunk. At midnight I returned him reeling to his hotel where we met Ghika in the lobby. He understood what was going on and realized that he had lost out as far as Tahir was concerned. At my insistence, Tahir told him that he was leaving for Vienna, where he would be staying with me. All further contact between Ghika and Tahir was thus rendered impossible. The next morning I had Tahir's luggage picked up and he set off for Vienna, this time as my prisoner, and once again without a penny to his name. I put him up at a hotel and subsequently bought him a train ticket to Nice, gave him some travelling money and sent him back to his mother. The Austrian Foreign Ministry also sent Mrs Ismail Qemali a larger sum of money to help her with her financial difficulties, in order that such a problem not occur again. In order to describe the level of Tahir's intelligence, it is sufficient to note that he had been a Turkish naval cadet under Abdul Hamid. This tells it all. This was thus the extent of my involvement at the Albanian Congress of Trieste....

From Trieste I returned to Vienna, where I urged Berchtold to ensure that the recently created Albanian throne be occupied as quickly as possible because I foresaw the negative consequences of leaving it vacant for too long. He complained that he was unable to find a suitable candidate for the throne. There were in fact a good number of candidates. Foremost among them was Count Urach of Württemberg. An Egyptian prince, Ahmed Fuad, and the son of the Marchese Castriota of Naples had also made their candidacies known.

At this moment I resolved to take a step which could easily have made me a laughing stock and have put all my activities on behalf of Albania in a bad light. Nonetheless, I decided to go through with it. I informed Excellency Conrad verbally that I would be willing to join the list of candidates for the throne if the Foreign Ministry would support me and told him that, to have myself proclaimed King of Albania, I would simply need the one-time payment of a larger sum of money in order to buy the support of the so-called Albanian patriots which, as I learned from the Montpensier putsch, was no problem at all. Once a reigning European monarch, I would have no difficulty coming up with the further funds needed by marrying a wealthy American heiress aspiring to royalty, a step which under other circumstances I would have been loath to take. I was sure of the support of the inhabitants of the northern part of the country in view of the stance I had taken in the years 1910 and 1911 and Vienna could expect to overcome any difficulties caused by Ismail Qemali who was being supported by Berchtold...

My candidacy may have been ridiculed in competent circles. Be that as it may, I grew disgusted a few weeks later and withdrew from all further activities concerning Albania. Some of those in the know said that I only did so because my highfalutin plans had not come about. I for my part gave as my reason [for withdrawing my candidacy] that the Albania created by the Conference of London was a stillbirth. I did not even attempt to contradict the slanderous allegations which my opponents revelled in, because I knew that events to come would prove to be my best defence. The collapse of the Albanian State in 1914 showed that I was right to get off the sinking ship in time in 1913. My only 'mistake' was to have recognized what was to come long before my opponents did. Prince Wied (9) ascended the Albanian throne while the Conference of London was still underway...

Soon after the Albanian Congress I resigned from the Albanian committee because of the borders set forth by London, and withdrew from all further political activity..."

Such was Nopcsa's role at the Albanian Congress of Trieste and his short-lived candidacy to the Albanian throne. Much has been written and published on the life and work of Baron Nopcsa such that there is no need at this juncture for a detailed biography of his life before and after the Balkan War. Instead, reference may be made to a number of books, in German and Hungarian, devoted to Nopcsa's life and times. The first attempt to survey Nopcsa's life, his publications and his influence was made by András Tasnádi Kubacska in his Hungarian-language Nopcsa Ferenc kalandos élete (Budapest 1937), which appeared in a German version as Franz Baron Nopcsa (Budapest 1945). Tasnádi Kubacska centred his writings on Nopcsa as a scholar of natural science and less as an Albanologist and public figure of the times. He endeavoured to portray Nopcsa as positively as he could and, as such, lacked the requisite objectivity and distance. The German version of his biography contains not only a useful bibliography of necrologies and newspaper articles on Nopcsa published between 1920 and 1938, but also Nopcsa's correspondence with Friedrich Baron Huene, Lucas Waagen, Ludwig von Lócsy and Kálmán Lambrecht. The first comprehensive bibliography of Nopcsa's works was published in a necrology by Kálmán Lambrecht entitled Franz Baron Nopcsa, der Begründer der Paläophysiologie, 3. Mai 1877 bis 25. April 1933 (Franz Baron Nopcsa, the founder of palaeophysiology, 3 May 1877 to 25 April 1933), which appeared in the Paläontologische Zeitschrift 15 (1933) shortly after the baron's death. The main source of information on Nopcsa's life and work is and remains, however, the monograph Franz Baron Nopcsa und Albanien, ein Beitrag zu Nopcsas Biographie (Franz Baron Nopcsa and Albania, a contribution to Nopcsa's biography), published by Gert Robel in the series Albanische Forschungen in Wiesbaden 1966. This critical and informative work is based upon the Vienna manuscripts. Robel deals not only with Nopcsa's important contribution to the study of Albania but also with his activities on behalf of the Albanian question as well as with the general political situation in the Balkans before, during and after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Nopcsa was a keen, though not always objective observer and commentator of events in the Balkan Peninsula in the early twentieth century. Much of his memoirs are put into a more objective context and made more understandable by Robel. Finally, mention must also be made of the recent bibliography Franz Baron von Nopcsa, Anmerkungen zu seiner Familie und seine Beziehungen zu Albanien (Franz Baron von Nopcsa, notes on his family and his relations to Albania), Vienna 1993, by József Hála of Budapest.

Baron Nopcsa has been lauded and held in high esteem as a scholar. As a human being, however, he is much more difficult to grasp. This is particularly true in his memoirs. Nopcsa writes little of his closest human relations and most intimate emotions. His memoirs reveal only indirect and probably unwanted references to his homosexuality, for instance his early love for the young officer Louis Draškovic (1879-1909) and his long-term intimate relationship with his Albanian secretary Bajazid Elmaz Doda (ca. 1888-1933) who died with him. Apart from such ambivalent references, the author withholds all his emotions and intimate concerns from his writings.

Robel draws the following conclusion about Nopcsa the man: "If we look back upon Nopcsa's life, we can observe the many and extremely diverse aspects in his being, including many a contradiction. His ingenious intuition was in stark contrast to his inability to understand and appreciate the motives of others; his insensitivity and egoism were in contrast to his devotion to the Albanians, his critical intelligence to his emotional bias" (Robel 1966, p.161). Indeed Nopcsa does not always appear congenial or likeable to the reader. He was constantly driven by a craving for recognition and prestige, was often irritable and arrogant and on occasion openly anti-Semitic. Some of these traits may be understandable in view of his background and milieu, but many of his motives and reactions remain difficult to fathom.

Tasnádi Kubacska and Lambrecht devoted their attention to Nopcsa primarily in his capacity as a scholar and scientist. Robel on the other hand, who is sparing in his use of praise, underlines Nopcsa's significance as an Albanologist.

Sixty-five years since the death of Baron Nopcsa and after decades of advanced Albanological research carried out in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Cosenza, Palermo and Saint Petersburg, and of course in Tirana and Prishtina too, one can only agree with the following quotation:

"His death, which was mourned by his friends and regretted by his colleagues, was not a loss for palaeontology and geology alone. His two great manuscripts on Albania which contained important ethnological material disappeared after his death and have remained unpublished up to the present day. This is all the more regrettable because no one else who lived in Albania for a longer period of time then so vividly recorded and noted what he experienced there. Nopcsa, with his almost ingenious curiosity, collected and noted everything he came across in that country. The loss of his diaries is a major tragedy. He had the privilege of experiencing the 'old' Albania before the country was touched by 'civilization' and before the old order with its customs and traditions had disappeared. The combination of intellectual curiosity, the gift of observation and eminent diligence which he possessed, made him destined like no one else to record and pass on his visions of this 'old' Albania. The difficulties of the age only enabled him to accomplish this task in a fragmentary manner. The incomplete manuscripts alone suffice to give him a place among the greatest scholars of Albanian studies." (Robel 1966, p. 137, 162-163).

Robert Elsie



(1) cf. Tasnádi Kubacska 1945, p. 275-277, Robel 1966, p. 135-136.
(2) Alexander Ular & Enrico Insabato: Der erlöschende Halbmond. Türkische Enthüllungen (Literarische Anstalt, Frankfurt 1909).
(3) Ferdinand François Bourbon Orléans-Montpensier.
(4) Faik Bey Konitza (1875-1942), Albanian publisher and patriot.
(5) Hilë Mosi (1885-1933), Albanian poet and patriot.
(6) Dervish Hima (1873-1928), Albanian publisher and patriot from Struga.
(7) Nikolla bey Ivanaj (1879- ca. 1948), Albanian publisher and writer from Montenegro
(8) Fan Noli, also known as Theofan Stylian Noli (1882-1965), Albanian politician, church leader and writer. He was Prime Minister of Albania in 1924 and later founder of the Albanian Autocephalic Orthodox Church.
(9) Wilhelm, Fürst zu Wied (1876-1945).

Disa thenie per Atdheun

ja disa thenie per atedheun :

Kush ka vdekur për atdhe, nuk ka vdekur por ka le.
Shqipe
Jetoni për Shqipëri dhe vdisni për të.
N.Frashëri
Dashuria për atdheun është topi që shkatërron kalatë më të forta dhe kalaja që mund t’u qëndrojë topave më të fortë.
S.Frashëri
Nuk vlen asgjë të dashurosh, nëse vajtimi i vendit tënd nuk prek zemrën tënde.
Elyari
Mos pyet se ç’do të bëjë atdheu për ty, pyet me gëzim ç’mund të bësh ti për të.
Kenedi
Më mirë të jetosh keq ne atdhe, se sa mirë e në vend të huaj.
Indiane
Një dimër në atdhe është më i ëmbël se njëqind pranvera në dhe të huaj.
Greke
Në qoftë se dëshironi ta njihni dhe ta doni atdheun tuaj, shkoni në të huajin.
Berne
Nuk e braktis atdheu njerinë, por njeriu atdheun.
Bloku
Është kënaqësi dhe nder të vdesësh për atdhe! Edhe më kënaqësi është të jetosh për të.
Horaci
Edhe më i merituari i ka më shumë borxh atdheut, sesa atdheu atij.
Burkhardi
Kush nuk i takon atdheut të vet, nuk i takon as njerëzimit.
Bjelinski
Atdheu është si familja: vlerën ia njohim vetëm atëherë kur e humbim.
Floberi
Nuk jam i sigurt se a mund t’i dua në jetë dy gra, por jam i sigurt se nuk mund t’i dua dy atdhe.
Stendali
Tymi në atdhe është më i mirë, se sa zjarri në dhe të huaj.
Greke
Njeriu nuk lind për veten e vet, por për atdheun.
Ciceroni
O, kurrë mos u lodh për ndihmën që i jep atdheut.
Euripidi
Të vdesësh për atdhe, kjo është punë mbretërish.
Volteri
Nuk ka këshillë më të keqe nga ajo që të shtyn të mohosh kombin tënd.
N.Veqilharxhi

PASHKET PO VINE-NOLI GJIGANDI YNE, QE I THA GREKUT NDAL,JEMI ZOT VET NE KETE VATAN!

Fan S. Noli
Lindi më 6 janar 1882 në Qytezë (turqisht: Ibrik Tepe), fshat shqiptar në Trakë, jo shumë larg nga Edreneja. Si disa fshatra të tjera të asaj krahine të banuar me shqiptarë, Qyteza kishte ruajtur me kohë gjuhën, doket dhe kostumet e të parëve. Noli e mbante fisin e vet me prejardhje nga Qyteza e Kolonjës. I ati, Stiliani, ndonëse trashëgoi një pronë tokë, nuk u mor me bujqësi, po shërbeu si psalt në kishën e fshatit. E ëma, Maria, ishte shtëpiake. Familja u shtua shumë dhe erdhi një kohë që jetesa u bë e vështirë për të. Sa qe i mitur Noli hoqi sëmundje të rënda, prandaj shkollën e nisi me vonesë. Filloren dhe të mesmen i bëri greqisht. Por me shumë ndikoi tek ai krenaria e fshatit shqiptar për të kaluarën historike dhe dashuria për shkrimin shqip. Që në bankat e shkollës iu shfaqën karakteri i pavarur dhe fryma e revoltës. Për këtë shkak nuk iu dha diploma në kohën e duhur, gjë që e pengoi të emërohej mësues atë vit shkollor. Më 1900 vajti në Greqi, me qëllim që të nxirrte jetesën dhe të ndiqte fakultetin e filozofisë. Në Athinë u lidh me një shoqëri belge, e cila zotëronte tramvajet me kuaj. S'i eci mbarë. Studime nuk i bëri. Atëherë u hodh në punë të tjera, si kopist, sufler dhe aktor pranë një trupe greke teatri shëtitës. Tek punonte atje, iu ngjall dëshira të mërej me dramaturgji. Më 1903 kaloi në Egjipt, ku zuri punë si mësues i greqishtes. Ndërkohë, njihet me lëvizjen kombëtare. I ndihmuar nga patriotë, nis veprimtarinë politike dhe letrare: shkruan artikujt publicistikë, përkthen greqisht »Shqipëria ç'ka qenë, ç'është dhe ç'do të bëhet« të Sami Frashërit. Nga viti 1908 deri më 1912 kryen studimet e larta për arte në Universitetin e Harvardit, të cilat i përfundon me cum laude në Bachelor of Arts. Në fund të jetës së tij shkon në Florida. Atje, në banesën e tij, në Fort Lauderdale, vdiq më 13 mars 1965, larg atdheut të shtrenjtë, që e deshi me zjarr të pashuar. Fan Noli është varrosur në Forrest Hill Cemetery, të Bostonit.

100 VJETORI I MIGJENIT TONE ? KUJTESE..

Mi gje ni...
Millosh Gjergj Nikolla also known as Migjeni, was born in Shkodra. His father, Gjergj Nikolla (1872-1924), came from an Orthodox family of Dibra origin and owned a bar there. As a boy, he attended a Serbian Orthodox elementary school in Shkodra and from 1923 to 1925 a secondary school in Bar (Tivar) on the Montenegrin coast, where his eldest sister, Lenka, had moved. In the autumn of 1925, when he was fourteen, he obtained a scholarship to attend a secondary school in Monastir (Bitola) in southern Macedonia. In Monastir he studied Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Greek, Latin and French. Graduating from school in 1927, he entered the Orthodox Seminary of St. John the Theologian, also in Monastir, where, despite incipient health problems, he continued his training and studies until June 1932. He read as many books as he could get his hands on: Russian, Serbian and French literature in particular, which were more to his tastes than theology. His years in Monastir confronted him with the dichotomy of East and West, with the Slavic soul of Holy Mother Russia and of the southern Slavs, which he encountered in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Ivan Turgenev , Lev Tolstoy , Nikolay Gogol and Maksim Gorky , and with socially critical authors of the West from Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Friedrich Schiller , Stendhal and Emile Zola to Upton Sinclair , Jack London and Ben Traven. On his return to Shkodra in 1932, after failing to win a scholarship to study in the ‘wonderful West,’ he decided to take up a teaching career rather than join the priesthood for which he had been trained. On 23 April 1933, he was appointed teacher of Albanian at a school in the Serb village of Vraka, seven kilometres from Shkodra. It was during this period that he also began writing prose sketches and verse which reflect the life and anguish of an intellectual in what certainly was and has remained the most backward region of Europe. In May 1934 his first short prose piece, Sokrat i vuejtun a po derr i kënaqun (Suffering Socrates or the satisfied pig), was published in the periodical Illyria, under his new pen name Migjeni, an acronym of Millosh Gjergj Nikolla. Soon though, in the summer of 1935, the twenty-three-year-old Migjeni fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, which he had contracted earlier. He journeyed to Athens in July of that year in hope of obtaining treatment for the disease which was endemic on the marshy coastal plains of Albania at the time, but returned to Shkodra a month later with no improvement in his condition. In the autumn of 1935, he transferred for a year to a school in Shkodra itself and, again in the periodical Illyria, began publishing his first epoch-making poems. In a letter of 12 January 1936 written to translator Skënder Luarasi (1900-1982) in Tirana, Migjeni announced, "I am about to send my songs to press. Since, while you were here, you promised that you would take charge of speaking to some publisher, ‘Gutemberg’ for instance, I would now like to remind you of this promise, informing you that I am ready." Two days later, Migjeni received the transfer he had earlier requested to the mountain village of Puka and on 18 April 1936 began his activities as the headmaster of the run-down school there. The clear mountain air did him some good, but the poverty and misery of the mountain tribes in and around Puka were even more overwhelming than that which he had experienced among the inhabitants of the coastal plain. Many of the children came to school barefoot and hungry, and teaching was interrupted for long periods of time because of outbreaks of contagious diseases, such as measles and mumps. After eighteen hard months in the mountains, the consumptive poet was obliged to put an end to his career as a teacher and as a writer, and to seek medical treatment in Turin in northern Italy where his sister Ollga was studying mathematics. He set out from Shkodra on 20 December 1937 and arrived in Turin before Christmas day. There he had hoped, after recovery, to register and study at the Faculty of Arts. The breakthrough in the treatment of tuberculosis, however, was to come a decade too late for Migjeni. After five months at San Luigi sanatorium near Turin, Migjeni was transferred to the Waldensian hospital in Torre Pellice where he died on 26 August 1938. His demise at the age of twenty-six was a tragic loss for modern Albanian letters. Migjeni made a promising start as a prose writer. He is the author of about twenty-four short prose sketches which he published in periodicals for the most part between the spring of 1933 and the spring of 1938. Ranging from one to five pages in length, these pieces are too short to constitute tales or short stories. Although he approached new themes with unprecedented cynicism and force, his sketches cannot all be considered great works of art from a literary point of view. It is thus far more as a poet that Migjeni made his mark on Albanian literature and culture, though he did so posthumously. He possessed all the prerequisites for being a great poet. He had an inquisitive mind, a depressive pessimistic nature and a repressed sexuality. Though his verse production was no more voluminous than his prose, his success in the field of poetry was no less than spectacular in Albania at the time. Migjeni’s only volume of verse, Vargjet e lira, Tirana 1944 (Free verses), was composed over a three-year period from 1933 to 1935. A first edition of this slender and yet revolutionary collection, a total of thirty-five poems, was printed by the Gutemberg Press in Tirana in 1936 but was immediately banned by the authorities and never circulated. The second edition of 1944, undertaken by scholar Kostaç Cipo (1892-1952) and the poet’s sister Ollga, was more successful. It nonetheless omitted two poems, Parathanja e parathanjeve (Preface of prefaces) and Blasfemi (Blasphemy), which the publisher, Ismail Mal’Osmani, felt might offend the Church. The 1944 edition did, however, include eight other poems composed after the first edition had already gone to press. The main theme of ‘Free verses,’ as with Migjeni’s prose, is misery and suffering. It is a poetry of acute social awareness and despair. Previous generations of poets had sung the beauties of the Albanian mountains and the sacred traditions of the nation, whereas Migjeni now opened his eyes to the harsh realities of life, to the appalling level of misery, disease and poverty he discovered all around him. He was a poet of despair who saw no way out, who cherished no hope that anything but death could put an end to suffering. "I suffer with the child whose father cannot buy him a toy. I suffer with the young man who burns with unslaked sexual desire. I suffer with the middle-aged man drowning in the apathy of life. I suffer with the old man who trembles at the prospect of death. I suffer with the peasant struggling with the soil. I suffer with the worker crushed by iron. I suffer with the sick suffering from all the diseases of the world... I suffer with man." Typical of the suffering and of the futility of human endeavour for Migjeni is Rezignata (Resignation), a poem in the longest cycle of the collection, Kangët e mjerimit (Songs of poverty). Here the poet paints a grim portrait of our earthly existence: sombre nights, tears, smoke, thorns and mud. Rarely does a breath of fresh air or a vision of nature seep through the gloom. When nature does occur in the verse of Migjeni, then of course it is autumn. If there is no hope, there are at least suffocated desires and wishes. Some poems, such as Të birtë e shekullit të ri (The sons of the new age), Zgjimi (Awakening), Kanga e rinisë ( The song of youth) and Kanga e të burgosunit (The prisoner’s song), are assertively declamatory in a left-wing revolutionary manner. Here we discover Migjeni as a precursor of socialist verse or rather, in fact, as the zenith of genuine socialist verse in Albanian letters, long before the so-called liberation and socialist period from 1944 to 1990. Migjeni was, nonetheless, not a socialist or revolutionary poet in the political sense, despite the indignation and the occasional clenched fist he shows us. For this, he lacked the optimism as well as any sense of political commitment and activity. He was a product of the thirties, an age in which Albanian intellectuals, including Migjeni, were particularly fascinated by the West and in which, in Western Europe itself, the rival ideologies of communism and fascism were colliding for the first time in the Spanish Civil War. Migjeni was not entirely uninfluenced by the nascent philosophy of the right either. In Të lindet njeriu (May the man be born) and particularly, in the Nietzschean dithyramb Trajtat e Mbinjeriut (The shape of the Superman), a strangled, crushed will transforms itself into "ardent desire for a new genius," for the Superman to come. To a Trotskyite friend, André Stefi, who had warned him that the communists would not forgive for such poems, Migjeni replied, "My work has a combative character, but for practical reasons, and taking into account our particular conditions, I must manoeuvre in disguise. I cannot explain these things to the [communist] groups, they must understand them for themselves. The publication of my works is dictated by the necessities of the social situation through which we are passing. As for myself, I consider my work to be a contribution to the union of the groups. André, my work will be achieved if I manage to live a little longer." Part of the ‘establishment’ which he felt was oblivious to and indeed responsible for the sufferings of humanity was the Church. Migjeni’s religious education and his training for the Orthodox priesthood seem to have been entirely counterproductive, for he cherished neither an attachment to religion nor any particularly fond sentiments for the organized Church. God for Migjeni was a giant with granite fists crushing the will of man. Evidence of the repulsion he felt towards god and the Church are to be found in the two poems missing from the 1944 edition, Parathania e parathanieve (Preface of prefaces) with its cry of desperation "God! Where are you?", and Blasfemi (Blasphemy). In Kanga skandaloze (Scandalous song), Migjeni expresses a morbid attraction to a pale nun and at the same time his defiance and rejection of her world. This poem is one which helps throw some light not only on Migjeni’s attitude to religion but also on one of the more fascinating and least studied aspects in the life of the poet, his repressed heterosexuality. Eroticism has certainly never been a prominent feature of Albanian literature at any period and one would be hard pressed to name any Albanian author who has expressed his intimate impulses and desires in verse or prose. Migjeni comes closest, though in an unwitting manner. It is generally assumed that the poet remained a virgin until his untimely death at the age of twenty-six. His verse and his prose abound with the figures of women, many of them unhappy prostitutes, for whom Migjeni betrays both pity and an open sexual interest. It is the tearful eyes and the red lips which catch his attention; the rest of the body is rarely described. For Migjeni, sex too means suffering. Passion and rapturous desire are ubiquitous in his verse, but equally present is the spectre of physical intimacy portrayed in terms of disgust and sorrow. It is but one of the many bestial faces of misery described in the 105-line Poema e mjerimit (Poem of poverty). Though he did not publish a single book during his lifetime, Migjeni’s works, which circulated privately and in the press of the period, were an immediate success. Migjeni paved the way for a modern literature in Albania. This literature was, however, soon to be nipped in the bud. Indeed the very year of the publication of ‘Free Verse’ saw the victory of Stalinism in Albania and the proclamation of the People’s Republic. Many have speculated as to what contribution Migjeni might have made to Albanian letters had he managed to live longer. The question remains highly hypothetical, for this individualist voice of genuine social protest would no doubt have suffered the same fate as most Albanian writers of talent in the late forties, i.e. internment, imprisonment or execution. His early demise has at least preserved the writer for us undefiled. The fact that Migjeni did perish so young makes it difficult to provide a critical assessment of his work. Though generally admired, Migjeni is not without critics. Some have been disappointed by his prose, nor is the range of his verse sufficient to allow us to acclaim him as a universal poet.

A jane Greket e sotem ‘ende’ Indo-Europiane? A kane qene ndonjehere?

Greket moderne nuk rrjedhin ne menyre predominuese nga Indo-Europianet. Eshte qesharake te flasesh nese greket ‘vazhdojne apo jo’ te jene Indo-Europiane pasi njerezit qe jetonin dikur brenda kufijeve gjeografike te Greqise nuk kane qene asnjehere me prejardhe dominuese Indo-Europiane. Sidoqofte aristrokracia e Greqise klasike duhet te kete rrjedhur nga Indo-Europianet. John V. Day ne shenimet e tij ve ne dukje:

Indo-Europianet shpesh duken sikur kane qene minoritete te vogla ne vendet ku ata penetruan: Klasa e luftetareve Kelte ne Irlande: patriket Romake: disa heronj Homerike dhe e ashtuquajtura ‘grek puro’ e viteve te mevonshme; si dhe Arianet qe luftuan kunder shume vendasve ne Indi.

Sipas Petersonit, aristokracia greke ishte e ndare nga ‘shtresa te ngjashme me kasten... ne klasa me njerez te lire dhe skllever midis te cilave influenca gjenetike e popullates autoktone gjenetike duhet te kete predominuar’. (Peterson 1974).
Po ashtu duhet mbajtur ne mend se greket kane 28 % HG9 (qe eshte nje percaktim [COLOR="Blue"]Y-chromosome haplogroup J blog[/COLOR] ose kromozoni Y i haplogrupit te tipit ose llojit J i njohur ndryshe si HG9, Eu9/Eu10.) te Lindjes se Mesme dhe 28 % HG21 Afrikano Veriore. Pjesa me e madhe e kesaj lashtesie mund te datohet qe nga Neoliti por eshte kurioz fakti qe RM (ose Racial Myths/Mitet mbi Rracat) nuk e intepreton kete te dhene ne kuptimin qe greket jane 56% ‘Hamito-Semitik’ dhe si rezultat shume me pak ‘puro’ Europiane. Sic ve ne dukje Day (2002): “Gjenetikisht popullata greke dhe jugosllave jane midis atyre qe paraqesin me pak tipare ‘Europiane’’.
Sipas te dhenave te studimeve te fundit ne fakt sugjerohet se pjesa me e madhe e origjines neolitike ne Greqi perfaqeson nje vershim gjenetik mbas Neolitit.


Greket Aristoi


Pjestare te familjeve aristokrate jane te paraqitur me teprice ne rradhet e Grekeve te periudhes klasike. Pra kur flitet mbi llojin rracial te ‘grekeve’ te lashte, eshte shume e rendesishme qe te konsiderohet lloji rracial i aristokracise. Nga kendveshtrimi fizik antropologjik kompleksiteti etnik i shoqerise greke gjate mijevjecarit te pare p.e.s. ‘ndalon’ cdo perpjekje per nje deklarate te pergjithshme te tipit fizik te bazuar mbi mesataret statistikore te te dhenave qe kane dale nga materialet e disponueshme skeletore. Nje kaste shtresore thelbesore e shoqeruar nga principe relativisht strikte te nje kaste endogame (martese brenda fisit) ndante Eupatridet me prejardhje Indo-Europiane nga klasa e njerezve te lire dhe sklleverit midis te cileve influenca gjenetike e popullates ‘Pellazge’ autoktone mund te kete predominuar. (Paterson 1974)

Peterson ve ne dukje se gjuhet IE (qe nga ky moment per fjalen Indo-Europiane do perdor shkurtimin IE) eventualisht filluan te fliten nga njerez te ndryshem gjenetikisht dhe ne rrace por ne te njejten kohe ai sugjeron se:

Gjate rrjedhes se pese ose gjashte mijevjecareve ekspansioni dhe pushtimi, nje kaste e larte IE gjithnje ne zgjerim padyshim duhet te kete ruajtur nje vazhdimesi te nje shkalle te larte gjenetike (Pearson, 1974), ndersa i impononin veten e tyre popullatave autoktone. Ata qe sollen te foluren IE ne territoret e sapo pushtuara u shnderruan ne klasen sunduese fisnike luftarake sic deshmohet nga konotaciopni ‘fisnik’ per arya ne Indi dhe Persi, ariothez ne Greqi (pra aristokracia) dhe aire tek Keltet. Dhe ne fakt evidencat tregojne se ne nje fare menyre pushtuesit arya, art ose aire ruajten principe strikte te endogamise ne zgjedhjen e grave te tyre zyrtare dhe sidoqofte ndonese ne disa zona ata duken se ne menyre disproporcionale kane ndikuar fuqishem ne ‘pellgun’ gjenetik te popullates indigjene nepermjet praktikimit te mbajtjes se nje numri te madh konkubinash, ata ndryshonin nga popujt e Uralit dhe ato Semitike ne kundershtine e tyre per te prodhuar trashegimtare te paligjshem nga martesa dhe per te pranuar statusin social te babait.

Pra deri ne kete pike ne lidhje me pjellen e tyre, ne shoqerine aristokrate greke si ne shume shoqeri te hershme IE, endogamia strikte e klasave pushtuese u evidentua nga pohimi qe ‘ne i zgjedhim grate tona sic zgjedhim kuajt: nga kohezgjatja gjeanologjike’? dhe eshte i njohur respekti i madh qe greket kishin per kuajt.

Sipas Peterson:

Fakti qe emigrantet IE kishin nje koncept te qarte dhe te prere mbi ate qe konsideronin si nje karakteristike te vecante te tyre fizionomike e cila duhet te jete ruajtur madje edhe theksuar nga martesat brenda fisit, eshte evidentuar me bollek ne literaturen Greke. Tek Odisea (XII, 222) kuptojme qe Athina e maskuar pershkruhej si te ishte ‘delikate dhe tolerante sic jane bijte e mbreterve’, ndersa tek Iliada (II, 26) Thersites me origjine autoktone pershkruhet si ‘i keq formuar dhe me koke te deformuar’...

Coon permend:

Batakcinjte, karakteret komike, satiret, centauret, gjigandet dhe te gjithe njerezit e tjere te pakendeshem dhe ata qe nuk mund te admirohen, shpesh paraqiten ne skulptura dhe ne vizatimet e vazove si fytyre gjere, hunde te shtypur dhe me mjeker te dendur. Sokrati qe i perkiste ketij lloji ne menyre keqdashese krahasohej me nje satir. Kjo lloj fizionomie vazhdon te ekzistoje edhe sot ne Greqi dhe eshte nje fizionomi e zakonshme Alpine. Ne skeletet e hershme te gjetura kjo tregohet nga kafka brakiocefale.
Sokrati, djali i nje skulptori dhe nje mamie, nuk ishte nje aristokrat. Fakti qe ky lloj fiziku percmohej nga aristokracia tregon se vete aristokracia nuk ishte e llojit Alpin, me siguri jo Alpine e perzjere. Coon po ashtu thekson se “Lloji rracial te cilit i perkiste Sokrati [nje lloj rrace qe nuk favorizohej nga elita IE] sot eshte lloji rracor me i rendesishem ne Greqi.

Peterson vazhdon:

...si nje suplement i fuqishem i studimit te mbetjeve te paplota skeletore... perdorimi i mundshem i nje analize te detajuar mbi portretet e mbijetuara greke, skulpturat dhe gdhendjet e te gjitha llojeve, te klasifikuara sipas prejardhjeve te verifikuara historike, tribale dhe familjare te individeve te paraqitur. Nje klasifikim i tille behet shume i rendesishem nen kendveshtrimin e e pranuar gjeresisht qe gjate mijevjecareve p.e.s. popullata e Egjeut mbetet e ndare nga nje numer ndarjesh te izoluara gjenetike ne vend qe te perfaqesojne nje popullate homogjene Mendeliane.

Greket qe tregohen me siper, pasardhes te familjeve te lashta aristokrate, paraqesin te dhena fizionomike IE.

Ska nevoje te permendet por ne ditet e sotme eshte me e mundur te shohesh nje rrace te tille ne Angli apo Suedi sesa ne Greqi. Coon afirmon:

...mbasi shikon bustet portret te Athines dhe maskat prej argjili te Spartaneve, impresionohesh nga ngjashmeria e tyre me Europiano Perendimoret e sotem. Kjo ngjashmeri behet me e paket ne artin Bizantin ne te cilin jane te pranishem me shume fytyrat e Lindjes se Aferme; por Bizantinet jetuan ne pjesen me te madhe jashte Greqise.
Peterson raporton se ‘gjate periudhes se dominimit Romak... aristoit e vjeter te prejardhur nga perendite ishin virtualisht te zhdukur’.

Angel (1945) konfirmon pranine e llojit Nordik-Iranian midis pushtueseve te Epokes se Hekurit te Greqise dhe vazhdimesise se tyre si minoritet ne Athinen e Koheve Klasike. Te dhenat e tij po ashtu sugjerojne pranine e lidhjes se llojit Nordik me Nordiko-Alpinet midis pushtuesve te Epokes se hershme te Bronzit dhe sic Angel permend me tej nje rrace te me vonshme Helladike-Nordiko-Iraniane-Mycenaean Athinase qe ‘pa shume dyshim... ishte luftetare’. Lloji Nordiko-Iranian ka qene i pranishem edhe ne kohet e vona helenike.

Demosteni (fotoja ne fund te faqes) trashegoi 84.000 dhrahmi nga babai i tij prona e te cilit ‘na jep disa ide mbi pronat e 300 qytetareve me te larte ne shekullin e katert’ (Webster 1973,44). Ne kontrast, ‘nentedhjet per qind e qytetareve kishin nje te ardhur prej 180-480 dhrahmi’, dhe ‘qytetaret, metikset (metikset ne Greqine e Lashte kane qene qytetare te dores se fundit, ata qe nuk kishi asnje te drejte civile ne jeten e vendit dhe konsideroheshin si te huaj dhe te ardhur) dhe klleverit punonin bashkarisht ne minierat e argjendit dhe paguheshin ne te njejten menyre’ (46)
Shtresa e ulet e qytetareve ka gjasa te kete qene me origjine autoktone (dhe jo IE). Shifra 317 p.e.s. e pranuar me konsensus per Athinen tregon 12.000 qytetare ne klasat e uleta (thetet), 8.000 te klases se mesme (hoplitet) dhe 1.000 ne dy klasat me te larta. Klasat e larta ishin te dominuara ne numer nga qytetaret e tyre, pra sklleverit dhe metikset.

Aristokracia ishte nje segment i vogel dhe i izoluar i popullsise dhe shume familje aristokrate praktikonin kremimin (djegien e trupave) ‘deri ne periudhen Klasike’ (Peterson 1974) duke e kufizuar me rreptesi panevojshmerine e evidencave skeletore ne diskutimin e llojit rracor te aristrokracise. Por evidenca e permendur me siper eshte konsistente me idene qe lloji Nordik duhet te kete perfaqesuar gjeresisht aristokracine, sic sugjerojne dhe vete portretet.

Aksidentalisht vete praktika e kremimit ne vetvehte eshte nje e dhene.

...kremimi... ishte i asociuar me popullatat pastoralo-nomade Nordike per te cilat shpirti duhet te sillet i lire ne vdekje ashtu si dhe ne jete. Si rezultat futja ne perdorim e kremimit ne Greqi eshte konsideruar nga shume studiues si nje tregues i ardhjes se popullates se re Nordike dhe nomade... (Hall 1997, 116)

Ska rendesi nese kremimi u prezantua nga ndonje ‘element verior’ i panjohur dhe i gjeneralizuar si i tille, ose ne menyre specifike nga ‘pasardhesit Doriane te praktikave te kremimit te popullates Zjarrperdoruese qe banonin ne Iliri dhe Bosnje ne Periudhen e Bronzit te Vone’ (Hall 1997, 116-117), eshte e qarte se kremimi sic eshte praktikuar nga aristokracia greke e ka origjinen e tij tek Nordiket.

Pigmenti


Ne lidhje me pigmentin, Coon (1939) thote:

Literatura greke dhe arti grek na japin evidenca te bollshme mbi pigmentin dhe karakteristikat e fytyres te banoreve te lashte te Eladhes. Perendite e Olimpit, paraardhesit e gjysem-heronjve ne pjesen me te madhe te tyre ishin bjonde, lekurbardhe dhe floke te verdhe. Athina kishte sy gri. Ndersa Poseidoni ishte me floke te zeze. [Shenim: Poseidoni e ka prejardhjen nga nje perendi Mesdhetare pre IE]. Nese do besonim Homerin, keto perendi ishin paksa te ndryshme nga pasardhesit e tyre heronj, shumica e te cileve ishin lekurebardhe dhe floke verdhe.

Day (2002) zbulon se:

Informacioni i vlefshem mbi greket e vertete dhe jo ata te fantazise vjen nga Polemoni, shkrimtari i dyte per nga rendesia mbi fizionomine i cili ka shkruar ne shekullin e dyte e.s. Polemoni shpjegon se ‘Greket puro’ te kohes se tij kane lekure te celet, floke te kuqe dhe ngjasojne me njeriun e prirur ndaj letersise dhe filozofise i cili ka lekure te celet dhe floke te celet. Polemoni mund te kete arritur ne keto perfundime nga Pseudo-Aristoteli, fizionimisti me i rendesishem grek i cili ne shekullin e trete p.e.s. deklaroi se mashkulli me perfekt eshte luani me krifen e tij te celet.

Sipas Angel, ‘Nordik-Iranianet ishin te gjate dhe muskuloze, me faqe te fuqishme dhe ka mundesi qe ne rradhet e tyre te perfshiheshin dhe floke kuqerremtet, sy bojqielli, gri si dhe floke verdhe dhe kafe.’ Po ashtu Angel permend ‘nje ngjashmeri te dukshme’ te ketij lloji ‘me anglo-saksonet’ dhe pjeserisht me veriperendimoret fqinje te ketij lloji grek.

Greket moderne jane ne menyre tronditese floke zinj dhe shume rralle me lekure te celet.

Kane ndryshuar greket qe nga lashtesia?


Natyrisht. Aristrokracia e vjeter, pergjegjese per shumicen e madheshtise se Greqise e Lashte, sigurisht qe nuk ekziston me. Kjo ne vetvehte eshte mjaftueshmerisht nje ndryshim shume i madh. Edhe vete fshataret kane ndryshuar ndonese debati i shkalles se sakte te prejardhjes se grekeve te sotem ne krahasim me ata te lashtesise vazhdon te mbetet i hapur.

Te gjithe kane dijeni mbi influencen e madhe te Shqiptareve ne Greqi. Sic thote Paul Theroux:

Greket nuk kane patur ndonje interes mbi te kaluaren e tyre deri ne momentin qe Europianet filluan te behen zbulues entuziaste dhe germues te rrenojave te tyre. Dhe ne fakt pse duhet te kishin interes ata? Greket nuk ishin Greke por pasardhes te peshkatareve sllave dhe popujve te tjere qe u dynden vone dhe qe nuk kishin kurrefare interesi ne shtyllat e thyera dhe tempujt pervec tokave ku te grumbullonin bagetite e tyre. (Shtyllat e Herkulit, 315-316)

Duke konsideruar levizjet e medha te grekeve ne Anatolia gjate epokes Bizantine si dhe spostimet e popujve lindore drejt Ballkanit qendron gjithmone nje mundesi qe Nje Turk te kete me shume prejardhje nga greket e lashte sesa nje grek modern. Dhe po ashtu ka gjithmone nje mundesi te nje kontributi Turk ne ‘pellgun’ gjenetik te grekeve te sotem.

Ne Greqi ka patur nje vershim gjenetik nga Negroidet dhe Mongoloidet, ne ate sasi saqe sot eshte e veshtire ta percaktosh. Sidoqofte pervetesimi i geneve nga Lindja e Aferme dhe Afrika Veriore ka mundesi te kete ndodhur ne nje shkalle me te gjere sesa pervetesimi i geneve jo kaukazoide (njeriu i bardhe): dhe kjo perzjere me e vonshme jo Europiane kaukazoide mund te jete shume me domethenese se perzjerja jo kaukazoide kur behet fjale per ndryshimet ne karakterin rracial te kombit Grek. Richards (2002) gjenj nje ‘frekuence shume te larte (~20 %) te nje rrjedhje te vonshme genesh ne Europen Mesdhetare Lindore.

Lindja e Aferme formon nje grup te qarte, shume te ndryshem nga Europianet. Popullatat e Mesdheut Qendror dhe Lindor, sebashku me Europen Juglindore ndonese te pozicionuara me afer me popullatat e tjera Europiane po ashtu tregojne afersi me Lindjen e Aferme ndersa Europa Mesdhetare Perendimore grupohet me Europen Qendrore dhe ate Veriore...
Vecorite juglindje-veriperendim ne piketimin klasik te frekuencave eshte interpretuar me ndihmen e evidencave te radiokarbonit, si nje perfaqesim i nje difuzioni domethenes te komuniteteve agrare te Lindjes se Aferme ne Europe gjate Neolitit te Hershem (Sokal 1991; Cavalli-Sforza 1994). Sidoqofte struktura ne frekuencat e haplogrupit mtDNA qe shohim ketu indikojne nje ngjashmeri midis Europianeve dhe atyre te Lindjes se Aferme, sidomos ne Europen Juglindore dhe pergjate Mesdheut ndersa evidencat arkeologjike tregojne se ekspansioni kryesor agrokultural ndodhi ne Europen Qendrore (Bogucki 2000; Prince 2000). Pra duket qe eshte jo bindes fakti qe struktura e frekuencave te haplogrupit mtDNA te jene gjeneruar kryesisht nga nje ekspansion Neolitik...

Pjesa e dyte e PC e variacionit te kromozonit Y llogaritet si 26 % e vete variacionit dhe grupohet me shumicen e rrajoneve te Europes ne nje pol ndersa grupon ate te Lindjes se Aferme ne tjetren, me Mesdheun lindor dhe qendror, Europen Mesdhetare midis dy poleve. Kontribuesit kryesore te gradienteve jane haplogrupi E dhe J (ish haplogrupet 21 dhe 9, dy te cilet jane shume frekuent ne Lindjen e Aferme) dhe perseri R* dhe N3 (te dy te cilet jane me frekuente ne Europe). Kjo ndikon ne nje vershim gjenetik nga Lindja e Aferme sic sugjerohet nga te dy, Cavalli-Sforza (1994) dhe Semino (2000). Haplogrupi J ne Europe interpretohet ne menyre me specifike nga Semino (2000) si nje rezultat i shperndarjes Neolitike. Sidoqofte eshte interesant fakti qe haplogrupet E dhe J peseri jane me frekuente pergjate brigjeve Meshdetare dhe pakesohen ndjeshem ndersa spostohesh drejt Europes Qendrore ku te dhenat arkeologjike na tregojne se aty ndodhi ekspansioni me i madh agrar.

Analizat thelbesore te mtDNA ne Europe (Richards 2000) sugjerojne nje shpjegim te mundshem te kesaj strukture: ka mundesi te jete per shkak te nje vershimi substancial (post-Neolitik) ne vend te nje ekspansioni te vetem Neolitik. Keto analiza te mtDNA te cilat jane bazuar ne krahasimin e llojet e sekuencave perputhese (ndermjet haplogrupeve) midis Europianeve dhe Lindjes se Aferme, sugjerojne se se nuk ka patur nje korrelacion nje me nje midis migrimeve dhe ndryshimeve te medha. Analizat per Europen Mesdhetare Lindore indikojne nje frekuence shume te larte (~20 %) te nje vershimi te vonet gjenetik e krahasuar kjo me vetem ~10 % te atij Neolitik.

Angel (1945) shikon evidenca te nje prirje emigrimi qe vazhdon nga koha e Romakeve ne ate te Bizantit dhe me vone, gje qe solli elementat Mesdhetare, Europiane Alpine dhe Armenoide [nga Lindja e Aferme] nepermjet detit dhe [sllavo folesit ne kohen e Bizantit] elementat Alpine dhe Dinarike nga veriu. Angel po ashtu beson se ne kohet Klasike Athina absorboi nje numer te madh popullate sklleverish dhe metiksesh.
Natyrisht qe ‘pellgu’ gjenetik grek ka pesuar nje influks te konsiderueshem nga jashte, gje qe ka kuptim po te bazohesh ne vendndodhjen e Greqise dhe historine e saj. Angel perpiqet qe te veje ne dukje vazhdimesine e banoreve te Athines por eshte e veshtire te gjesh kete vazhdimesi tek popullata origjinale Mesdhetare e cila sot eshte brakiocefalike dhe gjeresisht Alpine dhe ku nje element i vogel i rendesishem rracial i koheve me te hershme ne esence eshte zhdukur teresisht. Duhet kuptuar qe kur Angel flet per ‘vazhdimesi’ ai ka parasysh qe ndryshimi rracial ne Greqi ka ndodhur me shume gradualisht sesa menjehere. Ne kete kontekst kuptimi eshte i njejte po te themi ne lidhje me ‘vazhdimesine rraciale’ te Arabeve ndersa absorboheshin gradualisht nga numri i madh i sklleverve te sub Sahares.

Antropologi grekocentrist Aris Poulianos ben deklarata dhe me te forta sesa Angel ne lidhje me ‘vazhdimesine’ greke duke ngulur kembe ne ‘vazhdimesine e parreshtur biologjike te grekeve pergjate gjithe epokave historike dhe parahistorike te cilat i referohen periudhave te pakten te Mezolitikut dhe Paleolitit te Vonet (15.000-30.000).” Por puna e Poulianos eshte e diskredituar nga deklarata te tilla:

...vazhdimesia eshte... provuar nga krahasimi i matjeve te banoreve aktuale me ato te kafkave te lashta te Greqise, te cilat ne menyre statistikore nuk tregojne asnje ndryshim...

Sic tregon dhe puna e Angel – dhe sic dikton llogjika normale – perberja rraciale e Greqise ka ndryshuar shume gjate koherave; dhe evidenca gjenetike provon se vershimi i ndjeshem Neolitik dhe i mevonshem ka ndodhur ne Greqi. Nese Poulianos eshte i paafte te dalloje ndryshimet midis grekeve te lashte dhe atyre modern atehere teknikat qe ai perdor jane mangeta.

Besueshmeria e Poulianos rrenohet edhe me shume nga disa pohime te cuditshme ne lidhje me gjuhesine.

Ne menyre indirekte duhet te pranojme se [Sarakatsanees] po ashtu kane gjuhen me te lashte pasi paraardhesit e tyre gjithmone kane folur... dhe folur vetem greqisht ne dhjete mije vjetet e fundit...50, 60, 70 mbase edhe 100. Ne te kunderten, teoria IE vetem sa mbulon kater miije vjetet e fundit. Por edhe perpara Indoeuropianeve, a nuk kane folur banoret e ketij vendi per kaq mijera vjete? A nuk jane Sarakatsanees nje prove e gjalle sot?

Ska nevoje te thuhet qe asnje studiues Perendimor mund te mbeshtesi teorite gjuhesore te Poulianos. Sidoqofte puna e Poulianos u prit ngrohte ne Bashkimin Sovjetik. Kjo nuk eshte aspak befasuese: Poulianos kreu disertacionin e doktoratures se tij ne Universitetin e Moskes dhe me fantazine e tij te Neandertaleve greqishtfoles ai thjesht sa i con me tej teorite qesharake sovjetike te etnogjenezes, madje ne nje ekstrem edhe me te madh. Si perfundim Poulianos eshte nje grindavec qe si intereson askujt pervecse nacionalizmit grek dhe arkeologjise staliniste.

Nje faqe qe promovon Origjinen e Grekeve eshte e afte te raportoje se qindra shkenctare te Bllokut Lindor ‘kane rene teresisht dakort me kendveshtrimin shkencor te Zotit Aris Poulianos duke theksuar seriozitetin e studimeve te tij’, por i vetmi shkenctar Perendimor i cilika mbeshtetur teorite e tij eshte J. L. Angel. Ndersa eshte e vertete qe Angel hartoi nje permbledhje kritike ndaj librit te Poulianos ne AJPA, ky mik i Poulianos e gjeti vepren e tij nje pune jo sistematike e cila kapercen gjysmen e literatures e pershtatshme, ‘tenton te mbivlersoje spekullimet e bazuara ne shembujt e vegjel’, dhe le ‘nje numer te konsiderueshem perfundimesh pa arsye’. Ne nje shenim pozitiv, Angel beson se perdorimi i zhargonit nga ana e Poulianos ne ‘gjuhen e perditshme greke’ ne vend te gjuhes shkencore te ‘bajatur’ ‘duhet te ndihmoje per te popullarizuar antropologjine ne Greqi e shoqeruar me disa citime te Stalinit, Marksit dhe Engelsit.’

Aksidentalisht njera nga perpjekjet madhore te Poulianos ka qene refuzimi i teorise se Fallmerayer qe thote se greket moderne jane pasardhes te shqiptarevee me pas te sllaveve. Sidoqofte:

I njejti studim tregon se shqip-folesit si dhe vllehet e rrajonit te madh te Maqedonise jane ne pjesen me te madhe autoktone dhe si rezultat influenca e tyre ka lidhje direkte me adoptimin e gjuheve kronologjikisht me te reja te cilat jane ne perdorim sot.
Nese eshte keshtu atehere duket qarte se Poulianos nuk mund te provoje asgje ne lidhje me shkallen ne te cilen kontribuan sllavo-folesit gjate epokes Bizantine ne popullaten moderne Greke. Ishin apo jo me origjine autoktone ne Ballkan keta sllave-foles kjo eshte nje ceshtje qe ska rendesi. Ata sidoqofte nuk ishin te njejtet njerez si greket e lashte. Po ashtu duke pare mesataren per popullaten ne teresi erreson faktin qe ndarja jo proporcionale e kontributit grek erdhi nga minoritete te izoluara, te vecanta gjenetikisht dhe ne numer te parendesishem. BURIMI I TE GJITHA ARRITJEVE TE GREKEVE KLASIKE.

Angel permend ‘modelin Blegen te fuzionit te materialeve te ndryshme sociale madje dhe psikologjike te elementave te cilet formuan kulturen e Athines Klasike’. Blegen eshte korrekt kur thote se arritjet kulturale te Athines i detyrohen dicka shkrirjes se kulturave. Por elementi kyc i cili i ndan mendimin dhe arritjet greke nga ato te civilizimeve me te hershme origjinoi me Indo-Europianet:

Ndersa Egjyptianet dhe Babilonasit mblodhen nje sasi te madhe informacioni mbi matematiken dhe astronomine dhe praktikuan inxhinjerine ne shkalle mahnitese, shkenca ‘e tyre’ ne fakt nuk ka patur asnjehere baze shkencore. Njohuria e tyre ekzistonte ose si dije e mbledhur nga prifterinjte ose si produkt i perpjekjeve te pafund te deshtuara dhe te suksesshme. Vetem greket IE aktualisht sistematizuan njohuri matematikore dhe shkencore dhe ata ishin ne gjendje qe ta ndertonin ate ne nje sistem pasi vete sistemi ishte nje koncept i Rregullit Kozmik ne te cilin te gjitha ngjarjet dhe fenomenet ishin te lidhura nepermjet rastesise dhe lidhjeve te patundura te nje fenomeni dhe ngjarje me nje tjeter...

‘Nuk eshte aksidentale,’ shkroi V. Gordon Childe, ‘qe avancimet e para te medha drejt shkencave abstrakte antyrore u bene nga greket Ariane dhe Hindut dhe jo nga Babilonasit apo Egjyptianet, ndonese keta te fundit kishin burime te shumta materiale si dhe nje progres befasues ne teknike si ne rastin e observimit astronomik psh... ‘ (Clark 1996)

I frymezuar nga modeli i Blegen mbi fuzionin e kulturave, Angel e shikon perzjerjen e llojeve rraciale ‘si real dhe mbase faktore te vegjel te domosdoshem te cilet ndihmuan ne prodhimin e njerezve te medhenj tek te cilet fillon e gjithe historia e civilizimit.’ Ajo qe kjo teori injoron eshte rroli i madh qe luajti martesa brenda llojit e aristokracise greke ne arritjet e kesaj te fundit. Qe nga Kohet Klasike Greqia ka marre edhe me shume nderhyrje gjenetike dhe eshte bere akoma me e perzjere. Nese ky eshte celesi i madheshtise se saj atehere pse Greqia eshte duke shkuar poshte e me poshte qe nga Kohet Klasike?

Murphy (1941) merr nje pozicion te ngjashem me Angel por pranon edhe faktore te tjere:

te cilet mund te deduktohen nga puna e Darvinit ne pergjithesi dhe qe me vone eshte ndricuar edhe me shume nga studiues te tjere. Duket se perzjerja rracore njerezore e cila prodhon momentet me te shkelqyera te lulezimit ne zgjuarsi dhe aftesi, ndodh ne rradhet e varieteteve te cilet jane krahasueshmerisht te ngjashem me njeri tjetrin dhe ne te kunderten, kur keto varietete hibridet e te ciles jane larg nga njeri tjetri... atehere kemi nje mungese ne prodhimin e aftesive superiore.

Roger Pearson (1991) ka sugjeruar mundesine qe “ Europa duhet te kete pesuar nje regres trondites gjate dy mije vjeteve te fundit”. Nese kjo eshte e vertete atehere Greqia e cila sot ka mesataren me te ulet te inteligjences (IQ) ne Europe duhet te jete goditur me rende se cdo vend tjeter. Nga ana tjeter mund te jete fakti qe vetem klasa elitare ne Greqine e Lashte duhet te kete qene jashtezakonisht inteligjente. Dhe kur kjo elite u zhduk ose u absorbua nga masat me te medhaja ne numer atehere fuqia intelektuale e Greqise u zhduk bashke me te.

Zezake ne Greqine e Lashte

Miti Rracor thote:

‘Nuk ka asnje evidence qe zezaket kane qene te pranishem ne Greqine e Lashte’

Deklarata e mesiperme eshte e gjitha fallco. Ne librin e tij Rraca, John R. Baker shkruan se:

Evans jep disa foto te personave te cilet paraqesin karakteristika negroide dhe sugjeron se elementa pjeserisht te negroidizuar jane sjelle ne Krete si te burgosur (517).
Prania e llojit Negroid ose pjeserisht Negroid ne Greqi eshte konfirmuar dhe nga evidenca kafkore. J. L. Angel shkruan:

‘Ne kampionet skeletore nga Greqia kam vene re gjurme te qarta te hundes dhe gojes negroide ne dy nga katermbedhjete skelete qe i perkisnin Neolitit te Hershem (mijevjecari i gjashte p.e.s.), vetem dy ose tre midis 364 nga mijevjecari i dyte p.e.s., nje midis 113 te Epokes se Hershme te Hekurit, nje ose dy midis 233 skeleteve Klasike dhe Helenistike, kater skelete te qarte Negroidesh (te gjithe nga zona e Korinthit te Krishterimit te Hershem) midis nentedhejt e pese skeleteve te periudhes Romake, dy midis tetedhjet e pese atyre te Mesjetes dhe natyrisht dhjete midis pesedhjet e dy te periudhes Turko-Greke dhe asnje midis 202 skeleteve te periudhes Romantike (shekulli i nentembedhjete).

Frank Snowden ka studiuar pranine e zezakeve ne Greqine e Lashte nga kendveshtrimi artistik dhe ai i literatures. Gjetjet e tij perfshijne:

Te dyja evidencat, ato te literatures dhe ato arkeologjike furnizojne evidenca te nje kryqezimi frekuent midis zezakeve dhe te bardheve. Nga observimi i kesaj perzjerje rraciale asgje nuk ngjan me kufizimin modern te marteses apo mbajtjes se konkubinave midis rracave.
Natyrisht qe sipas konceptit qe ekzistonte ne Perendim kohet e fundit, ka qene perzjerja rraciale ajo qe solli shkaterrimin e civilizimit Grek, Romak dhe te tjerave...

Ne boten Greko-Romake nuk kishte asnje ligj qe te ndalonte bashkimin midis zezakeve dhe te bardheve. Gjaku Etiopian u perzje me ate te Grekeve dhe Romakeve. Asnje autor Grek apo Romak nuk e denonte kete perzjerje rraciale... Shkenctaret Aristoteli dhe Plini ashtu si dhe Plutarku komentuan pamjen fizionomike te te lindurve nga kryqezimi bardh e zi por nuk bejne asnje koment qe ti afrohet sadopak koncepteve te sotme strikte mbi perzjerjet rraciale... Pra duhet pranuar se gjate rrjedhes se kohes shume Etiopiane u asimiluan ne rradhet e nje popullsie te bardhe predominuese. (Zezaket ne Lashtesi 193-195)

Shume skllever ne Greqi ishin kaukazoid. Por duke qene se sklleverit ishin nje pjese e madhe e popullates, edhe sikur zezaket te perbenin nje perqindje te vogel te sklleverve perseri nje numer i konsiderueshem prej tyre ka qene i pranishem aty. Nje burim Grek na jep nje shifer te nje numri prej 400.000 sklleverish ne Attica ne vitin 317 p.e.s, krahasuar me 21.000 qytetare te rritur meshkuj dhe 110.000 qytetare meshkuj metikse (rezidente te huaj). Ndersa autoret moderne pranojne se numri prej 400.000 ‘duhet te jete gabim’ (Webster 1973, 41), duket sikur te gjithe Athiniotet zoteronin skllever madje disa prej tyre edhe 1 mije te tille. Se fundi Webster perllogarit se sklleverit perbenin rreth nje te treten e popullsise se Athines (62.000 nga popullata totale me nje shifer prej 186.000 – personalisht mendoj se ky numer eshte i nenvleresuar.) Nese nje e treta e popullsise se mbetur perbeheshe nga metikse atehere mbetet qe me pak se nje e treta e banoreve te Athines te ishin qytetare.



Mulate ne Greqine e Lashte



Disa individe deklarojne se ndonese ka mundesi qe ne Greqine e Lashte te mos kete patur skllever te bardhe, zakonet greke duhet te kene parandaluar cdo perzjerje me te huajt. Klasat e larta fillimisht i rezistuan me force perzjerjes me te huajt. Por klasat e larta nuk perbenin aspak pjesen derrmuese te popullates qe jetonte ne Greqi. Nuk ka asnje arsye qe te dyshosh se sklleverit dhe klasat e ulta dhe te mesme (te cilat ja kalonin shume here ne numer aristokracise) t’i jene perbajtur te njejtit zakon te klases se larte. Sic ve ne dukje Peterson; ‘shume [pjestare te klases tregtare dhe artizane] ishin me nje prejardhje te huaj’, pra eshte e veshtire te mendosh qe ata jane kufizuar nga perzjerja me rracat e tjera. Po ashtu duhet theksuar se:

Sklleverit kishin te njejten mbrojtje legale si dhe metikset, ata kishin mundesi qe te blinin lirine e tyre... Politikisht mund te jete e drejte te mendosh per metikset, sklleverit dhe qytetaret si tre grada te ndryshme. Por ekonomikisht dhe si rezultat deri ne nje fare pike ne menyre sociale, ato shkojne paralel me njera tjetren. Metikset dhe sklleverit isihin te bazuara ne te njejtat te ardhura gje qe mbulonte 90 perqind te qytetareve, punetoret e afte dhe ata te paafte. (Webster 1973, 47).
Ndonese mbas 451 kishte ligje qe ‘kufizonin qytetarine e nje femije te lindur nga dy prinder qytetare’, Websteri mendon se pavaresisht nga kjo ‘ne fakt nje numer i konsiderueshem athiniotesh kishin femiije me te huaj ose femra skllave te liruara dhe femijet e tyre ishin pranuar si qytetare’ (1973, 54).

Nuk ka asnje dyshim qe popullata e perbere nga sklleverit dhe metikset u absorbua nga popullata greke ne teresi. Pak rendesi ka nese ata u perzjene ose jo me qytetaret ne kohet klasike (dhe duket se ska aspak dyshim qe ata u perzjene, ose te pakten ne disa raste u be nga pjesa e ulet e qytetareve), ata nuk u zhduken ne fund te epokes Klasike. Ata me kalimin e viteve dhe kohes u shumuan ne numer dhe eventualisht u perfshine ne popullaten qe sot ne e quajme si ‘greke’. Kjo nuk perjashton aspak dhe situaten me metikset dhe sklleverit negroid.

Sipas Frank Snowden:

Relatat seksuale midis te bardheve dhe te zinjve nuk kane qene asnjehere shkak i krizave te medha emocionale dhe shume zezake sihin fizikisht te asimiluar nga popullata e bardhe qe dominonte boten Mesdhetare.
Numri i referencave mbi Etiopianet ne literaturen greke te shekullit te peste p.e.s. mbi paraqitjen e femijeve mualte qe pasoi pranine e zezakeve ne Greqi ne ushtrine e Xerxes si dhe ne perfaqesime te shumta artistike te mesit dhe fundit te shekullit te pesete p.e.s. reflekton fuqishem kete evolucion antropologjik.

Arthur Kemp ka hartuar nje sere referencash te zgjeruara mbi pranine e Negroideve dhe perzjerjes rraciale ne Greqine e Lashte. Burimet e dores se pare e bejne te qarte se ne fakt ka patur lindje te rracave te perzjera ne Greqi (madje dhe ne Rome). Nen driten e ketij fakti duket e qarte qe ka patur nje nderhyrje te fuqishme sub Sahariane gjenetike ne ‘pellgun’ gjenetik Grek.

Perzjerje Negroide ne Greqi


Duke konsideruar faktet e mesiperme nuk eshte aspak cudi qe Richards (2000) pikasi mtDNA Etiopiane ne haplogrupin M1 ne Greqi. Per me teper haplogrupi i kromozomit Y sub Saharian (me i zakonshmi midis Khoisianeve dhe Etiopianeve) u gjet ne nje individ nga Mitilini (Di Giacomo). Te tjere haplogrupe sub Sahariane jane gjetur ne Greqi. Megjithate Greqia mbetet e studiuar pak ne aspektin e geneve te popullates. Disa studime relevante qe jane bere kane trajtuar vetem disa shembuj te paket. Eshte shume shpejt te thuash me shume ne lidhje me shenjat e mtDNA sub Sahariane ne krahasim me vendet e tjera Europiane. Niveli i sakte i mtDNA sub Sahariane dhe kromozomit Y mund te kene hyre ne Greqi nga perzjerja me Negrit dhe sidomos me perzjerjen E3b qe e permbajne meshkujt afrikane.

E3b, haplogrupi i kromozomit Y me i zakonshem ne Greqi ‘ka mundesi qe ta kete origjinen nga Afrika’ (Semino 2004). Eshte propozuar ideja qe nengrupi me frekuent Eb3 ne Greqi, E-M78 i cili llogarit pothuajse gjysmen e kromozomit Y te Peloponezit (Cruciani 2004) e ka origjinen nga Somalia (Sanchez 2003). Duke patur parasysh te mesipermet del qe nuk eshte dhe aq e habitshme qe studimet e kryera ndaj meshkujve “HLA Genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharians origin of the Greeks” ne menyre te pavarur raportojne nje lidhje gjenetike midis Etiopianeve dhe Grekeve (Arnaiz-Villena 2001).

Po ashtu ne lidhje me perzjerjen negroide, nje e tille mund te kete vazhduar te ndodhe dhe gjate periudhes Otomane. Buxton dhe Rice (1931) shprehen se ‘ne Qipro ka nje proporcion te madh te platyrrhiny (nje tipar fizik ku hunda eshte mjaft e gjere ne krahasim me gjatesine e saj) ne mesin e klasave te ulta ne krahasim me ate te shtresave shoqerore te tejra por kjo ka mundesi te jete si rezultat i importimit te sklleverve zezake nga Turqit.’ Angel (1945) permend ‘nje skelet te periudhes Turke’ nga Athina, ‘i cili eshte padyshim mbetja e nje individi negroid me nje perzjerje te lehte me njeriun e bardhe.’ Eshte me interes fakti qe 4.3 % te kromozomit Y ne nje kampion qipriot turkjane sub-Sahariane (Cruciani 2004; ndersa te dhenat per qipriotet greke nuk jane raportuar).


Perzjerje Mongolide ne Greqi


Pervec perzjerjes negroide, ka nje evidence te qarte te nje perzjerje Mongoloide ne Greqi. Ne nje studim te 118 grekeve u dedektua HpaI morph [gen mongoloid] per here te pare ne nje kampion europian. (kampion ketu ka kuptimin e mostres ose kampionit ne gjeologji apo arkeologji apo antropologji). (Astrinidis, 1994).
3% i kromozomit Y grek i perket GH26, nje haplogrup i cili eshte gjetur ne shkalle te larte ne disa popullata Mongoloide. Sidoqofte prania e HG26 nuk eshte – sic ka vene ne dukje Dienekes – prove e nje prejardhje Mongoloide pasi HG26 eshte karakterizuar nga nje gjymtim i hershem (HG26 eshte paraardhes i haplogrupit te zakonshem europian HG1). Mbajtesit origjinale te HG25 ka shume mundesi qe te kene qene ose kaukazoide ose pjese e nje grupi rracor qe ka qene paraardhes i te dyja grupeve te mevonshme, atij kaukazoid dhe atij mongoloid. Pavaresisht se shume popullata te stepave te Azise i perkasin ne menyre predominuese haplogrupeve te kromozomit Y te cilat gjehen po ashtu dhe ne Europe (HG26, HG1), e ben te veshtire te nxjerresh me saktesi kontributin e mashkullit Mongoloid ne Greqi me te dhenat aktuale qe zoterohen. Por studime te metejeshme po nxjerrin dhe pranine e nje parardhje nga Azia Qendrore ne Greqi.

Konkluzion


• Greket kane ndryshuar qe nga kohet antike; ndryshimet perfshijne perzjerjen e asaj qe ne kohet klasike ka qene nje gen i izoluar dhe zhdukja e elites e cila ka qene pergjegjese per arritjet me te fashme te Greqise se Lashte. Rrjedhja gjenetike ne Greqi eshte faktuar qe ka ndodhur por nuk dihet ende me saktesi niveli dhe efektet.


• Greket kane perzjerje Negroide, sasia e te cilit me te dhenat aktuale eshte ende i papercaktuar qarte.


• Greket kane perzjerje Mongoloide.


• Ka nevoje per me shume studime dhe kerkime per te percaktuar shkallen e sakte te nivelit negroid dhe mongoloid ne parardhesit e grekeve te sotem.


• Sa rrjedhje te sakte gjenetike ka ne ‘pellgun’ gjenetik grek nga Lindja e Aferme gje qe pa asnje dyshim ka ndodhur shume me vone se Neoliti dhe sa shume ka ndryshuar kjo perzjerje gjenetike popullsine greke kjo mbetet per tu studiuar me thelle.


• Cili eshte kontributi sllav dhe shqiptar ne pellgun gjenetik Grek dhe cfare impakti gjenetik kane patur turqit ne Greqi edhe kjo mbetet per tu studiuar.

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