The Place of Albanian Lands in the Balkan Geopolitics During the Ottoman Invasion (the 14th – 15th Centuries)
The Place of Albanian Lands in the Balkan Geopolitics During the Ottoman Invasion (the 14th – 15th Centuries)

Summary/Abstract: The Balkan Peninsula had been an available dwelling space for Turks since the 6th century, but the first Turkish presence in Albanian lands is documented at the outset of the 11th century. At the turn of the 11th century the first Turkish colonies were created around the Lake Ohrid. The Turkish-Albanian contacts became more common by the 13th century, when Muslim Turks served as mercenary soldiers in the Angevine and Byzantine provincial armies. In 1280-1, Michael VIII Palailogos used Turkish mercenaries to stop the advance of Charles I Angevine (d’Anjou) in Eastern Albania. In 1337, the Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palailogos subjugated the Albanian nomads living between Kanina and Arta with the help of a Turkish army from the Emirate of Aydın (ca. 1337). The emir of Aydın, Umur beg, was remembered later by Ottoman ghazis as the first Turkish conqueror of the Balkans and was considered as the spiritual leader of the ghaza in Balkans.[...]

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