by Nelson R. Çabej/New Jersey/

Looking back at the 5- century long development of albanology, the work of Eqrem Çabej (1908-1980) rises as the summit in the wide and colorful landscape of the Albanian culture. Exceptional dimensions and manysidedness of his work make it impossible to properly seize and expose it in a short paper like this. My aim is more modest.

 Making of the scientist

Son of a cultured, noble and patriotic Albanian family, Eqrem Çabej attended primary school in his hometown, Gjirokastër. To his own credit the city hall granted him a scholarship to continue studies for 12 years in Austria: in St. Pölten (in Rienmüller family) and Klagenfurt – secondary education, and Graz and Wien – higher education.

The gifted boy was fortunate to be educated in Austria, especially in the University of Vienna, at the time the world’s leading center of albanological studies, where some of the world’s outstanding authorities in the Indo-European and Albanian linguistics, archaeology and history were working and lecturing. He was fortuitous to study under Norbert Jokl (1887-1942), the greatest albanologist of the time, and have as thesis adviser both him and the great Indo-Europeanist and helenist Paul Kretschmer (1866-1956), two important contributors, supporters and spokespersons of the theory of the Illyrian origin of Albanians.

After graduating and successfully defending his PhD dissertation Italo-albanische Studien (Albanian-Italian Studies), he returned to Albania, with great desire and confidence to contribute in elucidating the history of the Albanian language and culture. While still in his 20’s, he produced several original scientific papers on the Albanian folklore, ethnography, mythology and the history of the Albanian literature published in European scientific journals. The articles were received with interest and were widely cited in the historical and linguistic literature of the 30’s and were commented by wellknown albanologists, including Norbert Jokl, Carlo Tagliavini, Georg Stadtmüller, etc. Noteworthy are papers Sitten und Gebräuche der Albaner (Traditions and customs of Albanians) (1935), Rumänisch-albanische Lehnbeziehungen (Rumanian-Albanian Loanrelationships) (1936), Albaner und Slaven in Süditalien (Albanians and Slavs in South Italy) (1938), Miszellen (Miscellaneous) (1938), in Revue Internationale des études balkaniques; Mundartliches aus Italien (Dialectal elements from Italy) (1936) in Glotta; Volkstum und Volksname der Albaner (The national character and the national name of Albanians) and Kult und Fortleben der Göttin Diana auf dem Balkan (Cult and survival of goddess Diana in Ballkans) (1941) in Leipziger Vierteljahrsschrift für Sudosteuropa; Der albanische Dichter Gjergj Fishta (1941) (Albanian poet Gjergj Fishta) in Südost-Forschungen.

With these publications, since 30es of the last century, Çabej emerged as the most popular voice of the Albanian science in Europe. At a first glance these publications may leave the impression that the albanology novice was struggling to find the niche where he would make a name. However, in retrospect, these studies served as a prelude and groundwork for the frontal offensive he would later undertake to elucidate the history of the Albanian language, its etymology and morphology, and further, about Illyrian origin and the place of formation of the Albanian language and Albanian people. These studies are inextricably part of the research ground on which he would erect his scientific structure.

Full steam ahead in the field of albanoalogy

In 1952 Çabej began to deal with the problem of the place of formation of the Albanian and the Albanians as a people, a theme to which he would return time and again, as a major problem in the history of Albanians. Certainly, three-four papers he published on this problem during the 50-60’s of the last century represent cornerstones of the modern scientific theory of the autochthony of Albanians in their present territories. Thus, by the early 60-es, Çabej’s name became synonymous to the autochthony of Albanians. In the 50’s he also contributed to the fields of the Albanian orthography and lexicography, including his coauthorship in compilation of Dictionary of Albanian of 1954.

To this period of time belong the coauthored fundamental works on word formation in Albanian Prefixes of Albanian (1956) and Suffixes of Albanian (1962). As an important part of his preparatory work on Albanian etymology, Çabej would later undertake the transcription and transliteration of Gjon Buzuku’s Missale (Meshari), his most important philological work. He finished it in 1958, but due to particular socio-political circumstances of the time, the publication of this important work for the Albanian linguistics and culture in general was postponed for 10 years later, until 1968. The publication included an introduction and a critical study on the language, the values of the book and merits of the author. This study about the history and dialectology of Albanian would serve as a point of reference in his effort to reconstruct earlier forms of Albanian words.

In 1960, he began publishing a long series of articles in Buletini i Universitetit Shtetëror të Tiranës (Seria Shkencat Shoqërore), which would appear in full in 2 first volumes of Studime Gjuhësore, published in Prishtinë, Kosova, in 1976.

Çabej entered the study of the history of Albanian at a time when it was determined once and for all that this language was a member of the Indo-European family of languages, but several fundamental and complex problems of the history of Albanian were still remaining unresolved. Among them were:

• Assessment of the basic Indo-European inherited word stock of the Albanian and its ratio to the loanwords from other languages (Latin, Greek, Slavic, Turkish, etc.).
• – The origin of Albanian and, related to it, relationships between Albanian and Illyrian and Thracian-Dacian.

– The time of the formation of two main dialects of Albanian,

• – The place of formation of the Albanian language and Albanian people,
• – Contribution of the Illyrian to the Latin and ancient Greek lexicon.

In all these fields he made his valuable, sometimes decisive, contributions.

His deep inquiries, often all-embracing, on the origin of Albanian words, lexical relations of Albanian with Baltic, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic on the one hand, and their cognates in Greek and Armenian, on the other, led him to the idea of the evolution of the Pre-Albanian on the way of migration of the Pre-Illyrian Indo-European tribes from northern Europe towards the present Albanian-speaking territories, where the Illyrian ethnos formed sometime during the Bronze Age.

The silence of the early medieval sources on Albanians, determined the paramount importance of the historical-linguistic evidence and clues on the Illyrian-Albanian continuity, for a people’s language is the carrier of the oldest documents of its history. Çabej employed his deep historical-linguistic knowledge to investigate and elucidate the origin of Albanian and the place of the formation of the Albanian people.

Having published in 1958 the paper Problemi i autoktonisë së shqiptarëvet në dritën e emravet të vëndeve (The Problem of the Autochthony of Albanians in Light of the  Place Names), he retakes the topic in Die älteren Wohnsitze der Albaner auf der Balkanhalbinsel im Lichte der Sprache und der Ortsnamen (The Ancient Homeland of Albanians in the Balkan Peninsula in Light of the Language and Place Names) presented at the VII International Congress of Onomastic Sciences in Florence, Italy, to appear again in 1970 with the study  L’illyrien et l’albanais (The Illyrian and Albanian) and a year later with the paper Problemi i vëndit të formimit të gjuhës shqipe (The problem of the place of formation of the Albanian).

Now are classical the counterarguments he used to refute the view of the outstanding linguist Gustav Weigand and his followers like Vladimir Georgiev, who posited that the evolution of ancient Illyrian place names, such as Shkumbin, Shkodër, Durrës, etc. sugests that Albanians might have taken these names from an earlier non-Albanian populace that inhabited these territories before them.

Çabej strongly underscored the facts that Albanians live in ancient Illyrian territories and there is no direct/indirect evidence or even a hint to suggest their immigration in these territories. Under such circumstances, he argued, the burden of proof (Beweislast) lies on the opponents of the theory of autochthony to prove the Albanians came from somewhere else. With this, states the outstanding Croatian linguist Radoslav Katičić: ”Mr. Çabej…provided a solid methodological basis to any discussion on the origin of the Albanian language” [Katičić, R. (1974). Antroponimia ilire dhe etnogjeneza e shqiptareve. Kuvendi i Studimeve Ilire Tiranë, p. 95-98 (p. 96)].

Çabej argued and demonstrated in different ways and from different viewpoints that the modern Albanian-speaking territories represent an Illyrian area that shrunk over time as a result of Romanization, incoming foreign populations, but also due to the struggle for political and religious domination between the western Roman and Greek-Byzantine worlds.

He gets credit for filling the vacuum created by the absence of Albanian-related studies in the Balkan linguistics. More than anyone else, he revealed the lending role of Albanian to those languages.

Despite the high intensity of work in the field of the Albanian etymology, during the last two decades of his life, he continued to crucially contribute to the fields of the normative development of Albanian, as well as in the fields of Albanian orthography and lexicography, including his participation in compiling a great number of multilingual dictionaries of the Albanian scientific terminology.

But, undoubtedly, his Opus vitae is his seven-volume work Studime Etimologjike në Fushë të Shqipes (Etymological Studies in the Area of Albanian), which crowned his life-long work on the history of the Albanian word and language. In terms of the level, the scope and the scientific importance, it represents the greatest and most important corpus created so far in 3 centuries of the history of albanological disciplines.

His contributions reach out in all the areas of albanaology (Albanian linguistics, ethnography, mythology, folklore, history, etc.). His knowledge was wide-ranging and when I say this, my mind goes to a talk I had with him more than half a century ago. At the time I was just graduated and for the first time got some elementary genetic knowledge (at the time genetics was still ‘illegal’ in Albania) from a text for qualification of teachers of East German high schools. When I enthusiastically was telling him about Mendel’s laws of inheritance, I found myself screwed up in my effort to find the right Albanian word for the second law, he asked me whether I had in mind Spaltungsgesetz (German for the law of segregation), leaving me astounded by his knowledge in an area that was so remote from albanology and linguistics.

Master of the method

In his work on the etymology of Albanian words and reconstruction of their earlier forms, Çabej didn’t simply apply the comparative method with Indo-European cognates. He complemented it with the method of the internal reconstruction and comparison with various words within the Albanian. He didn’t believe in the new grammarians’ (Junggrammatiker’s) strict laws of the evolution of words, and was convinced that what really exist are only rules and that exceptions may exist to every rule. This is clearly seen in the existence of dialectal variants of the words and he was the first to systematically and strictly apply the method of search for the evolution of Albanian words both in time and space.

Unlike many of his predecessors, he followed the principle that linguists must first search whether the word could be explained within the Albanian and with the language’s own means. Only after being convinced that this didn’t lead to the source of the word, one should look for the possibility of it being a borrowing from other languages, Latin, Greek, Slavic or Turkish. And when a word could be explained equally good, both as an inherited word of Albanian and as a borrowing from another language, the principle of parsimony (priority of the simplest explanation and with less guesses) says that the first explanation, i. e. that it is an inherited Albanian word, would be preferred.

Çabej used to begin etymologization of the word with a critical, meticulous and usually exhaustive consideration of the previous research of the great Indo-Europeanists and albanologists, by exposing their merits, weaknesses and the relative value of their opinions and conclusions.

In his attempts to pursue evolution of the Albanian word in space and time he clustered dialectal forms within and outside of the modern Albanian-speaking territories, including the medieval Albanian settlements  in Greece, Italy, etc., as well as the earlier Albanian books from the 16^th century on. Only after careful examination of the work of previous linguists, written and oral sources, dialectal data and idioms of various Albanian regions and Albanian settlements outside the Albanian ethnic territories, he presents his carefully shaped and prudent view, by reconstructing earlier pre- and proto-Albanian forms up to their Indo-European roots.

He strongly emphasized the prerequisite for an objective attitude in etymological studies, for a clear distinction between the inherited Albanian words and borrowings, the need “to separate the wheat from the chaff” as he used to say.

With his renowned devotion to search for truth, he didn’t ever hesitate to reject as borrowings words that other scholars before him recognized as Albanian inherited words. He underscored this on the page 45 of Studime Etimologjike në Fushë të Shqipes I (Tiranë, 1982), where he delineates the adage that permeates his whole whole work on Albanian etymology: “In a principled distinction from some other linguistic streams…of obstinately increasing the proportion of the inherited element of the Albanian vocabulary; we have shown the foreign source for a number of words that were recognized as genuinely Albanian”. (It continued in the next issue)