Albania

country name
- etymology

• ***********https://www.quora.com/Where-does-the-term-Albanian-originate-from-Is-it-originally-Latin-And-where-do-the-terms-Arbereshe-and-Arvanite-link-to-it Albania may be a Latin corruption of the term Arberia, Arbenia in Gheg Albanian. So Arberia>Arbenia>Arbania>Albania. Albania may also mean the land of the rising sun. Alba=sunrise in Italian. Arberia is what Albania used to be called in the middle ages. The Arbereshe are the people coming from Arberia in Albanian language. You can also say Arber for singular person. Slavs used to call us Arbanasi. There are still some toponyms called like that in Serbia Bulgaria and Croatia. Arvanites is a Greek corruption of the word Arbanites (they turn B into V), people coming from Arbania>Arberia>Albania.

royalty

- Zog I (Albanian: Naltmadhnija e tij Zogu I, Mbreti i Shqiptarëve, IPA: [ˈzɔɡu]; 8 October 1895 – 9 April 1961), born Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli, taking the surname Zogu in 1922, was the leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939. He first served as the Prime Minister of Albania (1922–1924), then as President (1925–1928), and finally as the country's King (1928–1939). Aged only 27 at the time of his election, Zog is the youngest person to have been elected Prime Minister in Albanian history, and amongst the youngest in world history.

Zog was born as Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli^[2] in Burgajet Castle, near Burrel in the northern part of the Albanian section of the Ottoman Empire,^{[citation needed]} third son to Xhemal Pasha Zogolli, and first son by his second wife Sadije Toptani in 1895. His family was a beylik family of landowners, with feudal authority over the region of Mati. His mother's Toptani family claimed to be descended from the sister of Albania's greatest national hero, the 15th-century general Skanderbeg. He was educated at Galatasaray High School (Lycée Impérial de Galatasaray) in Beyoglu, the capital of the decaying Ottoman Empire, which controlled Albania.^{[citation needed]} Upon his father's death in 1911, Zogolli became governor of Mat, being appointed ahead of his elder half-brother, Xhelal Bey Zogolli.In 1923, he was shot and wounded in Parliament. A crisis arose in 1924 after the assassination of one of Zogu's industrialist opponents, Avni Rustemi; in the aftermath, a leftist revolt forced Zogu, along with 600 of his allies, into exile in June 1924. He returned to Albania with the backing of Yugoslav forces and Yugoslavia-based General Pyotr Wrangel′s White Russian troops led by Russian Gen Sergei Ulagay^[5] and became Prime Minister.In 1946, Zog and most of his family left England and went to live in Egypt at the behest of King Farouk. In 1951, Zog bought the Knollwood estate in Muttontown, New York, but the sixty-room estate was never occupied and Zog sold the estate in 1955. Farouk was overthrown in 1952, and the family left for France in 1955.He made his final home in France, where he died at the Foch Hospital, Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine on 9 April 1961, aged 65, of an undisclosed condition.^{[citation needed]} Zog was said to have regularly smoked 200 cigarettes a day, giving him a possible claim to the dubious title of the world's heaviest smoker in 1929,^[35] but had been seriously ill for some time. He was survived by his wife and son, and was initially buried at the cimetière parisien de Thiais, near Paris. On his death, his son Leka was pronounced H.M. King Leka of the Albanians by the exiled Albanian community.^[36]His widow, Geraldine, died of natural causes in 2002 at the age of 87^[36] in a military hospital in Tirana, Albania. The country's communist government abolished the monarchy in 1946, but, even in exile, the royal family insisted that Leka Zogu was Albania's legitimate ruler until his death on 30 November 2011.In October 2012, the government of Albania decided to bring back the remains of the former king from France, where he died in 1961. Zog's body was exhumed from the Thiais Cemetery, Paris on 15 November 2012.^[37] A guard of honour was provided by the French President, in the form of French Legionnaires in ceremonial dress.Zog's remains were returned in a state ceremony on 17 November 2012, coinciding with celebrations for Albania's independence centennial. The bodies of the king and his family members now lie in the reconstructed royal mausoleum in the capital Tirana.^[38] The interment was attended by the government of Albania, including the President and Prime Minister, and senior figures from the Romanian, Montenegrin, Russian and Albanian royal families.

• Countess Géraldine Margit Virginia Olga Mária Apponyi de Nagy-Appony (6 August 1915 – 22 October 2002) was the Queen consort of King Zog I of Albania and the mother of Leka I, Crown Prince of Albania.Geraldine was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, a daughter of Count Gyula Apponyi de Nagy-Appony (1873–1924) of the noble Apponyi family. Her mother was Gladys Virginia Steuart (1891–1947), an American, daughter of John Henry Steuart from Virginia, a diplomat who served as American Consul in Antwerp, Belgium, and his wife Mary Virginia Ramsay Harding. After her husband's death, Geraldine preferred to be known as the "Queen Mother of Albania".^[2] In June 2002, Geraldine returned from South Africa to live in Albania, after the law was changed to allow her to do so. She continued to assert that her son Leka was the legitimate king of Albania.Queen Geraldine died five months later at the age of 87 in a military hospital in Tirana. After being admitted for treatment for lung disease, she suffered at least three heart attacks, the last of which was fatal, on 22 October 2002.^[3] She was buried by the Central House of the Army with full honours, including a funeral oration at St Paul's Cathedral, on 26 October 2002, and interred in the public cemetery of Sharra, Albania, in the "VIP plot". She was later reburied in the Royal Mausoleum in Tirana.On 5 April 2004 her grandson, Leka, Crown Prince of Albania, accepted the Mother Teresa Medal awarded to her posthumously by the Albanian government in recognition of her charitable efforts for the people of Albania.
• Crown Prince Leka II married actress and singer Elia Zaharia in Oct. 2016, making her Crown Princess Elia of the Albanians. The couple lives in Tirana, where they represent Albania and Kosova and preside over the Queen Geraldine Foundation. Prince Leka has worked as an advisor within the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Interior and the Albanian Presidents Office, while Princess Elia works at the Albanian National Theater.Although the monarchy was dissolved, Zog's son King Leka remained head of the House of Zogu and claimant to the throne until his death in 2011 and was succeeded by his only son, Leka II.Crown Prince Leka II and Crown Princess Elia welcomed their first child, a baby girl, on Thursday. They named their daughter Geraldine — a meaningful tribute to the baby's paternal great-grandmother, Queen Geraldine. (In fact, the new addition was born at the Queen Geraldine Maternity Hospital in Tirana!)Queen Geraldine died on Oct. 22, 2002 — exactly 18 years to the day before her namesake's birth.https://people.com/royals/albania-royal-baby-crown-prince-leka-ii-crown-princess-elia-name-daughter-geraldine-after-grandmother/
• economist 31oct2020 "the birth of baby zog" a ruritanian royal family hasn't quite given up hope of regaining a throne

nobles
- The House of Kastrioti (Albanian: Dera e Kastriotit) was an Albanian royal and noble family, active in the 14th and 15th centuries as the rulers of the Principality of Kastrioti. The first Kastrioti mentioned in historical documents was a kephale of Kaninë in 1368. At the beginning of the 15th century the family controlled the region around Debar(modern westernmost North Macedonia and easternmost Albania) at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century. The most notable member was Skanderbeg, a magnate and general, regarded as an Albanian national hero. After the fall of the Principality and Skanderbeg's death in 1468 the Kastrioti family gave their allegiance to the Kingdom of Naples and were given control over the Duchy of San Pietro in Galatina and the County of Soleto in the Province of Lecce, Italy, where a maternal branch of the family still exists today as part of the Sanseverino family.

• note the six pointed star and double head eagle in its coat of arms
• George Castriot (Albanian: Gjergj Kastrioti; 6 May 1405 – 17 January 1468), known as Skanderbeg (Albanian: Skënderbej or Skënderbeu from Ottoman Turkish: اسکندر بگ‎, translit. İskender Beğ), was an Albanian nobleman and military commander who led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in what is today Albania and North Macedonia. A member of the noble Castriot family, he was sent to the Ottoman court as part of the Devshirme, where he was educated and entered the service of the Ottoman sultan for the next twenty years. He rose through the ranks, culminating in the appointment as sanjakbey (governor) of the Sanjak of Dibra in 1440. In 1443, he deserted the Ottomans during the Battle of Niš and became the ruler of Krujë, Svetigrad, and Modrič. In 1444, he was appointed the chief commander of the short-lived League of Lezhë that consolidated nobility throughout what is today Northern Albania. Thus, for the first time Albania was united under a single leader.^[1] Skanderbeg's rebellion was not a general uprising of Albanians, because he did not gain support in the Venetian-controlled north or in the Ottoman-controlled south. His followers included, apart from Albanians, also Slavs, Vlachs, and Greeks.

• https://www.quora.com/Except-Albanian-what-other-languages-did-Skanderbeg-speak

都拉斯Durrës was founded by ancient Greek colonists from Corinth and Corfu under the name of Epidamnos around the 7th century BC on the coast of the Illyrian Taulantii.^[3] Later known as Dyrrachium, it essentially developed to become significant as it became an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. The Via Egnatia, the continuation of the Via Appia, started in the city and led across the interior of the Balkan Peninsula to Constantinople in the east. In the Middle Ages, it was contested between Bulgarian, Venetian and Ottoman dominions. Following the Albanian Declaration of Independence, the city served as the capital of the Principality of Albania for a short period of time. Subsequently, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy and Nazi Germany in the interwar period. The city experienced a strong expansion in its demography and economic activity during Communism in Albania.

people
- Gjergj Fishta (October 23, 1871 – December 30, 1940) was an Albanian Franciscan, poet, rilindas, nationalist and a translator. Notably he was the chairman of the commission of the Congress of Monastir, which sanctioned the Albanian alphabet. In 1921 he became the Vice President of the Albanian parliament, and in 1937 he completed and published his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcís, an epic poem written in the Gheg dialect of Albanian. It contains 17,000 lines and is considered the "Albanian Iliad".

• Born in Fishtë, (Zadrima region), Lezhë, Albania (then Ottoman Empire), Fishta studied philosophy and Catholic theology in Bosnia (seminaries in Kraljeva Sutjeska, Franciscan monastery in Livno, Franciscan monastery in Kreševo), among Bosnian Croats. In 1902, he became the head of the Franciscan gymnasium in Shkodër(Collegium Illyricum). Fishta was under influence of Croatian Franciscan monks as a student in monasteries in Austria-Hungary, when he wrote his main work Lahuta e Malcís,^[4] influenced by the national epics of the Croatian and Serbian literature according to Robert Elsie.^[5] Dedicated to the commander Ali Pasha of Gusinje the work was an epic poem that consisted of 30 cantos focusing on the events of the League of Prizren, which had become a symbol of the Albanian national awakening. Elsie hypothesized that in Lahuta e Malcís, Fishta substituted the struggle against the Ottomans with a struggle against the Slavs,^[7] after the recent massacres and expulsionsof Albanians by their Slavic neighbours.^[8] After the World War II the authorities in Yugoslavia and Albanian historiography controlled by communist regime in Tirana (influenced by Yugoslav communists) proscribed Fishta's works as anti-Slavic propaganda.^[9] In Soviet historiography he was referred to as "former agent of Austro-Hungarian imperialism" who took position against Slavic people and Pan-Slavism because they opposed "rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian imperialism in Albania" and had a role in Catholic Clergy's preparation "for Italian aggression against Albania". In 1899, Fishta, along with Preng Doçi and Ndre Mjeda founded the Shoqnia e bashkimit të gjuhës shqipe (Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language) literary society, usually known as the Shoqnia Bashkimi (The Union Society), or simply Bashkimi (The Union) of Shkodra for publishing Albanian language books.^[11][12][13] In the late Ottoman period Fishta's publications included folk songs and a number of poems, which like other Albanian publications of the time often had to be published abroad and smuggled into the empire to avoid censorship. In 1907, Fishta wrote the satirical work The Wasps of Parnasus that critiqued Albanians of the time that placed individual interests over national ones and the intelligentsia who did not devote themselves to studying the Albanian language and showed disdain toward it.^[4] As a representative of the Society for the Unity of the Albanian Language,^[12] Fishta participated and was elected for president of the committee in the Congress of Monastir (today Bitola in Macedonia, then Ottoman Empire) held in 1908.^[15][16] Participants of the congress accepted Fishta's proposal for the Latin Bashkimi alphabet, and many of its elements were merged into the Istanbul alphabetresulting in the standard Albanian alphabet.^[17][15][16] In 1916, he was core founder of the Albanian Literary Commission, where he unsuccessfully tried to place Shkodra subdialect as standard literary Albanian.

Drug industry
- http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21707556-albania-seeks-contain-spread-cannabis-plantations-hash-and-burn

language

- https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-Albanians-speak-a-Romance-language-Albania-is-next-to-Italy The region of modern-day Albania was inhabited principally by the ancient Illyrians and to some extent by Greeks, until the 2nd century BC the ethnic composition remained the same, or well, the Greeks built some colonies in the coast but it wasn't a big impact, some of the Illyrians of Albania were bilingual and spoke Greek alongside their language for commerce and trading.Then arrived the Romans that in more than a millenia Romanized great part of the Balkan peninsula, except for the Albanians (and Greeks of course). The ancestors of the Albanians lived in (almost) complete isolation and maintained their language, after the fall of the Roman Empire they spread across the lowlands where they intermarried with the Roman and Greek settlers, the Romanized and Hellenized Illyrians and probably absorbed the residues of other Paleo-Balkan populations (Paeonians, some Thracians and Bryges), that contributed to the birth of the modern-day Albanians and their language. The re-migration across the lowlands and contacts with the Roman settlers and Romanized populations might explain the reason why 30% of the Albanian vocabulary comes from Latin, in the dialects of northwest the Romance loanwords are even higher, that's because there were Romans and later Dalmatians who lived alongside the Albanians in the cities of Shkodra, Tivar/Bar and Ulqin/Ulcinj before the arrival of the Slavs, the linguists call this dialect of Dalmatian “Labeatic” (from the Illyrian tribe of the Labeates who lived there), but most of the Dalmatian vocabulary we have are from the Ragusean (Dubronvik) and Vegliot (Krk) dialects.

language (albanian)
-  https://www.quora.com/What-does-old-Albanian-sound-like-Are-there-texts-from-the-Principality-of-Arbanon
- relations with greek

• https://www.quora.com/Why-can-some-Greek-be-explained-in-the-Albanian-language

- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Albanian-classified-as-an-Indo-European-language

albanians (people， race）

- The genetic similarity between Albanians and Greeks means one thing: Both peoples descend from a similar mix of Indoeuropeans and pre-IE neolithic Balkan populations, some people like to refer to them as ‘Pelasgians’, although Pelasgians were only one of many such Pre-IE Balkan civilizations.Albanians, specifically, went through a genetic bottleneck aproximately 1500 years ago, meaning that founder effects determine modern Albanian genetic y-DNA distributions and, to some extent, the phenotypes. Another way to put it: almost 1500 years ago (during the Slavic migrations) Albanians and their language went almost extinct. The few remaining people, maybe as few as 1500, re-expanded and heavily influenced the genetic makeup of their modern descendants. This is also why Albanians are among the most genetically homogenous peoples in Europe.What is the answer to your question? Albanians and Greeks have evolved separately for most of the last couple millenia. That has lead to possible variations in skin tone. More correctly, though, I assume Albanians get more tanned the more South you go, with Northern Greeks being hard to distinguish from South-Albanians, whereas Gheg Albanians (North Albania or Kosovo) most likely are more fair skinned than Cretans. It’s a continuum. There is no big ‘reason’ for that. It’s like asking why South-Germans have dark hair more frequently than North-Germans. There are a million small reasons for that, with environment and climate playing a role as well.https://www.quora.com/Why-Are-the-Albanians-lighter-compared-to-Greeks-Almost-the-same-weather-location-haplogroups-and-ancestors-What-have-Albanians-mixed-with-that-Greeks-didnt


EU
- Albania’s prime minister has urged the start of talks for his country to join the EU as part of a western Balkans enlargement to bolster European security. https://www.ft.com/content/269cfd5a-2de1-11e8-a34a-7e7563b0b0f4

switzerland
- 在1970-80年代之間，瑞士政府曾大舉從巴爾幹半島招募「短期客工」。但在鐵幕解體之後，巴爾幹半島也因南斯拉夫的內戰與分裂，在90年代陷入長年混亂，許多客工因此無家可歸，而這段時間的瑞士政府也收容了大量巴爾幹難民——至今，瑞士全國850萬人口中，就有50萬人來自巴爾幹、或具有巴爾幹血統。這些巴爾幹的難民或難民後代，又以阿爾巴尼亞族為大宗。像是20日瑞士隊的先發陣容中，11人中就有4名主力球員具有阿裔背景——其中，除了攻擊中場哲馬伊利（Blerim Dzemaili）來自於即將改名為「北馬其頓」的馬其頓共和國外；包括中場老將貝赫拉米（Valon Behrami） 以及進球的札卡、沙奇里，都是科索沃裔的阿爾巴尼亞族人。https://global.udn.com/global_vision/story/8662/3214282

greece
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Greeks-and-Albanians

China
- obor

• 中國駐阿爾巴尼亞大使 姜瑜，九二年到九五年間，曾被派 赴中國駐紐約聯合國代表團任職； 二零零六年六月十三日，姜瑜首次 以中華人民共和國外交部發言人的 身份，出席例行記者招待會。 二零一二年四月起，出任中國外 交部駐香港特別行政區特派員公署 副特派員和香港各界人士有廣泛的 來往。她，二零一五年出任駐阿爾 巴尼亞大使後，全力推動中國和阿 爾巴尼亞的經濟合作，跑遍了阿爾 巴尼亞主要的城市，發掘商機，對 於中國找到了地拉那機場，發展旅 遊業，推動兩國的工業合作，作出 了貢獻，今後還將有一批香港商人 前往阿爾巴尼亞考察業務。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2017/01/20/a30-0120.pdf
• hkej 9aug18 shum article

-mining

• http://www.reuters.com/article/us-albania-mine-chinese-idUSKBN15L27P Albanian rescue teams were still working on Monday to reach three Chinese mining engineers trapped since Saturday afternoon in a chrome mine at Bulqize after an explosion. The gas explosion on Saturday has destroyed the ventilation system as well as one side of the well at the chrome mine, run by Albanian Chrome, owned by Albania's Balfin Group.

- investors from china

• http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0426/c90000-9049418.html china’s financial services company China Everbright Limited announces onMonday that Keen Dynamics Limited (KDL), its joint venture with FriedmannPacific Asset Management Limited, has signed an agreement to acquireTirana International Airport SHPK , the concessionary developer andoperator of the capital airport of Albania. Upon closing of the deal, KDL will take over Tirana’s airport concession until2025 (with 2 years extension to 2027, pending for Albanian government’sapproval). Tirana International Airport is Albania’s only international airport and themost important transport hub. The airport has seen over 2 million passengersin 2015. It is also one of the fastest growing airports in Europe.

Hong Kong
- according to shenyukfai's article in hkej 7oct15, albanian government sponsored a hk show to attract immigrants
- http://paper.takungpao.com/resfile/PDF/20151029/PDF/a21_screen.pdf 由中國華信能源有限公司、中國 文化院承辦的阿爾巴尼亞現任總理埃迪．拉馬（Edi Rama）個人畫 展 「芳華綻放」（Calendar Blossoms）昨於饒宗頤文化館中區F座下 層展覽廳舉行開幕禮。展出拉馬近百幅在地拉那市任職市長期間的獨 特創作，展期至下月六日。http://www.hkcd.com.hk/pdf/201511/1110/HA11B10CADD.pdf

- 據報韋婉婷 已加盟阿爾巴尼亞女 子聯賽榜首球隊Vllaznia。Vllaznia較早 時已向韋婉婷開出合約，但受新冠肺炎 疫情影響，令她一直未能向新東家報到 。鑒於歐洲疫情開始有好轉，阿爾巴尼 亞重開邊境，韋婉婷在數天前已前往新 東家。http://paper.takungpao.com/resfile/PDF/20200622/PDF/b1_screen.pdf