Who are the Albanians?

Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu

Introduction - Τranslation - Εditing
By Marcus A. Templar – October 10, 2023
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Marcus A. Templar
National Security Advisor
Macedonian League

When I decided to translate the Academic paper by the Romanian scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (Annals of the Romanian Academy Series II - Tom, XXIII, pages 103-113 in 1901), I knew that I would find specific difficulties familiar to professional translators.

One issue is that the centennial document uses contemporary to its time vocabulary. Another predicament is primarily mechanical, depending on the quality of the product because of the scanning setup. Not only do diacritics exist in Romanian and not in Albanian and vice versa, e.g., diacritics like ä appear as ā or ă in the other, but also occasionally, the scanned text does not do justice to even Latin. In contrast, all Greek texts have been butchered. I tried to improve the original text by not adding my information but correcting the garbled text.

In the case of Latin and Greek, I was forced to research the sources and then add the corrected texts for the reader's benefit. If the author introduced text in other than Romanian languages, I attempted to translate it into English.

Here is the Greek text as a result of scanning:
(71, 12, 1: «την των Κοστουβώκων χώραν τοίς δπλοις κτησόμενοι, νικήσαντες δε εκείνους και την Δακίαν ουδέν ήττον έλίπουν.»)

And here is the original text in (Dio Cassius, Roman History, book 71, 12, 1)
«τὴν τῶν Κοστουβώκων χώραν τοῖς ὅπλοις κτησόμενοι, νικήσαντες δὲ ἐκείνους καὶ τὴν Δακίαν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐλύπουν»

I entered most of the translated text in brackets, as one or two words, or as endnotes, depending on the length of the text and the situation. However, I faithfully tried to keep the text intact.

Regarding the Illyrian descent of the Albanians, it is only a myth. Here are some facts.

Appian, Illyrian Wars, chap. 1 states: The Greeks call those people Illyrians who occupy the region beyond Macedonia and Thrace from Chaonia and Thesprotia to the river Ister (Danube).

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, book 3, 22 (144); and Pomponius Mela, book 2, 55-57 explicitly state that the Illyrians were a small tribe just south of the of the Lake Scodra and the Greeks generalized the name for all tribes of the area.
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The first account of Illyrian peoples dates back to the 6th century BC, in the works of the ancient Greek writer Hecataeus of Miletus. The name "Illyrians," as applied by the ancient Greeks to their northern neighbors, may have referred to a broad, ill-defined group of peoples. The Illyrian tribes never collectively identified as "Illyrians," and it is unlikely that they used any collective nomenclature at all.
(Editors: Joseph Roisman, Ian Worthington, A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., October 12, 2010).

I want to stress the connection between Romania-Moldova and Albania. "Pe-al nostru steag e scris Unire" (transl. "Unity is written on our flag") is a Romanian patriotic song dedicated to the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, established in 1859. ​Andrei Bârseanu wrote the lyrics, and Ciprian Porumbescu composed the music in 1880.

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy aggressively assisted the independence of Albania, the new Albanian government chose the music of the Patriotic Song of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The Albanian poet Aleksandër Stavre Drenova wrote the lyrics into the Albanian language, following closely the original Romanian lyrics. The original title of the Albanian version was "Betimi mbi Flamur" (The Pledge on the Flag). [1] The title of the present Albanian National Anthem is Himni i Flamurit.

Here is the Patriotic Song of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8gMhgRVdzw

Here is the National Anthem of Albania
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaQbBoPlGaE

Regarding the various endonyms Albanians have used in the past, one must read National Fog (Medieval tribes of Albania and Montenegro; and Serbs and Albanians (Their Symbiosis in the Middle Ages), 1925. The
same author, Milan Šuflay, wrote both books. [2]

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Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu (1838-1907)
Romanian Writer and Philologist

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WHO ARE THE ALBANIANS

Bogdan Petriceicu Haşdeu

from the Annals of the Romanian Academy

Series II - Tom. XXIII, page 103-113 in 1901

It has been ten years since I started studying, and I will not stop following the significant problem of the genealogy of the Balkan peoples. In my study "Layer and substrate," I obtained two capital solutions:

1. In the 7th century, there were still two compact Latin elements south of the Danube: Meso-Romanians in present-day Bulgaria and Illyro-Romanians in Serbia, especially in Dalmatia, whom the Bulgarians, on the one hand, and the Serbs on the other;
   
   
2. The so-called Macedo-Romanians and Istrian-Romanians today are Daco-Romanians. They were driven in the 9th century from Pannonia by the Magyars, from where other Daco-Romanians took refuge in Moravia and glorified themselves. These two solutions, peremptory in my opinion, will be completed and definitively demonstrated in successive subsequent conferences before the Romanian Academy; first: "Who are Bulgarians and Serbs?" and the second: "Who are the Daco-Romanians and the Pannono-Romanians?"

However, I am concerned with another solution, which I have not discussed in the past. It is the most important because it is the starting point for all the others.

Who are Albanians? Some historians and philologists, including Tomaschek [Wilhelm Tomaschek,1841-1901], believe it to be the posterity of the ancient Illyrians, who remained unmoved from time immemorial. Others, including Benlöw, go up to the Pelasgian ante-historians, and Reinhold does not shy away from naming a booklet about the Albanian language "Noctes pelasgicæ" [Pelasgic Nights]

1. Blau tries deciphering the Lycian inscriptions from Asia Minor through the Albanians. At the same time, Moratti also uses them for the Messapian inscriptions from Italy. Girolamo de Rada, an Albanian himself, does not let himself be the least bit lower, assuring us that: "Gli albanesi, popolo
   semitico disperso intorno al 1900 a.C. al tempo degli Hyckshos, andarono in Grecia, in Italia e in altri luoghi del Mediterraneo" [The Albanians, a Semitic people dispersed around 1900 BC. in the time of the Hyksos, they went to Greece, Italy and other places in the Mediterranean]. My illustrious friend Ascoli speaks seriously about opinions of this kind. Still, he does not take them seriously and does it well.

Nevertheless, let us ask ourselves once again: Who are the Albanians? What should their true provenance and relations be, especially with the Romanians? When and where did they come to settle in Epirus? Here is the only question, which I still lack to prove to the last certainty the persistence of the Romanian element in Trajan's Dacia. If the Albanians were autochthonous where they live today, then willy-nilly, we would be forced to admit that the Romanian nationality was explicitly formed in Illyria and not North of the Danube. Only through a community of origin and through an intimate old cohabitation at the same time can the primordial organic nature of the links between the Romanian and Albanian languages be explained. In addition, when I say this, I am not referring to any formal similarity, no matter how surprising, but the background and only the background of Romanian speech.
​

brad,
buză,
codru,
ghimpe,
mal,
bucur,
ghiuj în Moldova, vîj în Ardeal;
grumaz,
năpârcă
bunget,

​barză,
stăpân,
viezure,
gata,
sat,
vatră,
moș,
mire,
pârîu,
văpae, etc. etc

The number of such words, essentially Albanian in our native language, i.e., from the mouths of the peasants, is quite large, most unknown until now, some being preserved only as prehistoric remnants in a corner in a district, in each locality. I will give a sample of the many. In everyday speech, the synonyms snail and culbec mean "limacon."

For culbec, the old form is cubelc to the metropolitan of Dosoftei. The combination of snail and cubelc in children's games also features an extended form: in Munteni codomelc, in Transylvania codobelc, with
random variants, as noted by Professor Crețu. Snail is a separate word with the same meaning in the Celts: in Celtic dialects, snails are "limagon." Codobelc is a consonant accommodation from codomelc. Cubelc is a contraction of codobelc.

Finally, codomelc is a compound of two words, as is the French colimaçon from "cochilas + limax" [from Greek: κοχλίας + λίμαξ]. Among the Romanians, however, codomelc lives on together with snail and cubelc, although among Albanians, only the composition has survived: cadmili "limacon," where there are many variants, all corrupted, while the primitive Romanian form is intact, preserved only in children in their traditional games, an admirable "Ueberlebsel in Kinderspiel." (Dr. Ploss, Das Kind, vol. II, p. 308.)

Very few Albanian words among the Romanians could be disputed as terms that crossed over to us through a non-Albanian channel, perhaps through the Bulgars or Serbs or directly or indirectly through the Celts; the others are exclusively Albanian. However, the Albanian-Romanian lexical identity is secondary, in my opinion, compared to the grammatical identity. Especially characteristic are the meetings between Romanians and Albanians not through vocabulary but through phonetic, morphological, and syntactical peculiarities, which under no circumstances can be borrowed from foreigners, cannot be grafted over time, but date from the language's very origin.

For example, on the phonetic field, the transition of the consonant n to r between vowels, e.g., window from fenestra, does not exist among the Celts, nor the Neo-Latins, nor the Germans, nor the Slavs, nor the Greeks, but only among the Romanians and the Albanians, even under the same secondary conditions. Among Albanians in the Tosk dialect, the phenomenon is general; in the Ghegh dialect, it is more partial; likewise, with Romanian in the Istrian-Romanian dialect, it is broad and more partisan in the other dialects. Still, it is found in all of them. In Romanian, as in Albanian, past n in r can return to the primitive n. In Moldova, r from n is more often in the old language, in the Cazania of Metropolitan Varlam, in the Romanian glosses from the Slavic documents from Ștefan-cel-Mare, everywhere in the text of the Scheiane Psalter. In Transylvania, r from n, common even today in Moți, appears to be fully developed in the Măhăcene textures near Turda from around 1600: lura = moon, cire = who, oa meri = oam eni, măra = hand, and so forth. Through this phonetic, most Latin words sound slightly Albanian to us.

In the same way, a purely Latin word among Romanian becomes a true Albanianism through a change of meaning, through a logical process, through another idea instead of the Latin one. An example: a small fleshy extension that hangs at the end of the roof of the mouth in the neck [aka uvula], is called luette in French, in old French l'uvetíe, which is diminutive of the Latin uva, which means grape. It is called omușor in Romanian; however, the word om is a diminutive of the word "homo" in Latin or man. Among the French, the association of thought is Latin, just as the vocabulary is Latin. The same particle of the body [i.e., uvula] among the ancient Romans, and in Pliny in particular, it is called uva or "grape." Which language is Romanian thought associated with? It is Latin but also Albanian, depending on the word. In Albanian, the word for man is njeri, the diminutive of njeri or njerith, which is "small man/dwarf" or uvula; Thus njerith, which means small man or dwarf to the Albanians, simultaneously means that part of the body in the roof of the mouth, also known as uvula.

Semasiological engagement between Romanian and Albanian is significant, as it is not found elsewhere. In other peoples, as we see, for instance, in the Italian, in the French, ugola, uvola "grape"; in Spanish campanilla "bell"; in German Zäpflein, Zächen "stopper"; in Russian jazyčok (язычок), and Polish jezyczek "little tongue" and so on. There is no inkling of a uvula being similar except solely among Romanian and Albanian.

Finally, the morphological and syntactical structure identity in Romanian and Albanian, entirely in opposition to Latin and the other Romance languages, hit the top. Some phenomena have long been observed in passing by Kopitar, Miklosich, and Ascoli. I extensively followed a small part of this vast sphere in my study under the title: "A page from the Romanian-Albanian syntax" in "Words of the Elderly." I limit myself to drawing attention to it. There, you will see the two definite articles: one post-positive substantive and the other prepositive adjectival; duplicating, tripling, and even quadrupling both articles; the same rule in the construction of the noun with the adjective; same adjective-adverbial and genitive-dative form; the same genitive use of the prepositional definite article, and so on.

Based on the syntax, one might say that from the very beginning of the formation of a national language, the Romanian limited itself to placing the Latin material over the Albanian background. However, by the irreversible and unshaken crux, the Romanian language is Albanian, as the French is Celtic. Celtic in the French is not visible to the common eye, yet through analysis, Celticism is discovered everywhere. Germanic elements in the French are very numerous and palpable, just like the Slavic elements in the
Romanian. As Slavisms among the Romanian language, like Germanisms among the French, being accidental, almost all of them could be banished without thereby shaking the edifice of the national language. Notwithstanding, Celticisms among the French and Albanianisms among the Romanian cannot be achieved without a total catastrophe.

According to the above premises, the mind is afraid of consequences, consequences "in the manner of  Dr. Réthy Làszló" from Budapest, who concludes his argumentation with the sentence: "L'Académie de Bucharest ne pourra jamais décerner à qui que ce soit le prix of 20,000 francs fondé par le prince Couza" [The Academy of Bucharest will never be able to award anyone the prize of 20,000 francs founded by Prince Couza]; the mind is frightened by the Hungarian threat, and asks for a pause to wonder what to do next. I, for one, will not seek to facilitate my transition with many words and sideways. However, instead, I will cut Gordian's knot.

​Thus, I ask bluntly:
Is it possible that the current Albanians are the posterity of some Dacians, transported across the Danube in the era of Emperor Aurelian, that is, 150 years after the conquest of Dacia? Is it possible?

Answer:
It is not only possible, but the historical data fully confirm the linguistic data. After the fall of Decebalus, part of the Dacians submitted to Trajan. It began to amalgamate slowly with the Roman colonies, giving birth to the Daco-Roman ethnicity. Other Dacians, however, retreating higher into the Carpathians or further east of the Traian Province, maintained their individuality under various ethnic names, especially three Dacian peoples completely unsubordinated to Rome, namely the Costoboci, the Carpii, and the Bessi.

Almost a century and a half after Trajan, when the tamed Dacians could be and were already Romanized, the rebellious Dacians took advantage of the great movement of the Germans, known in history under the term "bellum Marcomannicum," and became dangerous for the peasant Romanians. Then, under the emperor Antoninus the Philosopher, perhaps even a little earlier, we see a very pronounced imperial tactic of moving over the Danube and settling there, on a long-secured territory, entire Dacian tribes and peoples, since they were defeated. The free Dacians, i.e., the non-Romanized ones, willingly or unwillingly had to move to Moesia and beyond.

The first ones, it seems, were the Costoboci. They enjoyed a very independent regime, even having their own kings, two of whom are known to us from Roman epigraphy. My friend Tocilescu mentioned one the other day: "Pieporus rex Coisstobocensis," who was captured by the Romans and taken to Rome with his entire family. The other, who escaped from the sight of our historians, appears in an even more interesting inscription from Rome: "Sabituus rex Ostabocesis Dacus."

In the same period, before the emperor Aurelian, under Marcus Aurelius, Dio Cassius says that the Astingian Germans invaded and succeeded in capturing the land of the Costoboci (Dio Cassius, 71, 12: "καὶ τὴν τῶν Κοστουβώκων χώραν τοῖς ὅπλοις κτησόμενοι, νικήσαντες δὲ ἐκείνους καὶ τὴν Δακίαν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐλύπουν"). [3] In this way, Rome had to do one of two things: let all the Costoboci settle in Traian Dacia above the provincials or move them across the Danube. Nevertheless, they were taken to Moesia and then pushed as far as Epirus, where, even there, they did not cease to harry. Indeed, the contemporary Pausanias (Paus. 10.34.5), after AD 150, complains that the Costoboci raided far into Hellas: “τὸ δὲ
Κοστοβώκων τε τῶν λῃστικῶν τὸ κατ᾽ ἐμὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐπιδραμὸν ἀφίκετο καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν Ἐλάτειαν”. [4]

Here is the powerful Dacian tribe of the Costoboci on the coast of Greece, near Fokida, exactly where the Tuscan branch of the Albanian race lives today. The very current name of these Albanian Tosks is just a simple metathesis from Costo, such metatheses being common among Albanians, e.g. ιχνάρε = χιλνάρε, φελτόνjε = λεφτόνjε, etc., as observed by Camarda: "Le metatesi, sia di consonan t i sia di voweli, o di syllablebe intiere, sono tra le affezioni, che molto spesso si manifestano nei vocaboli albanici" [see
conclusion note 1]. [5]

The second great migration of the Dacians, towards the same territorial point as the Costoboci or somewhat higher, but in any case in the vicinity, were the Carpi Dacians or Carpiani or Carpodaci, "Κάρποι, Καρπιανοὶ, Καρποδάκαι," as the Greek authors call them. About Carpi, as about Costoboci, the contemporary text is very clear. Aurelius Victor speaks of the emperor Diocletian: "caesi Marcomanni, Carporumque natio translata omnis in nostrum solum, cujus fere pars jam tum ab Aureliano erat". [6]
Therefore, Diocletian moved the whole nation of the Carpi, "natio omnis," across the Danube after Aurelian had already moved it in part.

And since we are talking about the emperor Aurelian, here is the place to understand the famous passage from Flavius ​​Vopiscus, quoted in one and not understood until now: "Quum vastatum Illyricum ac Moesiam deperditam videret, provinciam trans Danubium Daciam a Trajano constitutam sublato exercitu et provincialibus reliquit, desperans eam posse retineri: ab-ductosque ex ea populos, in Moesiam collocavit, appellavitque suam Daciam…" [7]  About this text, Nisard rightly says: "tout ce passage est un peu obscur dans notre auteur [8]." One could even say: "trés obscur" in all the usual editions, which blindly reproduce Puttmann's one from 1774. However, the passage is very clear in the old edition, which I find in Wolfgang Lazius, Reipublicae Romanae commentariorum libri duodecim, Francofurti 1598, p.34: "Quum vastatum Illyricum ac Moesiam deperditam videret, provinciam trans Danubium Daciam, a Traiano constitutam, sublato exercitu provincialibus reliquit, desperans eam posse retineri. Abductosque ex ea populos, in Moesiam collacavit, appellavitque suam Daciam".[9] In the Lazius edition, correct punctuation has been introduced, and above all, the absurd et between "exercitu" and "provincialibus" has been abolished, the meaning becomes as clear as possible, namely: considering that the army is no longer able to defend the Traian Province, where the provincials, i.e. the Roman colonies and the Romanized Dacians, were exposed not only to attacks from outside but also to the peoples the disobedient Dacians, Aurelian withdrew the army
from there and removed from Dacia the Dacians who were dangerous for the province, especially since Illyria and Moesia needed inhabitants, being deserted. The words: "provincialibus reliquit Daciam" in front of "populos abduxit ex Dacia" clarify everything perfectly. Among the Dacians who were moved in the passage from Vopiscus [10], there is also that "part of Carpi," "pars nationis Carporum," in the passage from Aurelius Victor precisely about Aurelian. One supplements the other (Aurelian, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, III. 39).

So essentially, the text renders: When he saw the province of the Illyricum devastated, and Moesia destroyed, he left Dacia, the province beyond the Danube established by Trajan with the provincial army,
hopeless of being able to retain it. Moreover, he settled the people he had taken from Dacia and settled them into Moesia and called it his own Dacia. Among the Dacians, the Carpi were always the most implacable enemies of Rome, "qui saepe Romanis investi sunt," [frequently hostile to the Romans] as Jordaness says.

The inscription from AlbaIulia in Transylvania is remarkable, where a Roman, Gaius Valerius Serapides, thanks the gods for having escaped easily from the hands of the Carpi: "a Carpis liberatus" [freed from Carpi], precisely because of the extreme energy of the Carpi, "Carporuni natio omnis" Et interea caesi Marcoinanui Carporuimpie natio omnis ui solum Komanum transjata est [And in the meantime the nation of Marcoinanus Carporuimpie was slain, and all the people who lived there were crossed over to the Komans alone] from Aurelius Victor (Epitome De Caesaribus) cannot be taken in a literal sense. However, we must understand that most were taken out of Dacia, but not all. A certain number remained in the inaccessible shelter of the mountains. It reappeared in Zossimus (New History, IV, 34 [11]) in the age of the Huns in alliance with other barbarians. However, most of the Carpathians once crossed the Danube; they never returned, walking towards Illyria in the footsteps of their Costoboci brothers, next to whom they formed the northern branch of the Albanians: the Gheghi.

The name Karp means "vulture" in Albanian. This word has remained almost intact to this day: karbă
"eagle, (French:) aigle, (German:) Adler" [(Greek:) chrysaetos] in folk songs of Culuriotis. This name of "vultures or eagles," birds of prey, was very appropriate for a mountain tribe, the cruelest and most unbridled of the Dacians. It is worth noting that even with the current Albanians, with the Gheghi in particular, their common name Şkiipetar comes from şkiipa, "eagle." Şkipetar is simply a synonym for "Karp": "die Skipetaren als das Adlervolk erscheinen," [the Skipetars appear as the eagle people] says the Albanian Stier.

It is important to note that the Gheghi, the posterity of the Carpi, do not themselves bear the name of Ghegă, which the Tosks give with a kind of contempt, as Hahn tells us: "diese Benennung wird eigentlich nur von dem Sudalbanesen gebraucht, der Gege halt sie fuer unehrenhaft und nennt sicii selbst Skipetar". [12] But the old name of Gheghi is only "vulture," either Carp or Schipetar, two forms for the same meaning. The term karp "eagle" is becoming rare in speech. The Gheghi did nothing but replace it with the
widespread synonym šiciipa "eagle," the background remains the same.

First, the Costoboci, then the Carpi, two distinct dialects already in the Dacian era, settled in Illyria, establishing the new nation of the Albanians in both branches: Tosci and Gheghi, already before AD 300. A third Dacian tribe had left Dacia at about the same time as the emperor Aurelian. However, he lingered longer on the southern shore of the Danube, and later he stopped in the Rhodope Mountains. These were the so-called Bessi, who were pure Dacians; therefore, they should not be confused with the previous Bessi, described in Herodotus: Thracians and those, but not Dacians. In Caesar's time, the Dacians constituted a mighty empire in the Carpathian region, so there were also the Bessi Dacians among them, while at that time - according to the contemporary Strabo ([Book 7. Chapter 12) - The Bessi Thracians lived far from the Danube in the Balkans, where the geographer explains very precisely their borders.

Mr. Tomaschek commits a serious error in not distinguishing the Bessi Dacians from the Bessi Thracians; better to say, the eminent professor from Vienna commits here one of the fundamental errors, of which there are quite a few in his successive studies about Bessi. Nevertheless, I note right from the start, that in the present case, we are dealing only with the Bessi Dacians, whom Ptolemy places not only in the Carpathians: "εἶτα Πιενγῖται καὶ Βίεσσοι παρὰ τὸν Καρπάτην τὸ ὄρος," [Book 3, Δακίας θέσις θ] whom therefore Trajan had found among the Dacians, and who also among the Dacians we see appearing in the era of the Marcomannic war at Capitolinus, as Mr. Tomaschek himself testifies in passing.

The name of these Bessi from Dacia immediately recalls the Albanian word bessă , which means "faith" and constantly circulates in Albanians' mouths as their most familiar oath. The late Ioan Nenițescu, in his journey through Turkey (p. 478), tells us: "The foreign traveler, when he walks through the parts of Northern Albania, takes as his guide an Albanian, who, after giving him his word: bessa-bess, must die defending it."

As a Dacian, the Bessa word with the same sense of faith, with the same sense of oath, was preserved among the Romanians as a popular provincialism. In the precious Romanian-Banățian dictionary, written near Lugoș or Caransebeș around 1670, the word abesh appears without explanation. Researching, I was able to verify that until today it is heard very often in the eastern part of Banat. Banat resident Sofronie Ljuba from Maidan wrote to me: "Abeș is used in speech as an affirmative adverb. For example, I hate that I call people stupid and do not call them in vain. Also, when one says something, the other affirms the word, saying: abeş!"

Therefore, abeș means: before the law, on honor, on faith, "ma foi, en vérité," exactly the Albanian affirmative adverb: bessa-bess! besa për besa! By omission, I said in Etymologicum Magnum that bessa is
preserved among Albanians only in the Tosk dialect. It's not like that. The word is also widespread in the Ghegh dialect, common to Albanians. Romanians adding the preposition a (=lat. ad), the Banatian Abeş will literally say: "ad fidem," while the Albanian pár bess = "per fidem".

After crossing the Danube, the Bessians were in no hurry to move away. For some time, they remained close to the great river. In the 6th century, Jordanes knew from an earlier well that the language of the
Bessians could explain the name of the Danube: "Danuvius qui lingua Bessorum Hister vocatur" XXXVII. [13]

This word is of extreme importance. It was not the Bessians who called it the Ister, which has existed since prehistoric times through the age of the Argonauts. However, Jordanes tells us that in the language of the Bessi, there is the word Ister with a meaning applicable to this river. In truth, Albanian i-sterhă is an articulated adjective, which means "very black," (Germ:) "tiefschwarz," or "deep" concerning water, as in Greek, a deep water was called "black" or "μέλαν ὓδωρ." In Ister in Bessi we see not only the Albanian adjective stēr, but even the adjectival prepositional article i of today's Albanian: I-stër = the deep one. The passage in Jordanes sheds light on the linguistic identity between the Bessi and the Albanians. Instead of the Ister in Albanian, Mr. Tomaschek ran with the Bessian word to the Ossetians from the Caucasus!

Jordanes also speaks about the emperor Leon the Thracian from the middle of the fifth century: "Leo Bessica ortus progenie," meaning "Leo, the offspring of Bessi" (Jordanes Romanorum, Chapter 14, 105).

D. Tomaschek also adds that the Byzantine Malala [§ 14.369] also calls Emperor Leo Bess: "ὁ Βῆσσος" [After the reign of Marcian, the most godlike Leo the great, Bessos]. However, in this regard, the most important source is forgotten, namely Candidus Isauricus, a historian contemporary with the emperor Leo himself, who tells us that he was a Dacian from Illyria: "ὃς ἧν ἐκ Δακίας τῆς ἐν Ἰλλιυρίοις," not from the Balkans, nor Rhodope. This Bess of Illyria was Albanian, like the Costoboci and the Carpodacii. The Bessians were then no longer near the Danube, but in the direction of the Adriatic Sea. [14]

All that can interest us from Mr. Tomaschek's research on Bessi is only the collection of data relative to the Christianization of this people, from which the Belgian Jesuit Van den Gheyn then reproduced them. Both, however, always avoid emphasizing that these Bessi were Dacians who came explicitly from Trajan's Dacia.

At the time of Herodotus, the Dacians and Daco-Bessians could not live in the Carpathians because a heterogeneous race of the Agatirsi lived there. They were still south of the Danube, but under what kind of name among the other Thracian peoples? If we admit that in that period of their history they were "καὶ Θρᾳκῶν τῶν μαχαιροφόρων τοῦ Διακοῦ γένους ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας" according to Thucydides (VII, 27), who distinguishes them among the Thracians as "καὶ μαχαιροφόρων, οἳ Δῖοι καλοῦνται" (II, 96), i.e., "bearers of swords," such a characteristic weapon of the Dacians on the Trajan Column, in this hypothesis, we will also admit the Daco-Bessi under the name of Diobessi (=Dio-Bessi) in Pliny, where even there they are not confused with the Bessi proper. Be that as it may, Mr. Tomaschek's pan-Bessian theory is destroyed by a robust and rigorous line of demarcation between the Traco-Bessi and the Daco-Bessi.

The Arnauts (medieval term for Albanians), strong and brave as always, are mentioned under the name of Bessi more than once, either as isolated soldiers or as numerous bands, in the Byzantine writers until the middle of the 6th century, as a completely different nationality from the other ethnicities of the Balkan Peninsula, and even as a separate ethnicity from the other Thracians, namely in Theophanes [Chronicles] 145, 17-20: στρατιὰ Γότθων τε καὶ Βέσσων καὶ ἑτέρων Θρακίων ἐθνῶν. In the year AD 539, the name of Bessi disappears. Over five centuries, in 1079, the name of Arnăuti (Arnaut) appears in Byzantine history: Ἀρβανῖται.

Here is the entire genesis of the Albanians: three Dacian peoples — Costoboci, Carpi, and Bessi, wandered from the Carpathians in the era of Emperor Aurelian. First, over 150 years, they had already collaborated here in Traian Dacia to form the Romanian ethnicity. From the year AD 300 to the great Scanderbeg, the national hero of the Arnauts, almost 1200 years had passed. In such a dozen centuries, standing still in the same place in Illyria, it is not surprising that the posterity of the Dacians came to
believe that they were autochthonous on the shores of the Adriatic so that Scanderbeg wrote to an Italian prince: "You do not know my Albanians! We descend from those Macedonians, who conquered India with our Alexander." [15] Today, history disproves the Arnauts' Macedonianism but still recognizes their no less illustrious lineage. A new Scanderbeg might say to them: "We bear the name of Decebalus, who had made the Roman empire tributary and had scared Trajan himself!"

I stop here. I will return in my later study: "Who are the Serbs and Bulgarians?" especially in the conference: "Romanians from Pannonia," where we will analyze the new confirmatory text of the Byzantine Kekaumenos.

The Albanians, however, are not just related to us, the Romanians. However, they are our good brothers from the same Dacian blood. The Albanians are to us what the Celts are to the French.

In closing, I will draw two topical conclusions:

1°. Any Romanian philologist, no matter how serious or how methodical, will go completely astray, especially in terms of grammar, if he does not first study the Albanian language in all its dialects, as well as Albanian folklore;

2°. The Romanian nation owes a brotherly support to the Albanians, as it supports the Macedonian-Romanians, who, the Macedonian-Romanians and the Albanians, have always loved each other and could together very well, "If they were revived" form one day a beautiful neo-Dacian kingdom of 3-4 million, joined the current neo-Hellenic kingdom.

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[1] Vasil Tole, "Edhe një herë rreth himnit tonë kombëtar".

[2] Nacijonalne Maglice. Sredovječna plemena Albanije i Crne Gore, AND Srbi I Arbanasi (Njihova Simbioza u Srednjem Vijeku), 1925.

[3] Original text and translation Dio Cassius
ὅτι Ἄστιγγοι, ὧν Ῥᾶός τε καὶ Ῥάπτος ἡγοῦντο, ἦλθον μὲν ἐς τὴν Δακίαν οἰκῆσαι ἐλπίδι τοῦ καὶ χρήματα καὶ χώραν ἐπὶ συμμαχίᾳ λήψεσθαι, μὴ τυχόντες δὲ αὐτῶν παρακατέθεντο τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ τοὺς παῖδας τῷ Κλήμεντι ὡς καὶ τὴν τῶν Κοστουβώκων χώραν τοῖς ὅπλοις κτησόμενοι, νικήσαντες δὲ ἐκείνους καὶ τὴν Δακίαν οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐλύπουν.

The Astingi, led by their chieftains Ratis and Raptus, came into Dacia with their entire households, hoping to secure money and land in return for their alliance. But failing of their purpose, they left their wives and children under the protection of Clemens until they should acquire the land of the Costoboci by their arms. However, upon conquering those people, they proceeded to damage Dacia no less than before.

[4] Original text and translation Pausanias
10,34,5 (Phocis and Ozolian Locri)] τὸ δὲ Κοστοβώκων τε τῶν λῃστικῶν τὸ κατ᾽ ἐμὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐπιδραμὸν ἀφίκετο καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν Ἐλάτειαν: ἔνθα δὴ ἀνὴρ Μνησίβουλος λόχον τε περὶ αὑτὸν ἀνδρῶν συνέστησε καὶ καταφονεύσας πολλοὺς τῶν βαρβάρων ἔπεσεν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ. οὗτος ὁ Μνησίβουλος δρόμου νίκας καὶ ἄλλας ἀνείλετο καὶ Ὀλυμπιάδι πέμπτῃ πρὸς ταῖς τριάκοντά τε καὶ διακοσίαις σταδίου καὶ τοῦ σὺν τῇ ἀσπίδι διαύλου: ἐν Ἐλατείᾳ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ δρομέως Μνησιβούλου χαλκοῦς ἕστηκεν ἀνδριάς.

[10,34,5] An army of bandits called the Costoboes, who overran Greece in my day, visited, among other cities, Elateia. A certain Mnesibulus gathered a company of men around him and put many of the barbarians to the sword, but he fell in the fighting. This Mnesibulus won several prizes for running, including prizes for the foot race and the double race with shield, at the two hundred and thirty-fifth Olympic festival. In the running at Elateia, there stands a bronze statue of Mnesibulus.

[5] Metathesis, both of consonants and of vowels, or of whole syllables, are among the terms of endearment which very often manifest themselves in Albanian words

[6] The Marcomanni were slain, and the whole nation of the Carpi was transferred to our soil, almost a part of which had already been taken by Aurelian.

[7] When he saw Illyricum devastated and Moesia destroyed, he left the province across the Danube, Dacia, established by Trajan, with a raised army and provincials, despairing of being able to retain it: and having taken the people from it, he placed it in Moesia, and called it his own Dacia..."

[8] This whole passage is a little obscure for our author

[9] Twelve books of commentaries on the Roman Republic, Frankfurt 1598, p.34: "When he saw the Illyricum devastated and Moesia destroyed, he left Dacia, a province across the Danube, established by Trajan, with an army of provincials, despairing of being able to retain it. He placed the people abducted from it in Moesia, and called it his Dacia."

[10] Vopiscus is a Roman praenomen, signifying a twin child born safe, while the other twin died before birth. (Plin. Nat. 7.8. s. 10; Solin. 1.; Val. Max. Epit. De Nominum Ratione, pp. 878, 879, ed. Torrenius.) Like many other ancient Roman praenomens, it was afterward used as a cognomen.

[11] Zosimus (Greek Ζώσιμος): Early Byzantine, pagan author of a history of the Roman Empire, published in the first quarter of the sixth century CE.

[12] This name is really used only by the South Albanians, who consider it dishonorable and call it Skipetar themselves

[13] The whole sentence is: The Danube in the language of the Bessi is called Ister, and it has profound waters in its channel to a depth of quite two hundred feet or 60 meters.

[14] Leo I, also known as "the Thracian," was the Roman emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from AD 457 to 474. He was a native of Dacia Aureliana near historic Thrace.

[15] Alexander the Great, whose name is frequently abbreviated to Leka in Albanian, inspired the name of the lek. The face of the 1-lek coin featured a portrait of Alexander, and the reverse featured him mounted on a horse.

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About Marcus A. Templar
Professor Marcus A. Templar is a former U.S. Army Cryptologic Linguist (Language Analyst), Signal Intelligence and All-Source Intelligence Analyst. During his career as a U.S. Intelligence Officer, besides organizational duties, he discharged the responsibilities of a U.S. Army Observer/Controller, Instructor of Intelligence Courses specializing in Deconstruction of Strategies, Foreign Disclosures Officer, and Translator Interpreter of Serbo-Croatian. He is the Macedonian League's National Security Advisor.

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About the Macedonian League
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