Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The legend of Rozafat Castle, now the ruins of a no doubt originally Illyrian fortification soaring above the town of Shkodra in northern Albania, involves one of the grimmest motifs of Balkan legendry, that of immurement. The story of a woman being walled in during the construction of a bridge or castle in order to…

Scanderbeg or Skanderbeg (Alb. Skënderbeu) was an Albanian prince (1405-1468) and is now considered the national hero of the Albanians. His real name was George Castrioti (Alb. Gjergj Kastrioti). Sent by his father as a hostage to Sultan Murad II (r. 1421-1451), he was converted to Islam, and after education in Edirne was given the…

This Italo-Albanian legend evinces the motif of the reunification of brother and sister, which exist in several variations in Albanian and Balkan folklore. Action in this version takes place in Koron, now Koroni in the Morea (Peloponnese), under Ottoman rule. A maiden, called Shega, meaning ‘pomegranate,’ is kidnapped by an Ottoman janissary called Vllastar, meaning…

This is a now largely forgotten tale from central Albania, recorded in the late nineteenth century. Nderenje, now Ndroq, is a small town on the road from Tirana to Kavaja. At a time when the towns of Kruja and Tirana were in feud with one another, there lived in Kruja a poor Muslim whose son…

Travelling through southern Albania in 1670, Ottoman traveller Evliya Chelebi (1611-1684) recounts the legend of a holy man venerated in Gjirokastra at the time. When Ali Dost Dede died, the whole population of Gjirokastra, convinced that he had expired of the plague, took to the hills and the villages in the countryside, leaving the blessed…

Travelling through southern Albania in 1670, Ottoman traveller Evliya Chelebi (1611-1684) recounts the apocryphal legend of the Arab sheikh Jabal-i Alhama, who fled to the mountains of Kurvelesh in Albania and died in Elbasan. According to Evliya, he is the father of the Albanian people.

The legend of the founding of the Hoti and Triepshi tribes in the mountains of northern Albania and Montenegro is preserved, in one version, by the German scholar Johann Georg von Hahn who heard it from a Father Gabriel in Shkodra in 1850.

The legend of the founding of the Kastrati tribe in the mountains of northern Albania is preserved, in one version, by the German scholar Johann Georg von Hahn who heard it from a Father Gabriel in Shkodra in 1850.

The legend of the founding of the Kelmendi tribe in the mountains of northern Albania is preserved, in one version, by the German scholar Johann Georg von Hahn who heard it from a Father Gabriel in Shkodra in 1850. Many years ago, there was a rich herdsman in the region of Triepshi. A young man…

The following legend of blood feuding between the Triepshi and Kastrati tribes in the Montenegrin-Albanian border region was recorded by the Montenegrin warrior, Marko Miljanov (1833-1901), in his book “Life and Customs of the Albanians” (Život i običaje Arbanasa), Belgrade 1907. “There is a tale about Albanian blood feuding from ancient times. It is as…