Albanian pederasty

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Pederasty in Albania was a popular custom reported by a number of Western travellers in the 19th century."^[1][2] Among these are counted Edvard Westermarck^[3] John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton, who in his travel journal^[4] reports that pederasty was "openly practiced," and Johann Georg von Hahn^[5], also known as "the father of Albanian studies.^[6] According to these reports it was common and socially accepted for young men between sixteen and twenty-four to court boys from about twelve to seventeen. ^[5]

In the literature, the lover, or erastes, is called ashik (after the Arabic ishq, "passionate love") and the beloved, or eromenos, dyllber (after the Turkish dilber, "beautiful"). A Geg married at the age of twenty four or twenty five, and then he usually, but not always, gave up boy-love.

The practice is thought to have been curtailed by the advent of communism in 1944.^[7]

Contents 1 Aspects of the relationships 2 Poetic and literary references 3 See also 4 Sources 5 Notes

[edit] Aspects of the relationships

While most prevalent among the Muslims, pederastic relationships were reportedly also found among the Christians, and there was even a special ceremony performed by a priest in church to seal them, called vellameria (from the Albanian vella, "brother" and marr, "to accept"), analogous to the Greek adelphopoiia ("brother making"). Jealousy was a frequent phenomenon, and sometimes men would even commit murder on account of a boy.^[8]

Travelers to the country, among whom Lord Byron and the French historian Frederick François Guillaume, Baron de Vaudoncourt, also mention Ali Pasha's interest in this love, describing his seraglio of handsome youths, from which he drew not only his lovers but also his most trusted assistants, such as the Greek Athanasi Vaya, who became his right hand man as well as a capable general in his own right.^[9]

[edit] Poetic and literary references

Some observers cast the practice in a negative light. François Pouqueville, Napoleon's consul general in Albania between 1805 and 1815, blames the Albanians for being "no less dissolute in this regard than the other inhabitants of modern Greece, without seeming to have any idea of the enormity of the crime."^[10]

Others present it as surprisingly positive, especially in light of the cultural values of the educated European audience of the period, for which the publication was intended. The following passage is reported by Hahn as the actual language used to him by a Geg Albanian:

The lover's feeling for the boy is pure as sunshine. It places the beloved on the same pedestal as a saint. It is the highest and most exalted passion of which the human breast is capable. The sight of a beautiful youth awakens astonishment in the lover, and opens the door of his heart to the delight which the contemplation of this loveliness affords. Love takes possession of him so completely that all his thought and feeling goes out in it. If he finds himself in the presence of the beloved, he rests absorbed in gazing on him. Absent, he thinks of nought but him. If the beloved unexpectedly appears, he falls into confusion, changes color, turns alternately pale and red. His heart beats faster and impedes his breathing. He has ears and eyes only for the beloved. He shuns touching him with the hand, kisses him only on the forehead, sings his praise in verse, a woman's never.

Hahn documents a number of Geg pederastic poems, such as the following:

S'gjen ndonji zok qi kendon,
Te gjithe jane e po qajne.
I mjeri ashik sa fort po duron,
Prej dyllberit po e dajne.

Dilli, qi len ne mengjes
Si ti, o djal, kur me zallandise
Kur me kthen syt' e zes'
Shpirt ment prej kres' mi gremise.

You'll find no bird that sings,
They all just sit and cry.
The poor lover, how strongly he endures,
[For] they separate him from his beloved.
The sun, when it rises in the morning,
Is like you, boy, when you are near me.
When your dark eye turns upon me,
It drives my reason from my head.

— Neçín of Përmet, son of Ali Pasha Frakulli, mid 19th century; tr. Nicholas Zymaris

The intensity of the feelings is reflected in native pederastic poetry such as the following verse.

Të kálli Hasán káfpeja
Të mos bánish Bajrám,
Se kështú qen’ka bes’e feja.
Núri yt, o Suleimán!
Bukurínë t’a dha Zot yn,
Mos ubán makrúr.
Tyj, o cun, të púthça syt’,
E t’udjéksha nur.

Hasan, you slanderous whore
Who won’t celebrate Bairam,
For thus they were from honor and faith.
Your radiance, O Suleiman!
Your beauty was given you by our Lord,
Be not so proud.
O that I may kiss your eyes, boy,
And burn up in your radiance.

— Neçín of Përmet; tr. Nicholas Zymaris

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Lord Byron, who in the course of his travels encountered this aspect of Albanian culture, may have been influenced by it when he included several stanzas alluding to pederastic love in his narrative poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.^{[citation needed]} Upon publication, however, the relevant stanzas were edited to obscure any pederastic references. The original, an Albanian song found after stanza 72 of Canto II, contained:

VI (original)
I ask not the pleasures that riches supply,
My Sabre shall win what the feeble must buy;
Shall win the young minions with long-flowing hair,
And many a maid from her mother shall tear. –
VII (original)
I love the fair face of the maid, and the youth,
Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe;
Let them bring from their chambers their many-toned lyres,
And sing us a song on the fall of their Sires.^[11]

[edit] See also

• Pederasty
• Greek pederasty
• Pederasty in the Middle East

[edit] Sources

• Erich Bethe, Die dorische Knabenliebe: ihre Ethic und ihre Idee 1907
• Robert Elsie, A Dictionary of Albanian Religion, Mythology, and Folk Culture
• J.G. von Hahn, Albanische Studien, 1854, p.166
• Paul Näcke, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 327
• Edward Westermarck, "Homosexualität." Translated by L. Katscher

[edit] Notes