Albania
POPULATION 3,544,841
MUSLIM between 60 and 80 percent
ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN between 15 and 20 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC between 10 and 15 percent
OTHER less than 5 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
Albania is a small mountainous country on the western fringe of the Balkan Peninsula. It borders the Adriatic Sea to the west, Serbia and Montenegro to the north, Macedonia to the east, and Greece to the southeast. Its regions were Christianized during the first centuries of the Common Era. Situated between Rome and Constantinople, Albania embraced Catholicism more strongly in its northern regions and Orthodoxy more strongly in the south.
During Ottoman domination, from the fifteenth century to 1913, large portions of the Albanian population converted to Islam. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the European Great Powers recognized an Albanian principality in 1913, but the country did not acquire full independence until after World War I, in 1920. Albania emerged as the only European country with a Muslim majority.
Religion during the Ottoman period became a determining factor for social and political identity, and it remained so in the twentieth century, even though a nation-building process attempted to unify Albania, despite its internal differences. Having endured an Italian occupation (1939–43), followed by a short German occupation (1943–44), the country recovered its independence and became a socialist republic.
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