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Arvanites (Greek: Αρβανίτες, see , a form of Albanian . Arvanites are predominantly Greek Orthodox Christians and identify as Greeks . They used to be the predominant population element in several regions in the south of Greece up to the 19th century. Today, their language is under danger of extinction due to language shift towards Greek and due to large-scale migrations into the cities. Foreign sources sometimes refer to Arvanites as Albanians,E.g. Schukalla (1993). as did some older Greek authors.E.g. Paschidis (1879), Poulos (1950). Today, however, Arvanites typically identify strongly as Greeks and may find the designation as Albanians offensive, and many of them also object to being considered an "ethnic minority". For the same reason, some also object to the designation of their language as a dialect of Albanian, preferring instead to regard it as a separate language. Many Albanians, on the other hand, prefer to view Arvanites as an Albanian minority group. HISTORY Arvanites in Greece are believed to originate from the Albanian-speaking settlers, who moved south at different times between the 11th century and the 15th century from what is today southern A.D. to 1418 A.D., 81,200 Arvanites, mercenary soldiers and their families, settled Greek lands after invitations from Byzantine emperors ( Palaeologus Dynasty), the Catalans and the Venetians Biris, Kostas (1960): ''Αρβανίτες, οι Δωριείς του νεότερου Ελληνισμού: H ιστορία των Ελλήνων Αρβανιτών''. the Dorians of modern Greece: History of the Greek Arvanites" . Athens. (3rd ed. 1998: ISBN 9602040319 ). Later movements are believed to have been motivated to evade Islamization after the Ottoman conquest. While most historians regard the ancestors of today's Arvanites as part of the same medieval population groups that are also the ancestors to present-day Albanians,See survey of the literature in Botsi (2003: 20-22) and GHM (1995). some Arvanite authors have argued that the settlers were not ethnic Albanians in a true sense. They hypothesize that Arvanites were either descendants of originally Greek populations who had only intermediately become Albanized; or that they were descendants of some other
"''Είναι ακόμα Υδραίοι αγωνιστές, ο προπάππος του (Νίκου Εγγονόπουλου) Περραιβός και ο ήρωας των Αρβανιτών Σκεντέρμπεης (τιμώντας την αρβανίτικη, υδραίικη, καταγωγή του). «Είναι οι τελευταίοι Έλληνες Δωριείς» τον θυμάται να λέει για τους Αρβανίτες η Λένα Εγγονοπούλου σε εποχές «ανύποπτες» για τις πρόσφατες πολιτικές εξελίξεις.''" . Being Orthodox Christians, Arvanites identified with the Greeks in their conflicts with Muslims during the time of the Ottoman Empire . Many Arvanites are credited with having played an important role fighting as Greeks in the Greek War Of Independence of 1821-1830. With the formation of modern nations and nation states in the Balkans, Arvanites have come to be regarded as an integral part of the Greek nation. DEMOGRAPHICS The regions traditionally inhabited by Arvanites in the south of Greece are found across large parts of Attica , Boeotia , the Peloponnese , the south of the island of Euboea and the north of the island of Andros . Within Attica, the capital Athens and its suburbs were partly Arvanitic until the late 19th century. There are also settlements in Phthiotis , Locris and several islands of the Saronic Gulf including Salamis . Other groups of Arvanites live in the north of Greece in areas closer to Albania and the historical centers of contiguous Albanian populations (Banfi 1996). Some of them live in Epirus ( Thesprotia and Preveza ); in Florina / Konitsa (near the border of the Republic Of Macedonia ); and in some locations further east in Thrace . These settlements are believed to be of a later date than the southern ones (GHM 1995). There are no reliable figures about the number of Arvanites in Greece today. The last official census figures available come from 1951. The number of active speakers of the Arvanitic language is believed to be much lower than the number of people who identify culturally as Arvanites owing to family tradition and local loyalties (see "Phara" below), and that number might be lower than the number of people of ultimately Arvanitic descent. The following is a summary of the widely diverging estimates (Botsi 2003: 97):
Like the rest of the Greek population, Arvanites have been emigrating from their villages to the cities and especially to the capital Athens . This has contributed to the loss of the language in the younger generation. NAMES The name Arvanites and its equivalents are today used both in Greek ('''Αρβανίτες''') and in Arvanitic itself ('''Arbërorë''', spelled '''Αρbε̰ρόρε̰''' in the Greek-based Arvanitic Alphabet ). In Standard Albanian, the name is '''Arvanitë'''. Arvanites are thus distinguished from ethnic Albanians, who are called '''Shqiptarë''' in Arvanitic and in Standard Albanian, and '''Alvaní''' (Αλβανοί) in Greek. The name Arvanites and its Albanian/Arvanitic equivalents go back to an old ethnonym that was formerly used by all Albanians to refer to themselves. Albanians adopted the new name of '''Shqiptarë''' and the country name '''Shqipëria''' since the 15th century, after the Arvanitic populations had split off. The Arvanites kept the old, common name, as did the Albanophone settlers in Italy ('''Arbëreshë'''). The word stems of both Arvanites and '''Albanians''', originally ''arb- (αρβ-)'' and ''alb- (αλβ-)'' have been attested as designations for people in the area of today's Albania since antiquity. (''). It is a matter of debate whether the two roots are ultimately cognate, or whether two accidentally similar roots were conflated with each other at a later date (Babiniotis 1998). In Byzantine Greek and in medieval Latin authors, reflexes of both roots are used synonymously for the people of today's Albania. Anna Comnena speaks of ''"Arbanitai"'' of the city of "Arbanon" in the ''Alexiad'', Book IV; Michael Attaliates mentions both ''"Albanoi"'' and ''"Arbanitai"''. See also Botsi (2003: 18-20) for more references. However, some authors have argued that the earliest medieval mentionings of the name ''"Albanians"'' in Attaleiates may be referring to entirely different groups, as it was a common designation for 'strangers' in medieval Latin, and that originally only ''"Arbanitai"'' was used for all Albanians (Vranousi 1970). This usage continued in Greek until the 19th and early 20th century, with Αλβανοί ("Albanians") being used in formal registers and Αρβανίτες ("Arvanites") used in the more popular speech, but both used indiscriminately for both Muslim and Christian Albanophones. ''Euromosaic'' (1996) ; see also GHM (1995) for references. In the course of the formation of the modern nation-state societies, it became customary to use only "Αλβανοί" for the people of Albania, and only "Αρβανίτες" for the Christian Arvanites integrated into Greek society. Arvanites are distinguished in Greece from , after violent clashes and atrocities committed during and after Axis occupation. There is some disagreement to what extent the term "Arvanites" legitimately also includes the small remaining ''Christian'' Albanophone population groups in Northwest Greece (Epirus). Unlike the southern Arvanites, these speakers are reported to use the name ''Shqiptarë'' both for themselves and for Albanian nationals (Banfi 1996), although this is reported not necessarily to imply Albanian national consciousness (Kollias 1983). Moraitis (2002) reports that such speakers also use the name Arvanitis in their Greek, and the ''Euromosaic'' (1996) report notes that the designation ''Chams'' is today rejected by the group. The word Shqiptár is also used in a few villages of ( identifies the present-day Albanian/Arvanitic dialects of Northwestern Greece (in Epirus and Lechovo) with those of the Chams. They are therefore classified linguistically together with standard Tosk Albanian, as opposed to "Arvanitika Albanian proper" (i.e. southern Greek Arvanitic). Nevertheless it reports that in Greek the Epirus varieties are also often subsumed under "Arvanitika" in a wider sense. It puts the estimated number of Epirus Albanophones at 10,000. "Arvanitic proper" ([http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=aat ) is said to include the outlying dialects spoken in Thrace. Other sources (e.g. GHM 1995) subsume the Epirote Albanophones under the term Arvanites, although they note the different linguistic self-designation. LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE PERCEPTION See Also: Arvanitic language The decline of the Arvanitic language has been brought about by several factors. One is the demographic trend of movement towards the cities, breaking up some of the social ties of village communities. It is also reported that many Arvanites in past decades have maintained a stance of social self-deprecation of the traditional community language, encouraging younger generations to switch to the dominant language, Greek, which was associated with social mobility and modernity (Tsitsipis 1981, Botsi 2003). Especially earlier in the 20th century, Greek state institutions are reported to have sometimes followed a policy of actively discouraging and repressing the use of the Arvanitic language, most strongly under the nationalist Metaxas regime of 1936-1940 (GHM 1995; Trudgill/Tzavaras 1977). While the Arvanitic language was commonly called Albanian in Greece until the 20th century, the wish of Arvanites to express their ethnic identification as Greeks has led to a stance of rejecting the identification of the language with Albanian as well. Breu (1985: 424) and Tsitsipis (1983) reported that many Arvanites had only very imprecise notions about how related or unrelated their language was to Albanian. Today, many Arvanites prefer to regard Arvanitic as different from Albanian. As Arvanitic is almost exclusively a spoken language, Arvanites also have no practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they do not use this form in writing or in media. The question of linguistic closeness or distance between Arvanitic and Albanian has come to the forefront especially since the early 1990s, when a large number of immigrants from Albania began to enter Greece and came into contact with local Arvanitic communities (cf. Botsi 2003, Athanassopoulou 2005). Since the 1980s, there have been some organized efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of Arvanites. The Arvanitic League of Greece and other organizations have been campaigning for Arvanitic to obtain the status of a "protected" languge and the Rainbow Party includes legal recognition of Arvanitic as a minority language in its manifesto {Link without Title} . MINORITY STATUS While sociological studies of Arvanite communities (Trudgill/Tzavaras 1977) used to note a clear sense of a special ethnic identity among Arvanites, most of them strongly identify nationally as Greeks and today see their Arvanitic identity only as secondary. Many are also reported to be strongly opposed against the idea of obtaining any kind of officially recognized "minority" status. The issue of Arvanites' being described as an ethnic or even national minority has at some times become a political issue between Greece and Albania, for instance during the 1990s, when remarks by Albanian president Sali Berisha provoked a furious reaction among the Arvanitic community in the Greek mass media. Jacques Levy (2000) describes Arvanites as "Albanian speakers who were integrated into Greek national identity as early as the first half of the nineteenth century and who in no way consider themselves as an ethnic minority". FOLK CULTURE Phara Phara (φάρα) is a Descent Model , similar to Scottish Clan s. Arvanites were organised in phares (φάρες) mostly during the reign of the Ottoman Empire . The Apex was a warlord and the phara was named after him (i.e. Botsaris' phara). In an Arvanitic village each phara was responsible to keep genealogical records (see also Registry Offices ), that are preserved until today as historical documents in local libraries. Usually there were more than one phares in an Arvanitic village and sometimes they were organised in Phratries that had conflict of interests. Those phratries didn't last long, because each leader of a phara desired to be the leader of the phratry and would not be lead by another. Arvanitic songs Although they are almost fully assimilated into Greek society, some distinct Arvanitic cultural characteristics are still identifiable. There are 4 Music CD s featuring Arvanitic songs although the lyrics are often in Greek. There are no mass media in Arvanitic, although some local radio stations have occasionally broadcast Arvanitic songs. During the last decades there have been made some attempts to document Arvanitic songs, the most recent by Thanasis Moraitis. Arvanitic songs share similarities with Arbëresh , Albanian and Greek Epirote Music . Trivia
STUDIES AND BOOKS ABOUT THE ARVANITES Kostas Biris Biris was a folklorist and an architect. His book "''Arvanites, the Dorians of modern Hellenism, history of Arvanites Greeks''" ( 1960 ) is a thorough study on Arvanites and it is the most referenced work by other scholars who studied Arvanites. Maria Michael-Dede Maria Michael-Dede is an author of literature and an ethnologist. She has written two books about Arvanitic songs ( 1978 ) and the book ''The Greek Arvanites'' ( 1997 ). Aristeides Kollias Kollias, a lawyer by profession, performed ethnologist studies on Arvanites. In his book "''Arvanites and the origin of the Greeks''" ( 1983 ), Kollias promotes the ''Pelasgian theory'' that identifies the Pelasgians with the Arvanites. Kollias states that Greek people and Albanian people were closer in the past than they are during the last two centuries and that they both descend from the Pelasgians. His rejection of the Indo-European theory and his theory that Arvanitika is very close (if not identical) to the Homeric Greek have been criticized, however his work on Arvanitic culture is generally accepted. Thanasis Moraitis Moraitis had worked with Kollias for some time, and he did an extensive search on Arvanitic music. In his book "''Arvanitika Songs''", he documents about 150 songs, analyzes their musical structure, and also has texts by linguists and historians about Arvanitic history, culture and the Arvanitic language. FAMOUS ARVANITES
SEE ALSO REFERENCES Footnotes Bibliography
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