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Hailed as a national hero in Albania, Gjergj Kastrioti-Skanderbeg (1403-1468) successfully ousted the Ottoman Turks from his native land for over two decades, halting Turkey's efforts to spread Islam through a predominately Roman Catholic western Europe.
Kidnapped by the Ottoman Turks at a young age, Albanian freedom fighter Gjergj Kastrioti-Skanderbeg was raised under Islam and trained as a general within the ranks of the Turkish military before fleeing his captors and reconverting to Christianity in 1443. As commander of Albania's warlords, he sparked a national revolt in 1444 and held off numerous efforts by the Ottomans to take back Albania and bring that country once again under Muslim rule. Following Kastrioti-Skanderbeg's death in 1468 his Albanian forces could no longer repulse the Turks; twelve years later Albania fell once more to Turkish forces and remained part of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries, until its eventual liberation in 1912.
The Spread of the Muslim Empire
The Albanian people, descendants of the Illyrians, occupied the mountainous region of the western Balkans, a remote area extending from what is now Slovenia southward into Greece.
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