Arbanasi, a historic Albanian village in Bulgaria
It is said that the tribal village of Arbanasi is located right in the center of a group of settlements, which consists of Veliko Tarnovo, Gorna Oriahovica and Liaskovec, at a distance of about 4 km from each eye. It is located on a plateau (reminiscent of another well-known settlement of medieval Albanian emigrants) and amazing views from the medieval fortresses of Carevec and Trepezica.
Also, the village is assumed to have been founded in the XNUMXth century by Orthodox Albanians who came mainly from Southern Albania, the area of Kostur and Epirus, who were involved in the sheep trade, who often traveled with their dogs to the Danube and Vlahi and then to turn this area into their residence.
With a farm of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the village of Arbanas was given to his son-in-law, Rustem Pasha, the Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who is also known for his Albanian origin from historical sources, and therefore the arboreal settlement on the Bulgarian lands soon turned into a village of prominent with wealthy inhabitants, who trade sheep, meat, leather, dairy products, copper, soap, candles, etc., crossing every corner of the Empire, but also Wallachia, Hungary, Poland, the Principality of Moscow, going as far as Baghdad, India and Persia.
In fact, the Orthodox Albanians will settle in several settlements in Northern Bulgaria, but most likely, their first settlement will be Arbanasi near Veliko Tarnovo.
It is precisely the frescoes and other ecclesiastical inscriptions of Arbanasi that prove that this settlement was founded somewhere in the middle of the XV century. Meanwhile, in the Ottoman documents of the time, not only Arbanasi, but also the nearby settlements Gorna Oriahovica, Dolna Oriahovica and Liaskovec, are collectively called "Arnavud Kariyeleri", i.e. "Albanian Villages".
From the medieval records, in 1751 Arbanasi had 236 Christian Albanian houses, and it also testifies to the presence of Albanians in other villages of the area, as isolated islands among a sea of Bulgarian population.
In the first half of the XNUMXth century, Arbanasi developed as a settlement of cattle breeders, artisans and merchants. A lot of churches would be built, with amazing frescoes, completely unheard of anywhere else in Bulgaria.
Meanwhile, even the architecture of Arbanasi is strongly reminiscent of South Albania, especially Gjirokastra and Berat, and another important evidence comes from the fact that the first frescoes of the church of Saint George in Arbanasi are the work of the master Nikola, the son of Onufri great, but besides Nicholas, the son of Onufri, the name of his assistant, John, is also found in the churches of Arbanasi.
Today, Arbanasi is a tourist village in Northern Bulgaria, with 330 inhabitants (while at the peak of development, it reached almost 3000 inhabitants), where rich Bulgarians spend their holidays and have their own villas, a village where the visitor is amazed by the charm, history and docks of this unique fixation with such a tangible Albanian heritage.
In Bulgaria, as stated by the Bulgarian historian Bojan Gjyzelev, thanks to whom we have the good fortune to know a lot of information about the presence of trees in medieval Bulgaria, there were also Albanian settlements in Červena Voda in the Ruse area on the Danube (another interesting coincidence, since also in Southern Albania we have a town, Çorovoda, with the same etymology), in Poroishte (again nicknamed Arnavutköy), today a neighborhood of the city of Razgrad, as well as in Dobrina and Devnia, near the city of Varna, where the Ukrainian Albanians come from ./Elvi Sidheri, KultPlus
