Kuči (tribe)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, both voluntarily and non-voluntarily many people from the pleme began to settle in the Plav-Gusinje, Rožaje and the wider Sandžak region.

As such, alongside Marko Miljanov (1833–1901), a national hero of Montenegro who led the tribe in the Montenegrin-Ottoman Wars in 1861–62 and 1876–78, people of Kuči ancestry include and Jakup Ferri (1832–1879), a national hero of Albania who fought against Miljanov's annexation of his home territory Plav to Montenegro.

The surname appears at least 19 times among Albanian stradioti recorded between 1482 and 1547, and Valentini notes various toponyms connected to the tribal name across Albania and Arvanite settlements in Greece.

[1] Stanišić proposes a derivation from Romanian cuci ("hills"), from a similar source to Albanian kuci ("place of high altitude").

The unofficial Kuči centre is the Ubli village, which had 227 inhabitants in the 2011 Montenegrin census and houses several institutions like a culture hall, the "Đoko Prelević" elementary school, a hospital, a police station and a former fabric factory.

[citation needed] Albanian in origin, Kuči underwent a process of gradual cultural integration into the neighbouring Slavic population.

[21] Kuči is mentioned again in the Venetian cadaster of 1416–7 of Shkodra, where the village of "Kuç" (Kuč), is listed as a small settlement of eight households near the city itself, headed by a Jon Nada.

[22] The region on the eastern shore of Lake Shkodra and the parishes of Zeta became the territory where the Kuči, along with other communities, such as the Bitidosi and Bushati would eventually migrate and settle in.

[28] This increase by 85 households in a few years represents a wave of refugees and other communities that settled in the area as the Ottomans were consolidating their power base.

[30] These formed Old Kuči (Serbian: Starokuči), who were a community of diverse brotherhoods (clans), in relation to the Drekalovići who claimed ancestry from a single ancestor.

[31] The merging was so finalized that it was hard for him to mark off the parts of those composite brotherhoods, "even the searching in that direction was also encountered by the apprehension of said individuals".

Furthermore, folk legends note that Panta had a number of sons among which Mara, Llesh, Pjetri, and Gjergj appear to be reflected in the Ottoman register through the surnames and patronyms of household heads.

The katuns of Petrovići and Lješovići possibly branched off from the settlement of Pantalesh and were descended from Panta's sons Pjetri and Llesh.

[9] In the second half of the 16th century, in particular between 1560–1571, armed uprisings spread in the northen Albanian territories of Mirdita, Shkodra, Kelmendi, Kuçi, and Pipri, fighting against the Ottoman Empire that was still at its pinnacle of power.

In the settlements of Bankeq, Bytadosa, Bardić, Lazarniči, and Lješovići, mixed Albanian-Slavic anthroponyms now predominated over typical Albanian personal names, borne by a minority of household heads.

In that assembly 44 leaders mostly from northern Albania and Montenegro took part to organize an insurrection against the Ottomans and ask for assistance by the Papacy.

The leaders who participated in the assembly also decided to send a proclamation to the kings of Spain and France claiming they were independent from Ottoman rule and did not pay tribute to the empire.

As Francesco Bolizza notes in a letter to Cardinal Caponi in 1649, about three or four Catholic villages remained in Kuči under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan mission of Gruda.

[45] According to Historians Simo Milutinović and Dimitrije Milaković, the Catholic Kuči, Bratonožići and Drekalovići tribe has converted to Orthodoxy by Rufim Boljević.

In 1658, in another attempt to form an anti-Ottoman coalition the seven tribes of Kuči, Vasojevići, Bratonožići, Piperi, Kelmendi, Hoti and Gruda allied themselves with the Republic of Venice, establishing the so-called "Seven-fold barjak" or "alaj-barjak.

[49] In 1688, the Kuči, with help from Kelmendi and Piperi, destroyed the army of Süleyman Pasha twice, took over Medun and got their hands of large quantities of weapons and equipment.

[49] In the same year, the Kuči are still considered Albanian by the German historian Christoph Boethius, renowned for his studies on the Ottoman Wars.

[9] At the beginning of the 18th century, some people from the Kuči and Kelmendi were forcibly resettled by the Ottomans in the southern parts of the Sandžak, especially in the hills of the Pešter plateau, around Sjenica, and in the land strip between Novi Pazar, Tutin, Rožaje and Plav.

[52] In 1774, in the same month of the death of Šćepan Mali,[53] Mehmed Pasha Bushati attacked the Kuči and Bjelopavlići,[54] but was subsequently decisively defeated and returned to Scutari.

At the Battle of Novšiće, following the Velika attacks (1879), the battalions of Kuči, Vasojevići and Bratonožići fought the Albanian irregulars under the command of Ali Pasha of Gusinje, and were defeated.

Mariano Bolizza in his voyage in the area in 1614 recorded that Lale Drekalov and Niko Raičkov held 490 houses of the Chuzzi Albanesi ("Albanian Kuči", a village of predominantly Roman Catholic religion), with 1,500 soldiers, described as "very war-like and courageous".

[59] The Islamization of Kuči has made a minority of inhabitants declaring as simply Montenegrins, or Muslims by ethnicity, and Bosniaks although they trace the same origin with that of their Christian brethren.

[63] Another late 19th century tradition was recorded by Jovan Erdeljanović in Kuči, the most intricate versions of which were from Kržanj, Žikoviće, Kostroviće, Bezihovo, Kute, Podgrad and Lazorce.

[32] Gojko Mrnjavčevic, however, is a fictional character in Serb epic poetry, who dies in the 1371 Battle of Maritsa in folk tradition itself.

[68] In terms of traditional customs, up to the end of the 19th century traces of a variant of the northern Albanian kanuns remained in use in Kuči.