Chandra Prakash Bhongir, Civil Engr, May04 - Repositories

Alongside prominent authors that wrote about Scanderbeg during the nineteenth
century Albanian intellectuals as members of the Albanian Diaspora began to recall and
write more about the memory of Scanderbeg as an Albanian leader. Writings from
Girolamo De Rada, Giusseppe Scura, Zef Serembe, Naim and Sami Frasheri, and Andon
Zako Cajupi sought to place Scanderbeg’s memory at the center of Albanian
consciousness. As such, Scanderbeg was no longer the celebrated Christian hero who
fought to save Europe from Islam, but he became the Albanian hero who fought to
liberate his country and establish the first Albanian independent state. It was during the
nineteenth century at the hands of the Diaspora intellectuals that Scanderbeg’s memory
became historic memory with an agency for Albanian independence.
Historians, anthropologists and linguists did not begin to critically study
Scanderbeg’s figure as an Albanian until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Even at this juncture the studies were minimal and did not stray from revisiting past
biographies of the hero. For most of the twentieth century Albanian history witnessed the
independence of Albania, the experience of both World Wars, Albanian descent into
communist dictatorship and by the end of the century the establishment of a democratic
form of government. Through all these important political changes, the country’s
enduring symbol for Albanian identity remains Scanderbeg and his legacy. As such, it is
important to highlight how the study of this topic has developed through time.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, “Scanderbeg,” [http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3148/12702,
Copywright 2003-2004].
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