Albanopolis (; )[.] was a city of the Albanoi, an Illyrians tribe. Albanopolis has been located by various scholars at the modern-day village of Zgërdhesh[.] The city appears in the literature in 150 AD, almost 300 years after Roman conquest of the region.
The city and its tribe gave their name to modern Albania.
Name
The toponym
Albanopolis is composed of "Albanoi", a tribe name, and "
polis", a Greek word meaning "city, castle, fortification".
Johann Georg von Hahn first noted that the suffix "polis" was probably added at a later date by other authors, as in some editions it is mentioned as "Albanos polis" or "Albanos".
Ancient ethnic names are rarely found in combination with "polis".
The ethnonym Albanoi assumed a particular importance in the ethnogensis of the Albanians, as it became their endonym, under circumstances that are no longer recognizable.
Attestation
The toponym Albanopolis has been found on a funeral inscription in
Gorno Sonje, near the city of
Skopje (ancient
Scupi), present-day
North Macedonia. It was discovered in 1931 by Nikola Vulić and its text was analyzed and published in 1982 by Borka Dragojević-Josifovska. The inscription in Latin reads "POSIS MESTYLU FILIUS FLAVIA DELVS MVCATI FILIA DOMO ALBANOPOLI IPSA DELVS". It is translated as "Posis Mestylu, son of Flavia, daughter of Delus Mucati, who comes from Albanopolis". It dates to the end of the 1st century or beginning of the 2nd century AD.
Ptolemy (100-170 AD) is the only author who mentions Albanopolis. He mentions it in the third book of Geographia as a city of a tribe he refers to as the Albanoi.
Location
The first scholar to advance the idea that Zgërdhesh was the site of the ancient Albanopolis was Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn. Zgërdhesh was also visited during World War I by Camillo Praschniker, an Austrian archaeologist, but his visit was short and he did not have time to draw any conclusions. According to historian
Selim Islami, Hahn's hypothesis is not conclusive, but may have merit, and deserves to be pursued in the future.
finds Zgërdhesh as the most convincing location, and argues that the Albanoi were a people who lived in the region between Mat and
Shkumbin.
However, archaeologists such as Thomas Maurer and Elvana Metalla have proposed that Zgërdhesh cannot be identified with Albanopolis. According to their findings, Zgërdhesh flourished during the Hellenistic period and was largely abandoned during the Roman imperial period. Albanopolis, on the other hand, is believed to have become a prominent settlement during the earlier phases of the Roman imperial period. Instead, Maurer and Metalla propose that Albanopolis was located to the east; in the river valleys of the Black Drin or the Vardar in the Šar Mountains.
See also
-
Illyria
-
Albania (placename)
-
List of ancient cities in Illyria
