GJURMË TË SHQIPES SË SHKRUAR
TRACES OF WRITTEN ALBANIAN

Summary/Abstract: Language is the identity of a people, its spirit, its existence, its past, and it's future! But for language to have longevity it must be written. This was the concern, desire, and anxiety of Albanian intellectuals, from the Renaissance to the Congress of Manastir, a time for which we have written evidence and arguments! Let us follow their journey and efforts for this divine mission. The Albanians, located on a land belt between two continents, experienced the fate of the clash of interests of the most powerful empires of the time, the Western-Roman and the Ottoman. An ark of ambitions from the most powerful empire of the east and a resistance mixed with fear and dread of the west is the word that describes the medieval political situation. In the midst of this catastrophe, the Albanians had to preserve their identity, language, and culture as the most ancient people in these lands. The arrival of the Turks on the Illyrian Peninsula, which after their conquest will be called the Balkans, a land of honey and blood, changed many things in the life of the Albanians, including the taking hostage of Gjon Kastriot's sons as a form of security. A writing tradition had existed very early on, but it was already beginning to lose track, many literary and artistic works were destroyed, those that survived would later be discovered by scholars such as Nilo Borgja, who also published a study of excellent for the "Pericope of the Gospel" from the XIV century, with Greek letters and Albanian words. This tells us about a tradition of writing Albanian with Greek letters, in the south of Albania, such as Konstantin Kristoforidhi who wrote the Dictionary of the Albanian language, the Hunt of the Highlanders, the Alphabet, etc.

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