Megleno-Romanians - Origins

Origins

The Moglen region (Turkish: Karacaova) is located in the north of Greece at the border with Macedonia. It is roughly bounded by the Vardar river to the east, by the Kožuf and Nidže mountains to the west, by the plains of Ianita and Vodena to the south, and by the Mariansca Mountains to the north. The number of Megleno-Romanians was estimated by different authors as follows:

• 14,000 in 1892
• 21,700 in 1895
• 11,960 in 1900
• 20,000 in 1902
• 14,720 in 1925

Historians Ovid Densusianu and Konstantin Jirecek considered that Megleno-Romanians descended from a mixture of Romanians with Pecenegs, settled in Moglen by the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in 1091. They argued this on the basis in part of the Asian-like facial appearance (more prominent cheek bones) of Meglen Vlachs. By contrast, Gustav Weigand and George Murnu believed that Megleno-Romanians were descendants of the Romanian-Bulgarian Empire who retreated to Moglen. This view was opposed by Jiricek. Pericle Papahagi argued another version, that Megleno-Romanians are descendants of a group of Romanians who were incorrectly called Vlachs.

Megleno-Romanians used to have a traditional custom, called bondic, where the head of a household would take an oak log and place it in the hearth just before Christmas, burning it bit by bit until Epiphany. The resulting charcoal would be put under fruit trees to make them fertile. A similar custom (called bavnic), but with specific variations, also existed among Aromanians, some Romanians and Latvians. In Serbian, the custom is known as badnjak, in Bulgarian as budnik, and in the Macedonian as Badnik or Badni Vecher (Badni Evening). Some believe that this and other cultural archetypes discovered by scientists are proof that Megleno-Romanians come from a traditional mountainous region.

Theodor Capidan, studying the resemblance of the Megleno-Romanian language with Romanian and other languages, concluded that Megleno-Romanians must have spent some time in the Rhodope Mountains before moving on to Moglen (due to the presence of elements similar to those found in the language of the Bulgarians in the Rhodopes). Both Papahagi and Capidan observed that Armonanian and Megleno-Romanian lack a Slavic influence, but show Greek influence instead. The study of Megleno-Romanian and other Eastern Romance varieties led Capidan to believe that during the establishment of the Romanian language in the Early Middle Ages, there was an ethnic Romanian continuity on both banks of the Danube (north and south).

From the medieval and modern periods, it is known that Moglen Vlachs had an administration of their own. Each village was led by a captain. Their economic and social centre was the town of Nânta. After the incursions of the Pomaks of Moglen against the Ottomans, the latter started a persecution campaign against villages in the area, including those of the Moglen Vlachs. Most of the villages were put under the administration of an Ottoman bei, who exploited them to the extreme in exchange for their security. The village of Osani, however, resisted much longer before being subdued by the Ottomans, because its captain was more skilled militarily.

In 1900, the then province of Gevgelija, which contained most of the Megleno-Romanian settlements, had a population of 49,315, of which 20,643 Slavs, 14,900 Turks, 9,400 Christian Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians, 3,500 Muslim Megleno-Romanians, 655 Gypsies, and 187 Circassians. The villages of Meglen Vlachs had in 1900 the following populations:

1Aromanian village surround by the Megleno-Romanian ones.