Gorani people

This article is about Goran, an ethnic group in the Balkans. For other uses, see Gorani.

Goran

Regions with significant populations
Languages
Albanian / Shqip, Našinski / Slavic
Religion
Muslim
Related ethnic groups
Albanian, Torbesh, Pomaks, Torlaks of Macedonian and Bulgarian ethnicity

The Goran, or Gorani, are a Balkan ethnic group characterised by their adherence to Islam and by their dwelling in the border region between Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. The region is generically referred to as Gora (meaning "mountain" in Slavic), now known as Gora-Dragaš. In turn, the people are called Goran,Gorani, or malesor, meaning Mountain People or Highlanders.

The origin of the Goran is disupted. This is verified by the many regional ethnic groups including the [Serbs]] who claim the Goran as their own, often based on tedious assertions and socio-linguistic or geographic rationalizations. The Slavic migrations southward into the Balkans began in the 6th and 7th centuries, which certainly limits the notion of any sustained Slavic presence, historically-speaking, in the Balkans.

The historical record has long proferred the possibility of an early Illyrian society in the region, perhaps pre-dating the Greek presence (which would debunk the hitherto sacred notion of a Greek primacy in Europe). The bulk of historiography in the 20th and 21st centuries seems to confirm this reasoning, following recent excavations in northern and southern Albania (i.e. Butrint). Many historians and anthropologists have studied the region and its history including many reputed German Albanologists, and other linguistic, anthropological, archaeological, sociological scholars including Braudel, Durham, Lane, Hobsbawm, Gibbon, Vickers, Pettifer, Pipa, May, Kaser, and many others. These note with some unanimity the likelihood that pre-Slavic Balkan peoples - i.e. today's Gorani, Bosniaks, some Croat elements, and Albanians - derive in whole or part from the Illyrian tribes which proliferated in the region. The fabled province of Illyricum was mentioned by St. Paul and Napoleon Bonaparte, and among other works of literature, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

During the Ottoman rule of Europe which began in roughly the 15th century, which followed the previous Islamic presence in Spain under the Moors, many communities accepted Islam. In the Balkans, the ease with which communities and individuals left Christianity indicates a possible shallow religious feeling, the possibility of preferential treatment as Muslims in a Muslim empire, or the point not often considered, i.e. that Balkan peoples who became Muslim did so for simple reasons of spiritual attachment. Regardless the rationale, the Muslim populations in the Balkans, including the Goran, represents Europe's largest concentration of Islamic peoples.

The Gorani homeland comprises the following countries and districts:

Kosova: southern Kosova, just south of Prizren.

Republic of Macedonia: north-western Macedonia, especially the Šar Planina region near Tetova.

Albania: north-eastern Albania, most notably in Shishtavec (or:Local Slavic: Шиштејец, Šištejec) in Kukës County.

Etymology

The word Gora, the name of the region in the south-west Balkans, means simply: 'the Mountains' or 'the Highlands', and so the word the Gorantsi (Goranci, Cyrillic: Горанци) - more usually rendered as the Gorani in English, or sometimes as the Gorans - for the name of its people: 'Mountain People' or 'Highlanders.'

History

The Gora is the region inhabited by the Goran, and also that which Slavic peoples and many Albanians (including Goran themselves) use to identify the native people (Goran). The region, Gora, is mentioned in 1348 at the edict of Serbian Emperor Stefan Dušan, along with seven other Goran-populated villages that were subsumed by the Monastery of Saint Archangel at Prizren at that time. The area called Gora was subsequently overrun during the Slavic hordes that began en masse in the 6th-7th centuries, compounded by the related Bulgarian invasions of the Balkans - many of which extended deep into what is now southern Albania) which soon followed. These invasions, lasting hundreds of years, seem to explain the appropriation of the Slavic language by the Goran which allowed them to maintain their distinct culture and remain as stewards of their lands.

In 1455, Gora was conquered from the Serbian Despotate by the Ottoman Turks and became a part of the Beylerbeyluk of Rumelia, or specifically, the Sanjak of Prizren. The process of natural assimilation into Ottoman society henceforth began, mostly at the end of the 16th century. And following the trend of Balkan peoples, the conversion from Serbian Orthodoxy through the process of Islamization was rapid, with dozens of mosques springing up across the Gora region (many have had to be rebuilt, due to the devastating Serb invasions of the late 19th century, which destroyed many of the area's mosques, and also the oppressive conditions of Albania during Hoxha's regime). The Goran continue to maintain a religious hybridity of sorts - while steadfast Muslims, they continue to maintain and observe a number of Christian traditions and holidays, blended in a manner quite common in Albanian culture (see Rose Wilder Lane, Edith Durham, and Miranda Vickers), with observance of certain Saint's days and their acknowledging of the Bogomil.

Because of Gora's highly isolated location in and around Albania's mountainous northern region, the difficult terrain aided the Goran in resisting first the Slavic and later the Ottoman invasions. Migrations to escape the Ottoman invasion did occur, as they did in Albania in the 14th century, when many Albanians fled to Italy, Egypt, Syria and the Ukraine. These migrations were repeated several centuries thenceforth when many Goran, hemmed in by both Yugoslav and Albanian authoritarian regimes, fled the region. Many surfaced in America, where a significant diaspora has emerged (primarily in California). Migrations from Gora during the Ottoman era resulted in two significant waves: the first towards Prizren and Sirinić, and the other towards Tetovo. The latter populated the Macedonian settlements of Dolno, Palčište and Tearce. Their descendants still populate that part of the Republic of Macedonia. Gorani colonists have migrated and populated on the eastern side of the Shar mountain the colonies of Urvič and Jelovjane.

In the First Balkan War in 1912 the Serbian Army seized Gora. A minor part of the Gorani population migrated to the Ottoman Empire as a result. In the 1916-1918 First World War the Gora was conquered by the Central Powers and assigned to a Greater Bulgaria. After 1918 they were integrated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The troubles under Bulgarian occupation, as well as the difficult period between 1919-20 were characterized by drought, causing famine and much poverty for the Gorans. This paradigm also incited migrations to Kosova's larger city, Prizren and Tetovo in Macedonia. Disease and hunger in the post-communist era in Albania have caused a general downfall of the Gorani population, mostly due to in-migration out of villages for urban centers like Shkodra and Tirana.

By the decision of the League of Nations however, in 1925, the final border towards Albania was established. In it, over 15,000 Gorans remained in Albania's borders in their 9 villages: Borje, Zapod, Košarište, Novo Selo, Orgosta, Orešek, Pakiša, Crneljevo and Šištevac on demand of Fascist Italy, despite the local Gorani community's desire to remain together undivided.

In 1999 after the NATO bombing campaign on FRY, the UNMIK took over international administration of the Serbian province of Kosova. Their own municipality was redrawn and Dragaš established, in which now Albanians are in majority. The Gora has received migrations of Albanians from Albania, and reports of killings and mistreatment of the Gorani by Albanian paramilitaries were subsequently recorded, though never verified. In 2007 the Kosovar provisional institutions opened a school in Gora to teach the Bosnian language, which sparked minor consternation amongst the Gorani population, added by the fact that the Principal declares as an Albanian. Many Gorans refuse to send their children to school for threats of assimilation and self-initially founded home schools for their young. In 1999 and over the years altogether, over 6,500 Gorans have fled to Serbia proper along with many Serb and Romani refugees.

Language

A geographical distribution of the Torlak dialect in former Yugoslavia, with marked Gora area

The Gorani spoken dialect is called "Nasinske", which means "Ours" (Нашински). It is a blended linguistic form with ample signs of language attrition. Some influences noted in today's spoken Nasinske include the Torlak, a dialectic blend of Serbian, and even some Turkish, Arabic, Albanian, and Bulgarian etymological traces. Most Goran in the region of Gora now speak Albanian as their mother tongue, though statistics on exactly how many is still unknown. According to the last 1991 Yugoslav census, 54.8% of the inhabitants of the Gora municipality said that they spoke the Gorani language, while little less than half the inhabitants of Gora declared that their native tongue is Serbian The UN administration in Kosova, UNMIK, has redrawn internal boundaries in the province in such a way that a Gorani-majority municipality no longer exists. The Gora was combined with the neighbouring Albanian-populated region of Opolje (some 20,000 people) into a new subdivision named Dragaš, which again has an Albanian majority.

The Gorani have a strong national patriotic feeling for themselves, but after centuries of assimilation they are divided among a minority who consider themselves Slavic, and the majority that promote a distinct Albanian-Gorani ethnic identity owing in the latter case to the previously noted historical contention on a shared Illyrian pedigree.

In Albania, the Goran occupy eleven villages centered around Shishtavec in the Kukës region.

Gorani diaspora

The Gora is an underdeveloped region and for almost two centuries, its male inhabitants would go off to more distant regions in order to find work. Due to this, a true Gorani diaspora has come to life with many living in parts of Central Serbia (particularly Belgrade: 3,340), Vojvodina (606), Republic of Macedonia (particularly the Western parts), Italy and Turkey, and following escape from communist Albania and socialist Yugoslavia in the late-1940s, America (particularly New York and Los Angeles).

Culture & Religion

Like many Balkan peoples prior to the invasion of the Romans and the forced conversions to Christianity, the existence of many pantheistic sects and worship of the sun god existed. Following the forced conversion to the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, which followed the schism in 1054, the Goran embraced Islam under the Ottoman Empire and remain today exclusive followers of the Islamic faith. However, the Goran still tangentially observe the Orthodox tradition, the slava, in specific Saint George's Day (Djurdjevdan).

Traditional Goran folk music includes a two-beat dance called "kolo" ('circle'), which is a circle dance focused on the foot movements: it always starts on the right foot and moves in an anti-clockwise direction. Kolo is usually accompanied by instrumental music made often with a Zurle or Kaval and Tapan or Davul, kolos are less frequently accompanied by singing as they are in neighboring ethnic groups such as the Albanians and Serbians.

Notable Gorani

• Fahrudin Jusufi, football player
• Miralem Sulejmani, football player
• Harun Hasani, academician

See also

• Torlaks

References

• Нексхат Ибрахими, Първи контакти на исляма с Балканските нации
• Хюсеин Мехмед. Помаците и торбешите в Мизия, Тракия и Македония., С., 2007.

External links

• Gora Cafe
• Website of Gorani people, self identifying as Bulgarian
• GORA-BROD
• Project Rastko - Gora, E-library of culture and tradition of Gora and Gorani people
• Gorani (Nasencite) Template:Bg icon
• A Travel among Goranis Template:Bs icon
• Gorani Fear Losing Identity, Adrian Kelmendi, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 21 February 2001
• The minorities within the minority, The Economist, 2 November 2006

Video clips

• Clip of the Gorani film Ofčarče
• Photo presentation with traditional Gorani music
• Another photo presentation of Gorani villages with traditional music PART I
• PART II "Setnja kroz goranske sela"
• Naša Gora — A beautiful photo presentation
• "Snimak iz Brodska Svadba 2007. Ekiba Onlinebrod prestava sa svoje snimci" — A Gorani wedding in Brod