20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Aromanians and their space of significant density 749captains would amass and chose among them the bravest captain, whowould lead them. Generally, the succession was done based on militarymerits and not on hereditary rights.These lands, the captainships, remain independent during the OttomanEmpire. By not engaging the Ottoman army in battle, acknowledgingits authority and treating with it, they were not conquered, thus leavingtheir privileges valid and intact. And important part of Greater Wallachiawas present when Constantinople was sieged. The consequences of theexistence of these captainships are important for the ethnic conservationof Aromanians. “This is the cause for which, when in lowland towns andvillages which are mostly inhabited by Greeks, Turks rule and settle in withtheir families and build mosques, in the highlands where the Romanianslive there is no Romanian commune in which a Turkish family has eversettled, nor has any trace of a Turkish church ever been found. Not onlythat, but Romanian captainships were considered inviolable refuge lands,and it was not only the Turks that were not allowed to settle or even passthrough these captainships, but even if a criminal were to enter the territoryof a captainship, he would forever be lost and unhindered”. (Caragiani,1929: 106, apud Aravantinos)The captainships were under the protection of the Sultan’s Mother(the Sultana Valide), possessing a self-governing administrative form,practically constituting themselves as independent towards the Turkishauthorities. They would pay a modest sum, which was not considereda tribute, each year to the Sultana Valide, who was the protector of thecaptains.The Turk’s fear of having them as enemies and thus becoming unableto control the mountainous areas they occupied granted the Aromaniansa certain independency until the XVIII century. After the year 1740 anduntil 1821 the Muslim Albanians, under the rule of the Albanian pashaliks,attempted to abolish the captainships and replace them with a form ofadministration known as a dervan-agaul. Numerous uprisings and localwars began because of this, led by haiduci or chefti, as they were called bythe Turks.Pouqeville, the French consul stationed at Ianina, observed: “TheAromanians of Epirus and Thessaly were the only ones of all the peoplesin the Balkan Peninsula who, under Ottoman rule, managed to preserve upuntil the XIX century a sort of semi-independence, from all points of view,thanks to the privileges they have obtained from their conquerors, who hadensured for them a nice national independence”. (Abeleanu, 1914: 34)