Islam in Albania
arrived in Albania mainly during the Ottoman period when the majority of Albanians over time converted to Islam under Ottoman rule. Following the Albanian National Awakening tenets and the de-emphasis of religious tradition in Albania, all governments in the 20th century pursued a secularization policy, most aggressively under the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, which actively persecuted Muslims. Due to this policy, Islam, as with all other faiths in the country, underwent radical changes. Decades of state atheism, which ended in 1991, brought a decline in the religious practice of all traditions. The post-communist period and the lifting of legal and other government restrictions on religion allowed Islam to revive through institutions that generated new infrastructure, literature, educational facilities, international transnational links and other social activities.
According to the 2023 census, Islam is the largest religion, with a 50.67% majority of Albanians identifying as Muslim, including 1,101,718 Sunni Muslims, and 115,644 Bektashi Muslims.
History
13th century
first came into contact with Islam in the 13th century when Angevin expansion into Albania during the reign of Charles I Anjou was made possible in part by Muslim involvement. Lucera is located only about 240 km northwest of Brindisi, which was the main port of disembarkation. Charles claimed rights in Albania, as Manfred's successor, since 1267 when the Treaty of Viterbo was drawn up. During the winter of 1271, the Angevin forces took Durrës. Within a year, Charles began to use the title "rex Albaniae", a title that was later recognized by the king of Serbia and the tsar of Bulgaria.In 1273, both Muslim and Christian contingents sailed across the Adriatic. In April 1273, a Muslim from Lucera named Leone was appointed captain of the Muslim forces in Durrës. A month later, Musa took Leone's place as commander of 200 Muslims stationed "in partibus Romaniae".
Although relations between the Church of Rome and Byzantium improved, Charles I of Anjou continued to send Muslim and Christian military forces to the east, towards Albania. The Muslim knight Salem, a regular army officer, led 300 Lucerians - archers and lancers - to Vlora, in 1275. In September of that year, Ibrahim became the captain of the Muslims of Durrës, who took the place of Musa.
On 19 April 1279, Charles I ordered 53 of the best Muslim archers from Lucera to be selected by the Capitanata's justiciary, Guy d'Allemagne, to go to Durrës. As usually happens in the recruitment process, the advice of Muslim military leaders was sought. Ibrahim had to approve the selections. Orders were given that Ibrahim could take four horses with him as he crossed from Brindisi to Durrës. Ibrahim served in Durrës again in the early 1280s, as did a man from Lucera, named Pietro Cristiano. One source identifies him as "de... terra Lucerie Saracenorum", most likely a Christian convert from Islam.
The demand for Muslim carpenters and blacksmiths to build war machines in Albania was so great during the summer of 1280 that it threatened to exhaust the skilled workers' pool for the construction of forts on the Italian coast. In June 1280, the king ordered the archers of the Capitanata and the Land of Bari to send 60 Muslim archers, as well as carpenters, stonemasons and blacksmiths to Albania. The archers had to report to Hugues le Rousseau de Sully in Berat.
In the fall of the same year, 200 archers from Lucera were sent to Vlora. At the beginning of December, 300 archers were stationed in Durrës. Angevin forces took part in the unsuccessful siege of Berat castle, and were repulsed by Byzantine forces.
Conversion and consolidation (15th–18th centuries)
Islam was further introduced to Albania in the 15th century after the Ottoman conquest of the area. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Albanians in large numbers converted to Islam. As Muslims, many Albanians attained important political and military positions within the Ottoman Empire and culturally contributed to the wider Muslim world.National Awakening (19th and early 20th centuries)
By the 19th century, Albanians were divided into three religious groups. Catholic Albanians who had some Albanian ethno-linguistic expression in schooling and church due to Austro-Hungarian protection and Italian clerical patronage. Orthodox Albanians under the Patriarchate of Constantinople had liturgy and schooling in Greek and toward the late Ottoman period mainly identified with Greek national aspirations. Muslim Albanians during this period formed around 70% of the overall Balkan Albanian population in the Ottoman Empire with an estimated population of more than a million. With the rise of the Eastern Crisis, Muslim Albanians became torn between loyalties to the Ottoman state and the emerging Albanian nationalist movement. Islam, the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire were traditionally seen as synonymous in belonging to the wider Muslim community. the Albanian nationalist movement advocated self-determination and strived to achieve socio-political recognition of Albanians as a separate people and language within the state.Wars and socio-political instability resulting in increasing identification with the Ottoman Empire amongst some Muslims within the Balkans during the late Ottoman period made the terms Muslim and Turk synonymous. In this context, Muslim Albanians of the era were conferred and received the term Turk, despite preferring to distance themselves from ethnic Turks. This practice has somewhat continued amongst Balkan Christian peoples in contemporary times who still refer to Muslim Albanians as Turks, Turco-Albanians, with often pejorative connotations and historic negative socio-political repercussions. These geo-political events nonetheless pushed Albanian nationalists, many Muslim, to distance themselves from the Ottomans, Islam and the then emerging pan-Islamic Ottomanism of Sultan Abdulhamid II. Another factor overlaying these concerns during the Albanian National Awakening period were thoughts that Western powers would only favour Christian Balkan states and peoples in the anti Ottoman struggle. During this time Albanian nationalists conceived of Albanians as a European people who under Skanderbeg resisted the Ottoman Turks that later subjugated and cut the Albanians off from Western European civilisation. Albanian nationalism overall was a reaction to the gradual breakup of the Ottoman Empire and a response to Balkan and Christian national movements that posed a threat to an Albanian population that was mainly Muslim. Muslim Albanians were heavily involved with the Albanian National Awakening producing many figures like Faik Konitza, Ismail Qemali, Midhat Frashëri, Shahin Kolonja and others advocating for Albanian interests and self-determination.
During the late Ottoman period, Muslims inhabited compactly the entire mountainous and hilly hinterland located north of the Himarë, Tepelenë, Këlcyrë and Frashëri line that encompasses most of the Vlorë, Tepelenë, Mallakastër, Skrapar, Tomorr and Dishnicë regions. There were intervening areas where Muslims lived alongside Albanian speaking Christians in mixed villages, towns and cities with either community forming a majority or minority of the population. In urban settlements Muslims were almost completely a majority in Tepelenë and Vlorë, a majority in Gjirokastër with a Christian minority, whereas Berat, Përmet and Delvinë had a Muslim majority with a large Christian minority. A Muslim population was also located in Konispol and some villages around the town. The Ottoman administrative sancaks or districts of Korçë and Gjirokastër in 1908 contained a Muslim population that numbered 95,000 in contrast to 128,000 Orthodox inhabitants. Apart from small and spread out numbers of Muslim Romani, Muslims in these areas that eventually came to constitute contemporary southern Albania were all Albanian speaking Muslims. In southern Albania during the late Ottoman period being Albanian was increasingly associated with Islam, while from the 1880s the emerging Albanian National Movement was viewed as an obstacle to Hellenism within the region. Some Orthodox Albanians began to affiliate with the Albanian National movement causing concern for Greece and they worked together with Muslim Albanians regarding shared social and geo-political Albanian interests and aims. In central and southern Albania, Muslim Albanian society was integrated into the Ottoman state. It was organised into a small elite class owning big feudal estates worked by a large peasant class, both Christian and Muslim though few other individuals were also employed in the military, business, as artisans and in other professions. While northern Albanian society was little integrated into the Ottoman world, it was instead organised through a tribal structure of clans of whom many were Catholic with others being Muslim residing in mountainous terrain that Ottomans often had difficulty in maintaining authority and control. When religious conflict occurred it was between clans of opposing faiths, while within the scope of clan affiliation, religious divisions were sidelined. Shkodër was inhabited by a Muslim majority with a sizable Catholic minority.