Informing Albanians about Arvanites

1)Kolokotronis, Kanaris, Diakos and Karaiskakis, were not Arvanites.

In contrast to what many Albanian bloggers and youtubers claim,  official sources indicate the particular heroes of the Greek revolution didn't have partially or fully Arvanite ancestry. Kolokotronis, was from Ramavouni of Messenia, Kanaris was from the island of Psara, Diakos from Fokhis and Karaiskakis from Skoulikaria, a community in Arta. None of these communities is recorded to be inhabited by Albanian/Arvanite or other non-Greek speaking populations. Among these four leaders, only Karaiskakis speaked Albanian, not because he was an Arvanite himself, but because he was captured by the Albanian Ali Pasha of Ioannina, and later served his house, where he learned speaking Albanian.

2) The vast majority of the revolutionaries were not Arvanites.

In contrast to what Albanian internet users promote, official sources indicate that only the 10-20% out of the 30.000 recorded surnames that participated in the revolution, were Arvanites. The rest 80-90% were either Greek speakers from Peloponnese, Central Greece, Aegean islands, Khalkidhiki/South Macedonia and Crete, Greek volunteers from the British occupied Ionian islands, and some Philhellenes from the rest of Europe.

3) Not only that, but the core of Arvanite-speaking area in Greece, didn’t produce any important general or revolutionary.

Only Arvanites from hydra and Spetses, As well as Souliotes, according to all Sources, seem to have contributed well to the Greek revolution.

4)On contrary, most of the ottoman army that fought in Greece before the Egyptian aid, was consisted of Albanians. And this army was defeated. In other words, Albanians were defeated by Greeks (and a few Arvanites) in 1821.

5) Arvanites are an insignificant minority in Modern Greece.

They represent not less than 1%, but also not more than 9% of the population (far from the percentages, the Albanians claim, which are not supported by any Source), with them, according to anthropological and lately genetic studies, being racially associated with their Greek compatriots, not with Albanians.

An early anthropological study proved that most of them belong to the “Aegean” Mediterranean type, a native Greek dominant type much different from dinaric, which is the the dominant racial type in Albania. That indicates that most of their ancestry is from native Greeks in these regions that were linguistically assimilated by the Albanian immigrants of 13^th century, along with Greeks who emigrated in Arvanite-speaking lands. For example, one of the most common surnames in Spetses is “Kritikos”, which indicates that Cretans were settled in the island and were assimilated by Arvanites.

6) Greeks and Albanians, are two very different nations from each other

In spite of a few similarities (few similarities which Albanians often focus on), for most of bibliography and common sense in Europe, we are talking about two very, vey different from each other countries in terms of mentality, culture and Greece is a Mediterranean country, associated with Mediterranean Southern European countries first, which are part of the West.

Albania on the other hand, is associated with the Islamic world first, and then with Eastern Europe, especially with their Balkan Slavic neighbors. Most of Greek identity (Mentality, Race, culture etc.) is something completely alien to Albania, as Albanians, as an isolated nation didn’t have contacts with other parts of the world, except of their close Balkan neighbors (Serbs etc).

Greece on contrary, always had contacts with other parts of the world, especially through navy. There were even Greeks in Colombus’ crew, in an period that Albanians were massively converting to Islam. 

7) Greek presence in Albania as a whole, has always been documented

There have always been Greek communities in most of Albania, especially in big cities on the coast. Vlore (Avlon) itself was one of the many Greek colonies in the coasts of Albania, meanwhile there are sources talking about Greek presence in Durres, Shkoder etc., all of them assimilated today.

For example, Two Irish pilgrims who visited Albania on their way to Jerusalem in 1322, reported that Durrës was "inhabited by Latins, Greeks, perfidious Jews and barbaric Albanians", all of them populations today completely assimilated into Albanians

Comment: This article should not be taken as offensive towards Albanians, it is just a response to monstrous historical and anthropological distortions, which have been committed by many Albanian nationalists in the internet

Sources

-John L. Comstock, History of the Greek Revolution; compiled from official documents of the Greek Government; and other authentic sources, New York, W.D. Reed, 1828.

-Detorakis, Turkish rule in Crete, p. 381

-Johann Georg von Hahn (1854), Albaneische Studien

-Alfred Philippson, Zur Ethnographie des Peloponnes ,Pettersmans Mitteilungen

-Handbook of Greece,1918,Naval Staff-Intelligence Division,p.72

Th. K.. Pitsios. Anthropological Study of the Population of the Peloponnese. The Origin of the Peloponnese. Library Anthropological Association of Greece no. 2. Athens, 1978

Read more: http://hellas2010.proboards.com/thread/13/arvanites-8-5-hellas#ixzz4zqflwKW4

-Lythoxoou, map of 19^th century Arvanite villages

Itinerarium Symonis Simeonis et Hugonis Illuminatoris ad Terram Sanctam, edited by J. Nasmith, 1778, cited in: Elsie Robert, The earliest references to the existence of the Albanian language. Zeitschrift für Balkanologie, Munich, 1991, v. 27.2, pp. 101–105.