20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

748 Radu BĂltĂŞiu & Emil Ţîrcomniculatin, meaning weapon-bearing people, and the institution itself is specificto Aromanians.Any decision regarding the social life within the captainships wastaken by the captain, the armatoli, the celnici and the Elderly Council (theauşatec).Because of the strategic positions in which the Aromanian communeswere situated the captainships could not be dissolved. They wereautonomous until 1740, when an attempt at their abolishment was madeusing the Muslim Albanians. The captains were in charge of protectingthe travellers and maintaining a political and military stability in theareas where they exerted their authority. The autonomy of the Wallachiancaptainships brought about the fact that, since the arrival of the Turks andup until the Greek revolution of 1821, largely, the uprisings in the area wereled by Wallachians and had as irradiation centers areas inhabited by them.It wouldn’t have been otherwise possible, seeing as the other peoples inthe Balkans were subjugated to their Turkish invaders: “In lowland townsand villages which are mostly inhabited by Greeks, Turks rule and settle inwith their families and build mosques, whereas in the highlands where theRomanians live there is no Romanian commune in which a Turkish familyhas ever settled, nor has any trace of a Turkish church ever been found”.(Caragiani, 1929: 106)Aromanian cities had the advantage of being built in a remote, almostinaccessible geographical medium, guarding the mountain passes as if theywere fortresses. Whoever wished to safely cross the mountains had to havethe captains as friends: “Not only is the entire city a fortress, but even thehouses are so built that one protects the other, and what’s more, every house,at its entrance, has two holes on one side and the other of the door, so thatpeople may shoot with their weapons through them, or as they would haveshot arrows or spears back in the day…” (Caragiani, 1929: 118)During the Venetian occupation of Peloponnesus and continental Greece,the leaders of the Venetian armies were chosen from the Wallach captains.(Their names are recorded by Caragiani, 1929: 81-83) We may surmisethat there was a strong link between Venice and the Aromanian leaderswho, later on, during the Ottoman Imperial occupation, led to commerciallinks which became the foundation of the Aromanian commercial cities ofNorthern Greece and southern Albany.There were 14 captainships in Macedonia, Epirus and Thessaly.(Abeleanu, 1916: 21) The captainships were divided into smallercaptainships, districts, towns and villages. In case of revolt or war, the