http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2010/01/02/who-was-alexander-great
Who was Alexander the Great?
By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on January 2nd, 2010
.
Share
Photo by Getty Images
Was he Greek, Macedonian, or was he in fact Albanian? That's the latest theory
on his identity that is bound to upset a lot of people in the Balkans.
Who exactly was Alexander the Great? Greek? Macedonian? Or was he in fact
Albanian? That's the latest theory on Alexander's identity, put forward by an
ethnic Albanian historian, Nijazi Muhamedi, that is bound to upset a lot of
people here in the Balkans.
I'm not sure how detailed his research was, but Mr Muhamedi will be well aware
that he is wading into a debate that is already highly emotive.
We do know that Alexander the Great was a brilliant general and King of ancient
Macedon, whose army swept across Asia Minor, Persia, and all the way to India,
around 300 BC.
How closely Alexander would associate himself with any modern nation-state is a
moot point, but he is now at the centre of a very contemporary dispute about
identity.
Greece has long claimed Alexander the Great as its own, stressing the cultural
continuity between ancient Macedon and modern-day Greece..
But Greece's northern neighbour, which calls itself the Republic of Macedonia
(and is recognised as such by most other countries, although not by the Greeks,
who have succeeded in preventing that name from being officially adopted at the
United Nations) has, in recent years, made a determined bid to claim
Alexander's heritage.For example, its capital, Skopje, now boasts an "Alexander
the Great Airport".
Greeks are outraged by this, seeing it as a deliberate appropriation of their
history. I've reported on this issue in the past for Al Jazeera; here's a story
that was broadcast a couple of years ago, and gives some of the background
couple of years ago, and gives some of the background
But the Republic of Macedonia, (or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
FYROM, as the Greeks prefer to call it) is itself a badly divided society, with
an Albanian minority that often feels discriminated against.
Last year, this minority- as well as the governments of neighbouring Albania
and Kosovo- reacted angrily to an official new encyclopedia , which said that
Albanians had only settled the region as recently as the 16th century.
Of course, Mr Muhamedi's new theory implies that Albanians have been around a
lot longer than that. This row will run and run. As the Balkans tries to define
its future, the past remains a fertile battleground.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
