What the word means
Besa, in its indefinite form besë, stands for a promise that binds the person who gives it completely. Whoever gives his besa puts his honour behind it; breaking it means losing his standing in the community. The Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem translates it literally as to keep the promise and describes someone who acts by besa as a person you can trust with your life and the lives of your family.
The word reaches deep into the language. The adjective besnik means faithful or trustworthy, and both Besa for women and Besnik for men are still given as first names today. Early dictionaries struggled to translate it: in the early nineteenth century Markos Botsaris rendered it in a Greek-Albanian word list with a Greek word for religion or faith, and an Ottoman almanac for the province of Kosovo compared it in 1896 with the French parole d'honneur.
Besa in the law of the mountains
In the highlands of northern Albania, besa was one of the institutions on which everything rested. The customary law known as the Kanun uses it as a guarantee: a besa could secure a truce between two feuding families, protect a man threatened by revenge for an agreed time or at an agreed place, or make trade and herding possible across clan boundaries.
Because a besa was so reliable, rulers used it too. The Ottoman authorities asked tribes for a besa to bind them to agreements, and Sultan Abdul Hamid II called on the people around Shkodër in the early 1890s to swear a besa against the blood feud. In 1899 a gathering of 450 Albanian notables in Kosovo under Haxhi Zeka swore a besa to suspend feuding, and as late as 28 June 1970 families from the Malësia region made a besa at Tuzi to end their feuds and accept the decisions of the courts.
An oath that made history
In the decades before Albanian independence, many turning points began with a besa. In 1878 Albanians met in Prizren and formed the League of Prizren, an alliance sealed by a besa. In 1881 they swore a besa and rose against the Ottoman government. In July 1908 Albanians from Kosovo gathered at Ferizaj and swore a besa to press Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the constitution.
Even the alphabet owes something to a besa. In November 1908, at the Congress of Manastir, the committee of eleven that had to choose between the competing scripts swore a besa to reveal nothing until the final decision. Out of that meeting came the Latin alphabet that Albanian still uses today.
1943: the promise to the refugees
The most moving chapter of besa was written during the Second World War. Before the war, according to Yad Vashem, only about two hundred Jews lived in Albania, out of a population of 803,000. After 1933, Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and the neighbouring countries arrived; estimates range from 600 to 1,800 people.
When German troops occupied Albania in 1943, Albanians refused to hand over lists of Jews, and officials gave many Jewish families false papers. Yad Vashem writes that almost all Jews within Albania's borders survived the occupation, with the exception of one family, and that there were more Jews in the country at the end of the war than before it.
One example among many: in Kruja, the brothers Hamid and Xhemal Veseli hid two Jewish families from Yugoslavia, the Mandils and the Ben Josephs, in their family home for nine months until liberation. Yad Vashem honoured them as Righteous Among the Nations in 2004; their brother Refik had been the first Albanian to receive this title. By 2006 the memorial had recognised 63 Albanians in this way.
The rescue was carried by ordinary families in towns and villages. The photographer Norman H. Gershman made this the subject of the exhibition Besa: A Code of Honor, and the documentary Besa: The Promise tells the story of Jewish survival in Albania.
In sayings and in books
Two sayings show how highly besa ranks: "Besa e shqiptarit nuk shitet pazarit", the besa of an Albanian is not sold at the market, and "Besa e shqiptarit si purteka e arit", the besa of an Albanian is like a rod of gold. Sami Frashëri wrote a play about it in 1874, and Ismail Kadare made it a central theme of his 1980 novel Doruntine.
In everyday life, besa has lost none of its force. "Të jap besën", I give you my besa, is still said when something really matters, between friends, in business and in families. For many Albanians in the diaspora it is one of the words that stand for what home means.
The Dardania leather jacket carries the double-headed eagle across the back: 300 millimetres wide, pressed into scale-grain leather. No print, no patch. Numbered, in black and bone white.
SEE THE JACKET →What does besa mean in Albanian?+
Besa means the given word or pledge of honour, a promise regarded as sacred that may not be broken. The adjective besnik, faithful, comes from it.
How did Albanians save Jews in the Second World War?+
During the German occupation from 1943 they refused to hand over lists of Jews, gave them false papers and hid them in their homes. According to Yad Vashem, almost all Jews in Albania survived, and there were more Jews in the country after the war than before.
Is Besa a name?+
Yes. Besa is a popular Albanian name for girls, and Besnik, faithful, its counterpart for boys.
- Wikipedia: Besa (Albanian culture)
- Yad Vashem: Besa – A Code of Honor (exhibition)
- Yad Vashem: The Veseli family
- U.S. Senate Resolution 521 (109th Congress, 2006) on Albanians who sheltered Jews
- Wikipedia (de): Kanun (Albanien)
For centuries the Kanun governed life in the northern Albanian mountains: honour, hospitality, the given word and blood feud. Where it comes from and what remains of it.
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