Vlachs
Vlach, also Wallachian and many other variants, is a term and exonym used from the Middle Ages until the Modern Era to designate speakers of Eastern Romance languages living in Southeast Europe—south of the Danube and north of the Danube.
Although it has also been used to name present-day Romanians, the term "Vlach" today refers primarily to speakers of the Eastern Romance languages who live south of the Danube, in Albania, Bulgaria, northern Greece, North Macedonia and eastern Serbia. These people include the ethnic groups of the Aromanians, the Megleno-Romanians and, in Serbia, the Timok Romanians. The term also became a synonym in the Balkans for the social category of shepherds, and was also used for non-Romance-speaking peoples, in recent times in the western Balkans derogatively. The term is also used to refer to the ethnographic group of Moravian Vlachs who speak a Slavic language but originate from Romanians, as well as for Morlachs and Istro-Romanians.
Etymology
The word Vlach/''Wallachian is etymologically derived from the ethnonym of a Celtic tribe, adopted into Proto-Germanic *Walhaz, which meant 'stranger', from *Wolkā-. Via Latin, in Gothic, as *walhs, the ethnonym took on the meaning 'foreigner' or 'Romance-speaker' and later "shepherd', 'nomad'. The term was adopted into Greek as Vláhoi or Blachoi, Albanian vllah, Slavic as Vlah or Voloh, Hungarian as oláh and olasz, etc. The root word was notably adopted in Germanic for Wales and Walloon, and in Switzerland for Romansh-speakers, and in Poland Włochy or in Hungary olasz became an exonym for Italians. The Slovenian term Lahi has also been used to designate Italians. The same name is still used in Polish and Hungarian as an exonym for Italy, while in Slovak, Czech and Slovenian it was replaced with the endonym Italia.Other forms which were recognised by linguists to designate the "Vlachs" are: Blaci, Blauen, Blachi found in Western medieval sources, Balachi, Walati found in Western sources derived from medieval German, while the Germanic population from Transylvania used also the variants Woloch, Blôch. French sources used mostly Valaques while the medieval Song of Roland used Blos. In English and in modern German the forms Wallachians, Walachen appear, respectively. In the Balkan Peninsula various names such as Rumer, Tzintzars, Morlachs, Maurovlachs, Armâns, Cincars, Koutzovlachs were used, while Muslim sources speak of Ulak, Ilak, Iflak''.
Historical uses
The term 'Vlach' first appeared in medieval sources and was generally used as an exonym for speakers of the Eastern Romance languages. Although later associated with transhumance across most Southeastern Europe, the early medieval Vlachs were agriculturists and pastoralists, and the practice of transhumant pastoralism only took hold between the 14th and the 19th centuries. Testimonies from the 13th and the 14th centuries show that, although in Europe and beyond, they were called Vlachs or Wallachians in Greek, Volóxi, the Romanians used the endonym rumân or român, from the Latin romānus, meaning 'Roman'. Aromanians use the endonym armãn or rãmãn, from romānus. From Latin romānus are also the Albanian forms rëmen and rëmër, 'vlach'. Megleno-Romanians designate themselves with the Macedonian form Vla in their own language.In historical sources the term "Vlach" could also refer to different peoples: "Slovak, Hungarian, Balkan, Transylvanian, Romanian, or even Albanian". In late Byzantine documents, the Vlachs are sometimes mentioned as Bulgaro-Albano-Vlachs, or Serbo-Albano-Bulgaro-Vlachs. According to the Serbian historian Sima Ćirković, the name "Vlach" in medieval sources had the same rank as the name "Greek", "Serb" or "Latin".
In the Western Balkans, during the High Middle Ages, the word also acquired a socio-economic component, being used as an internal name for the pastoral population in the medieval Kingdom of Serbia, one that was also often engaged in the transport of goods, colonisation of empty lands, and military service. It will then expand to local interpretations with religious, ethnic, and social status particularities across the wider region, being employed as a name for Eastern Romance speaking people, Eastern Orthodox population in opposition to Catholic population, for the rural population of the hinterlands, the Christian population in general as opposed to Muslim population, or a combination of these aspects. During the early history of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, there was a military class of Vlachs in Serbia and Ottoman Macedonia, made up of Christians who served as auxiliary forces and were exempted of certain taxes until the beginning of the 17th century. In this context, a large part of the Dalmatian hinterland was repopulated by Slavic settlers, both Orthodox and Catholic, speaking the Shtokavian dialect and called Vlach or Morlach by the inhabitants of the Dalmatian coast and islands. In these areas, the term Vlah evolved to Vlaj and is still used as a derogatory term to refer to the rural inhabitants of the hinterland, both Croats and Serbs, as "peasants" and "ignorants". In Istria, the ethnonym Vlach is used by the Chakavian-speaking Croatian inhabitants to refer to the Istro-Romanians and the Slavs who settled in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Nowadays, the term Vlachs is used in scholarship for the Eastern Romance-speaking communities in the Balkans, especially those in Greece, Albania and North Macedonia. In Serbia the term Vlach is also used to refer to Romanian speakers, especially those living in eastern Serbia.
In modern Slovak, Valasi, other than denoting people of Vlachian ethnicity or origin, is synonymously and even more prominently used to describe shepherds, more commonly apprentice shepherds. The term originated following Vlachian arrival in mounts and hills of present-day Slovakia in 14th century and coinciding development in sheep herding and dairy industry. Further west, in Czech Republic, the area of Moravian Wallachia is known as Valašsko and the inhabitants as Valaši, names usually translated in English as Wallachia and Wallachians, respectively.
History
According to the theory of Daco-Roman continuity, the ancestors of modern Vlachs and Romanians originated from Dacians. For proponents of this theory, Eastern Romance languages prove the survival of the Thraco-Romans in the lower Danube basin during the Migration Period. On the other hand, the other theory states that the Romanians and the Vlachs, including the ancestors of present-day Aromanians, were originally part of the same group of speakers of Eastern Romance languages, and that their origins should be sought in the southern Balkans. Early Romanian-speakers would have then moved northwards from the 12th century onwards.10th century
During the Middle Ages, the term "Magna Vlachia" appears in Byzantine documents. This name was used for Thessaly and present-day North Macedonia.John Skylitzes mentioned that in 976 Vlachs fought with and killed David of Bulgaria, somewhere between Prespa and Kastoria. A latter addition to the text by Skylitzes Continuatus names the Vlachs as "hoditōn", a word that was associated by historians with the Serbian "kjelatori": guides and guards of caravans in the Balkans.
Ibn al-Nadīm published in 998 the work Kitāb al-Fihrist mentioning "Turks, Bulgars and Blaghā". According to B. Dodge the ethnonym Blaghā could refer to Wallachians/Romanians. It is important to note, however, that the original Arabic text does not contain the word "Blaghā" but rather "البلغار," which translates to "al-Bulghār," the term used in contemporary Arabic texts to refer to Volga Bulgaria. The new Arabic edition also features the word "al-Bulghār" instead of "Blaghā." Furthermore, the first critical edition edited by Gustav Flügel in 1871, which includes the original Arabic text, likewise uses the designation "البلغار". The word "البلغار" appears instead of "البلغم" in both the 1971/1973/1988 Tehran/Beirut/Cairo critical editions as well. Thus, Bayard's translation is incorrect, as he mistakenly read "البلغار" as "البلغم". Therefore, the original Arabic text refers to Volga Bulgaria, not the Vlachs.
Mutahhar al-Maqdisi, "They say that in the Turkic neighbourhood there are the Khazars, Russians, Slavs, Waladj, Alans, Greeks and many other peoples." According to other non-Romanian historians, based on the context, the "Waladj" are not the Vlachs, but a people living around the Volga.
11th century
Vlachs were present in large numbers, on the Chalcidice peninsula around 1000, according to monastic documents from Mount Athos. On the peninsula, the Vlachs were famous for their cheese and meat products. In these texts sometimes they are called "Vlachorynhinii", which may be a mixture of the name "Vlach" and "Rynhini" a Slavic tribe who settled in the same area in the 7th century.In 1013, a Byzantine document mentions the settlement of "Kimbalongu" in the mountains near Strumitsa, which was a Vlach settlement.
The names Blakumen or Blökumenn is mentioned in Nordic sagas dating between the 11th and 13th centuries, with respect to events that took place in either 1018 or 1019 somewhere at the northwestern part of the Black Sea and believed by some to be related to the Vlachs. Omeljan Pritsak, however, point out that the texts probably refer to a nomadic Turkic people, since the "Blakumen" in the texts are "non-christian heathens" and nomadic horsemans. Spinei contrasts Pritsak's view by claiming that there are several mentions of the Blakumen or Blökumen in contexts taking place decades before the earliest appearance of the Cumans in the Pontic steppe, and that translating the name to "Black Cumans" is not concordant with the Varangian ethnic terminology.
In 1020, the Archdiocese of Ohrid was founded, which was responsible for "the spiritual care of all the Vlachs".
In 1022, Vlach shepherds from Thessaly and the Pindus mountains provided cheese for Constantinople.
In 1025, the Annales Barenses mentions a people called "Vlach" who live near the river Axios.
The same chronicle the Annales Barenses describes that in 1027 the Byzantine army led by Orestes that tried to recapture Sicily from the Arabs, also included many Vlachs recruited from Macedonia.
Kekaumenos writes in his Strategikon about the revolt in 1066 in the region of Thessaly under the protospatharios Nikoulitzas Delphinas, nephew of the homonymous 10th century military commander, and father in law of the writer. He writes about a leader, Nikulitsa, who is given command by Basil II over the Vlachs in Hellas theme. Nikulitsa switched alliance to Samuel of Bulgaria after the conquest of Larissa by the Bulgarian Tsar. The Vlachs of Larissa met with Nikoulitzas Delphinas in the house of one of their leaders named Beriboes to discuss their decision to revolt. The Vlachs already sent their families and livestock to the mountains of Bulgaria. Delphinas convinced them to postpone their actions until they harvest the fields. Kekaumenos mentions the herds of the Vlachs and their household spend the months of April to September beyond Thessaly, in the high mountains of Bulgaria, where it is very cold.. The same text describes that the homeland of the Vlachs is Thessaly, precisely the part of the region divided by the river Pleres. According to Kekaumenos, the Vlachs were Dacians and Bessi, who lived near and south from the Danube and the Sava, where the Serbs live now. They feigned loyalty to the Romans while they were constantly attacked and pillaged, therefore, Trajan launched a war, their leader, Decebalus was also killed, and then the Vlachs were scattered in Macedonia, Epirus and Hellas. According to Hungarian historians, Kekaumenos made the Dacians the ancestors of the Vlachs because he knew about the deceitfulness of the Dacians against the Romans, and according to him the Dacians and Vlachs had a perfectly matching nature, treachery and political unreliability, so much that in his opinion they should not be believed even if the Vlachs take an oath. Kekaumenos arbitrarily identified the Vlachs with the Dacians according to the archaizing efforts of his time, because the tendency to refer to later peoples with classical names was common in Byzantium at the time of Kekaumenos. Kekaumenos also confused the Roman province Dacia Traiana with Dacia Aureliana, and even he placed it further west where it actually was, that is why he mentioned the Serbian territory as the homeland, the Bessus tribe was a neighbor of the Roman province Macedonia. According to Florin Curta, the interpretation of Vlachs being nomadic shepherds by Hungarian and/or Neo-Roeslerian historians is due to the desire to demonstrate that Romanian ethnogenesis took place south of the Danube, that Vlachs and Romanians are the same people, and their current distribution is the result of nomadic movement to Transylvania and the surrounding regions after the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary. Curta adds that the mention in Strategikon cannot be used to support the idea of transhumant pastoralism, the closer analogy for the agricultural practice of Vlachs being Alpine transhumance: Vlach men going to the mountain pastures with the herds in the summer while the rest of their families remained in their lowland villages.
Alexius Komnenos mentions that in 1082 he passed through a Vlach settlement called Exeva in Macedonia.
Anna Komnene mentions in her Alexiad that in 1091 Emperor Alexios ordered Nikephoros Melissenos to raise an army against invading Pechenegs. Melissenos recruited, among others, Bulgarians and "the nomadic tribes called Vlachs in popular parlance".
According to the Alexiad, in 1094–1095, Emperor Alexius Komnenos was notified by a Vlach chieftain called Poudila about the crossing of the Danube by a Cuman army, and that to prepare himself for the attack, then the Vlachs likewise led the Cumans through the gorges of the Balkan Mountains.
In 1099, crusading armies were attacked by Vlachs, in the mountains along the road from Braničevo to Naissus.