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Anėtarėsuar: 8.2006 Vendndodhja: Nė breshta, mes bredhave, | Citim:
"I believe", wrote Procope of Caesarea,
recalling the Illyrian province in his Historia Arcana, "that we must estimate at more than 200,000 the number of people
who were massacred or taken into captivity, in which of these invasions, leaving these provinces looking like the desert
of Schythia."
Which were the consequences of these devastations for the Latin urbanites ? During the first half of the 6th century
the urban communities withdrew to the higher mountain plateaus; other large number of these "Romaioi", frightened
by the terrifying attacks of the Avars and Slavs, preferred to sought the security of the megalopolises of Thessalonica
and Constantinople. But the majority of them fled into mountainous regions, where they were to survive the following
centuries predominantly by occupying themselves with cattle-breeding. In the Middle Ages these Romaioi came to be
known as Vlachs (the Slav word for "shepherd"); practicing pastoralism they were able to survive in the mountains,
unaffected by the Slavs' takeover of settled agriculture until almost today: the actual Arumanians (the Vlachs' own
name for themselves) have always been predominantly shepherds; no many years ago, they were moving flocks to
an Alpine pasture in the spring and then to nearby lowlands in the autumn in a seminomadic or nomadic way of
life (wandering) inhabiting the mountainous, inaccessible and isolated areas, each family living in a kind of
grass hut known as kalyva until 1960.
The oral history also points out to this migration: there was a tradition of Balkan Latinity with Scupi (Skopje) as its
center; with the Slavic invasions and the collapse of the Danube frontier, the Latin speakers moved from this center
northwards and southwards ( Pindus mountains ), joining other Latin speakers in the process.
Nowadays, the Aromanians rarely form compact regions, but they are living in Albania (some 150.000 - 5%) in its
Southern half; in Bulgaria there are some hundreds (?) in the Rodhopes Mountains; also in Greece (some 120.000
or 1%) in the North (Epirus - Thessaly & Pindus Mt.) but very assimilated linguistically by the cohertion of the state
(i.e., physical punishment in schools if speaking Arumanian); there are also the Meglens (megleno-romanian, a dialect
between Romanian and Aromanian), living North of Tessalonica, 15.000. In Macedonia (some 20.000 - 1%). And the
group of the Istro-romanians, some 2000 at Istria (Croatia), a later migration. The total ethnic would be 315.000,
but the real Arumanophones are less. I would suggest that the Aromanian has as substrate Illyrian, where the
Megleno-aromanian has Thracian substrate, explaining its differences.
It must be pointed out that the Vlachs did not borrow shepherd terms from the Slavs or from any other population with
the exception of the other par excellence shepherd population of the Balkan peninsula, the Albanians [Illyrians]: it
can be suspected that in these times of chaos they were living side-to-side, far from the Slav destruction: the Albanian
name of the Arumanians is rėmėr (from Latin romanus) or "choban", what means shepherd. The philology can track
their history, there is in fact enough Latin agricultural vocabulary in Romanian -words for sowing, plugging, harrowing,
and so on - to show that they were farming in Roman times.
Other problem that emerges, is that Aromanians have been nomadic, then, which were their original territories ? The
main area of the Balkan interior where a Latin-speaking population may have continued, in both towns and country,
after the Slav invasion, has already been mentioned: it included the upper Morava valley [Nis region], northern
Macedonia, and the whole of Kosovo, where the Illyrian - Albanian - Latin contact took place effectively.
After four centuries adapting to their new way of life, economies and habitat, the Vlachs started a process of expansion:
The Vlachs (Aromanians) are mentioned as Blachorinchinii of Chalcidice [N Greece], named after the river Rhinchos.
In the eighth century these Rinchinii and Blachorinchinii are mentioned as attacking the monastery of Castamonitu.
In 976 a Byzantine author, Kedrenos, tells us that the brother of the Bulgarian king Samuel was killed by Wallach wagoners between Castoria and Prespa, in Macedonia.
In 980 Basil II, the Bulgaroktonos, conferred the domination over the Wallachs of Thessalia on one Nicoulitza.
In 1014 King Samuel was defeated between Serres and Melnik [N Greece] in the hills of Kimbaloggoi, a Latin name like the Campulung of Wallachia.
In 1019 an edict of Emperor Basil II (the Bulgaroktonos) puts the Wallachs of Bulgaria (Blacoi), which had been supposed as an independent state, under the archbishopric of Ochrida.
A descendant of a Nicoulitza, bearing the same name, organized a revolt of the Wallachs of Thessalia in 1060.
The first known mention of Vlachs north of the lower Danube was written by the Polish chronicler Jan Dlugosz (1415-1480). It relates that Ruthenians, Petchenegs, and Vlachs were in 1070 AD fighting in Moldavia in the army of the prince Wiaczeslav against Boleslaw, who later became the king of Poland (Boleslaw II). In such epoch, also occupied Albanian zones.
According to Cecaumenos (Strategicon, in 1066), the Wallachs of Epirus, Thessalia, etc., all came from the north, and were descended from the Dacians and Bessi (Thracians) who dwelt north of the Danube and along the Sava. [??]
Some years after, around 1173, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, traveling through Thessaly, is mentioning the mountaineer Vlachs, and the way they were plundering those Greeks of the plains. Niketas Honiatis describes a "Great Wallachia" comprising Thesaly, as opossed to other two "Wallachias" quoted by Frantzes: "Litlle Wallachia" in Acarnania and Aetolia, and an "Upper Wallachia" in Epirus. The existence of these free entities is confirmed by the Western chronicles Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Henri de Valenciennes, Robert de Clary, and by those who wrote about the rebellion of a stem of the Vlachs of the Hemus (Chalhidiki) Peninsula in 1196 A.D.
The crusaders of Frederick Barbarossa in 1190 in the region of Nis met with resistance from Wallachs who towards 1189 had revolted, led by their chiefs Peter and Asen, against the Byzantine domination.
Chroniates also wrote, between 1202 and 1214, that the Thessalian mountain region was called 'Great Wallachia'.
Wallach contingents in the armies of the Shishmanid Tsars of Vidin (throughout the fourteenth century) are also mentioned by Orbini: Tsar Michael's army counts at one moment 12,000 Bulgarians (80%) and 3000 Wallachians (20%). Tsar Alexander (1331-1371) has 'fatto un buono essercito de Bulgari et Valachi...' With his army he routs Emperor John Cantecuzene.
The areas of the Timok and Morava remained Romanized until the 13th and 14th centuries. In these regions, although to a lesser extent as compared to Dalmatia, a large number of Roman placenames were preserved.
The Romance language was spoken in the Serbian regions, while it is probable that in Bulgaria, it disappeared soon after the organization of the second empire. The silence of the historical sources concerning Vlachs after this moment can only be explained in this way. In the region of Struma, in southwestern Bulgaria, Vlachs continued to live until the end of the Middle Ages.
The Montenegrin highlands clearly had a well-established Vlach population by the early fourteenth century, when Vlach place-names are recorded.
In Bosnia, due to deliberate policies on the part of the Ottomans to fill up territory which has been depopulated, either by war or by plague, can be tracked signs in the earliest defters (Turkish tax records) of groups of Christian herdsman, identifiable as Vlachs, being settled in devastated areas of eastern Herzegovina, in the defters of the 1470s and 1480s they can be seen spreading into central and north-central Bosnia these "Serbs, who call themselves Vlachs [...] They came from Smederovo and Belgrade."
A westernmost expansion of the Aromanians - Vlachs has ben the most recent of the Istrian Peninsula.
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