Note 123 — Chapter VI · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.
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The Albanians under Turkish rule appear always to have maintained a kind of semi-autonomy, and the several tribes and clans remained as essentially independent as they were before the conquest. Though vassals of the Sultans, they would not brook the interference of Turkish officials in their internal administration, and there is reason to believe that the Turkish Government has never been able to appoint or confirm any provincial governor who was not a native of Albania, and had not already established his influence by his arms, policy or connections.123 Their racial pride is intense, and to the present day, the Albanian, if asked what he is, will call himself a Skipetar,124 before saying whether he is a Christian or a Muhammadan—a very remarkable instance of national feeling obliterating the fierce distinction between these two religions that so forcibly obtrudes itself in the rest of the Ottoman empire. The Christian and Muhammadan Albanians alike, just as they speak the same language, so do they cherish the same traditions, and observe the same manners and customs; and pride in their common nationality has been too strong a bond to allow differences of religious belief to split the nation into separate communities on this basis.125 Side by side they served in the irregular troops, which soon after the Turkish conquest became the main dependence of the government in all its internal administration, and both classes found the same ready employment in the service of the local pashas, being accounted the bravest soldiers in the empire. Christian Albanians served in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War,126 and though they have perhaps been a little more quiet and agricultural than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, still the difference has been small: they have always retained their arms and military habits, have always displayed the same fierce, proud, untameable spirit, and been animated with the same intense national feeling as their brethren who had embraced the creed of the Prophet.127