Chandra Prakash Bhongir, Civil Engr, May04 - Repositories

Introduction
CHAPTER I
THE MYTH OF SCANDERBEG IN THE
MEMORY OF THE ARBERESH AND ALBANIA:
AN INTRODUCTION TO METHODOLOGY
Annon from the castle walls
The crescent banner falls,
And the crowd beholds instead,
Like a portent in the sky,
Iskander’s banner fly,
The Black Eagle with double head;
And a shout ascends on high,
……..
And the loud, exultant cry
That echoes wide and far
Is “Long Live Scanderbeg!” 1
Since his death in 1468, Scanderbeg’s life served as the source of many tales and
myths in Albania and Europe. It is my contention that even though Albanians and the
Albanian diaspora in the world kept his memory alive, it was not until the nineteenth
century, that Scanderbeg’s memory was resurrected by Albanian intellectuals, who lived
outside Albania, as a rallying point toward the achievement of Albanian independence
from the Ottoman empire. Before developing the evolution of the Scanderbeg myth it is
important to provide the framework under which I study the evolution of Scanderbeg’s
1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Scanderbeg,”
[http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3148/12702, Copywright 2003-2004].
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