The Islamisation of the Albanians and its impact on the Albanian religious identity... (4)

In Albania the campaigns of forcible dissemination of Islam were only exceptions, since these clearly did not have the anticipated effect. The Ottoman campaigns during the conquest of Albania usually ended in land desolation, abduction into slavery, and imposition of Islam. The campaigns of 1464 and 1465 brought devastation to the Albanians. These campaigns were undertaken in the summer, in the harvest season, and finished off by burning down the fields and bringing ruin, by driving away the cattle, and taking the captured people into slavery. Particularly difficult was 1466, when the Albanian lands were invaded by sultan Mehmed II followed by his entire army. Turkish chronicler Kemal Pashadze mentions that "because of the heavy losses inflicted on them by the Albanians, the Ottomans showed appalling ferocity here and even left no vegetation on the ground". ⁵⁸ During these campaigns seeking to subjugate Albania, in spite of the outrages, Islam was being spread among the native population only incidentally, occasionally. During that period, Islam was adopted mainly by the feudal clans trying to preserve their lands and consolidate their privileged positions. 

Under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih (the Conqueror) the non-Muslim religious communities were allowed. At that time the situation of people professing different religions was better within the boundaries of the Empire than in some countries in Western Europe.⁵⁹  When in the beginning of the 16th century Sultan Selim I decided to impose Islam on all Christians by force, his plan failed, because the patriarch of Constantinople referred to the code of Sultan Mehmed II, which guaranteed certain autonomy to non-Muslim communities. Helpful were also protests by the members of the high Muslim religious circles, as well as by the janissaries. 

Typical is the case of the large-scale Islamisation in the unruly region of Reka, lying to the north of Debar. Here the Sublime Porte resorted to the spread of Islam as a method of pacification. Reka fell under Ottoman power in 1460. According to the first timar registers for this territory from 1467, its sparse population was Christian only. It comprised motley groups of Albanians, Slavs, and Wallachians. In the beginning and the middle of the 16th century several consecutive uprisings broke out. In 1573 the kadi of Elbasan sent a report to the sultan on the need to draw the local population to the true faith in order to appease them at long last. The results of the measures applied became apparent in the next register of the region from 1582. As many as 170 Muslim households, of which 160 newly converted to Islam, were listed in it. ⁶⁰

One of the early forms of nonforcible conversion to Islam and substitution of the cultural identity was the gradual incorporation of the local aristocracy into the Ottoman military-feudal class. This naturally required some kind of compromise with certain dogmas of the Muslim doctrine with a view to the expansionist objectives of the empire. One way or another, typical of the early period of the consolidation of the power in the Balkans is the motley character of the military detachments recruited into the Ottoman army. Once fallen under partial dependence on the sultan, the Balkan nobility, in their striving to prevail over their rivals, as well as to preserve or expand their estates, gradually turned into Ottoman feudal tenants. Data on feudal lords who supported the foreign power are found in the correspondence between the patriarch of Constantinople and the archbishop of Ohrid dating back to the beginning of 15th century. In his commentary to this evidence Prof. H. Geltzer writes: "…What a strong power of attraction has the young, full of energy Turkish state exerted, especially on the Slav and Albanian notables in the Balkan Peninsula… One has to remember that this was the time when Bulgarian, Serbian and Albanian notables abandoned Christianity in droves and adopted Islam."⁶¹