Chameria
Chameria is a historical region along the coast of the Ionian Sea in southwestern Albania and northwestern Greece, traditionally associated with the Albanian ethnic subgroup of the Chams. For a brief period, three kazas were combined by the Ottomans into an administrative district called Çamlik sancak. During the interwar period, the toponym was in common use and the official name of the area above the Acheron river in all Greek state documents. The term is used today mostly by Albanians and it is obsolete in Greek, surviving in some old folk songs. Most of what is called Chameria is divided between parts of the Greek regional units of Thesprotia, Preveza, and Ioannina ; and the municipality of Konispol at the southernmost extremity of Albania. Apart from geographic and ethnographic usages, in contemporary times within Albania the toponym has also acquired irredentist connotations.
Name and definition
Name
In the Middle Ages this area was known as Vagenetia.Chameria was mostly used as a term for the region of modern Thesprotia, during the Ottoman rule. It is of uncertain etymology. It possibly derives from the ancient Greek name of the Thyamis river, called Cham in Albanian, either through the unattested Slavic *čamь or *čama rendering the older Slavic *tjama, or a direct continuation from it.
In European travel reports, the term appears for the first time at the beginning of the 19th century. The term was not used in Ottoman territorial administration before the 20th century.
Geography and boundaries
In modern times, the region of Chameria was reduced to the dialectological territory of the Chams, stretching between the mouth of the Acheron river in the south, the area of Butrint in the north, and the Pindus in the east. After the permanent demarcation of the Greco-Albanian border, only two small municipalities were left in southern Albania, while the remainder was part of the Epirus periphery of Greece.The early 19th c. Greek author Perraivos, notable for his works on Souli and Epirus, notes that the Albanian Chams inhabit the area between the Bistrica river in the north and the Souli area south. French diplomat and General Consul of France in nearby Ioannina, François Pouqueville, noticed in 1814-1816 that there is a district named Chamouri that stretches from the Thyamis all the way down to the Acheron river. In the early 1800s British colonel William Martin Leake while in the area described Chameria as stretching from the boundaries of Butrint and Delvinë until the Fanari and Paramythia areas consisting of two main sub-districts, Daghawi or Dai and Parakalamos. During the 19th century, the novelista and poet Nikolaos Konemenos, an Arvanite from the area placed his home district of Lakka within the bounds of Tsamouria or Chameria. In the early 1880s, British diplomat Valentine Chirol who spent time in the area during the Eastern Crisis defined Chameria along linguistic lines in geographic terms where Albanian speakers were found during that time. Chirol states that the Thiamis river basin, the Souli mountains, the Louros river valley up until the Preveza peninsula formed part of the district called "Tchamouria" which referred to the "southernmost Albanian settlements in Epirus". Chirol also noted that due to the spread of the Chams in the area, the toponym also applied to the centre of the region where they held "undivided sway".
Within the confines of the Ottoman administrative system Albanians of the time claimed that Toskland was made up of three components Toskalık, Laplık and Çamlık. According to the Ottoman administration of 1880s Çamlık or Chamland consisted of the regions Margalic, Aydonat and Filat. As such those three kazas where also known as kaza of Chameria. Similarly in 1910 the kaza of Resadiye was created, also known as kaza of Chameria or Igoumenitsa and included the former kazas of Paramythia, Margariti and Filiates. On the other hand, Sami Frashëri, a noted member of the Albanian national movement and Ottoman intellectual who compiled the first Ottoman dictionary Kamus al-a'lam wrote in various article entries pertaining to the region and claimed that Chameria included: Ioannina, Konitsa, Louros, Parga, Margariti, Filiates, Preveza. Thus claiming that Chameria was a much larger region and coincided with the southern part of Epirus.
During the interwar period of the twentieth century British historian Nicholas Hammond traversed the region and described Chameria as consisting of main settlements like Paramythia and Margariti. He also described the Chameria region as pertaining to the Thiamis river basin, covering the Margariti district and heading all the way down to coastal villages like Loutsa of the Acheron plain, which marked the most southernmost Albanian speaking settlement and the southern limit of Chameria. Pre-War Greek sources say that the coast of Chameria extended from the Acheron River to Butrint and the inland reaches east till the slopes of Mount Olytsikas. The center of Chameria was considered to be Paramythia and other areas were Filiates, Parga and Margariti. In various Greek sources of the interwar era they also at times include the Greek speaking area to the east of Filiates within Chameria, while excluding the Albanian speaking area of Fanari known also as Prevezaniko. Throughout the interwar period, Chameria in official Greek government documents related to the area north of the Acheron river.
File:The falls of the Kalama Albania 1851 by Edward Lear 1812-1888.jpg|thumb|350px|The falls of the Thyamis by Edward Lear, 1851. Pencil and watercolour on paper, 16.50 × 26.00 cm.
Modern day scholarship gives descriptions of the geographical outlines or areas of Chameria. Professors of History, Eleftheria Manta, Kyriakos Kentriotis and Dimitris Michalooulos agree that Chameria extends from the Acheron River to Butrint and the inland reaches east till the slopes of Mount Olytsikas. This region, besides a small part that belongs to the Albanian state is more or less equated with Thesprotia. Leonidas Kallivretakis states that the Greek part of the Chameria region is limited to Thesprotia prefecture, both in Ottoman and modern times. Similarly, historian Georgia Kretsi states that Chameria concerns the same region which is today called Thesprotia among Greeks, in addition to a small number of settlements on the Albanian side of the border. Lambros Baltsiotis states that it includes a small part of Albanian territory, consisted of the western part of Thesprotia prefecture and north of Preveza regional unit, stretching down to Fanari. German historian Hermann Frank Meyer states that the modern Thesprotia prefecture geographically coincides with Chameria. Laurie Kain Hart states that Chameria as a district extends to "Epiros at least as far south as Preveza". Historian Konstantinos Tsitselikis states that Chameria is part of Margariti, Igoumenitsa, Filiates and Paramythia regions. Historian Sherif Delvina states that the southernmost limit of Chameria is the Acheron river.
James Pettifer and Miranda Vickers state that Chameria reaches out from the Ionian coast going to the eastern Ioannina mountains and extending to the south going as near as the Preveza gulf. However, in another work Miranda Vickers states that it "extends from Butrint and the mouth of the Acheron River", but at the same time also from "Lake Prespa in the north, eastward to the Pindus mountains and south as far as Preveza and the Gulf of Arta". Robert Elsie states that Chameria corresponds to Thesprotia and Preveza prefectures and including a small area around Konispol town in Albania. Elsie describes Chameria as containing the river basins of the Thiamis and Acheron rivers and Ionian coastline all the way down to Preveza while excluding Corfu island, the Epirote interior and the city of Ioannina. In the same work Elsie states that Thesprotia is the Greek toponymic equivalent for the Albanian toponym Chameria.
History
Late Middle Ages
The earliest mention of Albanians within the region of Epirus is recorded in a Venetian document of 1210 as inhabiting the area opposite the island of Corfu, however any pre-14th century Albanian migration in the region can not be confirmed. The first documented appearance of Albanians which occurred in sizable numbers within the Despotate of Epirus is not recorded before 1337 in which Byzantine sources present them as nomads.In the 1340s, taking advantage of a Byzantine civil war, the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan conquered Epirus and incorporated it in his Serbian Empire. During this time, two Albanian states were formed in the region. In the summer of 1358, Nikephoros II Orsini, the last despot of Epirus of the Orsini dynasty, was defeated in battle against Albanian chieftains. After acquiring the sympathy of Symeon Uroš Palaiogolos, these chieftains established two new states in the region, the Despotate of Arta and Principality of Gjirokastër. Internal dissension and successive conflicts with their neighbours, including the rising power of the Ottoman Turks, led to the downfall of these Albanian principalities to the Tocco family. The Tocco in turn gradually gave way to the Ottomans, who took Ioannina in 1430, Arta in 1449, Angelokastron in 1460, and finally Vonitsa in 1479.
Ottoman rule
During the Ottoman rule, the region was under the Vilayet of Ioannina, and later under the Pashalik of Yanina. During this time, the region was known as Chameria and became a district in the Vilayet of Yanina. The wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between Russia and the Ottoman Empire negatively impacted upon the region. Increased conversions to Islam followed, often forced, such as those of 25 villages in 1739 which are located in current day Thesprotia prefecture.In the 18th century, as the power of the Ottomans declined, the region came under the semi-independent state of Ali Pasha Tepelena, an Albanian brigand who became the provincial governor of Ioannina in 1788. Ali Pasha started campaigns to subjugate the confederation of the Souli settlements in this region. His forces met fierce resistance by the Souliote warriors. After numerous failed attempts to defeat the Souliotes, his troops succeeded in conquering the area in 1803.
After the fall of the Pashalik, the region remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire, while Greece and Albania declared that their goal was to include in their states the whole region of Epirus, including Thesprotia or Chameria. With the rise of the Albanian national movement in the late 19th century, the local Orthodox Albanian speaking population did not share the national ideas of their Muslim Albanian speaking neighbours. Instead they remained Greek-oriented and identified themselves as Greeks. In 1909, the Ottoman Empire combined the kazas of Filat, Aydonat, Margiliç and the town of Parga into a new administrative unit called Çamlak sancak, part of Yanya Vilayet. Finally, following the Balkan Wars, Epirus was divided in 1913, in the London Peace Conference, and the region came under the control of Kingdom of Greece, with only a small portion being integrated into the newly formed State of Albania.
During the Ottoman era, Chameria had a feudal system of administration. The most important and older feudal clan was that of Pronjo of Paramythia.