Albanopolis (; ) was a city of the Albanoi, an Illyrian tribe. Albanopolis has been located by various scholars at the modern-day village of Zgërdhesh or at Krujë. The ancient city may correspond with later mentions of the settlement called Arbanon and Albanon during the Middle Ages, although it is not certain this was the same place.. The city appears in the literature in 150 AD, almost 300 years after Roman conquest of the region. The city and its tribe gave their name to modern Albania.

Name

The toponym ''Albanopolis'' is composed of "Albanoi", a tribe name, and "

polis Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...

", a Greek word meaning "city, castle, fortification". Johann Georg von Hahn first noted that the suffix "polis" was probably added at a later date by other authors, as in some editions it is mentioned as "Albanos polis" or "Albanos". Ancient ethnic names are rarely found in combination with "polis". The

ethnonym An ethnonym () is a name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms (whose name of the ethnic group has been created by another group of people) and autonyms, or endonyms (whose name is created and used ...

''Albanoi'' assumed a particular importance in the ethnogensis of the Albanians, as it became their

endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

, under circumstances that are no longer recognizable.

Attestation

The toponym Albanopolis has been found on a funeral inscription in Gorno Sonje, near the city of

Skopje Skopje ( , ; ; , sq-definite, Shkupi) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It lies in the northern part of the country, in the Skopje Basin, Skopje Valley along the Vardar River, and is the political, economic, and cultura ...

(ancient Scupi), present-day

North Macedonia North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...

. It was discovered in 1931 by Nikola Vulić and its text was analyzed and published in 1982 by Borka Dragojević-Josifovska. The inscription in Latin reads "POSIS MESTYLU F LIUSFL VIADELVS MVCATI F LIADOM ALBANOP LIIPSA DELVS". It is translated as "Posis Mestylu, son of Flavia, daughter of Delus Mucati, who comes from Albanopolis". It dates to the end of the 1st century or beginning of the 2nd century AD.

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

(100-170 AD) is the only author who mentions Albanopolis. He mentions it in the third book of ''Geographia'' as a city of a tribe he refers to as the Albanoi.

Location

The first scholar to advance the idea that Zgërdhesh was the site of the ancient Albanopolis was Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn. Zgërdhesh was also visited during World War I by Camillo Praschniker, an Austrian archaeologist, but his visit was short and he did not have time to draw any conclusions. According to historian Selim Islami, Hahn's hypothesis is not conclusive, but may have merit, and deserves to be pursued in the future. Aurel Plasari finds Zgërdhesh as the most convincing location, and argues that the Albanoi were a people who lived in the region between

Mat A mat is a hard or soft floor covering that generally is placed on a floor or other flat surface. Mats serve a range of purposes including: * serving to clean items passed over it, such as a doormat, which removes dirt from the soles of shoe ...

and Shkumbin. However, archaeologists such as Thomas Maurer and Elvana Metalla have proposed that Zgërdhesh cannot be identified with Albanopolis. According to their findings, Zgërdhesh flourished during the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

and was largely abandoned during the

Roman imperial period The Roman imperial period is the expansion of political and cultural influence of the Roman Empire. The period begins with the reign of Augustus (), and it is taken to end variously between the late 3rd and the late 4th century, with the beginnin ...

. Albanopolis, on the other hand, is believed to have become a prominent settlement during the earlier phases of the Roman imperial period. Instead, Maurer and Metalla propose that Albanopolis was located to the east; in the river valleys of the

Black Drin The Black Drin, or Black Drim (; ) is a river in North Macedonia and Albania. It flows out of Lake Ohrid in Struga, North Macedonia. It is long and its drainage basin is . Its average discharge is . After flowing through North Macedonia for , the ...

or the Upper Vardar in the Šar Mountains.

References

{{Illyrians Cities in ancient Illyria Illyrian Albania Archaeological sites in Albania Former populated places in the Balkans

Name

Attestation

Location

See also

References