Po redaktohet Albanoi (paragraf)

== Ancient and medieval literature ==

The Albanoi may have likely first appeared under the name [[Abroi]] in ancient literature.<ref name="Plasari10">{{harvnb|Plasari|2020|pp=10–11}}</ref> The Abroi may have been a constituent tribe of the larger group of the [[Taulantii]].{{sfn|Wilkes|1996|p=98}} They are first mentioned by [[Hecataeus of Miletus]] (550-476 BCE) in fragment 69 of ''Periodos Ges''. Hecataeus places them near the Taulanti who lived along the Adriatic and the [[Enchelei]]. In 19th century and 20th century cartographies, they are variously placed in the upper [[Devoll (river)|Devoll]] or the coastal area between [[Mat (river)|Mat]] and [[Shkumbin]] rivers. Their name may have actually been ''Arboi'' as ''Abroi'' may have been produced via a metathesis, another linguistic process or a common misassociation by Hecataeus of their name with the ancient Greek term [[wiktionary:ἁβρός|abros]] to better adapt it to Greek. The name ''Arboi'' directly connects them to the later ''Albanoi'' who lived in the same region.<ref name="Plasari10"/> [[Stephanus of Byzantium]] who copied much of the work of Hecataeus in the 6th century CE added another entry about a city named Arbon in [[Illyria]] per Polybius and identified its demonyms as ''Arbonios'' and ''Arbonitis''.{{sfn|Plasari|2020|p=22}}

[[Polybius]] (200-118 BCE) mentions a location named "Arbon" in his description of the [[Illyrian Wars]]. "Arbon" in a series of mistranslations has been named an "island" or a "city" even though Polybius never mentions it as such. The place has not been identified, and it is unlikely that it refers to the northern Adriatic island of Rab (attested for the first time as Arba by Pliny).{{sfn|Winnifrith|2021|p=70}} An interdisciplinary reading of the passage indicates that "Arbon" might actually have been in central Albania, roughly in the same location as the later [[Albanopolis]] ([[Ptolemy]]) and Arbanon ([[Anna Komnene]]). [[Wilhelm Tomaschek]] (1841-1901) considered ''Arbon'' to be the "first attestation of the modern name of Albania".{{sfn|Plasari|2020|p=15}}

[[Ptolemy]] (100-170 CE) is the first author who mentions the ethnonym of the Albanoi in ''Geographia''. The Albanoi are mentioned in the third book of Geographia. They were a people who lived in the region between Mat and Shkumbin and held the settlement Albanopolis. [[Johann Georg von Hahn]] first noted that the suffix -polis ("city") was probably added at a later date by other authors as in other editions it is mentioned as "Albanos polis" or "Albanos".{{sfn|Plasari|2020|p=18}} [[Zgërdhesh]] has been identified as the likely location of Albanopolis. It is not certain if its location corresponds to the region mentioned as [[Arbanon]] mentioned by [[Anna Komnene]] in the [[Alexiad]] about events related to the [[First Norman invasion of the Balkans]](1081). An indication of movement from higher altitudes in a much earlier period has been detected in the distribution of Albanian place names ending in ''-esh'', derives from the Latin ''-ensis'' ([[Vulgar Latin]] ''-ēsis''), between the [[Shkumbin]] and the [[Mat River|Mat]] rivers, with a concentration between [[Elbasan]] and [[Krujë]].{{sfn|Wilkes|1996|p=279}}

[[John of Nikiû]] (7th century), a Coptic bishop mentions in the French translation of a manuscript titled ''Chronicle'' that ''barbarians, foreign peoples and Illyrians, ravaged the cities of the Christians and took the inhabitants alive'' in the [[Byzantine Empire]]. [[Hermann Zotenberg]] who translated the Chronicle from [[Geʽez]] to French rendered with the term ''Illyrians'', a term which in the original manuscript corresponded to ''Alwerikon''. Alwerikon in the Byzantine Greek translation of the Chronicle corresponded to the term Albani(k/t)on (genitive of Albanitai). [[Constantine Sathas]] (1842-1912) who first recorded the discrepancy between different translations considered the mention of ''Alwerikon'' an attestation of the same population as the Illyrian Albanoi.{{sfn|Plasari|2020|p=27}}

[[Michael Attaleiates]] (1022-1080) mentions the term ''Albanoi'' twice and the term ''Arbanitai'' once. The term ''Albanoi'' is used first to describe the groups which rebelled in southern Italy and Sicily against the Byzantines in 1038-40. The second use of the term ''Albanoi'' is related to groups which supported the revolt of [[George Maniakes]] in 1042 and marched with him throughout the Balkans against the Byzantine capital, [[Constantinople]]. The term ''Arvanitai'' is used to describe a revolt of [[Bulgarians]] (Boulgaroi) and ''Arbanitai'' in the theme of [[Dyrrhachium (theme)|Dyrrhachium]] in 1078-79. It is generally accepted that ''Arbanitai'' refers to the ethnonym of medieval [[Albanians]]. As such, it is considered to be the first attestation of Albanians as an ethnic group in Byzantine historiography.<ref name="Plasari41">{{harvnb|Plasari|2020|p=41}}</ref> The use of the term ''Albanoi'' in 1038-49 and 1042 as an ethnonym related to Albanians have been a subject of debate. In what has been termed the "Vranoussi-Ducellier debate", Alain Ducellier proposed that both uses of the term referred to medieval Albanians. Era Vranoussi counter-suggested that the first use referred to [[Normans]], while the second didn't have an ethnic connotation necessarily and could be a reference to the Normans as "foreigners" ([[wiktionary:aubain|aubain]]) in [[Epirus (region)|Epirus]] which Maniakes and his army traversed.<ref name="Plasari41"/> This debate has never been resolved.{{sfn|Quanrud|2021|p=1}} A newer synthesis about the second use of the term ''Albanoi'' by Pëllumb Xhufi suggests that the term ''Albanoi'' may have referred to Albanians of the specific district of [[Arbanon]], while ''Arbanitai'' to Albanians in general regardless of the specific region they inhabited.{{sfn|Plasari|2020|p=43}} From thereon, in the next centuries, the term ''Albanoi'' is used extensively as the ethnonym for medieval Albanians in Byzantine literature. ''Albanoi'' is the formal term for Albanians in modern Greek and until the 20th century it was used interchangeably with the term ''Arbanitai'', which now in Greek refers exclusively to [[Arvanites]].{{sfn|Baltsiotis|2018|p=101}} These names reflect the Albanian endonym Arbër/n + esh which itself derives from the same root as the name of the Albanoi.{{sfn|Demiraj|2015|p=481}}