The glorious saga of the Muzaka family

Read too Muzakas in Slavic folktales and rhapsodies

From: Luan Rama

In medieval Frankish history, a place honored voice and the famous stradio player Muzaka, one of the sons of Gjon Muzaka, who was one of Skanderbeg's closest comrades-in-arms.

According to the well-known researcher of the history of Greece and Greek Albanians, Carl Hopf, in his book "Greco-Roman Chronicles" it is written about the son of Gjon Muzaka, Adrian, who was a captain of light cavalry in the service of the French king. He had under his command a troop of 300 Stradiotes, and with them he fought against the English in the north of France. But then it was learned that, poisoned, he died in the north of France, in Picardy, in 1526. Meanwhile, his brother named Constantine, as the historian Paolo Petta writes in his book "Despots of Epirus and Macedonia" ( Despoti d'Epirio e principi di Macedonia), was one of the few commanders who saved his troops and led them to France.

Who were these great leaders and what was their life like? Did Constantine finally stay in France? Where are you? Near the royal court? Perhaps one day the old archives will reveal to us new data about their exploits.

In his memoirs, Gjon Muzaka reminded his sons, but also history, that "when Albania was conquered by the Ottomans, he went to Naples to King Ferrante of Aragon, where he received him in his court and promised him a lot of land in Apicia". He also remembers that when he fled to Naples, "his son Theodhor was one and a half years old, Adrian one month old, while Konstantin was born in Naples". John Muzaka, who refused to change his religion as requested by the sultan, describes his and his family's escape in a romantic way... He escaped secretly at night, without being seen, there from 1476, taking a ship to cast off the coast of southern Italy. "My wife and your mother, Maria Dukagjini", he wrote, "She was pregnant with Don Adrian and in the last months of her pregnancy she was forced to flee to Durrës, not revealing who she was and took refuge in the house of some nobles, our friends, where she gave birth to Adrian. He was taken to the church to be baptized as a foundling child of some peasant, so much so that even the godparents did not know whose son he was. Don Theodori and Dona Helena also hid in the houses of other nobles. And when the messengers of the Turks came to the city to look for your mother with her sons, she hid herself on the bed of a feather bed, which, after being well arranged, did not give the impression that there was a person inside. The Turkish envoys searched the houses, but God mercifully wanted them not to be discovered. That's how she escaped the fury of the Turk and together with her children she did not fall into cruel hands. After some months, the above nobles, together with some good men who were our vassals, rented a ship, where they boarded the mother with the children and escorted them safely to Pulje".

The name of Gjon Muzaka is also found in the diaries of the Italian historian Sanudo where, in 1499, referring to the letter of governor Jacomo Lion, he wrote: "It is said that Gjon Muzaka, captain of Francavila, son of the late Muzak Arianiti, who had been lord of Muzeqe in Albania, was ready to go with 300 knights to Albania, in the service of our Lordship, promising to do a lot of work".

In fact, in 1498, he had once gone to the Albanian coast and after returning from this war, he wants to go again. In 1512, as written in a document, "Albanian Giovanni Musacchio" fights for the defense of Prato and in 1529 fights in Tuscany against the German troops of Emperor Maximilian. Regarding Teodoro the Albanian (Teodoro Musaçhio), it is written that in the years 1525-1526 he fought in the province of Piedmont, in Monferrato, Ceva, etc., at the head of 100 knights, where he also participated in the defense of Milan. But, in 1529, during a battle against Emperor Maximilian, he fell on the battlefield.

In other documents, there is talk of another son of Gjon Muzaka, Musaçhino di Musaçhio, who had fought against the Pisians, against the Venetians of Bartolomeo d'Alviano. He also fought against the Spanish in Prato and against the Germans in northern Italy. His last battle is the defense of Florence in 1530. Five years later it is written that he died.

In 1550, many years after the death of his father John Muzaka, Constantine added to this memory and other notes that belonged to the family and what happened next to them, as well as the other princes, where it is also mentioned about the son of Skënderbeu, John Kastrioti and his mother. "Know that my brother Adrian had a light cavalry of a hundred knights in the service of the king of France and that he was well paid both in war and in peace. And this one named Mr. Adrian Muzaka, died on the tenth of May, poisoned by some French gentlemen who served Monsignor Vendôme, to take his place and money, and that he had under him 12 thousand infantry. Others took the horses and the money. He was settled in the city of Bivilles, which is in the province of Picardy, where the said king had given him a castle called Mundi, near Monro and Bivilles. So he died on the tenth of May 1526".

In the Annals of Geographical and Historical Travels, Conrad Malte-Brun writes about the legendary captain the "old" Musachio (Musachio ancien et preux capitaine) and his cavalry of 500 horsemen, also mentioning one of his braves, Nicola Masi, "a captain full of courage", whose name in Albanian was "mëzi", "poledro"... The coat of arms of the Muzaka family was the two-headed eagle with a star in the middle.

A strange story happened to me with this coat of arms in the spring of 1992, at the Albanian Embassy in Paris. A Muzacai scion, whose family from Calabria had long since emigrated to France, came to the Embassy and brought me a large emblem of the Muzacai, cast in bronze. Since it was very heavy, we left it in the internal corridor of the Embassy, ​​but the five-pointed star, between the heads of the eagle, became disturbing for the former Albanian monarchist immigrants, who saw it as a communist symbol, i.e. a nostalgia for the era that had just passed. And then we removed the heavy emblem. But, in fact, that star was not added by that pinjoll as a sign of adoration for communist Albania. That star had the right to remain in the emblem since it had existed as such eight centuries earlier, since Byzantine times. Historian Xhufi writes that "since Andrea Muzaka had fought and defeated the Serbian army of Vukashin in 1369, in Perister, the Byzantine emperor had given Muzaka the imperial emblem: the double-headed eagle with a star in the middle". Surprisingly, the Byzantine era and the totalitarian era had met each other in a Parisian history…