Mirroring the Bazaar: Social Change Through Balkan Marketplaces

Mirroring the Bazaar 271

Mirroring the Bazaar: Social Change Through Balkan Marketplaces

Armanda Hysa

It was in June 2007, when coming back from Sofia, that I visited Skopje and its

charshiya [bazaar] for the first time. It was a two hours stay, during which I

and my colleagues had the chance to talk to one of the businessmen running a

bar at the bezisten [antiques bazaar] of the charshiya. I stayed silent most of the

conversation, fascinated by this very big and new but, compared to the old

bazaar of Kruja in Albania, old charshiya in its own manner.

I started my work as an ethnologist at the Institute of Folk Culture in

Tirana, an environment which was facing a governmental reform and was in a

difficult financial situation. At that time the Institute was, and after the name

change into the Institute of Cultural Anthropology still is a kind of battlefield of

scientific paradigms: ethnology perceived as the discipline that researched the

“original traditions” of the Albanian people versus ethnology perceived as a

social science equal to social and cultural anthropology at home. Even though I

was one of the proponents for the shift of ethnology’s subject-matter toward an

anthropology at home, it never came to my mind that we could research other

places and people outside Albania. I may say that I (and probably my

colleagues as well) would not even have such an idea, not only because of the

very difficult financial situation the Institute was in (and still is), but because of

a kind of disbelieve in my own capacities to do it. Albania has always been

researched by outside anthropologists, but the other way round, Albanian

anthropologists (educated only in Albania) as outsiders researching other

societies, had never been an option.

At that time, during the mentioned conversation, I simply forgot about that

disbelieve, and thought only about my research topic – the charshiya, the old

bazaar. I was visiting one of the biggest charshiyas in Southeastern Europe, it

was my topic and I would not limit my research on contemporary charshiyas

only to Albania. When doing research on historical charshiyas it is quite

impossible not to compare one given charshiya with others from Ottoman

times. Likewise, as an anthropologist researching present charshiyas, I find it

inappropriate to limit my research only to one charshiya. Only through

comparison by means of multi-sited fieldwork can one grasp what the

charshiya represents as a socioeconomic space, and how it is represented in

different discourses and images about the past and the present. I am looking,

272 Armanda Hysa

thus, at the charshiya as a socioeconomic space and place, a place of

production, trade and consumption, a public space, and a meeting place for the

past and the present.

In this paper I want to discuss the relationship of the charshiya as a complex

marketplace with its history: on the one hand, in some Balkan cities these

marketplaces are today the oldest living urban complexes, having their own

history, on the other hand they are part of historical and mythical narratives

about city life and therefore are subjects of identity narratives and identity

politics. And when the charshiya becomes the meeting point of different

historical narratives, identity narratives, and of a continuously changing reality,

they are left with the three options of marginalization, demolition or

museumification.

The origins of Balkan charshiyas

There is a central question I pose with regard to defining the charshiya as the

principal space and location, or as the focus of the pre-industrial city or town.

Was the charshiya central to the city or town because city dwellers and

inhabitants considered it to be such? Or is it the researchers, historians,

sociologists and anthropologists who, given the historical facts, attribute the

charshiya its central place in the city’s life? This question is crucial to

understanding the transformations that took place on the charshiya from the end

of the 19th century to our days.

Both Karl Marx and Max Weber emphasized the centrality of the market as

a place of handicraft production and exchanges of goods. For Marx and Marxist

thinkers, craftsmen were crucial for the transition from the handicraft mode of

production to the industrial one. Artisans were those creative minds who tried

to find and develop new and more advanced technologies. On the other hand,

the poor artisans, the unpaid apprentice and the dispossessed villagers would be

the bases of the proletariat during the industrial transformation.1

Weber defined as a pre-industrial city or town mostly those urban places

with a local marketplace which he calls “the non-sporadic and regular presence

of the goods-exchange within the population as an essential part of the

subsistence incomes of that population. […] In the economic sense, we can talk

about city only when the local population produces and satisfies most of their

everyday needs at the local marketplace […]”.2

1 See for example KAUTSKY, KARL: The Class Struggle. The Proletariat:

www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch02.htm. 2 WEBER, MAX: Qyteti [Die Stadt]. Tirana 2006, p. 25.


The anthropological debate has for decades focussed on the centrality of the

marketplace and of market principles for the pre-industrial or pre-capitalist

world. The substantivist approach, even though it did not deny the importance

of marketplaces, often denied the existence of market principles, while the

formalist approach gave both of them a central place, not only for the

economic, but also for the social organisation in general.

When researching the charshiya historically, Stephen Gudeman’s theory of

“community economy”, combined with some aspects of the formalist approach,

seems to be more appropriate as a theoretical framework. Gudeman states:

“A community economy always has a place in space. Its boundaries may be permeable

with respect to membership; and a community may be composed of smaller

communities, based on households, extended kin groups, local lineages, religious

organizations [...] The community economy also may be contained within a larger

structure such as a chiefdom, feudal system or market. Community participation defines

as well a local identity. [...] In contrast, the market has no locality. Because the

accumulation of gains has no limits and trade respects no social boundaries, market

relationships overrun and often break the borders of communities.”3

The charshiya of the pre-industrial Balkan city or town bears both

characteristics, which at a first glance seem contrary. It was a community’s

base where, as Weber stated, most of the members of the urban communities

had similar activities and satisfied their needs, thereby creating a kind of

community identity. But it was also a market in terms of abstract market

principles and in terms of overcoming social boundaries and limits of

communities. In this sense, the charshiya is called market-place, while the

abstract actions of buying, negotiating, and selling are referred to by the word

bazaar. It is because most of the bazaar or market negotiation and exchange

took place at the charshiya, that it was simply called bazaar, or pazar.

The definition of the bazaar as a place where specific identities are formed,

at the same time a place where social groups usually meet, boundaries extend

or disappear, has been given by Clifford Geertz in his Peddler and Princess:

“The pasar […] , or traditional market, is at once an economic institution and a way of

life, a general mode of commercial activity reaching into all aspects of […] society, and

3 GUDEMAN, STEVEN: Economic Anthropology. In: BARNARD, ALAN/SPENCER, JONATHAN

(Eds.): Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London 1996, p. 261-270, here p.

263.

274 Armanda Hysa

a sociocultural world nearly complete in itself. As agriculture for the peasant, so petty

commerce provides for the trader the permanent backdrop against which almost all his

activities occur. It is his environment […] and the whole of his life is shaped by it. Thus

by the pasar we mean not simply that particular square eighth of a mile or so of sheds

and platforms, set apart in the center of the town, where […] men are permitted each day

to deceive one another, but the whole pattern of small-scale peddling and processing

activity [...] The market place is the climax of this pattern, its focus and center, but it is

not the whole of it; for the pasar style of trading permeates the whole region, thinning

out somewhat only in the most rural of the villages. To understand the pasar in this

broad sense, one needs to look at it from three points of view: first, as a patterned flow

of economic goods and services; second, as a set of economic mechanisms to sustain

and regulate that flow of goods and services, and third as a social and cultural system in

which those mechanisms are imbedded”.4

Anthropological research on Balkan charshiyas seems to be limited. Only

few authors of our time appear to have dealt with them directly or indirectly.

But when we turn our attention to the early 20th century, we will notice that a

lot of ethnographical research has been undertaken by ethnographers in

Bulgaria and in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia around the First World War. Today

we may be guided by new theoretical frameworks, but the historical value of

these early ethnographic data is considerable. If the use of official documents

may lead the historian to an etatist interpretation of the social and economic

history of the handicrafts and guilds, the data collected by local ethnographers

of the time is the anthropological breathing of that history, there are men

talking about themselves, the way they organised their lives, etc. But

unfortunately this is not so visible in the ethnographic articles which often

generalize and do not present personal narratives or case studies. It is visible,

however, in the manuscripts and notes of fieldwork expeditions which are to be

found mostly in ethnographic archives.

Historical research was more concentrated on craftsmen and guild

organizations in the Ottoman period, and rarely on the charshiya itself. There is

a huge body of publications on Ottoman craftsmen authored by Turkish and

other historians,5 works that are very important to understand the social,

4 GEERTZ, CLIFFORD: Peddlers and Princes. Chicago 1963, p. 30. 5 See for ex. QUATAERT, DONALD/INALCIK, HALIL (Eds.): An Economic and Social History

of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1914. Vol. 1 and 2, Cambridge 1994; SHKODRA, ZIJA: Esnafet

Shqiptare [Albanisches Handwerk]. Tirana 1973; TODOROV, NIKOLAY: The Balkan City

1400–1900. Seattle 1983; FAROQHI, SURAIYA/DEGUILHEM, RANDI: Crafts and Craftsmen of


economic, and political relevance of guild organization. These publications

strove to elucidate whether guilds were totally dependent from the state or

whether they were autonomous socio-economic-political organizations of the

local craftsmen, whether they were organized on rigid principles or were

flexible as well. As concerns the relationship between pre-industrial and

industrial forms of production, Nikolay Todorov’s conclusion is very important

that the guilds were flexible enough to accommodate themselves to the proto-

industrial production of raw woollen cloths. It shows that prosperous

manufacturers attempted to control their guilds rather than leaving them or

trying to subvert their functioning.6 But all of them conclude that guild

organization was central to urban life.

With regard to the question raised above it is clear that the idea of the

central importance of the charshiya for urban life is shared not only by

researchers but was also a perception of the local population. It was so

important, that among South Slavs it was a synonym for the city or town itself

(alongside grad, gradić or varoš); official announcements of the central or

local government were communicated by public criers on the charshiya, the

main cafes were located there, the entire display of power of local political

actors would take place there. In the case of Shkodra, the charshiya became the

battlefield of a war between guilds related to two different political actors

struggling for power. The overlord who would assume the power of the

pashaluk would be the one allied to one of the struggling esnafs. Or, as

Desanka Nikolić’s article on the importance of the charshiya for the process of

urbanization in Serbia shows, Prince Miloš Obrenović used to walk in the

middle of the charshiya of Belgrade just to demonstrate his economic and

political power.7

Zija Shkodra’s work on “Albanian Esnafs”, Todorov’s work on the pre-

industrial Ottoman Balkan city as well as some of the articles by ethnographers

of the 20th century show that because the charshiya was the space of money and

luxury accumulation, it was the place where the first local industries, mainly of

soap, oil, tobacco, and ice production, started to rise. The case of the leather-

worker Has Tabaku from Tirana, who migrated to France, participated in the

the Middle East. Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean (Islamic

Mediterranean). Cambridge 2005. 6 FAROQHI/DEGUILHEM: Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East, p. 20. 7 NIKOLIĆ, DESANKA: “Čaršija” – počeci urbanizacije u Srbiji u XIX veku [“Čaršija/Basar“ –

Anfänge der Urbanisierung in Serbien im 19. Jahrhundert]. In: Glasnik etnografskog instituta

SANU 44(1995), p. 85–92, here p. 88.

276 Armanda Hysa

Paris Commune, returned to Tirana and transformed the guild of tobacco-

workers and furriers into the first Cooperative of Leather Workers (Kooperativa

e pare e Punetorëve të Lëkurës) in 1873,8 is an indicator that being the most

important public space, the charshiya became the entrance door of modern

ideas about the rights of workers and their organizations. But it would also be

one of its first victims.

During the 19th century, several new nation-states were created from

territories of the Ottoman Empire, and the empire itself almost collapsed

because of the political, economic, and industrial revolution in Western Europe.

The economic agreements between the Ottoman Empire on the one side, and

Great Britain, France, Italy and Austro-Hungary on the other had an

asymmetrical character, and most historians today consider them imperialistic.

The quantity and price of imported goods as well as the modernization of the

way of life had direct consequences for many craftsmen and guilds. The new

imported goods were sold mainly at the charshiya, and as a consequence its

function as a place of production was reduced.

After the creation of independent nation states, the capital Balkan cities

entered a period of “harsh” modernization. Modernity, based on rationality,

positivist sciences, education, and industrialization was a historical process

going on in some parts of Europe and elsewhere. But the ideology and practice

of the nation-state were also its product and, at the same time, its producer and

reproducer. With the creation of the nation-state, other public buildings, places

and spaces became important for its ideology. In the case of Serbia, Desanka

Nikolić concludes that even though the charshiya was closely related to the

process of urbanisation, by the end of the 19th century it was perceived as an

anachronism and survived only in the provinces.9

The discourse of intellectuals, which was characterized by the backward vs.

modern dichotomy, described the traditional craftsmen as dirty and ignorant

and juxtaposed them to the educated craftsmen coming from Europe. In their

discourses the charshiya was often described as a dirty and obscure place

compared to the new shops built after the European fashion.10 Zygmunt

Bauman has called the period when all efforts were made to create a pure and

8 Krijimi i shoqatës së parë të tabakëve në Tiranë [Schaffung des ersten Tabak-Vereins in

Tirana], an oral account collected by Ferit Llagami in 1973 and archived at the Ethnographic

Archive of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Arts Study, file 13, Tirana. 9 NIKOLIĆ: “Čaršija”, p. 92. 10 This kind of discourse characterizes almost the entire Albanian media during the first half

of the 20th century.


perfect society as solid modernity.11 In the efforts to create a pure and perfect

society, the charshiya lost the governments’ interest, and the intellectual

discourses certainly did not help the craftsmen and the villagers. The very

existence of the charshiya represented a kind of counter ideology.

In the case of Tirana, all the urban planning between 1923 and 1942 left it

aside. The fascists’ (1942) and later the communists’ (1957) plans of Tirana,

reflecting two extremely rationalized regimes, where no place was given to the

non-pure, decided to demolish Tirana’s bazaar as the last sign of an “irrational”

urban element. The history of the capital had to begin with their monumental

buildings. The bazaar began to be demolished in June 1959, when Nikita

Khrushchev placed the first stone of the new Palace of Culture in the name of

the USSR and Albanian friendship.12 The demolition of the bazaar was not the

consequence of cultural change, but of a political decision for ideological

reasons.

It is not the aim of this article to follow the transformation of Balkan

charshiyas, of their histories, functions and meanings. I wanted to point out that

any anthropological research trying to elucidate the present social, cultural or

symbolic meanings of a phenomenon, or of a place with such a rich historical

capital must take its history into consideration. Given the great significance of

the charshiya as a socio-cultural and economic space, even for the spreading of

modern political and economic ideas, I consider the charshiya as a mirror in

which Albanian and Balkan modernities are reflected.

Back to the present. The meaning of change and the change of meaning of

two Balkan charshiyas: the bazaar of Kruja and the charshiya of

Skopje.

Parallel with historical-anthropological research I started to organize field trips

to several charshiyas in the Balkans. I have visited those of Skopje (R. of

Macedonia), Sarajevo, Mostar (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Gjakova (Kosovo),

and the bazaars of Kruja and Gjirokastra (Albania). But I concentrated my

research on Skopje, Sarajevo and Kruja. My aim is to analyse the metaphor of

11 BAUMAN, ZYGMUNT: Liquid Arts. In: Theory, Culture and Society 24(2007)1, p. 117-126. 12 I have published an article dedicated to the demolition of the bazaar of Tirana. See HYSA,

ARMANDA: Vendi i pazarit të vjetër në planet urbanistike për zhvillimin e qytetit të Tiranës,

në kuadër të reformave modernizuese [Alte Marktplätze in der Stadtplanung zur

Stadtentwicklung Tiranas, innerhalb der Modernisierungsreformen] (1923-1959). In: Kultura

Popullore 1-2(2009), p. 150-161.

278 Armanda Hysa

mirror in three different post-Ottoman contexts. But for reasons of space, in

this article I will compare two cases, the old bazaar of Kruja and the old

charshiya of Skopje. In Ottoman times and in the first decades of the Balkan

nation-states, the charshiya was the central economic and public space for cities

and towns. Its economic relevance diminished because of industrialisation and

of the creation of other spaces for business. But what happened to its function

as a public space is what interests me in this paper. How much of a mirror are

charshiyas nowadays? Is there a conflict between the politics of identity on the

charshiyas and them being public spaces? How much from the daily realities of

respective societies can one grasp by being at the charshiya? Or, in other

words, what part of everyday reality is mirrored at the charshiya?

I began asking these questions during my first fieldwork in Skopje, a field

trip that showed me the importance of comparison. Up to than I had taken for

granted the reality of the bazaar of Kruja as a living museum, and I was

interested to analyse just the ways in which craftsmanship adapts to the market

of souvenirs. I thought that the transformation of the bazaar into a place for

selling souvenirs was a subject of simple historical description. Only when I

visited the Skopje charshiya I understood that the way in which the charshiyas

were transformed in different societies can tell us a lot about those societies’

changing realities. And this way we can better understand the charshiyas

themselves. When the charshiya becomes the meeting point of different

historical narratives, identity narratives, and of a continuously changing reality

there are three possibilities at hand: marginalization, demolition or

museumification.

John Gillis says that identity and memory are strongly interrelated.13 The

core of every individual or group identity is a feeling of sameness in time and

space, and it is based on remembering. On the other hand, what is remembered

is determined by the presupposed identity. He states that memories and

identities are not fixed things, but representations of realities, they are

subjective and are adapted and selected depending on the identity we want to

construct at that moment. “The work of memory” is embodied in the complex

class, gender, and power relationships which determine what should be

remembered and what should be forgotten.

Without entering into the details of the relation between history, writing

history, and memory (“the work of history”), it is similarly embedded in these

relationships what should be written and what not for creating new memories

13 GILLIS, R. JOHN: Memory and Identity. The History of a Relationship. In: IDEM (Ed.):

Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity. Princeton 1994, p. 3 -25, here p. 3.


and identities – and what others should be silenced. While the writing of

history is open to new arguments and interpretations, the construction of

museums as they were conceived at the end of 19th century and parts of the 20th

century is the contrary. For museums, the debate on history is over, they know

the only and final historical truth and their task is to tell it: “We don’t research

history”, the directress of the museum of the City of Sarajevo told me, “we just

tell it”. Objects are not only de-contextualized socially, culturally, and from

their time-space, but they are arranged in such a way that they can tell that

history – hence create that memory and that identity. For that reason museums

are very important tools for the politics of identity.

The old bazaar of Kruja

I have already mentioned that in the case of Albania, whenever the charshiya

was seen as a threat to modernity, be it Western or socialist modernity to be

erected on the ruins of the old world, the charshiyas faced state-sponsored

demolition, even if the local craftsmen produced for everyday needs.

The socialist kind of modernity in Albania with its planned economy aimed

at nationalising ownership of all sorts, and this included even the small

craftsmen. The way of life changed more and more, but the bazaars were still

centres of production for everyday needs. In the cities, there were already other

public spaces for social and cultural life such as boulevards, modern cafeterias

and hotels, theatres etc. which were important for certain strata of society. But

the bazaar was still a principal public space of daily life, and it was socially

inclusive. It was no longer a place to show off social or economic prestige, but

it was there for everyone. For small towns, the bazaars were still the only

public spaces. But they were demolished everywhere in Albania, and their

empty spaces were replaced by small parks (lulishte). When it was needed for a

national hero’s fame, the bazaar was preserved as a cultural monument,

freezing it in time, museumifying it, as is the case with Kruja and Gjirokastra.

A small part of the bazaar of Korça was preserved as well, because of its

distinct bourgeois architecture.

Thus, the fate of Albanian bazaars was either demolition or

museumification. There was no place for any marginalisation from the change

in the way of life. By demolishing the bazaars and nationalising the handicraft

sector, forcing craftsmen to produce only souvenirs, the style of dressing and of

house furniture (daily material culture) changed within a few years. The

decision to preserve the bazaar of Kruja as a cultural monument and a living

280 Armanda Hysa

museum was based on two main reasons. Being the marketplace of a small

town, the shops of the bazaar, and the kalldrama (cobble stones) had not

changed their architectonic structure and appearance for at least 300 years (the

bazaar had been reconstructed several times because of fires, but always in the

same style). So it fulfilled the principle of “originality” and “authenticity”

needed for a museum. Yet Kruja was also the capital of the Albanian national

hero, Skanderbeg. In 1968, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his

death, the government decided to proclaim Kruja the museum city of

Skanderbeg, with the bazaar, the ethnographic museum (which was the house

of the local bey), and the castle (kala), which was transformed into the Museum

of Skanderbeg. Even though craftsmen admit that the bazaar is no older than

400 years, most media narratives relate it to the period of Skanderbeg, avoiding

all Ottoman influence, and in some cases describing it as a monument of

resistance against Ottoman rule.14 Authenticity and “resistance against the

occupiers” narratives go hand in hand with Albanian nationalist ideology.

Most of the bazaar was demolished. Only one lane (sokak) and 30 shops out

of 150 were preserved. The shops were nationalised and became part of the

State Handicrafts Enterprises and of the State Import Export Enterprise

“Albania”. Only a few craftsmen kept working at the State Handicrafts

Enterprise, while the Import Export Enterprise hired persons who were

considered trustworthy by the regime, as they were among the few persons who

could deal directly with foreigners – tourists or trade agents who would go

abroad for trade.15 Through the State Import Export Enterprise, the bazaar of

Kruja became the most important centre of accumulation of handicraft goods

produced by all State Handicraft Enterprises in Albania. It became also one of

the most important tourist sites in Albania, becoming itself a commodity.

The commodification of the charshiya thus went hand in hand with its

museumification. Handicraft items as commodities not for everyday use, but as

souvenirs were considered important elements of the preservation of traditional

material culture. But in reality they were a newly invented tradition. They were

not produced according to the traditional models of the end of the 19th century

and the first half of the 20th century. Instead, the new tradition consisted of

repeating the emblem of Skanderbeg’s goat-hat, and from the national flag the

14 See e.g. RUSPIN, VIOLETA: www.forumishqiptar.com/showthread.php?t=13211. Accessed

in Sept. 2011; http://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazari_karakteristik_i_Kruj%C3%ABs. Accessed

in July 2011; www.nasergashi.com/t2205-kalaja-e-krujes. Accessed in Nov. 2011. 15 The data for the organization of the bazaar of Kruja were given to me orally by three shop

owners of the bazaar who used to work there as state workers during socialism. They also

explained to me many of the changes that occurred after 1990.


red colour was adopted and applied in most carpets (qilim) and the double

headed eagle was applied in carpets, embroideries (qëndisje), doilies (çentro)

and others. An important part of this new state invented tradition was the

production of Skanderbeg mini statues.

The nationalisation of folk tradition is a practice used in nation-building

processes. The tradition is frozen in time and is made to appear unchanged,

original, and authentic, representing the spirit of the people. This state-

sponsored tradition did not search for the “spirit of the people” but constructed

it from above in order to fit the Albanian nationalist-communist ideology. The

commodities sold at the Kruja bazaar were thus a direct outcome of the politics

of identity of the political elites. They had no previous social life16 and no

previous social and cultural symbolism. We are thus not dealing with the

transformation of specific material culture symbols from a local context to a

national one (which is the basis of identity construction in most nation-states),

but rather with the reverse process: there are the state intellectual elites

operating as engineers of folk culture (in addition to Gellner’s observation that

the political and intellectual elites of Eastern Europe were engineers of high

culture).17

The instrumentalization of folk traditions for nationalist purposes has been

criticized by most researchers and historians of nationalism, but this does not

mean that there were no folk traditions. The case of the souvenir artefacts

produced by the State Handicraft Enterprise as well as the demolition of most

bazaars were not the result of cultural change and change of people’s ideas of

tradition but were a result of state ideological imposition and control aiming at

imagining one’s own identity. Therefore I agree with Hobsbawm’s concept of

“invented traditions”18 and disagree with Herzfeld’s critique of the term.19 One

can make a distinction between the creation and innovation of traditions of

people who create and consume them and invented traditions from above by

the engineering efforts of political elites, similar to the distinction between

memory and nostalgia. Memories are subjected to selection and transformation

by various social, cultural, and political contexts of the present, while nostalgia,

16 APPADURAI, ARJUN: The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective.

Cambridge 1988. 17 GELLNER, ERNEST: Nacionalizmi [Nationalismus]. Tirana 2008. 18 HOBSBAWM, ERIC/RANGER, TERENCE O.: Introduction. In: IDEM (Ed.): The Invention of

Tradition. Cambridge 1983. 19 HERZFELD, MICHAEL: A Place in History. Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town.

Princeton 1991, p. 12.

282 Armanda Hysa

even though related to the past, may not refer to specific events of the past: “it

creates a frame for meaning, a means of dramatizing aspects of an increasingly

fluid and unnamed social life.”20 But the invented tradition like the souvenir

production in the socialist period in Kruja and elsewhere in Albania differs

from nostalgia in that it was not the result of how people perceived and

imagined tradition (even without connection to tradition) like nostalgia is.

Therefore the element of manipulation which Hobsbawm highlights and which

Herzfeld relativizes, played an important role in enforcing the state control of

individual and collective identities and imaginations of the self.

The commodification and museumification of the Kruja bazaar preserved,

to a certain degree, the importance of the bazaar from an economic point of

view. But it lost its function as a public space. It was just a site for Albanian

and foreign visitors who, however, in the socialist period were not so many.

In the 20 years of post-socialism the bazaar of Kruja inherited some features

from the socialist period, but there were also many changes. The former shop

owners received their properties back, but many others did not have this chance

because their shops had been demolished. There were some minor conflicts

about property among former owners and actual sellers who used to sell in the

souvenir shops owned by the state during socialism. In 1991 the parliament

passed a law which gave the right of shop privatisation to the actual sellers, but

the former owners had priority and the few sellers who wanted to privatize

shops bought the empty spaces along the lane of the bazaar and built their own

shops in the bazaar style. The bazaar of Kruja is still one of the principal tourist

attractions and continues to be a cultural monument protected by the state. The

businesses run at the bazaar are exclusively in souvenirs. A special emphasis is

given to the “authentic traditions”, especially to the production of qeleshe (a

special traditional woollen hat for men). Qeleshe are produced at the bazaar as

a sign of continuation of tradition despite the socialist period. Most of the items

are not produced at the bazaar, but all over Albania. A good part of workers of

the former Handicraft Enterprise continued to work privately at home after the

Enterprise closed down in the early 1990s. They created formal and informal

networks in order to find markets, reduce competition, and increase incomes. In

effect, most items are identical with those produced during socialism, as the

producers keep using the models and catalogues made for them in that period.

The variety of commodities is thus enriched with artefacts reminiscent of

the period of socialism: socialism itself is commodified and sold. Along with

20 STEWART, KATHLEEN: Nostalgia. A Polemic. In: Cultural Anthropology 3(1988)3, p. 227-

240, here p. 227.


these items new heroes became part of the souvenir deities: mini statues of the

god Dea thought of as an Illyrian god, along with mini statues of Skanderbeg

and Mother Therese are part of the new nationalist–Europeanist ideology. Dea

confirms the Illyrian roots of the Albanians, and at the same time their ancient

European roots, while Skanderbeg and Mother Therese confirm the Christianity

and Europeanness of the Albanians.21 Albanian bunkers of the socialist period,

together with coffee cups with the face of Enver Hoxha, Sali Berisha, Edi

Rama and Mother Therese are among the most sold items, along with

handmade carpets, “Skanderbeg” brandy, and folk costumes. Most of these

items, especially mini statues, and some other wooden and copper items, are

brought from China, but the sellers would insist that their families produce

most of the stuff at home.

This is the most difficult part of fieldwork: it is difficult to build up trust on

this point, and it is a problem from an ethical point of view. It was interesting

for me to notice a kind of detachment of sellers from the products they sell.

Their only worry was to increase their incomes, and they take care to learn

some basic English and Italian. There is no feeling of nostalgia about the items

they sell, or about their symbolic meanings. At one occasion a shop owner, a

woman, said to me that she felt a kind of shame for selling cups with the face

of the dictator, or with bunkers. But since most buyers are foreigners, they love

to buy these items. “Albanians never buy cups with the face of Enver Hoxha,”

she said, “and I always explain to them that I don’t like the dictator either, but I

need these items for business.”

21 There is a huge debate going on about the European identity of the Albanians. The

proponents of European identity construct this identity in accordance with Albanian

nationalist ideology. Europeanness is equated to Christianity, and this narrative is

characterized by a strong orientalist discourse. As a consequence, every oriental influence is

considered as “a cancerous part” that should be cured. The principal proponent of this

narrative is the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, who emphasizes the importance of

Skanderbeg and Mother Therese as both Christian–European and Albanian heroes. Enis

Sulstarova has analysed this discourse in the light of the theory of Orientalism. Fatos

Lubonja says that national-communism differs from this new nationalist ideology, since the

latter includes the elites and does not call them betrayers and collaborators of foreign

occupiers. National-communism was not keen to affirm any European or Christian roots,

since Europe represented the capitalist system and Christianity represented a reactionary

ideology. Therefore, Lubonja asserts, national-communism was replaced by national-

Europeanism. See Skenderbeu dhe identiteti i sotem europian:

http://perpjekja.blogspot.com/2009/02/skenderbeu-dhe-identiteti-i-sotem.html.

Accessed in Feb. 2012.

284 Armanda Hysa

Many shop owners at the Kruja bazaar do not only sell these items, but also

collect and sell what they call antiques. “Antiques” are those items of material

culture used by people or families in their daily life such as old books or

journals (dating from the end of the 19th century to the end of socialism),

jewels, clothes, crosses, pictures, photographs, Party membership booklets,

covers, cups, pots, and all kinds of furniture. In some cases they even sell

antiques from other Balkan countries.

The shop owners explained to me that Albanians are more interested in

buying antiques and newly produced items of which they were sure they are

handmade in Albania, while foreigners buy everything, and many of them

believe that the cups with the face of Enver Hoxha are traditional from the time

of socialism. Albanians of Albania are not so much interested in buying mini

statues of Mother Therese or Skanderbeg, or items with national symbols, even

though most of them generally accept them as national heroes, while Albanians

of Kosovo, Macedonia or the diaspora tend to buy items with national symbols.

Albanians of Albania find this disturbing sometimes. Political control during

the communist dictatorship imposed that every family should keep a photo of

Enver Hoxha in the most visible part of the house, and items for decoration

were full of national symbols. This is why after the end of socialism most

Albanians from Albania are reluctant to use political or national symbols as

decoration items in their homes.

There is only one bar at the Kruja bazaar, and no restaurant. In terms of

social space, the bazaar does no longer belong to its inhabitants. No locals go

there to have a coffee or chat with friends. It is a site reserved for business and

tourists only. There is no feeling of regret about this among the inhabitants, as

for many families in Kruja the bazaar represents the only source of income, as

the tourists spend the rest of their day in other places, in hotels, restaurants,

cafeterias in town. There is no feeling of resentment against tourists among the

locals, as is the case in other countries.22

By observing the Kruja bazaar one can study and understand many

questions related to socialist and post-socialist realities and developments, even

though the bazaar has lost its quality as a public space for socialisation. But the

bazaar is no longer the micro-cosmos of local society it used to be and, as a

consequence, mirrors only partly the social, economic, and political processes

of the present society. There is an emotional detachment from its cultural or

historical meaning. No feelings of nostalgia or any kind of intimacy are related

22 See LAW, SETHA M./LAWRENCE–ZUNIGA, DENISE: Anthropology of Space and Place.

London 2007.


to it, not even in peoples’ narratives. The bazaar is experienced more as a

commodity without a specific meaning, which is due to the fact that it has lost

its quality of a public space. On the macro level, this detachment seems to

represent a kind of indifference that most Albanians show towards matters

related to identity or heritage; my hypothesis is that this is a consequence of the

brutality with which socialist state ideology silenced local traditions and

replaced them with purely ideological symbols.

The charshiya of Skopje

When a Bulgarian friend told me that it must be interesting to do fieldwork at

the Charshiya of the Albanians, I was surprised. My first visit to the Skopje

charshiya had been some months ago. It was a Sunday, and most shops were

closed. I had noticed that all the boards indicating the working hours and the

name of the business were in Macedonian. The second time I went there with

the purpose to start fieldwork was again in 2007 and again on a Sunday

morning, and the situation was the same. The charshiya was closed, with the

exception of a bar. Some shops had a kind of stamp in their windows, a stamp

with only one word in Cyrillic, ECHAФ (esnaf). Then, in one of the shops at

the entrance of the charshiya, I read a note that this was the residence of the

Esnaf Association of the Old Charshiya of Skopje, written in English and

Macedonian. The hotel where I decided to stay, a small and nice one, was

placed at the heart of the charshiya, immediately behind the mosque, and a few

metres away from the church. The person who helped me find the hotel was an

Albanian, while the owner of the hotel was a Macedonian. It was obvious that

they helped each other with clients.

There are three main entrances to the charshiya, one from the bit-bazar

where one can buy everything for subsistence, from food and beverages to

clothes and household items, most of it Chinese, the second near the

Moskovska trade centre and the Skanderbeg statue, and the third at the Stone

Bridge. One could discern two styles of architecture, “typical” charshiya

architecture and Titoist architecture. The shops of the latter style were built

during Tito’s period and had been meant to form the largest commercial centre

in Yugoslavia, but the project was never finished. Handicraft shops were very

rare at the charshiya, the few remaining craftsmen being goldsmiths (zlatar),

quilt makers (jorgandžia), and one cloth-painter (hemboj). There were few

souvenir shops. Most shops sold clothes of all kinds for all ages and sexes.

There were five shops selling wedding dresses, many kebab-restaurants and

286 Armanda Hysa

cafeterias, a few “modern” restaurants, some bars, one pub, two or three travel

agents, two religious bookshops, four small hotels. Right at the centre of the

charshiya there was a shop with a large board reading China Centre, the centre

of Chinese merchandise. Most traders and shop-owners were Albanians, but the

shops near the Orthodox church and the new part from the Tito era were run by

Macedonians, Torbeshi, and Aromunians. The charshiya is considered the

historical centre of Skopje; close to it are the old castle (kala), the Historical-

Archeological-Ethnographic Museum of Macedonia, and other institutions of

national importance.

From that first visit in 2007 on I came back to Skopje every year, but stayed

for a longer period in 2011. On my first trip I had become aware of the negative

meaning of the denomination “Charshiya of the Albanians”. I knew little about

the political situation in Macedonia and learned more about it during my stay. I

have mentioned above the two types of architecture on the charshiya, but it

seemed that the “typical” architecture was not really typical if compared to the

architecture of the Kruja Bazaar or the baščaršija of Sarajevo. The buildings of

the Skopje charshiya had undergone significant changes, at least during the last

five decades, an important fact which indicated, that the charshiya never

stopped being a viable centre of commerce, production and, most importantly,

of socialization. It was not frozen in time, and since the first day of my stay, I

understood intuitively that for its inhabitants and the inhabitants of Skopje this

space was full of symbolical meanings. People might love it or hate it, but they

were never indifferent to its existence. Therefore the charshiya occasionally

became a contested space where narratives of Macedonian national identity met

with narratives of its Turkishness, Albanianness or Muslimness; narratives of a

peaceful multiethnic and multireligious coexistence with narratives of

homogeneous belonging; the moral of esnaf with the “non-moral” of

modernity; the love of its older inhabitants for their charshiya with the

newcomers’ indifference towards it. A tension could also be noticed between

what was perceived as malicious politics of the state and the inhabitants of the

charshiya.

I have used the phrase “inhabitants of the charshiya” (who call themselves

“çarshialinjtë” or “čaršijali”), because most people working at the charshiya

perceive it as their living space. This shows the intimacy and emotional

meaning which the place has for their lives. A similar term “ahl as-souq” (the

people of the bazaar) is used by Anika Rabo for the traders of the bazaar of


Aleppo where “the people of the market are seen, and see themselves, as

epitomizing the values and attitudes of the Aleppo market”.23

There are very few people at the charshiya who have inherited their

businesses or shops from their fathers or grandfathers, but most of them would

tell you with nostalgia about the good old times when the charshiya used to

flourish and to be filled with people who were not just clients, and when the

morale of the esnaf used to rule. Memories of the esnafs merge with a kind of

“Titostalgia”. In this respect, the case of the Skopje charshiya is extremely

interesting, but for the sake of comparison and space I will rather focus on the

charshiya as a contested space.

When telling the history of the charshiya, two of my main informants,

Albanians born and raised in Skopje, would identify two kinds of realities, the

reality of the charshiya and the reality of bad state politics trying to ruin it. The

reality of the charshiya corresponded to its good old days located deep in a

timeless past up to the 1980s. The nostalgic account of Xhavit24 tells about a

charshiya which in the past was a well organized place. It was a place of

handicraft production and ruled by esnaf morals. I was curious to learn the

meaning of esnaf and, knowing the story of the guild organizations that

survived up to the beginning of the 20th century, I was surprised to hear people

talking about them in 2007, and still in 2011. In their narratives esnaf did not

mean the guild organization as such. Actually, because the craftsmen members

of the guilds were a kind of middle class of society, the word esnaf took on a

socio-cultural meaning of belonging to “good families”, families of people who

worked in honourable professions and behaved according to the moral code of

the esnaf organizations. The moral laws were written down in the statutes of

each organization. Most of them originated from religious codes of behaviour

and were almost identical among both Christian Orthodox and Muslim esnafs.

In the Ottoman period, the craftsmen who broke this moral code would not

only be expelled from the guild but could be sued in the court (sheri) of the city

or town (kasaba). In modern times, at the charshiya of Skopje, the old

craftsmen were called esnaf even though they were not related to any such

guild. The essence of esnaf was handicraft production and behaviours in

accordance with the morals of esnaf. Both the old and the contemporary

meaning of the morals of esnaf includes the concept of honesty and hard work.

23 RABO, ANNIKA: A Shop of One's Own. Independence and Reputation among Traders in

Aleppo. New York 2005, p. 4. 24 I use pseudonyms instead of real names, even though my informants have no problem

with giving the real names.

288 Armanda Hysa

To be esnaf means to produce your own commodities in an honest way, not to

cheat with the quality of production for the purpose of gain, not to cheat with

prices even when the quality of goods was guaranteed, to respect the clients and

never lie to them, even when they were occasional customers. A good esnaf

knows how to attract clients in an honest way, and this is important, because, in

the words of my informants, “to have clients does not mean only a good gain

and profit. It means security and cohesion for the society. If clients are happy

with your work, there will be more work to be done, the demand will increase

and more jobs will be created”. Esnafs do compete with each other, but in an

honest way. They never try to “steal” clients from each other, and when a client

wants to change the craftsman they make sure not to let him talk badly about

their colleague. Not only the craftsman is esnaf, but the client is esnaf as well.

A client-esnaf never cheats in business, and if they are not happy with the deal

they should openly express their discontent. If they want to break the

relationship, they should explain well why they are doing this, without blaming

the former partner, otherwise they would not be a trustworthy client and other

craftsmen would avoid them. The craftsmen who were not perceived as hard

workers, or who were perceived as lazy (dembel), were not welcomed by their

colleagues. They would have less clients and would have to close their shops.

Differences in ethnicity or religion were not important for the morals of the

esnaf. According to my informants, it is true that the modernization of the way

of life made it difficult for some handicrafts to survive, but there was still room

for other modern handicrafts to exist. But the morals of esnaf died out because

of what were perceived as bad state politics towards the charshiya.

The head of the organization “Esnaf”, which was established in 2006, said

that there was plenty of work for craftsmen in former Yugoslavia, as the

demand for handmade items produced at the charshiya such as bootees, jewels,

carpets, traditional clothes still in use with villagers, items made of iron and

copper, etc. was very high. The esnafs, i.e., the craftsmen with their specific

moral code, were ruling the charshiya up to the 1980s, and even some state

enterprises like Jugokoža (Yugoleather) were based at the charshiya because of

its importance as a trade centre and centre of production. The period of Tito’s

rule is described by my informants as a period of bloom for the charshiya. Not

only handicraft production and trade were blooming, but in his period there

began to be built a shopping centre which was planned to be the largest one in

Yugoslavia. The charshiya was charming for most of the inhabitants of Skopje

who would not start their days elsewhere but at the cafeterias of the charshiya.

“You see this place, it is almost empty,” one of the bar owners at the bezisten,

the former bazaar for luxury items, told me. “If you would have come here in


the 1970s, you wouldn’t have had a chance to find a free place at this afternoon

hour at all the bars and cafeterias of the charshiya. It used to be so full that you

wouldn’t find a place where to throw even an apple (nuk kishe me gjet vend me

hedh asnji kokërr moll)”.

The owners of the restaurant Bratstvo are Albanians, they are brothers.

Their rhetoric when talking about the political situation in Macedonia from

time to time takes on strong Albanian nationalist nuances. The music played at

their restaurant is exclusively Albanian folk music from Macedonia and

Kosovo and is sometimes disturbingly loud, from morning to afternoon closing

time. They do it on purpose, as a way of demonstrating their Albanianness, but

they never thought of changing the (slavic) name of their restaurant. The first

thing one notices in the restaurant is the photograph of the owners with the

Montenegrin prime minister Milo Djukanović and the Macedonian prime

minister Vlado Bučkovski in 2006. “My father bought the shop in the early

seventies,” Arben told me. “He had just started to run the restaurant, when Tito

visited Skopje. The people who were with him told him that the owner was

Albanian who had just opened the restaurant. So Tito decided to have lunch at

our restaurant, and had a long conversation with my father. At the end he told

everyone: ‘This is the real unity and brotherhood (bratstvo i jedinstvo) I am

talking about’. My father was so honoured that Tito decided to have lunch at

his restaurant and to have a conversation with him that he decided to call the

restaurant ‘Bratstvo’. Tito is the godfather of our restaurant, this is a historical

fact and we are proud of this. We would never change the name of our

restaurant. Tito even wrote about this in his diary, and this is the reason why

Milo Djukanović also decided to have lunch here. He has read about it and said

to us that this was the first thing that he wanted to do when visiting Skopje,

going to all the places where Tito went during that visit”.

If one would ask Albanians in Macedonia directly how they remember

Tito’s period, Tito himself, Tito’s politics etc., one would get negative answers.

To them, Tito was just like the other Slavic leaders, anti-Albanian, colonialist,

and in some cases even chauvinist.25 Yet, if one lets the conversation go on,

their memories stripped of the actual political influences and feelings of

marginality, most of them will tell nostalgically about their daily life which

under Tito’s rule seems to have been much better than after his rule. This is

why I call it a specific Titostalgia: it is not clearly articulated, it seems to be

25 The reasons for this kind of explanation are various and deserve a specific paper, therefore

I will not analyse them here.

290 Armanda Hysa

unvoiced and implicit, and it is heavily influenced by the ethnic conflicts of the

post-Tito and post-socialist period. This nostalgia goes hand in hand with the

nostalgia for the esnaf moral order, but there is no specifically expressed

nostalgia for the Ottoman times.

The charshiya became a clearly contested space especially after the student

protests in Kosovo in 1981. My informants, mostly Albanians, say that the fear

of Albanian irredentism had stronger effects in Macedonia than in Serbia.26

Many teachers or civil servants who were Albanians and suspected to be

irredentists were fired. But since there was a lot of demand for the artefacts

produced at the charshiya, many masters started to employ them. Muedin, the

head of “Esnaf”, told me: “This disturbed the state authorities. The number of

Albanians working at the charshiya was growing, and that meant that

Albanians would be stronger economically”. Xhavit, the other informant, said:

“After 1981, most of the crimes committed in Skopje would be propagated to have

happened at the charshiya. It was not true, but no one would believe us. One article

today, another tomorrow in the newspapers, did the effect, and after some years less and

less people would come to the charshiya. Many handicraft shops were obliged to change

their business purpose. In the 1980s most of my Macedonian friends and colleagues

closed and sold their shops, since they would have more income opening businesses in

their neighbourhoods. One of my best friends and colleagues, a silversmith too, closed

his shop by the end of the 1980s. I still remember as if it was yesterday how desperate

both of us were that day. ‘I have to go, Xhavit,’ he said, ‘there are better opportunities in

my neighbourhood. But I am leaving my heart here. The esnafs are dying’.”

Muedin told me that the end of Yugoslavia was the most difficult period for

the charshiya. Most Macedonian shop owners sold their businesses or gave

their shops for rent, and those who bought or rented the shops were more and

more Albanians.

“Ethnicity was not important for the morals of esnafs,” Xhavit said, “but bad state

politics and propaganda made it important. Most Albanians who recently moved to the

charshiya came from villages, they have no clue of what this place is, and they sell

26 I will not discuss how true the historical accounts of my informants are. It is more

important to see how ways of remembering and experiencing history are employed to

explain the present.


stupid Chinese and Turkish merchandise. They have no idea of what it means to be

esnaf.”27

When I asked two Macedonian friends of mine in 2007 why they had not

gone to the charshiya for over 25 years, they answered that it was not a secure

place. It was the place of Albanians, therefore it was a place for drug dealers

and mafiosos (the common stereotype of Albanians in Macedonia, Serbia, and

elsewhere). In 2007 these were the common perceptions of the “charshiya of

Albanians”, and one could seldom hear people talking in Macedonian. For

some 25 years the charshiya was a marginalised space of marginalised people,

but it was the main public space for most Albanians and never lost this quality.

The Ohrid Agreement of 2001 was not yet implemented, in the sense of

including Albanians in the state administration. I could understand the

complexity of the ethnic situation in Macedonia by only walking on the

charshiya and talking to people. Even though marginal, it was a mirror of a

divided city.

In 2011, only by walking to the known places of the charshiya, it was

visible that things had changed a lot. The “Esnaf of the Old Charshiya of

Skopje” had successfully cooperated with the Ministry of Culture and

organised various activities at the charshiya. The Ohrid Agreement section on

integrating Albanians in the state administration had begun to be implemented

in 2009 and increased the communication between Albanians and

Macedonians. The number of businesses co-owned by Albanians,

Macedonians, and Torbeshi was growing rapidly and more Macedonians chose

to spend their leisure time in the restaurants and cafeterias of the charshiya.

Both the Ministries of Culture and of Economy began encouraging the small

businesses of the charshiya, especially those of handicraft production.28

When I hear stories about the past of the charshiya, stories of handicrafts,

esnafs, apprentices, cafeterias full of people, and walk through the arrays of the

present charshiya it is like experiencing imaginations evoked by historical

readings and postcards. This is the purpose of museums as well, to create an

image of the past, but what distinguishes the charshiya of Skopje from a real

museum is that the museum is a tool in the hands of politics of identity: frozen

27 This reflects that the charshiya is not only a contested space between Macedonians and

Albanians, but also between perceptions as being urban vs. the “dull” villagers who are not

better even when they are Albanians. This will be analysed in more detail elsewhere. 28 See for ex. www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/audio_

story/2012/02/16/audio_story-05.

292 Armanda Hysa

in time it is disembedded not only from the socio-cultural context, but also

from the daily experience of the people. While the past experienced at the

charshiya of Skopje has no precise historical time, a timeless past, but it is not

static. At first glance, the bazaar of Kruja is older and more “original”, while

the charshiya of Skopje is more modern. But the bazaar of Kruja, being turned

into a museum, decontextualized, disembedded from its people, transcends no

historical and cultural symbolism, while it is quite the opposite with the

charshiya of Skopje. And for this reason the charshiya of Skopje is more

successful in constructing the image of old – stara – e vjeter than the bazaar of

Kruja. It is old and yet contemporary. It may not be the only public space in

Skopje, and from time to time it may even be marginalised, but it is lived and

experienced by its people. State politics may have influenced the reality and the

perceptions of the charshiya, but they never detached it from its inhabitants and

never changed its quality as a public space. Efforts at its museumification also

go in this direction. Therefore the charshiya of Skopje mirrors not only the

realities of Macedonian society, but it helps to understand the significant

difference between Albanian socialism or post-socialism and Yugoslav

socialism or Macedonian post-socialism with regard to identity politics as well

as politics towards small businesses.

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Documents

Mirroring the Bazaar: Social Change Through Balkan Marketplaces