Besa and the Old Law
The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini codified northern Albanian life for centuries, hospitality, honour, property, and the blood feud, and at its centre stood besa, a word of honour treated as absolute. The same code produced the burrnesha, women who swore to live as men. This facet also holds what UNESCO calls Albanian folk iso-polyphony, proclaimed a Masterpiece in 2005 and inscribed on the Representative List in 2008: two solo voices over a choral drone, whose name comes from the ison of Byzantine chant, and whose Lab and Tosk forms differ in how that drone is sung.
Part of Albania
36 moments in this segment.
- - Family cradle at Margegaj. A carved wooden cradle more than a century old, kept by the Mekshiqi family at Margegaj in Tropoja. Objects like this were handed down through generations in the highland houses.
- - Men of Shkoder, 1903. A group of Shkoder men photographed by Franz Nopcsa in 1903, in the fez and sashed dress of the late Ottoman town. Shkoder was then the largest Albanian city and the centre of Catholic northern Albania.
- - The men of Iballje in Puka, 1905. Armed men of Iballje in the district of Puka, photographed by Franz Nopcsa in 1905. In the northern highlands the rifle was ordinary dress and disputes were settled under the customary law of the Kanun.
- - Tekke west of Elbasan. A dervish lodge in the countryside west of Elbasan. Bektashi tekkes were central to religious life in central and southern Albania, and the order later made Tirana its world headquarters.
- - Carved panelling in a Shkodër reception room. A drawing of the wooden panelling of a Shkodër state room, from Franz Nopcsa's 1925 survey of the buildings, dress and implements of northern Albania. The Hungarian geologist spent two decades recording highland life before it changed.
- - Church festival at Polican, 1931. Villagers gather for the feast day at the church of Saint Nicholas in Polican in southern Albania. Rural religious festivals were a fixed point of the year across the south before the state campaign against religion.
- - Xhema Alibali, sworn virgin. An agency report from 25 August 2001 following Xhema Alibali, one of the burrnesha who took on a man's social role under the Kanun. She dances at a village wedding, smokes at home and sits in the men's cafe.
- - Bridal dowry chest. A carved wooden chest of the kind used to carry a bride's dowry to her new household. The senduk held the textiles a girl and her family had spent years preparing.
- - Voices in iso-polyphony. Albanian iso-polyphonic singing, the multi-part vocal form of the south in which a held drone carries the other voices. UNESCO inscribed it as intangible cultural heritage in 2005.
- - The lahute of Hysen Kurtaj. A performance on the lahute, the single-stringed fiddle that carries Gheg epic song, by Hysen Kurtaj of the Rugova folk ensemble. The clip was posted by a workshop that makes and sells the instrument.
- - Ethnographic museum, Kruje. The ethnographic museum in Kruje, housed in an Ottoman-era family house, photographed in 2009. Its rooms are laid out as a working household of the period, with looms, olive presses and a hearth.
- - UNESCO films Albanian iso-polyphony. The UNESCO film for the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity sets out the two branches of Albanian polyphonic singing, the Gheg of the north and the Lab and Tosk styles of the south. The tradition was inscribed in 2008.
- - Two men bound by the blood feud. The international trailer for a documentary on the Kanun and gjakmarrja, following two men held on either side of a feud, with Albanian dialogue subtitled. The customary code still shapes some households in the northern highlands.
- - Stone water trough at Vrith, Shkrel. A carved stone trough for livestock at Vrith in Shkrel, above Shkoder, listed as heritage. Objects like this belong to a pastoral economy that shaped highland life for centuries.
- - Ethnographic museum at Bajram Curri. The museum at Bajram Curri, which holds the material culture of Tropoja and the Gjakova highlands, photographed in 2012.
- - Shëngjergj day gathering at Novosej. Villagers gather at Novosej for Shëngjergj, the spring feast of Saint George kept by both Christian and Muslim Albanians as a marker of the pastoral year.
- - Fetching the bride at Valbone. The ceremony of collecting the bride from her family's house in Valbone in the northern Alps. The handover of the bride, with its songs and gifts, is the core of the traditional highland wedding.
- - Sofra Dardane at Bajram Curri. The Sofra Dardane festival brings singers and folk groups to Bajram Curri each summer. The name invokes the shared table, the sofra, around which northern hospitality is organised.
- - The chestnut festival at Bajram Curri. The Festa e Gështenjave, the autumn chestnut fair, in Bajram Curri in October 2014. Chestnut groves are one of the few cash crops of the Tropoja highlands.
- - Wedding guests singing. Krushq, the party that escorts the bride, singing at a wedding in the Kukës region. Unaccompanied group song of this kind is the backbone of northern Albanian ceremony.
- - Nine voices in Gjirokaster. A field recording made in Gjirokaster in May 2015, with as many as nine singers holding the drone and the two solo lines of southern iso-polyphony. It was caught by a listener standing among them rather than staged for a camera.
- - The kulla of Abdullah Dreni in Gjakovë. A stone kulla in Gjakovë, the fortified tower house of the northern Albanian lands. Its blind lower walls and narrow firing slits belong to a society governed by the Kanun and by blood feud.
- - A wedding in Tirana. A wedding party in Tirana in 2017. Albanian weddings remain large, multi-day affairs that draw in whole extended families, in the city as much as in the villages.
- - Embroidered lace outside Gjirokaster castle. Embroidered lacework laid out for sale outside the castle at Gjirokaster in 2018. Needlework of this kind is one of the crafts that survived the collectivised decades and now depends on tourism.
- - Crowds at the beer festival, 2018. An evening crowd at the Festa e Birrës in August 2018. The beer festival is among the largest of the summer gatherings that fill Albanian towns after the harvest.
- - Kerri i nuses, the bride's cart in Prizren. A decorated bride's cart paraded through Prizren as part of a traditional wedding. Marriage customs remain one of the most durable parts of Albanian social life.
- - The lahuta and the Song of Halil's Wedding. Isa Elezi-Lekgjekaj of Rugova sings the opening verses of a song from the Kreshnik cycle, accompanying himself on the single-string lahuta. That cycle is the spine of the northern Albanian oral epic.
- - Catholic wedding at Saint Paul's cathedral, Tirana. A marriage at the Catholic cathedral of Saint Paul in Tirana in 2019. Religious weddings returned to Albania only after 1990, when the ban on all worship imposed in 1967 was lifted.
- - Window of the Dollma teqe at Krujë. A carved window of the Dollma teqe below Krujë castle, a Bektashi lodge kept by the same family since the eighteenth century. It survived the 1967 campaign that closed every other place of worship in the country.
- - Northern folk motifs by Agron Pllumaj. The Gheg musician Agron Pllumaj performs motifs from the northern Albanian folk repertoire in a clip he dedicates to an old church and to family members no longer living.
- - Copper ewer and tray in the ethnographic museum. A copper gjym and tepsi in an Albanian ethnographic museum. Coppersmiths worked whole quarters of the old bazaars at Shkoder, Kruje and Gjirokaster.
- - House of Gjergj Fishta at Fishte. The house of Gjergj Fishta at Fishte near Lezhe. The Franciscan poet wrote Lahuta e Malcis, the verse epic of the northern highlands, and took part in the 1908 alphabet congress at Manastir; the communist state later banned his work outright.
- - The Bektashi world headquarters in Tirana. The seat of the Bektashi order, whose leadership moved from Anatolia to Tirana in 1930 after the Turkish republic banned the dervish lodges. Suppressed in 1967, the order re-established itself here after 1990.
- - The Gjon Markagjoni tower, Shkoder. The stone tower attached to the Shkoder historical museum belonged to the Markagjoni family, chiefs of Mirdita. Fortified tower houses like this were the standard architecture of the northern clans.
- - Gjirokastra marks twenty years of protection. Local television from Gjirokastra on the celebrations for two decades of international protection for Albanian iso-polyphony, first proclaimed in 2005. The town marked it with singing in the old quarter.
- - Wedding procession through Krume. A wedding procession moving through the streets of Krume in Has, in the far north-east, in June 2026. The convoy of cars with horns and flags has replaced the horseback procession but the ritual is the same.
