[5] In the second century BC, a Roman trading post recorded in Latin as Mansio Scampa (also in Ancient Greek: Σκάμπα) near the site of modern Elbasan developed close to a junction of two branches of an important Roman road, the Via Egnatia, which connected the Adriatic coast with Byzantium.

By the third or fourth century AD, this place had grown into a real city protected by a substantial Roman fortress with towers; the fort covered around 300 square meters.

[6] This city appears on late antique itineraries like the Tabula Peutingeriana and Itinerarium Burdigalense as Scampis or Hiscampis.

As a town in a wide river valley it was vulnerable to attacks once the legions were withdrawn but Emperor Justinian made an effort to improve the fortifications.

The site seems to have been abandoned until the Ottoman army built a military camp there, followed by urban reconstruction under Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1466.

[11] In the late 17th century, the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi passed through Elbasan and noted that "all the inhabitants speak Albanian" having knowledge of Turkish with Muslim clergy being literate in Persian, while merchants also used the Greek and "Frankish" languages.

[14] In 1909, after the Young Turks revolution in Istanbul, an Albanian National Congress was held in Elbasan to study educational and cultural questions.

Before the Second World War, Elbasan was a city with a mixture of eastern and medieval buildings, narrow cobbled streets and a large bazaar.

There was a clearly defined Muslim settlement within the castle walls, an Aromanian district on the outskirts of the city and several fine mosques and Islamic buildings.

There was much wartime damage, which was followed by an intensive programme of industrial development in the Communist period that boosted the city to around 75,000 inhabitants.

The culmination of this process was the construction of the huge Steel of the Party (Albanian: Celiku i Partise) metallurgical complex outside the city, in the Shkumbini valley, built with Chinese assistance in the 1970s.

The city of Elbasan lies to the north of the river Shkumbin between the Skanderbeg Mountains and the Myzeqe Plain in central Albania.

After the 1908 Congress of Monastir (in modern Bitola, North Macedonia) decided to use the Latin alphabet for the written Albanian language, Muslim clerics influenced by the Ottoman Empire held various demonstrations in favor of the Arabic script in Elbasan.

Notably, Saint Jovan Vladimir was buried at the church until 1995 when his remains were transferred to the Orthodox Cathedral in Tirana, being brought back to the monastery only for his feast days.

Ballokume, a kind of cookie made with butter and cornmeal among other ingredients, is the traditional dessert served on this day.