Malësia

[6] Malësia e Vogël (small highlands) with seven Catholic tribes such as the Shala with 4 bajaraktars, Shoshi, Toplana and Nikaj contained some 1,250 households with a collective strength of 2,500 men that could be mobilised for war.

An example is from 1658, when the seven tribes of Kuči, Vasojevići, Bratonožići, Piperi, Kelmendi, Hoti and Gruda allied themselves with the Republic of Venice against the Ottomans.

On May 26, 1913, 130 leaders of Gruda, Hoti, Kelmendi, Kastrati and Shkreli sent a petition to Cecil Burney in Shkodër against the incorporation of their territories into Montenegro.

[12] The region is inhabited by an Albanian majority, divided between Catholicism and Islam, while a small Serb-Montenegrin community is present in some villages.

[citation needed] Author and Franciscan friar Gjergj Fishta spent 35 years composing this epic poem, in which is chronicled the whole range of the ethnic Albanian cultural experience (e.g. weddings, funerals, historical battles, mythology, genealogy, and tribal law).

Anton Harapi, Albania's most distinguished Christian philosopher, dedicated his masterpiece "Ândrra e Pretashit" (The Dream of Pretash), initially called "The Wise Men along Cemi River" to the people of Malcía.

[citation needed] In 1908, anthropologist Edith Durham visited the Malësia region and catalogued her findings in her ethnographic work "High Albania," which was, for nearly a century, the most trusted source of information about the Albanian highlanders.

Albanian anthropologist Kolë Berisha wrote, among other books, the four-volumes ethnography entitled "Malcía e Madhe" written between 1900 and 1945.