Byzantium and the Emergence of Albania

Abstract

The subject to be considered here poses insurmountable problems of definition, since both Byzantium and Albania are concepts which change in a chameleon-like manner during the period under consideration.¹ The ‘Byzantines’ for instance would have referred to themselves as Romans (Romaioi), and unless the ‘Albanoi’ referred to by Ptolemy in the second century AD as inhabiting the area which is now central Albania were the ancestors of the later Albanians, the term ‘Albanian’ itself would not necessarily have meant very much to anyone living in the area between the fourth and eleventh centuries. The problem has been well recognised before, and Albania in particular is very difficult to define in either ethnological or geographical terms. Thus Popović² could write:

Parler du territoire de l’Albanie actuelle au crépuscule de l’Antiquité est pour des raisons diverses, une tâche aussi difficile qu’ingrate.