Product Code Database
The Aromanians () are an ethnic group native to the southern Balkans who speak Aromanian, an Eastern Romance language. They traditionally live in central and southern Albania, south-western Bulgaria, northern and central Greece, and North Macedonia, and can currently be found in central and southern Albania, south-western Bulgaria, south-western and eastern North Macedonia, northern and central Greece, southern Serbia, and south-eastern Romania (Northern Dobruja). An Aromanian diaspora living outside these places also exists. The Aromanians are known by several other names, such as "Vlachs" or "Macedo-Romanians" (sometimes used to also refer to the Megleno-Romanians).
The term "Vlachs" is used in Greece and in other countries to refer to the Aromanians, with this term having been more widespread in the past to refer to all Romance-speaking peoples of the Balkan Peninsula and Carpathian Mountains region (Southeast Europe).
Their vernacular, Aromanian, is an Eastern Romance language very similar to Romanian, which has many slightly varying dialects of its own. Aromanian is considered to have developed from Common Romanian, a common stage of all the Eastern Romance varieties that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken by Paleo-Balkan peoples after the Romanization of the Balkan area that fell under the Latin sphere of influence. The Aromanian language shares many common features with Albanian, Bulgarian and Greek language; however, although it has many loanwords from Greek, Slavic languages, and Turkish language, its lexicon remains majority Romance in origin.
The term Vlach is an exonym used since medieval times. Aromanians call themselves Rrãmãn or Armãn, depending on which of the two dialectal groups they belong, and identify as part of the Fara Armãneascã ("Aromanian tribe") or the Populu Armãnescu ("Aromanian people"). The endonym is rendered in English as Aromanian, in Romanian as Aromâni, in Greek as Armanoi (Αρμάνοι), in Albanian as Arumunët, in Bulgarian as Arumani (Арумъни), in Macedonian as Aromanci (Ароманци), in Serbo-Croatian as Armani and Aromuni.
The term "Vlach" was used in medieval Balkans as an exonym for all the Romance-speaking (Romanized) people of the region, as well as a general name for shepherds, but nowadays is commonly used for the Aromanians and Meglenites, Romanians being named Vlachs only in Serbia, Bulgaria and North Macedonia. The term is noted in the following languages: Greek "Vlachoi" (Βλάχοι), Albanian "Vllehët", Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian "Vlasi" (Bласи), Turkish language "Ulahlar", Hungarian "Oláh". It is noteworthy that the term Vlach also meant "bandit" or "rebel" in Ottoman historiography, and that the term was also used as an exonym for mainly Orthodox Christians in Ottoman-ruled western Balkans (mainly denoting Serbs), as well as by the Venetians for the immigrant Slavophone population of the Dalmatian hinterland (also mainly denoting Serbs).
Rrãmãnji
Armãnji
In the South Slavic countries, such as Serbia, North Macedonia and Bulgaria, the nicknames used to refer to the Aromanians are usually Vlasi (South Slavic for Vlachs and Wallachians) and Tsintsari (also spelled Tzintzari, Cincari or similar), which is derived from the way the Aromanians pronounce the word meaning five, tsintsi. In Romania, the demonym Macedoni, Machedoni or Macedoromâni is also used. In Albania, the terms Vllah or Vlleh ("Vlach") and Çoban or Çobenj (from Turkish çoban, "shepherd") are used.
A Romanian research team concluded in the 1960s that Albanian Aromanians migrated to Tirana, Stan Karbunarë, Skrapar District, Pojan, Bilisht and Korçë, and that they inhabited Karaja, Lushnjë, Moscopole, Drenovë (Aromanian Dãrnova) and Boboshticë (Aromanian Bubushtitsa). There was an important community of Aromanians in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina that was probably assimilated by local dwellers. Initially they were Christians but around year 1000 they adhered to Bogomilism/Pataria Christian sect and were Serbianisation. After the Turkish occupation, the Aromanians of Bosnia and Herzegovina converted to Islam faith due to economic and religious motives.Isidor Ieşan, Secta patarenă în Balcani şi în Dacia Traiană. Institutul de arte grafice C. Sfetea, București, 1912 There are many artifacts of Aromanians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainly in their . These necropolises cover all Bosnia and consist of funerary monuments, generally without crosses.
The medieval Vlachs (Aromanians) of Herzegovina are considered authors of the famous funerary monuments with petroglyphs (stecci in Serbian) from Herzegovina and surrounding countries. The theory of the Vlach origin was proposed by Bogumil Hrabak (1956) and Marian WenzelMarian Wenzel, Bosnian and Herzegovinian Tombstobes-Who Made Them and Why?" Sudost-Forschungen 21(1962): 102–143 and more recently was supported by the archeological and anthropological researches of skeleton remains from the graves under stećci. The theory is much older and was first proposed by Arthur Evans in his work Antiquarian Researches in Illyricum (1883). While doing research with Felix von Luschan on stećak graves around Konavle, he found that a large number of skulls were not of Slavic origin but similar to older Illyrian and Albanian tribes, as well as noting that Dubrovnik memorials recorded those parts inhabited by the Vlachs until the 15th century.Mužić, Ivan (2009). "Vlasi i starobalkanska pretkršćanska simbolika jelena na stećcima". Starohrvatska prosvjeta (in Croatian). Split: Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments. III (36): 315–349.
Until then, the Aromanians, as Eastern Orthodox Christians, were subsumed with other ethnic groups into the wider ethnoreligious group of the "Romans" (in Greek Rhomaioi, after the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire), which in Ottoman Empire times formed the distinct Rum millet. The Rum millet was headed by the Greek-dominated Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Greek language was used as a lingua franca among Balkan Orthodox Christians throughout the 17th–19th centuries. As a result, wealthy, urbanized Aromanians were culturally Hellenized and played a major role in the dissemination of Greek language and culture; indeed, the first book written in Aromanian was written in the Greek alphabet and aimed at spreading Greek among Aromanian-speakers.
By the early 19th century, however, the distinct Latin-derived nature of the Aromanian language began to be studied in a series of grammars and language booklets. In 1815, the Aromanians of Budapest requested permission to use their language in liturgy, but it was turned down by the local metropolitan.
The establishment of a distinct Aromanian national consciousness, however, was hampered by the tendency of the Aromanian upper classes to be absorbed in the dominant surrounding ethnicities, and espouse their respective national causes as their own. So much did they become identified with the host nations that Balkan national historiographies portray the Aromanians as the "best Albanians", "best Greeks" and "best Bulgarians", leading to researchers calling them the " of the Balkans". Consequently, many Aromanians played a prominent role in the modern history of the Balkan nations: the revolutionary Pitu Guli, Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis, Greek magnate Georgios Averoff, Greek Defence Minister Evangelos Averoff, Serbian Prime Minister Vladan Đorđević, Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople, Romanian metropolitan Andrei Şaguna etc.
Following the establishment of independent Romania and the autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the 1860s, the Aromanians increasingly began to come under the influence of the Romanian national movement. Although vehemently opposed by the Greek church, the Romanians established an extensive state-sponsored cultural and educative network in the southern Balkans: the first Romanian school was established in 1864 by the Aromanian Dimitri Atanasescu, and by the early 20th century there were 100 Romanian churches and 106 schools with 4,000 pupils and 300 teachers. As a result, Aromanians divided into two main factions, one pro-Greek, the other pro-Romanian, plus a smaller focusing exclusively on its Aromanian identity.
With the support of the Great Powers, and especially Austria-Hungary, the "Aromanian-Romanian movement" culminated in the recognition of the Aromanians as a distinct millet (the Ullah millet) by the Ottoman Empire on 22 May 1905, with corresponding freedoms of worship and education in their own language. Nevertheless, due to the advanced assimilation of the Aromanians, this came too late to lead to the creation of a distinct Aromanian national identity; indeed, as Gustav Weigand noted in 1897, most Aromanians were not only indifferent, but actively hostile to their own national movement.
At the same time, the Greek–Romanian antagonism over Aromanian loyalties intensified with the armed Macedonian Struggle, leading to the rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1906. During the Macedonian Struggle, most Aromanians participated on the "patriarchist" (pro-Greek) side, but some sided with the "exarchists" (pro-Bulgarians). However, following the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, Romanian interest waned, and when it revived in the 1920s it was designed more towards encouraging the Romanians' "Macedonian brothers" to emigrate to Southern Dobruja, where there were strong non-Romanian minorities.
While Romanian activity declined, from World War I on and with its involvement in Albania, Italy made some efforts—not very successful—in converting pro-Romanian sympathies into pro-Italian ones. In World War II, during the Axis occupation of Greece, Italy encouraged Aromanian nationalists to form an "Aromanian homeland", the so-called Principality of the Pindus. The project never gained much traction among the local population, however. On the contrary, many leading figures of the Greek Resistance against the Axis, like Andreas Tzimas, Stefanos Sarafis, and Alexandros Svolos, were Aromanians. The "principality" project collapsed with the Italian armistice in 1943.
In modern times, Aromanians generally have adopted the dominant national culture, often with a dual identity as both Aromanian and Greek/Albanian/Bulgarian/Macedonian/Serbian/etc. Aromanians are also found outside the borders of Greece. There are many Aromanians in southern Albania and in towns all over the Balkans, while Aromanians identifying as Romanians are still to be found in areas where Romanian schools were active. There are also many Aromanians who identify themselves as solely Aromanian (even, as in the case of the "Cincars", when they no longer speak the language). Such groups are to be found in southwestern Albania, the eastern parts of North Macedonia, the Aromanians who immigrated to Romania in 1940, and in Greece in the Veria (Aromanian Veryia) and Grevena (Aromanian Grebini) areas and in Athens.
The majority of the Aromanian population lives in northern and central Greece; Epirus, Greek Macedonia and Thessaly. The main areas inhabited by these populations are the Pindus Mountains, around the mountains of Mount Olympus and Vermion, and around the Prespa Lakes near the border with Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia. Some Aromanians can still be found in isolated rural settlements such as Samarina (Aromanian Samarina, Xamarina or San Marina), Perivoli (Aromanian Pirivoli) and Smixi (Aromanian Zmixi). There are also Aromanians (Vlachs) in towns and cities such as Ioannina (Aromanian Ianina, Enina or Enãna), Metsovo (Aromanian Aminciu), Veria (Aromanian Veryia) Katerini, Trikala (Aromanian Trikolj), Grevena (Aromanian Grebini) and Thessaloniki (Aromanian Sãruna)
Generally, the use of the minority languages has been discouraged in Greece,Greek Monitor of Human and Minority Rights vol I. No 3 December 1995 although recently there have been efforts to preserve the endangered languages (including Aromanian) of Greece.
Since 1994, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki offers beginner and advanced courses in "Koutsovlach", and cultural festivals with over 40,000 participants—the largest Aromanian cultural gatherings in the world—regularly take place in Metsovo. Nevertheless, there are no exclusively Aromanian newspapers, and the Aromanian language is almost totally absent from television. Indeed, although as of 2002 there were over 200 Vlach cultural associations in Greece, many did not even feature the term "Vlach" in their titles, and only a few are active in preserving the Aromanian language.
In 1997, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed Recommendation 1333 (1997) encouraging the Balkan states to take steps to rectify the "critical situation" of Aromanian culture and language. This was after pressure from the Union for Aromanian Language and Culture in Germany. In response, the then President of Greece, Konstantinos Stefanopoulos, publicly urged Greek Aromanians to teach the language to their children.
In 2001, 31 Aromanian mayors and heads of villages signed a protest resolution against the U.S. State Department report on the human rights situation in Greece. They complained "against the direct or indirect characterisation of the Vlach-speaking Greeks as an ethnic, linguistic or other minority, stating that the Vlach-speaking Greeks never requested to be recognised by the Greek state as a minority, stressing that historically and culturally they were and still are an integral part of Hellenism, they would be bilingual and Aromanian would be secondary".
Furthermore, the largest Aromanian group in Greece (and across the world), the Panhellenic Federation of Cultural Associations of Vlachs in Greece, has repeatedly rejected the classification of Aromanian as a minority language or the Vlachs as a distinct ethnic group separate from the Greeks, considering the Aromanians as an "integral part of Hellenism". The Aromanian (Vlach) Cultural Society, which is associated with Sotiris Bletsas, is represented on the Member State Committee of the European Bureau for Lesser Spoken Languages in Greece.
For the last years there seems to be a renewal of the former policies of supporting and sponsoring of Romanian schools for Aromanians of Albania. As a recent article in the Romanian media points out, the kindergarten, primary and secondary schools in the Albanian town of Divjakë where the local Albanian Aromanians pupils are taught classes both in Aromanian and Romanian were granted substantial help directly from the Romanian government. One of the only churches serving the Aromanian minority in Albania is the St. Sotir Church (Ayiu Sutir) of Korçë, which was given 2 billion Romanian leu help from the Romanian government. They also have a political party named Party of the Vlachs of Albania (PVSH), which is the only in the world along with two in North Macedonia, and two social organisations named Shoqata Arumunët/Vllehtë e Shqiperisë (The Society of the Aromanians/Vlachs of Albania) and Unioni Kombëtar Arumun Shqiptar (The Aromanian Albanian National Union). Many of the Albanian Aromanians (Arvanito Vlachs) have immigrated to Greece, since they are considered in Greece part of the Greek minority in Albania.Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers. The Albanian Aromanians´ Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania , p. 12-13. There are attempts to establish education in their native language in the town of Divjakë.
Notable Aromanians whose family background hailed from today's Albania include Bishop Andrei Şaguna, and Father Haralambie Balamaci, whereas notable Albanians with an Aromanian family background are actors Aleksandër (Sandër) Prosi, Margarita Xhepa, Albert Vërria, and Prokop Mima, as well as composer Nikolla Zoraqi and singers Eli Fara and Parashqevi Simaku.
On 13 October 2017, Aromanians received the official status of ethnic minority, through voting of a bill by Albanian Parliament.
]]
According to official government figures (census 2002), there are 9,695 Aromanians or Vlachs, as they are officially called in North Macedonia. According to the census of 1953 there were 8,669 Vlachs, 6,392 in 1981 and 8,467 in 1994. The Vlachs of Macedonia , Tom J. Winnifrith. Aromanians are recognized as an ethnic minority, and are hence represented in Parliament and enjoy ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights and the right to education in their language.
There are Aromanian cultural societies and associations such as the Union for Aromanian Culture from North Macedonia, The Aromanian League of North Macedonia, The International League of Aromanians and Comuna Armãneascã "Frats Manachi", (The Aromanian Community Manaki Brothers) in Bitola (Aromanian Bituli or Bitule). There also are two political parties representing the Aromanian minority of the country. These are the Democratic Union of the Vlachs of Macedonia (DSVM; Unia Democratã a Armãnjlor dit Machidunii, UDAM) and the Party of the Vlachs of Macedonia (PVM; Partia Armãnjilor ditu Machidunie, PAM). They are the only Aromanian parties in the world along with the PVSH in Albania.
Many forms of Aromanian-language media have been established since the 1990s. North Macedonia's Government provides financial assistance to Aromanian-language newspapers and radio stations. Aromanian-language newspapers such as Phoenix () service the Aromanian community. The Aromanian television program Spark (; Macedonian Искра (Iskra)) broadcasts on the second channel of the Macedonian Radio-Television.
There are Aromanian classes provided in primary schools and the state funds some Aromanian published works (magazines and books) as well as works that cover Aromanian culture, language and history. The latter is mostly done by the first Aromanian Scientific Society, "Constantin Belemace" in Skopje (Aromanian Scopia), which has organized symposiums on Aromanian history and has published papers from them. According to the last census, there were 9,596 Aromanians (0.48% of the total population). There are concentrations in Kruševo (Aromanian Crushuva) 1,020 (20%), Štip (Aromanian Shtip) 2,074 (4.3%), Bitola 1,270 (1.3%), Struga 656 (1%), Sveti Nikole (Aromanian San Nicole) 238 (1.4%), Kisela Voda 647 (1.1%) and Skopje 2,557 (0.5%).
In 1925, 47 years after Dobruja was incorporated into Romania, King Ferdinand gave the Aromanians land and privileges to settle in this region, which resulted in a significant migration of Aromanians into Romania. Today, 25% of the population of the region are descendants of Aromanian immigrants.
There are currently between 50,000 and 100,000 Aromanians in Romania, most of which are concentrated in Dobruja. According to some Aromanian cultural organizations in Romania, there are some 100,000 Aromanians in Romania, and they are often called macedoni ("Macedonians"). Some Aromanian associations even place the total number of people of Aromanian descent in Romania as high as 250,000.
Recently, there has been a growing movement in Romania, both by Aromanians and by Romanian lawmakers, to recognize the Aromanians either as a separate cultural group or as a separate ethnic group, and extend to them the rights of other minorities in Romania, such as mother-tongue education and representatives in parliament.
In Romania exists the Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society.
In Bulgaria, most Aromanians were concentrated in the region south-west of Sofia, in the region called Pirin, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire until 1913. Due to this reason, a large number of these Aromanians moved to Southern Dobruja, part of the Kingdom of Romania after the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913. After the reinclusion of Southern Dobruja in Bulgaria with the Treaty of Craiova of 1940, most were moved to Northern Dobruja in a population exchange. Another group moved to northern Greece. Nowadays, the largest group of Aromanians in Bulgaria is found in the southern mountainous area, around Peshtera. Most Aromanians in Bulgaria originate from the Gramos, with some from North Macedonia, the Pindus in Greece and Moscopole in Albania.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Aromanians and Romanians (known as "Vlachs" in Bulgaria) have started initiatives to organize themselves under one common association.
According to the 1926 official census, there were 69,080 Romanians, 5,324 Aromanians, 3,777 Cutzovlachs, and 1,551 Tsintsars.
The majority of Serbian people of Aromanian descent do not speak Aromanian and espouse a Serbs. They live in Niš, Belgrade and some smaller communities in Southern Serbia, such as Knjaževac. The Lunjina Serbian–Aromanian Association was founded in Belgrade in 1991. According to the 2022 census, there were 327 Serbian citizens that identified as ethnic Cincari. However, unofficial estimates number the Aromanian population of Serbia at 5,000–15,000.
|
|
