Shkreli (tribe)

Shkreli is a historical Albanian tribe and region in the Malësia Madhe region of Northern Albania and is majority Catholic. With the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, part of the tribe migrated to Rugova in Western Kosovo beginning around 1700, after which they continued to migrate into the Lower Pešter and Sandžak regions (today in Serbia and Montenegro). The Shkreli tribe that migrated to Kosovo converted to Islam in the 18th century and maintained the Albanian language as their mother tongue. Some members of the Shkreli within the Pešter region and in Sandžak (known as Škrijelj/Шкријељ) converted to Islam and became Slavophones by the 20th century, which as of today they now self-identify as part of the Bosniak ethnicity, although in the Pešter plateau they partly utilized the Albanian language until the middle of the 20th century. The Shkreli in Albania and Montenegro are predominantly Catholic. The Shkreli tribe's patron saint is St. Nicholas (Shënkoll). Various theories have been proposed for the etymology of the name Shkreli. It first appears as a patronymic and village name in 1416 in its present location. It has been spelled as Scirelli, Screlli, Strelli, Scrielli (1703) and Scarglieli (1614) in Latin. An older, unproven historically, etymology links it to Saint Charles (Shën Kërli in Albanian), who is hypothesized to have been the patron saint of an old church in the area. In reality, the name of the region was given to it by the kin community, which apart from Shkreli appears throughout northern Albania in the Middle Ages. Another, more linguistically based approach links the name to shkrelë, a word used in Gheg Albanian for big corn leaves. Corn is one of the few crops that are cultivated extensively in the available arable land of the Shkreli. The people of the region are called Shkrelë. Those in the Sandžak region who have been Slavicized use the surname Škrijelj. Shkreli is situated in Malësi e Madhe District, north of the city of Shkodra in the protected area of the Shkreli Regional Nature Park in the valley of Prroni i Thatë (Dry Creek).

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Related concepts (3)

Albanian language

Albanian (endonym: shqipja ʃcipja or gjuha shqipe ˈɟuha ˈʃcipe) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that language family. It is the descendant of a Paleo-Balkan language. Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as a recognized minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.

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Accursed Mountains

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