20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Aromanians and their space of significant density 747The Wallachian Captainships.The administrative division of the areas inhabited by Aromanianswas done through captainships (military districts). Captainships predatethe year 1400 and have lasted until the Greek revolution of 1821. Thisform of organization was specific to the Aromanians, their neighbouringpeople bearing no resemblance to it. The captainships were the cores ofthe Aromanian resistance and, by default, the structures – the “places”which made possible the rebirth – “expansion” of the Aromanian cultureand civilization. They had the function of strategically connecting differentAromanian communities in order to ensure the critical mass necessary forthe Aromanian rebirth and manifestation as a general factor of civilizationwithin the Balkans and the rest of Europe.The captainships formed a concrete technical formula, in territory, onthe basis of which the Aromanian communities manifested themselvesas significant densities. Through their strength (the Turks were forced tonegotiate with them the order of an entire region of the Empire, in the areaof Epir for nearly 400 years, from their entrance in the Balkans and upto their abolition in mid century XVIII) these captainships founded therough infrastructure, the pattern of social organization through which theAromanians have dispersed their Neoromanic Christian order throughoutthe Balkans and have made their civilization known even up to Alexandria,Vienna and Leipzig. The fact that they were under the protection of theSultana Valide proves that their internal density was indeed fantastic: whilethe mountainous Alban and the Slavic Bosniac communities lost their faithwhen faced with the Islamic offensive, the Aromanians have managed tokeep more than their Romanic and Christian identity, they even becamepartners in relation to their own law of the Empire, enjoying the protectionof high ranking individuals within the Empire itself.The captain wore a sword (a sign of his anointing), which he handeddown to his successor. The captain’s deputy bore the title of pălicar, meaninga vigorous man (from the latin pollex, the thumb). The soldiers, numberinganywhere from 50 to 300, were called armatoli, bearing sword, daggerand a cartridge belt wrapped around their waist. I. Caragiani noticed thatGreeks used the Aromanian words for weapon, captain and armatol, andthat not even in the year 1900 did they have their own words to denominatethese concepts.The armatoli were constituted as a people’s army which ensured, underthe captain’s order, the safety of those lands. The word armatol comes from