Myzeqe

The site of Apollonia lay on the territory of the Taulantii, a cluster of Illyrian tribes that remained closely involved with the settlement for centuries and lived alongside the Greek colonists.

However, over time the local house of Muzaka came to view the Angevin royal family of Albania as their allies and protectors especially as the threat of Serbian expansion increased, and became more loyal to them.

Four decades later, the Battle of Savra (as one of the plains of Myzeqe was known in the Middle Ages) marked the ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire in the region.

[9] In the late Ottoman era, Myzeqeja had a high rate of malaria, as was generally true of wetter areas in the wider region during that time.

The middle of the century brought massive changes to the region as large numbers of Cham Albanian refugees from Greece were settled in it, and its wetlands were rapidly drained and industrialized under Communism, turning it into the "granary" of Albania.

[6] In the Ottoman period, a number of Albanian settlements in the plain of Myzeqe took place, notably from neighbouring Toskëria and Labëria.

In the first half of the 20th century, refugees from Kosovo and the Sandžak also came in the region after it was annexed by Serbia and Montenegro and then included in Yugoslavia.

These waves of settlement mark Myzeqe as the area where all Albanian subgroups: Gheg, Tosk, and Lab populations meet.

[3] Most inhabitants are Albanians,[11] but there are Vlachs established mainly in Divjake town, and some of the Fier villages and some Romani people, as well as the linguistically assimilated Bosniaks of Libofshë.

Myzeqe is notable in its religious makeup as one of the few fairly large regions of Albania where a majority of inhabitants remained Orthodox Christian throughout the Ottoman rule.

In the nineteenth century, Fier became a economic and commercial centre of the Myzeqe plain which consisted of small settlements and villages populated by Albanians of Orthodox and Muslim faiths and Aromanians.