Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see below for more about names) are a population group in Greece whose linguistic heritage is Arvanitic, a form of Albanian. Arvanites are predominantly Greek Orthodox Christians and identify as Greeks. They used to be the predominant population element in some regions in the south of Greece up to the 19th century. Today, Arvanites have become largely assimilated into the Greek nation. Their language is under danger of extinction due to language shift towards Greek and due to large-scale migrations into the cities.
Many Arvanites characterise the Arvanite settlements in Greece as a "modern Dorian invasion".
"''Είναι ακόμα Υδραίοι αγωνιστές, ο προπάππους του (Νίκου Εγγονόπουλου) Περραιβός και ο ήρωας των Αρβανιτών Σκεντέρμπεης (τιμώντας την αρβανίτικη, υδραίικη, καταγωγή του). «Είναι οι τελευταίοι Έλληνες Δωριείς» τον θυμάται να λέει για τους Αρβανίτες η Λένα Εγγονοπούλου σε εποχές «ανύποπτες» για τις πρόσφατες πολιτικές εξελίξεις.''" Some Greek and Arvanite authors go one step further, and have proposed theories that link the ultimate ancestors of the Arvanites with pre-Greek "Pelasgians" (Kollias 1983) and relate Arvanitic language with Ancient Greek. These views have little echo in mainstream scholarship to date.The "Pelasgian" view is currently propagated by the largest association of Greek Arvanites (Αρβανιτικός Σύνδεσμος Ελλάδος). It has quoted a self-published study (Stylos, no date, see and inscriptions, among them the famous Dipylon inscription (which all other scholarship agrees to be Greek), are in fact written in Arvanitic. See *," target="_blank" >and [http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/oi?ikey=141098®ion=13&bookid=26 for the accepted Greek readings.
Being Orthodox Christians, the Arvanites identified with the Greeks in their conflicts with Muslims during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Many Arvanites became national Greek heros, having played an important role fighting with the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence of 1821. With the formation of modern nations and nation states in the Balkans, Arvanites have come to be regarded as an integral part of the Greek nation. To identify as an 'Arvanites' in Greece is to identify with a constituent element of the Greek nation.
The history of the Arvanites or Albanites begins in Albania during the 13th century. The population of the region, entailing both Greeks and Albanians, undergoes large changes in the old system of factions and tight bonds that were developed during the previous centuries. A plethora of information can be gathered from Arvanitic songs, where the phara is belauded and the statutory promise besha, those two basic characteristics of those primarily agricultural and veterinarian communities.
The creation of the Despotate of Epirus is deemed by certain authors as a confirmation of the "ancient" bonds the Albanians and Greeks of the Byzantine Empire shared. These bonds entailed military collaboration where Greeks and Albanians fought together against Slavs and Venetians during the 1200s. Such military services did not benefit the people of the region. However, the aristocracy of the phares prospered since they were awarded court titles for their military services.
These aristocrats ruled over many regions and they progressively weakened the old administrative system. From traditional patriarchical leaders, they evolved into landlords. The new regime that the aristocracy imposed not only deprived the common people of their fortunes, but many times also resulted in their liberticide.
In their attempts to escape from these new conditions, the Arvanites were compelled to acquire nomadic habits. They saw immigration as the only solution to their problems created by the monopolizing of Albanian territories from ever more violent rulers. The Ottoman invasion was one more reason for the Arvanites' expatriation. During the 13th century, the Arvanites moved either volunteerly or involuntarily as a result of the numerous conflicts that were occurring in the Balkans. They kept their language intact while becoming Greek culturally, socially and nationally. Like the Vlachs, the Arvanites developed Greek national conscience and they self-identify as Greeks.
Leaders of phares, who for one reason or another kept the old traditions, assembled all of the peasants who were ready to begin a new course. The immigration via sea started around 1280 AD, and the land immigration peaked at the end of the 13th century since there are mentions of an Arvanitic presence in Thessaly in 1315 AD.
The Arvanite nomads migrate from Thessaly to Attica and from Acarnania to the south of the Peloponnese. Whether individually or en masse, these immigrations appear to be an escape reaction from social oppression that became intolerable or a reaction to the destruction of the old way of life that made the people feel disoriented.
The phares kept, along with their leaders, the Greek Orthodox faith, and they were thus entrenched in traditions. The rulers of the Albanian coastline were entrenched in Roman Catholicism. Thessaly was the first Greek region that accepted the migrations. According to Chalcocondylis, the Arvanites went from Thessaly to inner Macedonia up to Kastoria. They brought there their skills in agriculture. The waves of immigrants were not always welcome and were initially mistrusted in many areas. In other areas, they were received with open arms because their presence provided an important opportunity to restore the worn out lands with new workers.
Those who reached Peloponnese and settled in innaccessible mountainous areas, shaped compact teams. Often they had no scruples placing themselves under the sovereignty of a Greek ruler - often the direct descendant of an old Byzantine dynasty. Along with the rest of the Greeks they constituted a strong front of resistance against the Ottomans. With the adoption of a common ethos, the Greek-Albanian unions played an important role in the 1821 Greek War of Independence, as the Arvanites had completely accepted their origin.
The waves of immigrants were id not always peacefully disposed and initially in many areas they were received with mistrust. In other areas they were received with open arms, because their presence was an important opportunity to restore the worn out lands with new workforce. To sum up, Arvanites were an ideal supplier of workforce for Greece; they boosted demographically the local population and contributed considerably in his fight against the Ottoman forces. Greeks and Arvanites, accomplished through expostulations and compromises, to lead to a common life, without degrading the sovereign Greek character, whose assimilating power enabled many Arvanites to reached the top echelons of political and military ranks.
In 1897, the descendants of the Arvanites heroes of the Greek War of Independence, sign the manifesto of the Arvanitic league. Botsaris, Tzavelas and others support the previous call by forty Albanian beys to revolt against the Ottomans and join the Greek Kingdom.
Regions with a strong traditional presence of Arvanites in the south of Greece are found across in Attica, Boeotia, the north-east of the Peloponnese, the south of the island of Euboea and the north of the island of Andros. In parts of this area they formed a solid majority until c.1900. Within Attica, the capital Athens and its suburbs were partly Arvanitic until the late 19th century. There are also settlements in Phthiotis, Locris and several islands of the Saronic Gulf including Salamis.
Other groups of Arvanites live in the north of Greece in areas closer to Albania and the historical centers of contiguous Albanian populations (Banfi 1996). Some of them live in Epirus (Thesprotia and Preveza); in Florina/Konitsa (near the border of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia); and in some locations further east in Thrace. These settlements are believed to be of a later date than the southern ones (GHM 1995).
There are no reliable figures about the number of Arvanites in Greece today. The last official census figures available come from 1951. The number of active speakers of the Arvanitic language is believed to be much lower than the number of people who identify culturally as Arvanites owing to family tradition and local loyalties (see "Phara" below), and that number might be lower than the number of people of ultimately Arvanitic descent. The following is a summary of the widely diverging estimates (Botsi 2003: 97):
Like the rest of the Greek population, Arvanites have been emigrating from their villages to the cities and especially to the capital Athens. This has contributed to the loss of the language in the younger generation.
Arvanites refer to their place of origin as Arvanitia (today southern Albania and NW Greece). Sometimes they apply this term to the whole of Albania and/or Epirus. Arvanitia is also an alternate name for Akronafplia, Nafplion's Acropolis.
The name Arvanites and its Albanian/Arvanitic equivalents go back to an old ethnonym that was formerly used by all Albanians to refer to themselves. Albanians adopted the new name of Shqiptarë and the country name Shqipëria since the 15th century, after the Arvanitic populations had split off. The Arvanites kept the old, common name, as did the Albanophone settlers in Italy (Arbëreshë). The word stems of both Arvanites and Albanians, originally arb- (αρβ-) and alb- (αλβ-) have been attested as designations for people in the area of today's Albania since antiquity. (Polybius: Άρβων, Αρβωνίται; Ptolemy: Αλβανόπολις, Αλβανοί; for more details see: Origins of the name Albania). It is a matter of debate whether the two roots are ultimately cognate, or whether two accidentally similar roots were conflated with each other at a later date (Babiniotis 1998). In Byzantine Greek and in medieval Latin authors, reflexes of both roots are used synonymously for the people of today's Albania.Anna Comnena speaks of "Arbanitai" of the city of "Arbanon" in the Alexiad, Book IV; Michael Attaliates mentions both "Albanoi" and "Arbanitai". See also Botsi (2003: 18-20) for more references. However, some authors have argued that the earliest medieval mentionings of the name "Albanians" in Attaleiates may be referring to entirely different groups, as it was a common designation for 'strangers' in medieval Latin, and that originally only "Arbanitai" was used for all Albanians (Vranousi 1970). This usage continued in Greek until the 19th and early 20th century, with Αλβανοί ("Albanians") being used in formal registers and Αρβανίτες ("Arvanites") used in the more popular speech, but both used indiscriminately for both Muslim and Christian Albanophones.Euromosaic (1996); see also GHM (1995) for references. In the course of the formation of the modern nation-state societies, it became customary to use only "Αλβανοί" for the people of Albania, and only "Αρβανίτες" for the Christian Arvanites integrated into Greek society.
Arvanites are distinguished in Greece from Cham Albanians (Greek: "Τσάμηδες"), another group of Albanophones in the northwest of Greece. Unlike the Christian Arvanites, the Chams were predominantly Muslims and identified nationally as Albanians. Most Muslim Chams were expelled from Greece shortly before the end of the Second World War, after violent clashes and atrocities committed during and after Axis occupation.
There is some disagreement to what extent the term "Arvanites" legitimately also includes the small remaining Christian Albanophone population groups in Northwest Greece (Epirus and western Macedonia). Unlike the southern Arvanites, these speakers are reported to use the name Shqiptarë both for themselves and for Albanian nationals (Banfi 1996), although this is reported not necessarily to imply Albanian national consciousness (Kollias 1983). Moraitis (2002) reports that such speakers also use the name Arvanitis in their Greek, and the Euromosaic (1996) report notes that the designation Chams is today rejected by the group. The word Shqiptár is also used in a few villages of Thrace, where Arvanites migrated from the mountains of Pindos during the 19th century. Botsi (2003: 21) reports that the term "Arvanites" in its narrow sense includes only the populations of the compact Arvanitic settlement areas in southern Greece, according to the self-identification of those groups. The Ethnologue (identifies the present-day Albanian/Arvanitic dialects of Northwestern Greece (in Epirus and Lechovo) with those of the Chams. They are therefore classified linguistically together with standard Tosk Albanian, as opposed to "Arvanitika Albanian proper" (i.e. southern Greek Arvanitic). Nevertheless it reports that in Greek the Epirus varieties are also often subsumed under "Arvanitika" in a wider sense. It puts the estimated number of Epirus Albanophones at 10,000. "Arvanitic proper" ([http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=aat) is said to include the outlying dialects spoken in Thrace. Other sources (e.g. GHM 1995) subsume the Epirote Albanophones under the term Arvanites, although they note the different linguistic self-designation.
The decline of the Arvanitic language has been brought about by several factors. One is the demographic trend of movement towards the cities, breaking up some of the social ties of village communities. It is also reported that many Arvanites in past decades have maintained a stance of social self-deprecation of the traditional community language, encouraging younger generations to switch to the dominant language, Greek, which was associated with social mobility and modernity (Tsitsipis 1981, Botsi 2003). Especially earlier in the 20th century, Greek state institutions are reported to have sometimes followed a policy of actively discouraging and repressing the use of the Arvanitic language, most strongly under the nationalist Metaxas regime of 1936-1940 (GHM 1995; Trudgill/Tzavaras 1977).
While the Arvanitic language was commonly called Albanian in Greece until the 20th century, the wish of Arvanites to express their ethnic identification as Greeks has led to a stance of rejecting the identification of the language with Albanian as well. Breu (1985: 424) and Tsitsipis (1983) reported that many Arvanites had only very imprecise notions about how related or unrelated their language was to Albanian. Today, many Arvanites prefer to regard Arvanitic as different from Albanian. As Arvanitic is almost exclusively a spoken language, Arvanites also have no practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they do not use this form in writing or in media. The question of linguistic closeness or distance between Arvanitic and Albanian has come to the forefront especially since the early 1990s, when a large number of immigrants from Albania began to enter Greece and came into contact with local Arvanitic communities (cf. Botsi 2003, Athanassopoulou 2005).
Since the 1980s, there have been some organized efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of Arvanites.
Some foreign sources refer to Arvanites as Albanians,E.g. Schukalla (1993). as did older Greek authors up to the mid-20th century.E.g. Paschidis (1879), Poulos (1950). The view of Arvanites as an Albanian group is reported as wide-spread in Albania (Dimitras/Lenkova 1997). Arvanites themselves, however, have come to reject the designation as Albanians, and often also object to the term "minority" being applied to them. Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities (Trudgill/Tzavaras 1977) used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites, the authors did not identify a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'; this was partly due to religious differences between the Muslim majority of Albania and the Greek Orthodox faith of the Arvanites. Today, for Arvanites this identity is subordinated to that of being part of the Greek nation. Conversely, other Greeks regard the Arvanite element as an integral part of Greek nationhood. Levy (2000) dates the onset of this national integration into the early 19th century and Kollias (1983) to the 15th century following the death of Skanderbeg. No political desire to obtain any officially recognized minority status for themselves or protection for their language has been reported on the part of Arvanite groups. Attempts at making the Arvanites the topic of a political "ethnic minority" issue between Greece and Albania, which were made briefly during the 1990s under Albanian president Sali Berisha, were met with furious or amused rejection by public opinion in Greece.
The section about phara is based on Biris (1960) and Kollias (1983).
There are 4 music CDs featuring Arvanitic songs although the lyrics are often in Greek. There are no mass media in Arvanitic, although some local radio stations have occasionally broadcast Arvanitic songs. During the last decades there have been made some attempts to document Arvanitic songs, the most recent by Thanasis Moraitis.
Arvanitic songs share similarities with Arbëresh, Albanian and Greek Epirote music.
Maria Michael-Dede is an author of literature and an ethnologist. She has written two books about Arvanitic songs (1978) and the book The Greek Arvanites (1997).
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