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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.

 

 

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