Albanian people

Middle Ages

The Albanian people maintain a very chequered and tumultuous history behind them, a fact explained by their geographical position in the Southeast of Europe at the cultural and political crossroad between the east and west, but they also have historically inhabited a hardly accessible mountainous region, which helped them preserve their peculiar culture and language. The issue surrounding the origin of the Albanian people has long been debated by historians and linguists for centuries. They have Paleo-Balkan origins, and for geographic and historical reasons most scholars maintain that they descended at least partially from the Illyrians, but besides the Illyrians which specific Peleo-Balkan group contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Albanians is still a matter of academic debate.