The Great Migration of 1690 did alter the demographic balance of Kosovo and set in motion migratory waves of Kosovo Serbs which would transform Serbs from an overwhelming majority to a minority of Kosovo. A second migration of Kosovo Serbs occurred after the Austro-Turkish War of 1737-39, when Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic led "several hundred Serbian families ... from the mining settlements around Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and Kopa"
Miranda Vickers Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo, p. 6
Great Migration of 1689 and the Second Migration in 1737 forced Serbs out and left a vacant space in Kosovo. With open land to expand into, Albanians moved into depopulated Kosovo. This altered the ethnic make-up of Kosovo and made the Albanians the majority instead of a minority.
Ivo Banac The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics.
London: Cornell University Press.
The second significant expansion of Albanians in Rumelia occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. They came to settle in the plains of Djakovë (Yakova), Prizren, Ipek (Pec), Kalkandelen (Tetovo) and Kossovo, especially after the mass migration of the Serbs from these areas in 1690.
Fehim Suleimanoglu Independent Study
It seems that the Albanian settlement was mostly the result of the land mukâta‘a system (see my Tanzimat nedir, in Tarih Araštirmalari, Ankara 1942) prevailing there in this period. Albanians came to these rich plains and settled there permanently.
The albanisation and islamisation of these plains went hand in hand in the 17th and 18th centuries. Conversion to Islam received a new impetus under the Bushatlis and ‘Alî Pasha [q.v.] of Tepedelen (who) according to contemporary witnesses, forced a number of villages to adopt Islam.
Albanians started to move back into Kosovo in considerable numbers in the 15th century when the Ottomans took sovereignty over the region in 1489. During this time the great majority of Albanians were still Christians, and Serbs and Albanians lived together in reasonable harmony.
Richard Jensen Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo: An Abbreviated History
Gradually Albanians and to a lesser extent Serbs became converted to Islam. Serb resistance to conversion was strengthened by activities of the Orthodox Church since Kosovo contained many seminaries and was the home of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In the late 17th century Serbs left Kosovo in large numbers as a result of military victories of the Ottoman Turks and Albanians.
This displacement of the Serb population is known in history as "the great migration". As a result, the region of Kosovo became underpopulated and, attracted by available fertile land, was resettled by Albanians moving eastward from the hills of Albania.
Colorado University Press
1996
First, we have no strong historical 'me'. We had five centuries under Turkish occupation, and at that time, we had a Turkish identity, not an Albanian identity, except for our language. We as Albanians didn’t have a real history during these five centuries. Our history was linked to the Turkish Empire. This is one of the reasons I could say that our nationalism started very late...
Fatos Lubonja famous Albanian dissident
Traditionally, the society was organized into clans, families, tribes. And our Christian law—the so-called “Canon of Lek Dukagjini”—was called by one of the popes the least Christian law in the world. It was firmly linked to the blood feud. And Albanians could defend only their own house, their own family, their own tribe, and they didn’t care about others.
The Albanian villages are much better, much richer than the Serbian ones. The Serbs, even the rich ones, don't build fine houses in villages where there are Albanians. If a Serb has a two-story house he refrains from painting it so that it shan't look better than the Albanian houses.
Leon Trotsky The Balkan Wars
Pathfinder Press
1995
Western historians prove that the ancestors of much of today's Albanian population is of non-Albanian descent
“The number of Albanians in Old Serbia was increasing, as they were supported and encouraged by Austria”. One should look at the ethnic map of Serbia which had been published in London in 1909 by Alfred Stead, showing that there were only a few ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, and that most of them were “Albanized Serbs" Tthe Mussulmanised Serbs, known as Arnauts, are the bitterest foes of the Serb.
Lord H.Temperley professor in Oxford and Cambridge
New York University Law Faculty
The Albanian population originates from migrants from the south-west (modern Albania). During the centuries of Ottoman rule (particularly during and after the 18th century)...the existing Albanian population was greatly added to by migrants from the west (modern Albania). There was a small existing Albanian population before the Ottoman conquest, and the largest migration (of Albanians) into Kosovo began in the 17th century. Most of the population of the new areas was Slavic; about
60% of the population was Serb.
The British researcher Laffan had noted: “The number of Albanians in Old Serbia was increasing, as they were supported and encouraged by Austria”.
For example, Sir John Banham wrote to the Marquis of Lansdown on May 7, 1901, that 40 Serbian families were obliged to emigrate to the Kingdom of Serbia due to the Albanian terror.
Another English diplomat, M. Young, wrote to the marquis of Lansdown on September 9, 1901: “The Old Servia is still an area of disturbance owing to the lawlessness, vendettas and racial jealousies of the Albanians”.
Young added in the same report that the oppression of the Serbian population continues and that 600 Albanians, with the help of 50 Turkish soldiers, “had reduced a village of 60 households to one quarter of that number”.
Young’s report of December 1901 states that the Albanian terror from the spring to December resulted in the expulsion of 250 Serbian families to the Kingdom of Serbia.
The Serb ethnic community in Albania is one of the world's most jeopardised national minorities as a consequence of the unconditional Albanisation carried out during the rule of Enver Hoxha and the stand of present Albanian authorities, whose aspirations towards Kosovo and Metohija and the creation of a Greater Albania are indisputable.
Human Rights Watch International
Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Coast said that several thousand Serbs in the Serbian Orthodox Church's Skadar Episcopate, which is situated in Albania, do not have a school, church or the right to use their mother tongue.
The Serb school in the village of Vraka, near Shkoder, was torn down in 1934 and has not been reconstructed since. Two Serbian Orthodox churches were torn down during Hoxha's rule and Serbian cemeteries were obliterated despite a large number of Serbs in the region.
Officially, ethnic Serbs still carry Albanian names and are of Albanian nationality, so that one can conclude that they have no national rights.
http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/yds/1998/98-09-17.yds.html
QUOTE #18:
More widespread conversion to Islam took place in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic Albanians began to wield more influence on political events in these regions. Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for the moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday).
F.C.H.L Pouqueville
French traveller and writer
But several generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into being a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a long time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi, until the memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old customs and legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation to the next.
For a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic Albanians, because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they did not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the turn of the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames as Dokic, Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably indicated their Serbian origin.
The situation was similar in Pec and its surroundings where many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically Serbian surnames: Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc. The eastern parts of Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian settlements, were the last to undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization in Upper Morava and Izmornik is pinpointed as taking place in the first decades of the 18th century, and the latest in 1870s.
Toponyms in many ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo show that Serbs had lived there the preceding centuries, and in some places Orthodox cemeteries were shielded against desecrators by ethnic Albanians themselves, because they knew that the graves of their own ancestors lay there.
In the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region near Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also cases of
conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century, especially during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor and property, though far more pronounced at the time was the process of emigration, since families, sometimes even entire villages, fled to Serbia or Montenegro.
Fearing the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo (Albanian) pashas engaged in ruthless persecution in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious holdings. A French travel writer was astounded by the utter anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians. Jashar-pasha Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several churches in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks.
In just a few years of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages between Vucitrn and Gnjilane...dividing up the seized land among the local Islamized population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern Albanian.
The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate. Extensive anthropo-geographic research indicates that about 30% of the present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia is of Serbian origin.
http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/JUGOSLAVIA/kosovo_engl.txt_Piece40.04
QUOTE #19:
Namely, in spite of its relatively short duration, the Turkish-Tatar war of 1687-92 under Arap-pasha from Anatolia brought fatal consequences. The destruction of Visoki Decani monastery, the looting and devastation of villages caused a large and numerous conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Islam. This also happened to the entire tribe of the Krasnici whose Serbian, that is, old previous name was Krastenic and who from then on were completely Albanized.
Hugo Roth Kosovo Origins
It is interesting to note that the German sources from the pen of Prof Hopf referred to by S Gopcevic also bring into question the origins of the Gegi, a north Albanian tribe, ascribing to it a Slav origin which, at least according to the testimony of these authors, is also reflected in the noticeable difference in relation to the south Albanian tribe, the Tosks This difference appears in language, dress, customs and, allegedly, also in physionomy
Passing through Kosovo and Metohia, S Gopcevic stayed awhile in Prizren Besides the statistical data which he gathered, he also pointed out the incredible rate of the Islamization of the Serbs Thus, in Prizren, for example, a town of 60,000 inhabitants, he establishes that there are 11,000 Christian Serbs but as many as 36,000 Islamized ones with the remaining population being Turks, Albanians, Tzintzars and Gypsies
He portrayed Djakovica as a place of 4,100 households of which all of 16 ! belonged to Christian Serbs, 450 belonged to Gypsies, 130 to Catholic Albanians and the rest to Islamicised Albanians, all of them Albanized S " who are among the greatest fanatics which, as is already well known, is always the case with renegades"
Of Pec he says there were 2,530 households of which 1,600 were Mohammedan, 700 Christian Serbs, 200 Catholic Albanians, 10 Turkish etc Very significant is his observation that the number of mosques in proportion to such a numerous Moslem population was negligible This fact well illustrates that Islam was a new phenomenon in Metohia at that time.
Finally, here are a few facts about Pristina which, he says, had 3,510 households, 350 belonging to Christian Serbs, 2,600 ! to Mohammedan Serbs, 260 to Turks, 70 to Jews, 70 to Albanians etc Other, small settlements have not been left out but we will interpret them within the framework of a general statistical table.
In concluding this chapter, it is important to mention that S Gopcevic, the author of the book cited did not begin his study tour and investigation because of the Albanian problem He was primarily concerned with Serbo-Bulgarian relations and the problem of the Albanians was, according to scientific practice, treated as an objectively existing element of the reality of the time which thereby only increases the reliability of his testimony
Pathfinder Press
1995
http://www.kosovo.com/sk/history/kosovo_origins/
The province is best known as Kosovo - this name has been the most widely used by maps and gazetteers within Serbia and abroad. The alternative spelling Kossovo was frequently used until the early 20th century and before that, Cassovo or Cassua, an Italianisation of the name.
The name "Kosovo" is itself used in other Slavic countries, appearing in Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Russia.
All places in the world whose names begin with "Kosove" (pronounced "ko-SO-vah") is the Albanian spelling for the province. Albanians tend to use "Kosova" exclusively in preference to the Serbian name, which many of them reject as a symbol of Serbian dominance. It is also occasionally spelled as Kosovë; this is due to the fact that in Albanian, adding the definite article to a noun changes the ending of the word.
Encyclopedia Article
The name Kosovo appears to have its roots in the Slavic word kos which means "blackbird". The root word is widely used as a toponym in Slavic countries and the historical German name for Kosovo Polje, Amselfeld, does indeed mean "field of the blackbird".
Some Albanian researchers claim that the name is a Serbian form of an old Albanian placename meaning "high plain" - but this is not a widely accepted theory and would not explain the widespread distribution of the name across the Slav countries. The Albanian form is generally thought to be an Albanian version of an originally Slavic placename.
The Albanian-populated areas of the province and Albania itself tend to use "Kosova" exclusively. "Kosovo" is used, again almost exclusively, in the Serb-populated north of the province and in the rest of the former Yugoslavia. The international community tries to steer a middle path by referring formally to "Kosovo/Kosova." In practice, however, the Serbian variant is still the most frequently used outside of Kosovo while the Albanian variant is widely used by "internationals" within the province.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo