Kruja
Kruja (Kru-yah)
town is built around the foot of its sheer Fortress rock, 610 metres
high. The castle, the citadel of the national hero Skėnderbeg, is
both shrine and monument to the aspiration of the Albanian nation.
It is built
at a height of 548 metres on an isolated spur of the limestone mountain-wall
of the Kruja range, and has spectacular views of the surrounding
region. Kruja is thought to be named from the Albanian word Krua
meaning a Spring. The citadel was used by the Illyrian tribes
centred on nearby Zgėrdhesh as early as the 6 BC, and have become
the main Illyrian castle in the area after Zgėrdhesh was abandoned
in the 4th century of our era. The first Albanian feudal state,
the Kingdom of Arbër, was formed here around the year 1190,
with Kruja as an important part of its defensive system.
It is mentioned
as an important castle in the writing of the Byzantine chronicler
Georgius Akropolitis, who in 1245 called it Kroas, and it belonged
to Gulam, the lord of Abanon. At the end of the 13th century it
was taken by Charles of Anjou, who repaired the walls - after which
it passed to the Thopia family.
In 1396 the
Ottoman Turks occupied Kruja for the first time, but soon withdrew
and did not reappear for another 20 years. In 1430 an uprising started
under the leadership of Gjon Kastrioti, but it was crushed by Ottomans,
(Gjon Kastrioti is the father of the Albanian national hero Gjergj
Kastriot Skėnderbeg).
Gjergj, was
sent with his three brothers as a hostage to the Sultan at Constantinople
in 1415. He impressed his tutors at the military school he attended
and they gave him the title "Skander-beg" (Equal of Alexander the
Great) for valour on the field of battle. In 1443 he suddenly left
the Ottoman army which was fighting Hunyadi, the Hungarian Hero,
and returned to Albania. As the Turks retreated near Nish on 3 November
1443, Gjergj withdrew his nephew Hamza and 300 Albanian horsemen
and headed for Dibėr and then Krujė. With his return to his homeland,
a new phase in the resistance movement against the Turks started.
In 1450, during the first siege of Kruja, the castle suffered serious
damage. With heavy cannon, the Turks managed to destroy the walls
of the main gate, but did not take the central stronghold. The same
heroic Albanian resistance was organised when Sultan Murat II returned
with an even stronger army. The Turkish chronicler, Dursan Bey,
who took part in the second siege, wrote of the event that 'the Albanians have been born to resist and disobey'.
A German chronicler of the 16 century records that "Only
by starving out the defenders were the Turks able to take the strong
and impregnable castle on June 16 th 1478", ten years
after Skėnderbeg's death.
The town and
citadel were laid waste by the Sultan's troops and renamed Aksahissar, The White
Fort. The earthquake of 1617 caused the cracking and
collapse of many hill structures, including the citadel, but in
1832, on the Sultan's orders, the Albanian feudal castles were made
useless for defence and a centralised bureaucratic government replaced
- at least in intention - the former feudal semi-autonomy of such
mountain regions as Kruja. Half-hearted attempts were made by the
Turks to rebuild sections of the castle, after they tightened their
grip on the countryside, for they realised that sudden Balkan uprisings
could overwhelm their government, and a defenceless castle is a
doubtful asset to a ruling class.
In 1968, on the
500th anniversary of the death of Skėnderbeg, the city was proclaimed
a 'Hero City' by the communist
government which had come to power in November 1944.
top
of page
|