Morlachs

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The Vlachs of Herzegovina and Montenegro during the Middle Ages (in red colour)

The Region Morlachia in the 17-th century

Morlachs (in Greek: Μαυροβλάχοι, Mavrovlachi or Mauro-Vlachs, meaning "Black Vlachs"; in Latin sources: Nigri Latini) were a population of Vlach shepherds that lived in the Dinaric Alps (western Balkans in modern use), constantly migrating in search for better pastures for their sheep flocks. They were probably a blend of Romanized indigenous peoples and Roman colonists.

The adjective "black" is used here with the meaning of "northern", this metaphor probably deriving from the Turkic practice of naming cardinal directions after colours.

Reports from the mid-11th century tell how the Morlachs lived in the mountainous regions of Montenegro, Bosnia (Stara Vlaška), Herzegovina and on the Dalmatian coast. In the 14th century, some Morlachs moved northward and settled in present-day Croatia where later they would serve as frontier guardians in the Military Frontier between the Habsburg (Croatia) and the Ottoman (Bosnia) Empires, an area sometimes known as Morlachia. The continuous attempts by the feudal lords to reduce them to serfdom failed. It is not clear as yet exactly how the Morlachs survived, but the slower feudalization of the Western Balkans compared to the west of Europe seem to alleviate their decentralization from the feudal bonds. Greater freedom and easier mobility gave rise to the continuous running Slavic serfs whom they encountered, and eventually most Morlachs were linguistically assimilated by the local Slavs.

By the 15th century, the surviving Morlachs reached the Istrian Peninsula, where their descendants are today mistakenly confused with the Istro-Romanians who are "Ćići", a distinctly different group from the Morlachs^{[citation needed]}. With barely a thousand speakers of Istro-Romanian left, the "Ćiribirski" and/or "Vlaški" language is now considered as a severely endangered. Another group reached the island of Krk around 1450 and settled in the villages of Dubašnica and Poljica, where until the 19th century the people spoke an obvious Romanic language which in time, acquired more and more Slavic words and features.

Away from Istria, the term Morlach remained to describe the people of Dalmatian Zagora and Lika. Since the Romanic Morlachs assimilated the Slavs, and with no surviving paraphernalia to identify "pure" Morlachs from Slavicized ones or actual Slavs themselves, the name survived among people, producing a Slavic nation identifying as Morlachs. Essentially, the term is now a social description rather than an ethnic designation. According to the 1991 Croatian census, 22 people declared themselves as Morlachs [1].

[edit] References

• Danubian Europe: Maurovalachia
• Britannica Encyclopaedia from 1911
• Palaiovlachoi - Stari Vlah. Medieval Balkan History and Toponymy