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Of Time, Honor, and Memory: Oral Law in Albania

2008; Center for Studies in Oral Tradition; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ort.0.0017

1542-4308

Fatos Tarifa,

Byzantine Studies and History

Of Time, Honor, and Memory:Oral Law in Albania Fatos Tarifa (bio) This essay provides a historical account of the role of oral tradition in passing on from generation to generation an ancient code of customary law that has shaped and dominated the lives of northern Albanians until well into the mid-twentieth century. This traditional body of customary law is known as the Kode of Lekë Dukagjini. It represents a series of norms, mores, and injunctions that were passed down by word of mouth for generations and reputedly originally formulated by Lekë Dukagjini, an Albanian prince and companion-in-arms to Albania's national hero, George Kastriot Skanderbeg (1405-68). Lekë Dukagjini ruled the territories of Pulati, Puka, Mirdita, Lura, and Luma in northern Albania-known today as the region of Dukagjini-until the Ottoman armies seized Albania's northernmost city of Shkodër in 1479. Throughout the past five to six centuries this corpus of customary law has been referred to as Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit, Kanuni i Malsisë (the Code of the Highlands), or Kanuni i maleve (the Code of the Mountains). The "Code" is an inexact term, since Kanun, deriving from the Greek kanon, simultaneously signifies "norm," "rule," and "measure." The Kanun, but most particularly the norm of vengeance, or blood taking, as its standard punitive apparatus, continue to this day to be a subject of historical, sociological, anthropological, and juridical interest involving various theoretical frames of reference from the dominant trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to today. The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini was not the only customary law in Albania. Some regions in the north attributed theirs to Skanderbeg (Kanuni i Skënderbeut-the Code of Skanderbeg), and in the south another Code (Kanuni i Labërisë-the Code of Labëria) was enforced, although not as rigidly as the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini. Although the latter two are little known, they, too, are worthy of sociological and anthropological attention. Before the Ottoman Turks invaded Albania over 600 years ago, the country was divided into several petty principalities, none of which was sufficiently strong for long enough to subject a neighboring territory to its rule. Faced with the danger of Ottoman invasion, Skanderbeg was able to unite all of the Albanian princes and their territories under his unchallenged leadership in a single state. Lekë Dukagjini was one of his closest friends and allies. They both were Christian crusaders and resisted the whole force of the Ottoman army for a quarter of a century. Although the Ottomans finally conquered Albania ten years after the death of Skanderbeg, they were unable to exert more than a nominal authority outside the main towns, and certainly not in the remote highlands of northern Albania, which formed the northwestern corner of Ottoman Turkey in Europe. As Edith Durham, to whom we owe essentially the first in-depth interest and study on Albania's customary law, has put it, "the mountain tribesman has never been more than nominally conquered-and is still unsubdued. Empires pass over him and run off like water from a duck's back" (Durham 1910:453).1 Like other foreign invaders before them, the Turks barely bothered with the highlanders of northern Albania. A number of authors point to the fact that there were no roads2 along which the Ottoman forces, strong enough to be effective, could march in order to reduce them to real submission. Johnson (1916:36) writes: The conquering arm of the Turk[s] reduced the Bulgarian inhabitants of open plains to complete subjection within a comparatively short time; but a century and a quarter was required to secure a less firm hold upon the mountains of Serbia, while the inaccessible wilds of Albania and Montenegro were never completely subjected to Turkish power. As Margaret Hasluck3 points out, "the Turkish government, unable to enforce its will, accepted the situation and left the mountaineers to govern themselves, as they had presumably done under their native princes and chiefs" (1954:9). In reading the Kanun, Lekë Dukagjini appears as a kind of Albanian Moses, whose teachings were recorded in the memories of elders, the tribal elite, and in the mountains of northern...