Mataruge

The Mataruge (alternatively, Mataruga or Motoruga) were a medieval Albanian tribe which originally lived in Old Herzegovina and southern Dalmatia. Their name is attested in historical record for the first time in 1222 in the Pelješac peninsula of Dalmatia. Throughout the 20th century, they were considered to have stopped existing as a separate community during the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the 15th century. Modern research in the Ottoman archives showed that they had dispersed throughout the western Balkans following Ottoman conquest and formed settlements in other areas. By 1477, a part of them lived in the kaza of Prijepolje, where they formed their own distinct community (nahiye) with 10 villages (katund). One of their leaders appears in the defter to have been a Vojko Arbanash. Other Mataruga communities had moved in central Croatia and Bosnia. Over time they became culturally integrated in the surrounding communities of their new homelands. Families who trace their origin to the tribe are found today in all countries of the western Balkans.

Etymology
Various etymological derivations about the name of the tribe have been proposed which involve Albanian, Latin, Celtic or a combination of those languages. One these links the name to a term which referred to a type of spear which was introduced by the Celts in the Balkans. Like other communities in the western Balkans they were sometimes grouped socially with the Vlachs, a term which came to refer to the social status of pastoral semi-nomadic communities. Kaser, Karl (2012). <!-- Household and Family in the Balkans: Two Decades of Historical Family Research at University of Graz. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 978-3-643-50406-7. p.117. "The Illyrian people escaping Romanization probably became the core of the later Albanian population; the Romanized Illyrian people, through a process completed by Roman colonists, were the origin of the later Vlach population. This means that the latter-day Vlachs are, so to speak, the successors of the Roman and Romanized Illyrian population. Just as the Germanic Anglo-Saxons had called the Romanized Celts ‘Welsh’ and their land ‘Wales’, or the Germanic tribes one day to be French had called them ‘Walloon’, so the Slavs called these Illyrians and other Latinized populations ‘Vlach’ (Hammel 1993: 5). The populations of the western parts of the Balkans were able to continue their normal life only until the arrival of the Slavs in the second half of the 6th century. The Slavs (together with the Avars) more or less completely destroyed the existing Roman culture, its cities and churches. We know in detail, for instance, how they unsuccessfully besieged the Greek city of Thessaloniki and completely destroyed the Roman city of Salona near the later city of Split (on the Adriatic coast). The Roman and Romanized population fled mainly to the mountainous regions (Southern and Central Dinaric and Northern Pindus range) where they survived and kept their Roman identity as pastoral nomads. They mixed with the indigenous Illyrian/Albanian population of the mountains. As such they were later on called ‘Vlachs’ (as to the origin of this term, there are many theories). For centuries Albanians and Vlachs dominated the higher levels of the Southern/Central Dinaric and Northern Pindus ranges, while the Slavs and Greeks dominated the plains. The former developed special technical skills of herding and certain forms of social organization and cooperation. But we know almost nothing about that until the 11th century because of the poverty of the archaeological sources and the lack of written historical sources. Information from the 11th to the 14th centuries shows that the highest concentration of Vlach and Albanian mountain populations was between the mountainous part of Herzegovina (part of today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina) and the Ionian sea’s Gulf of Arta in Northern Greece, including the mountainous regions of Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Epiros, Thessaly and Macedonia. The Albanian core region in the north and south was flanked by territories occupied by Vlachs. From the 11th century onward we have strong evidence about Vlach summer pastures in the Northern Pindus and their winter pastures in the plains of Thessaly and Southern Macedonia. In the 11th century Byzantine writers called this region Megali Vlachia (Greater Vlachia) and a part of Epiros was known as ‘Upper Vlach Country’ (Wace & Thompson 1971: 258-259; Weigand 1898: 13; Antonijević 1982: 28-29; Beuermann 1967: 174-175). Moreover, there is also strong evidence of Vlach presence in Herzegovina and, to a degree, in Montenegro. Linguistic investigation of toponymies and ethnonymies makes it certain that an autochthonous stratum of Roman population (Vlachs) lived there before the Slavs (Serbs) moved in (during the late medieval period) and slowly assimilated the Vlachs. Many Vlach lineages organized in special pastoral units are known by name. The Slavic oral tradition of these areas, even in the 20th century, still preserves knowledge of a pre-Slavic population, called ‘Lužani’, ‘Špani’, ‘Kauri’, ‘Latini’, ‘Mataruge’ or ‘Mataguži’ (Kulišić 1980: 7-26; Palavestra 1965-66: 24-34; Hrabak 1956: 37-39)." -->]''

Other
In folk, oral stories they have also been linked to other tribes like the Španje and the Kriči. These communities seem to have also migrated along with Mataruge from Old Herzegovina to Croatia after in the wake of the Ottoman conquest. Mataruge were frequently mentioned in historical documents of 14th and 15th century as a pasture society, with some of the most prominent of them being organizers of caravans for transport of salt and other goods from the seaside into mainlands.

Names of many toponyms in Montenegro and Serbia are derived from the name of this tribe, such as Mataruška Banja, Mataruge in Pljevlja and Mataruge in Kraljevo.

In the region of Grahovo, (Old Herzegovina) the Mataruge were mentioned between 1318 and 1398.The tribe Riđani and other brotherhoods extensively tried to emigrate towards the fertile lands of the Grahovo field, However they faced resistance from the Mataruge natives which inhabited the area. The Mataruge frequently attacked Travelers and Settlers along the Grahovo-Risan route.