Countess Befort, the first swallow of female travelers in Albania

Zylyftar Hoxha

The famous travels of Lord Byron and Cam Hobhouse in Albania at the beginning of the 19th century were followed by other travelers who, not like Byron, with romantic verses of his greatest work, "Travels of Čajlld Haroldit", but with notes and diaries they give their travel impressions of this country from the oldest and the most "strange", as they call Albania. Less visited was the north of Albania, which until then had been visited by only two Englishmen, one was the son of Th. S. Hughes and the other Dunn Gardner, but who had not published travel notes. All these travelers were male. Women started to come to Albania, somewhat later, there from the half of the 1863th century. And one of the first of these was the English Countess Emily Anne Beaufort, who gave her impressions in the book "The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863", published in London in 1864.

The book was started by her and was then completed by her husband, who wrote the last three chapters, since he had also made a similar trip to Albania and several countries in the Balkans that same year. These three chapters belong to northern Albania, where the countess could not come.

JANINA

At the beginning of May 1863, Amili arrived in Corfu and on June 1, a group of three English men and three women, together with a cook and two servants, left for Ioannina, which he calls the capital of southern Albania. In Saranda, only a few ruins remained from the former Venetian castle. In Delvina they stayed at the house of the mydir, then they took the road to Ioannina, remembering the verses of Byron and the monastery of Zica, which could not even be compared to the beauties of the surroundings of Delvina and Romanati.

Ioannina appeared to him from afar as a white marble city. There they visited the castle, the tomb of the body of Ali Pasha and at the foot of the hill of Saint George they remembered Bohemund, who had defeated the emperor Alex Komneni there in 1082. In the bazaar they attracted the best gold embroideries than anywhere else, but the city was so impoverished that the villagers now went all the way to Vlora to buy clothing. Even the silver works were of good quality, reminiscent of the shops that are still in Ioannina today.

On the island of Ioannina they found 7 monasteries, but without any monks. They entered the monastery of Pandelejmon and went up to the room full of bullet holes in the floor, where they killed Ali Pasha and kidnapped Vasiliqi, who was in the next room. She stayed two years in Istanbul, was allowed to go to Patras, and died there in misery in 1855.

"Albanians are a special people, not just a tribe, but a separate nation," she writes. With the general name Albanians, they are divided: in the north the Geges and in the south the Toscans. Most of them became Muslims in the c. XV". The author quotes the words of the historian Finlay (Finlej), that their morals were not such that they turned into greater criminals by becoming Muslims, and they are less fanatical than the Turks and less prejudiced than the Greeks. But Emilia calls the villagers lazy and ignorant, while among the citizens she has also noticed bright intelligent faces.

SHKODRA AND ULCINI

On June 23, the group landed in Vlora and the next day from there they stopped in Durrës for a walk. But they found the city a wretched center, with many hideous-looking Turks. The next day they reached Tivar. This was a town of only 250 houses, with about 4000 Albanian inhabitants, of whom two-thirds were Muslim. Here lay the dividing line between Turkey and Austria, and the group continued towards Dalmatia. The fourth chapter is dedicated to Montenegro.

On the way back to leave Montenegro, the countess came to Shkodër. He says that the city got its name from the hill of the castle, that is, it is "over the hill" and adds: "If this origin is correct, then it is curious and valuable, because it shows that today's Albanian is able to interpret a name which dates back as early as the days of the Roman Republic. "This reminds one of the interpretation of the German historian J. Falmerajer, according to which the epithet for the quick-footed Achilles in the language of Epirus was "aspete", meaning "quick".

The city of Shkodra had 4500 houses, but surrounded by walls, so that you could hardly see a window. The heat in the summer was scorching, that's why many people from Shkodra have a country house in Drisht. The Catholic inhabitants, about 12.000, had no church, while the Orthodox had a small church and a school. She calls the bridge over Kir extraordinary, "like a spider from one bank to the other", built in 1768.

Amili also mentioned Ulqin, inhabited entirely by Albanian Muslims, with a fleet of over 200 ships, while once these pirate sailors were the terror of Italy and the Adriatic.

Regarding the language, he notes: "Albanian is spoken in Shkodër." It differs from the language spoken in the south of Albania. In the mountainous regions, Albanian is spoken by the Catholics and Serbian by the Orthodox, while very few of the Muslims speak Turkish. Italian is spoken a lot in the cities, but not at all in the villages."

Muslim citizens wore fustanellas as well as southern Albanians. The silkworm grew only in northern Albania, while he notes that potatoes did not grow in Albania. Due to the heat, she was unable to make any drawings during that short stay in Shkodër. After a total of two weeks she finally left the eastern shores of the Adriatic.

OAT

From Ioannina, the group headed towards the mountains of Suli, for which she has given a romantic painting full of light. It especially marks the top of Tripa, from which the slujos were thrown to prevent the captives from being caught; the other peak was called Mali i Vetetimave and in the center was Qafa, the peak on which Ali Pasha had built a large castle.

The countess called the Suljots a tribe of Tosks, "fara", who turned into a military caste, which was also engaged in robbery. In 1792 they had become a sort of small republic, producing 1500 warriors. The author insists that the Suljots were simply Albanians and not Greeks, and the Orthodox Chams joined them. Ali Pasha destroyed them by trickery, dissension and attacks from time to time, events which she has summarized according to Martin-Lik and Finley. In Parga she has seen the most beautiful clothes, with cheerful light colors. He ends this part with nine tips for those who want to go as tourists to the southern Albanian countries, and among these seven he asks: "It is better to have a servant who speaks Albanian with you". He also noted the game animals that can be hunted in Vlora, Saranda, Butrint, etc., a list that is probably one of the first for the fauna of Albania.