Talk:Triepshi (tribe)

Things Robert Elsie got wrong
Mr. Elsie's book on the tribes of Albania is not a bad intro for someone who wants get to know a bit about the region and become familiar with some of the bibliography. Mr. Elsie was also very passionate about this topic - and more importantly, he genuinely sympathized with the hardship these communities have been through. But that doesn't make his book a particularly good one, when you're trying to write something that accurate. For example, in p. 60, there's a comment that says "Some members of the tribe derive their origin from Ivan Crnojevic and some old families of Delaj claimed they stemmed from refugees from Herzegovina". Now, the bibliography on this last part is "Lucaj, Luce ̈, Triepshi ndërmjet Malësisë dhe Kucit [Triepshi between the Malësia and Kuci]". I happen to have this book and yes, indeed it does say about Delaj and one of the stories being that they are Catholic refugees from Herzegovina.

So, that leaves us with the first story about Ivan Crnojevic being a ancestor of a part of Triesh. Mr. Lucaj says nothing of the sort in his book, so he can't be Elsie's source. As we read p. 73, the following from von Hahn is found: "They came from a settlement called Rijeka Ivan Beka" (he refers to the Bekaj/Benkaj brotherhood). This is the brotherhood that doesn't stem from the Ban Keqi and that checks because they are the only part Triesh that can intermarry with Hoti, who are patrilineally related to Trieshi. So, the thing that happened here is that Elsie made the mistake of reading von Hahn as his original source as saying that Bekaj have Ivan Crnojevic as an ancestor, when the real story here is that they came from Rijeka Crnojevića or Rijeka Ivan Beka, a settlement that he controlled.

I'll start a cleanup and major content update of this article later on.

[By this of course I don't mean to disrespect Elsie's work, on the contrary I respect the man and his dedication to this call. However, I do want to stress out that it can't be used as the first-to-go-to bibliographical component when it is shown to misfire on crucial details] --Maleschreiber (talk) 00:52, 11 February 2020 (UTC)