This report documents violations investigated by Helsinki Watch during missions to Kosovo and Serbia proper in May, June and December 1991. Participants in those missions included Jonathan Fanton, chair of Helsinki Watch...

Arnold von Harff (1), a German knight, traveller and writer, was born in about 1471 into a noble family of the Lower Rhineland (Harff on the Erft, a village northwest of Cologne). In the autumn of 1496, he set out on a journey...

The Italian humanist and historian George Merula (1430-1494), also known as Georgius Merula Alexandrinus or Giorgio Merlano di Negro, was born in Alessandria in northern Italy. He studied in Milan under Francesco Filelfo...

The 'Directorium ad passagium faciendum', which can be translated as 'Initiative for making the passage', is a mediaeval Latin manuscript (also available in an early French translation) attributed alternatively to a monk called Burcard...

Typical of the many short references to the Albanians in Byzantine chronicles is the following text by the Emperor John VI Cantacuzene (r. 1347-1355), whose 'History' covers the years 1320-1356. Here as in other texts, the...

Narratives of pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land provide a primary source of information for much of the eastern Mediterranean in the first half of the second millennium, and in one such narrative (1) dating from the year...

The so-called 'Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis' (Anonymous Description of Eastern Europe) (1) is a mediaeval Latin text from the year 1308 which contains a survey of the lands of Eastern Europe, in particular the...

Historian and scholar George Pachymeres (1242- ca. 1310) was born in Nicaea and held high office in Constantinople. His 'History' covers the reigns of Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1261-1282) and Andronicus II...

Historian George Acropolites (1217-1282) was the tutor of Emperor Theodore II Lascaris (r. 1254-1258) and later became rector of the university in Constantinople. His 'Chronicle' of the Nicaean Empire, based...

Michael Attaleiates was a Byzantine lawyer and historian who rose to high office under the emperors Romanus IV (r. 1067-1071) and Michael VII (r. 1071-1078). His 'History', covering the years 1034-1079, is a largely...

What is possibly the earliest written reference to the Albanians is that to be found in an old Bulgarian text compiled around the beginning of the eleventh century. It was discovered in a Serbian manuscript dated 1628...

Illyria (Albanian Iliria;  Latin Illyria  (see also Illyricum) was in Classical antiquity a region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula, founded by the tribes and clans of Illyrians, an ancient people who spoke the Illyrian languages. In Greek mythology, Illyrius was the...

Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of World War I. The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared, with justification, that Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece would succeed in extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian forces...

The Rise of Albanian Nationalism first sparked with the Battle of Deçiq on April 6, 1911, which was located in the town of Tuzi, Malësi e Madhe. The battle was fought between the Catholic Malësor Albanians lead by Ded Gjo Luli, against the forces of the Ottoman...

The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At first, the feuding Albanian clans proved no match for the armies of the sultan. In the fifteenth century, however, Skanderbeg united the Albanian tribes in a defensive alliance that held up...

The first historical mention of Albania and the Albanians as such appears in an account of the resistance by a Byzantine emperor, Alexius I Comnenus, to an offensive by the Vatican-backed Normans from southern Italy into the Albanian-populated lands in 1081. In the same year, the...

The fall of the Western Roman Empire and the age of great migrations brought radical changes to the Balkan Peninsula and the Illyrian people. Barbarian tribesmen overran many rich Roman cities, destroying the existing social and economic order and leaving the great Roman aqueducts, coliseums...

Christianity came to Illyrian-populated lands in the first century A.D. Saint Paul wrote that he preached in the Roman province of Illyricum, and tradition holds that he visited Durrës. In 379, under emperor Theodosius I, as part of the Prefecture of Illyricum Orientale, the southern region was...

In the Illyrian Wars of 229 and 219 B.C., Rome overran the Illyrian settlements in the Neretva River valley. The Romans made new gains in 168 B.C., with Roman forces capturing Illyria's King Gentius at Shkodër, which they called Scodra, and bringing him to Rome in 165 B.C. A century later, Julius...

The Illyrians were Indo-European tribesmen who appeared in the western portion of the Balkan Peninsula about 1000 B.C., a period coinciding with the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age. They inhabited much of the area for at least the next millennium. Archaeologists associate...