The Albanian tribes () form a historical mode of social organization (farefisní) in Albania and the southwestern Balkans characterized by a common culture, often common patrilineal kinship ties and shared social ties. The fis (; commonly translated as "tribe", also as "clan" or "kin" community) stands at the center of Albanian organization based on kinship relations, a concept that can be found among southern Albanians also with the term farë ().
Inherited from ancient Illyrian social structures, Albanian tribal society emerged in the early Middle Ages as the dominant form of social organization among Albanians. The development of feudalism came to both antagonize it, and slowly integrate aspects of it in Albanian feudal society, as most noble families themselves came from these tribes and depended on their support. This process stopped after the Ottoman conquest of Albania and the Balkans in the late 15th century and was followed by a process of strengthening of the tribe (fis) as a means of organization against Ottoman centralization particularly in the mountains of northern Albania and adjacent areas of Montenegro.
It also remained in a less developed system in southern Albania where large feudal estates and later trade and urban centres began to develop at the expense of tribal organization. One of the most particular elements of the Albanian tribal structure is its dependence on the Kanun, a code of Albanian oral customary laws. Most tribes engaged in warfare against external forces like the Ottoman Empire. Some also engaged in limited inter-tribal struggle for the control of resources.
Until the early years of the 20th century, Albanian tribal society remained largely intact until the rise to power of the communist regime in 1944, and is considered to be the only example of a tribal social system with tribal chiefs and councils, blood feuds and oral customary laws to survive in Europe until the middle of the 20th century.
Terminology
Fundamental terms that define Albanian tribal structure are shared by all regions. Some terms may be used interchangeably with the same semantic content and other terms have a different content depending on the region. No uniform or standard classification exists as societal structure showed variance even within the same general area. The term fis is the central concept of Albanian tribal structure. The fis is a community whose members are linked to each other as kin through the same patrilineal ancestry and live in the same territory. It has been translated in English as tribe or clan. Thus, fis refers both to the kinship ties that bind the community and the territorialization of that community in a region exclusively used in a communal manner by the members of the fis. In contrast, bashkësi (literally, association) refers to a community of the same ancestry that has not been established territorially in a given area that is its traditional home region.
It is further divided into fis i madh and fis i vogël. Fis i madh refers to all members of the kin community that live in its traditional territory, while fis i vogël refers to the immediate family members and their cousins (kushëri). In this sense, it is sometimes used synonymously with vëllazëri or vllazni in Gheg Albanian. This term refers to all families that trace their origin to the same patrilineal ancestor. Related families (familje) are referred to as of one bark/pl. barqe (literally, belly). As some tribes grew in number, a part of them settled in new territory and formed a new fis that may or may not have held the same name as the parental group. The concept of farefisni refers to the bonds between all communities that stem from the same fis. Farë literally means seed. Among southern Albanians, it is sometimes used as a synonym for fis, which in turn is used in the meaning of fis i vogël.
The term bajrak refers to an Ottoman military institution of the 17th century. In international bibliography of the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was often mistakenly equated with the fis as both would sometimes cover the same geographical area. The result of this mistake was the portrayal of bajrak administrative divisions and other regions as fis in early anthropological accounts of Albania, although there were bajraks in which only a small part or none at all constituted a fis.
Geography
The Malësors (highlanders) lived in three geographical regions within northern Albania. Malësia e Madhe (great highlands) contained five large tribes, four of which (Hoti, Kelmendi, Shkreli, Kastrati) having a Catholic majority and Muslim minority and with Gruda evenly split between both religions. Within Malësia e Madhe there were seven small additional tribes. During times of war and mobilisation of troops, the bajraktar (chieftain) of Hoti was recognised by the Ottoman government as leader of all forces of the Malësia e Madhe tribes, having collectively some 6,200 rifles.
Malësia e Vogël (small highlands) contained seven Catholic tribes such as the Shala with four bajaraktars, Shoshi, Toplana, and Nikaj containing some 1,250 households with a collective strength of 2,500 men that could be mobilised for war. Shoshi had a distinction in the region of possessing a legendary rock associated with Lekë Dukagjini.
The Mirdita region was also a large powerful devoutly Catholic tribe with 2,500 households and five bajraktars that could mobilize 5,000 irregular troops. A general assembly of the Mirdita often met in Orosh to deliberate on important issues relating to the tribe. The position of hereditary prince of the tribe with the title Prenk Pasha (Prince Lord) was held by the Gjonmarkaj family. Apart from this princely family, the Franciscan Abbot held some influence among the Mirdita tribesmen.
The government estimated the military strength of Malësors in İşkodra sanjak as numbering over 30,000 tribesmen and Ottoman officials were of the view that the highlanders could defeat Montenegro on their own with limited state assistance.
In Western Kosovo, the Gjakovë highlands contained eight tribes that were mainly Muslim; in the Luma area near Prizren there were five tribes, mostly Muslim. Other important tribal groupings further south include the highlanders of the Dibra region known as the "Tigers of Dibra".
Among the many religiously mixed Catholic-Muslim tribes and one Muslim-Orthodox clan, Ottoman officials noted that tribal loyalties superseded religious affiliations. In Catholic households there were instances of Christians who possessed four wives, marrying the first spouse in a church and the other three in the presence of an imam, while among Muslim households the Islamic tradition of circumcision was ignored.
Organisation
Northern Albanian
Among Gheg Malësors of the highlands, the is headed by the oldest male () and forms the basic unit of tribal society. The governing councils consist of elders (, singular: ). The idea of law administration is so closely related to "old age", that "to arbitrate" () and () means both "seniority" and "arbitration". The fis is divided into a group of several closely related houses () and a main house (). The head of is the (lit. "head", pl. or ), while the head of the house is the ("the lord of the house"). A house may be composed of two or three other houses with property in common under one .
A political and territorial unit consisting of several clans was the (standard or banner). The leader of a , whose position was hereditary, was referred to as bajraktar (standard bearer). Several bajraks composed a tribe, which was led by a man from a notable family, while major issues were decided by the tribe assembly whose members of the tribe were male. The Ottomans implemented the bayraktar system within northern Albanian tribes, and granted some privileges to the bayraktars (banner chieftains) in exchange for their obligation to mobilize local fighters to support military actions of the Ottoman forces. Those privileges entitled Albanian tribesmen to pay no taxes and to be excluded from military conscription in return for commitment to military service as irregular troops; however few served in that capacity. Malisors viewed Ottoman officials as a threat to their tribal way of living and left it to their bajraktars to deal with the Ottoman political system. Officials of the Late Ottoman period noted that Malisors preferred that their children learn the use of a weapon and refused to send them to government schools that taught Turkish, which was viewed as a form of state control. Most Albanian Malisors were illiterate.
Southern Albanian
In southern Albania, the social system is based on the house ( or ) and the , which consists of a patrilineal kinship group and an exogamous unit composed of members with some property in common. The patrilineal kinship ties are defined by the concept of "blood" () including moral and physical characteristics that are shared by all the members of a . The generally consists of three or four generations sharing a common ancestor, while the tribe, or , is much smaller than a northern Albanian . The members of a have a common ancestor who is the eponymos founder of the village. The political organization is communal; every neighbourhood sends a representing elder () to the governing council of the village (), who elect the head of the village ().
The Albanian term (definite form: ) means "seed" and "progeny". In northern Albania it had no legal use, whereas in southern Albania, fara was used legally instead of the term of the northerners until the beginning of the 19th century, to mean a politically autonomous tribe and a 'brotherhood' (Gheg Alb. ; Tosk Alb. ; or Alb. bark, "belly"). Attestations of these forms of social organization among southern Albanians are reported by Leake and Pouqueville when describing the traditional organization of Suli (between 1660 and 1803), Epirus, and of southern Albania in general (until the beginning of the 19th century). Pouqueville in particular reported that each village (Alb. ) and each town was some kind of autonomous republic composed of brotherhoods. In other accounts he mentioned the 'great ''' tribes, each having their polemarchs. These chiefs had boluk-bashis (platoon commanders), analogus to the northern , the and the (chieftains) of the , respectively.
Unlike the northern Albanian tribes, the lineage groups of southern Albanians did not inhabit a closed region, but constituted ethnographic islands located on mountains surrounded by a farming environment. One of the centres of these lineage societies was based in Labëria in the central mountains of southern Albania. A second centre was based in Himara in southwest Albania. A third centre was based in the Suli region, located far south in the middle of a Greek population. The tendency to build segmentary lineage organizations of these mountain communities increased with the degree of their isolation, causing the loss of the tribal organization of the Albanian highlanders in southern Albania and northern Greece since the 15th century, during the period of the Ottoman dominion. Afterwards, these lineage segments increasingly became the basic political, economic, religious, and predatory units of social organization. Nevertheless, in the southern Albanian areas of tribal establishment, the Albanian customary law remained unaffected throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule.