Last modified: 2003-06-14 by dov gutterman
Keywords: yugoslavia | bosnia and herzegovina | croatia | macedonia | slovenia | mavrolachians | morlaks | istria | mavrolakians | dalmatia | mavrovlakhos | wallachians | vlakhs | chopes | torvlaks |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
by Ivan Sache
See also:
"Mavrolachians (Morlaks) - Istria, Slovenia, Croatia
(1917)" - Red field with a wide red diagonal stripe with a
white "window" bearing red crescent and star. This
design is listed under 37 at the chart: Flags of Aspirant Peoples
[eba94].
Ivan Sache, 16 September 1999
I had trouble locating "Mavrolachians (Morlaks).
According to Buschan 'Die Vo"lker Europas', c. 1910, the
Maurovlachen (Maurovlachians) were 'black Vlachians; they were
nomadic shepherds, like the Aromunen and Turkish shepherds; their
name was mentioned in the 10th century in the Byzantine empire;
in the 11th century in Bulgaria and in later times in the western
part of the Balkan peninsula. <Buschan writes here on the
wandering shepherds in general> There were shepherd speaking
Slavic and Albanian languages; in the 19th century they spoke
Romanian and Aromanian. They wandered into Moravian Wallachia,
the islands of Istria and into the environment of Trieste. Most
of them settled probably in villages and some of them became the
heriditary village shepherds (Transylvania, the great Hungarian
plain); in Buschan's time the Aromanians wandered in the
meadow-rich parts of the Balkan mountains and the Rhodope, the
Pindus, Schardagh, soutwest Serbia and southern Albania. In
winter they wander for 30, 40 days in the coastal regions at
Arta, the Dardanelles and Valona (Vlone"). They carried
their possessions on big horses.
The Morlaks lived in Dalmatia and some of them were shepherds
(Buschan speaks about the two as different peoples).
In Kramer's 'Geographisch Woordenboek' (1883) I read about:
'Morlacca (German: Vellebith), region in Austrian Croatia,
consisting of the mountainous coastal area with the villages of
Carlopago (Karlobeg) and Zeng (Senj). The inhabitants are
reckoned to be some of the most uncivilized in the
Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. The Street of Morlacca (Velibitsky
Kanal), 5 km wide, separates the Illyrian and Dalmatian islands
Veglia (Krk), Arbe (Rab) and Pago (Pag) from the mainland.
My tentative conclusion would be that the Maurovlachians do not
exist anymore as a wandering shepherd-tribe, and that some of
them have settled in 'Morlacca' as Morlaks; the fl