The Battle of Kosova (1389): Albanians and the Struggle Behind the Myth

Depiction of the Battle of Kosova from a manuscript dated 1460.

In June of 1389 CE, two armies clashed near Fushë Kosovë in a battle whose ramifications would echo across the span of Balkan history and into the present day. On one side stood a Christian coalition led by Lazar Hrebeljanović, the knez (prince) of Moravian Serbia; on the other, an Ottoman army under Sultan Murad I, who was reinforced by his vassal states. The Battle of Kosova ended indecisively, as both armies withdrew after suffering devastating losses, including the deaths of both Lazar and Murad. The Ottomans soon resumed their advance, while Lazar’s allies were too weakened to continue mounting any lasting resistance.

The Serbs were particularly vulnerable, having been utterly devastated by the Ottomans at the Battle of Maritsa in 1371. By the end of the 15^th century, the Ottomans had consolidated their control over the Balkans, a status quo which would largely remain in place for centuries.

Over time, the battle became enshrined as the cornerstone of Serbian national mythology and state-building, undergoing heavy ideological construction in the 19^th century to depict Kosova as the “cradle of Serbia.”¹ What became known as the Kosova Myth was developed in literature and oral legend in the ensuing centuries. Different authors recorded varying accounts of the battle, with the first few coming from European and Ottoman sources in the following decades.² While the narratives contain historical truths, they are also strewn with embellishments and exaggerations primarily surrounding three key topics: the death of Lazar Hrebeljanović, the death of Sultan Murad and the alleged treason of Vuk Branković, a major Serbian lord and Lazar’s vassal, who played a prominent role in the battle.^{2, 3}

The development and sheer discrepancies of the accounts that surround these three topics presents an interesting subject in and of themselves, highlighting how ahistorical yet powerful the Kosova Myth went on to grow in the Serbian cultural psyche. Most of the details surrounding the battle are uncertain, particularly regarding the size and composition of the armies, the order of battle, the way in which it unfolded, the deaths of the two leaders and whether or not the battle should be classified as having resulted in an Ottoman victory or inconclusively.³

The Battle of Kosova has come to be portrayed in Serbian society as a valiant last stand of Christian Serbia against the oncoming Islamic hordes of the Ottoman Empire. This interpretation, however, is a later development; Serbian historian Miodrag Popović has noted that the inhabitants of Ottoman-controlled Serbia shunned the oppositional themes of the Kosova Myth, which developed in Western Europe.² Indeed, the remaining Serbian lords were soon vassalized by the Ottomans, and the Serbians would enjoy substantial religious autonomy and relaxed vassal obligations under their new overlords compared to their fellow subjects.³ Popović further argued that Ottoman Serbia’s Christian population developed a “Turkophilic” culture that was shaped by the accommodation of Ottoman rule^2,4and modern scholars acknowledge that the Kosova Myth, in its modern framing, had little relevance for the Serbs living under the Ottomans.^{2, 4, 5}

Stefan Lazarević, the son and successor of Lazar Hrebeljanović, ruled as an Ottoman vassal from 1389 until 1404, at which point he aligned himself with the Hungarians, before returning to Ottoman vassalage in 1409. To avoid outright conflict with either power, he recognised the suzerainty of both Hungary and the Ottomans. Under Lazar, Serbia entered a period of revival, as constant Ottoman support allowed Stefan to centralise his rule.⁵ However, as an important patron of literature and the Serbian Orthodox church, Stefan used chronicles and clerics to recast the Battle of Kosova into a powerful symbol for his subjects, propagating the cult of Lazar and depicting his father’s death as an act of martyrdom.⁵ Stefan’s own dynasty was cast as the rightful inheritor of that sacrifice. By contrast, rival Serbian noble families, such as the Mrnjavčevići and the Brankovići, were increasingly painted in a negative light under this emerging narrative.

Modern scholarship, however, identifies the Battle of Maritsa in 1371 as more significant in medieval Serbian history than that of Kosova due to its impact on the Serbian principalities;^3,5 A large Serbian force under the command of Vukašin and Uglješa Mrnjavčević was decimated by a much smaller Ottoman force, with both commanders perishing in the fighting.⁶ Yet, this battle was pushed aside by Stefan’s chosen narrative, while Serbian ruler Vuk Branković was recast as the traitor of Kosova and blamed for the disaster, having been accused of withdrawing from the battle in an act of betrayal. Despite the scholarly consensus that Branković did not actually betray his allies and only fled upon Lazar’s death to preserve the remainder of his forces, his depiction as a traitor endured in Serbian cultural memory. After the Lazarević dynasty died out in 1427, interest in maintaining the cult of Lazar and Stefan’s depiction of the Kosova Myth waned considerably. Nonetheless, the groundwork for the Kosova Myth had already been laid.^{3, 5}

Contemporary fresco of Lazar Hrebeljanović, commander of the Christian coalition that fought at the Battle of Kosova

Contrary to the inaccurate narrative of unending anti-Ottoman resistance, the Serbians cooperated with the Turks on multiple occasions, much like other peoples subjugated by the Ottomans. As an Ottoman vassal, Stefan Lazarević supplied the Sultan with troops and loyally participated in numerous Ottoman campaigns against his fellow Christians.⁶ Later, it was Đurađ Branković – Serbian despot, Ottoman vassal and father-in-law to Sultan Murad II – who prevented the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg from joining the Second Battle of Kosova in 1448. By destroying the passageways that ran through his lands, he significantly delayed Skanderbeg and his men^7,8,9 who were already held up by the Venetians.³ In the meantime, the Ottomans – who received updates on the troop movements and plans of their adversaries from Branković himself – decisively defeated the army of Hungarian national hero John Hunyadi by forcing the latter into open battle prior to the arrival of Skanderbeg.^4,3,9 Skanderbeg was only ~32km (20 miles) away from the battlefield when he encountered fleeing Hungarian soldiers. Realising that the battle was lost, he ordered his men back; were it not for the delay, his arrival might have proved decisive. Skanderbeg subsequently chose to punish Branković by ravaging his domains.⁸

The Kosova Myth would continue to develop throughout the course of the 16^th century until achieving its definitive form in the 18^th century.⁴ During this time, it was cultivated primarily beyond the borders of Ottoman Serbia, particularly through Serbs from various regions who had fled northward and westward to escape Ottoman advances. It was here, amplified by exile, that the story was reinterpreted and reinforced, particularly through the influence of writers from the Catholic states of the West, who wove the Kosova Myth with their own ideological opposition to the Ottomans.⁵

It is only during the intensification of anti-Ottoman sentiment and Serbian national revival of the 18^th and 19^th centuries that the Kosova Myth would gain widespread popularity, centered around the “king-saint” Lazar Hrebeljanović and his knight, Miloš Obilić, who, according to legend, assassinated Sultan Murad I.^{2, 4} Re-shaped by now in other parts of Europe, the Kosova Myth was transmitted back into Ottoman Serbia.⁵ Popular tradition has it that Lazar was visited by an angel on the eve of the battle, where he was offered a choice between a military victory that would allow him to retain an earthly kingdom, or a defeat in which he would become a martyr and be granted a heavenly kingdom.^3,4,5 According to this tradition, Lazar chose to die as a “martyr” and plunge his people into centuries of Ottoman occupation, yet through this act, he won the Serbs the special status of a heavenly people.^{4, 5}

As put best by the prolific American scholar Sabrina P. Ramet, the most dominant presentation of the Kosova Myth by the mid-20^th century – including the cult of Lazar and the mythologisation of Miloš Obilić – was that in which the battle signified the “disastrous end of the glorious mediaeval era of Serbia and the beginning of a long lasting slavery under the ‘Turkish yoke’.”^{4, 10} For Serbs, the Battle of Kosova had come to represent the spirit of resistance and hostility towards Muslims. In omitting the role of Christian Albanians in Lazar’s army, it left room for the myth to evolve and eventually symbolise the eternal struggle between the Albanians and the Serbs that resumed in the second half of the 19th century.⁴

The Myth was weaponised under the Yugoslav regime of Slobodan Milošević, who elevated Kosova to the central symbol of Serbian national identity and grievance. Its climax came with Milošević’s Gazimestan speech on 28 June 1989, delivered before hundreds of thousands on the 600th anniversary of the battle, where he invoked Kosova as Serbia’s eternal cause and a rallying cry for his nationalist aspirations against the backdrop of escalating ethnic tensions across Yugoslavia.⁴ In the following decade, this same narrative underpinned the persecution, displacement, atrocities and mass violence carried out against Albanians that culminated in the Kosova War of 1998–99 and, ultimately, Kosova’s declaration of independence in 2008.

Slobodan Milošević addressing the crowd, estimated at around a million, during the infamous Gazimestan speech on 28 June, 1989.

Even today, the Kosova Myth continues to shape Serbian identity, commemorated annually during a national holiday known as ‘Vidovdan’ (St. Vitus Day). The battle is portrayed as a uniquely Serbian struggle and hegemonized as a cornerstone of Serb history and victimhood. However, one crucial element that the Myth ignores entirely is the role of Albanians and other Balkan ethnic groups at the Battle of Kosova, many of whom fought on the side of Lazar’s Christian coalition.

Lazar’s army was primarily composed of his own troops, joined by the forces of Vuk Branković and reinforcements sent by Tvrtko I of Bosnia. The latter were commanded by Vlatko Vuković, one of Tvrtko’s most prominent commanders.³ However, the general scholarly consensus is that Lazar’s army also consisted of Albanians, Hungarians, Vlachs, Bulgarians and Croats.^{3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16} Of these ethnic groups, Albanians are perhaps the most thoroughly discussed in modern scholarship.

Early sources on the battle vary in detail, but the Ottoman chronicles are particularly significant, offering fuller accounts than their Slavic or Western European counterparts. While these narratives contain many unreliable claims and exaggerations, they nonetheless provide some of the clearest testimony to Albanian involvement in the Battle of 1389, among other themes. For instance, chroniclers such as Shukrullah in the mid-15th century explicitly listed Albanians (Arnavud) among the peoples in Lazar’s coalition, alongside Serbs, Hungarians, Vlachs, Bosnians and Croats. Later authors, including Neşri and Idris Bitlisi in the late 15^th century, went further by naming specific Albanian lords as participants, with Neşri even placing them on Lazar’s left flank alongside the Bosnian forces.^{13, 15}  The Muzaka Chronicles (1510) – written by exiled Albanian nobleman Gjon Muzaka – also attests to the participation of Albanians on the side of Lazar’s coalition.

Many scholars therefore conclude that Albanians were indeed present at the battle and have named numerous lords as having led the Albanian troops. The lord whose presence is best-attested is Teodor II Muzaka, who – as reported in the Muzaka Chronicles – brought ‘a large band of Albanians’ along with ‘other Albanian lords’ to join Lazar’s army, ultimately dying on the field of battle.^{3, 13, 17} Teodor II was the son of Andrea II (d. 1372), a medieval lord of southern Albania and the most prominent member of the noble Albanian Muzaka family. Andrea II was a formidable ruler, rebelling against Byzantine control, resisting the expansion of Tsar Stefan Dušan (the greatest Serbian ruler of the Middle Ages) both before and after the latter’s conquest of much of the region, and later waging war against the Serbian successor states, defeating both Vukašin and Marko Mrnjavčević.^{14, 18,19,} At the time of Andrea’s  death in 1372, the Principality of the Muzaka reached its greatest territorial extent, with Teodor II inheriting the Berat and Myzeqe regions. Following Teodor II’s death at the Battle of Kosova, his lands passed to his nephew, Teodor III Muzaka.

Frescoes from the Church of Saint Tanush (Athanasios) of Muzaka, in what is now Kastoria, Greece. The church was financed and built by Teodor II and his brother, Stoja.

Another lord identified as a leader of the Albanians in Lazar’s army is Gjergj II Balsha, who has received more coverage in modern scholarship than Teodor II Muzaka.^{15,17,20,21,22,23,24,25} Gjergj II was a member of the Balsha (or alternatively, Balšić) family of northern Albania and Montenegro, whose ethnic origins remain a matter of dispute. Most modern scholars and academics treat the Balsha as an Albanian noble family,^26,27,28,29 and according to Noel Malcolm, a leading voice in the field of Balkan history, – they were extensively Slavicized.³ As is often the case with these matters,there are competing views which attribute Slavic or Vlach origin to the Balsha family; yet these claims directly contradict contemporary and historical documents – some of which are Serbian – that explicitly describe them as Albanian lords.²⁹

Gjergj II Balsha’s participation remains disputed among present-day scholars. Many argue against his involvement, citing Ragusan records that place him in Ulqin at the time of the battle.¹³ On the other hand, historian Luan Malltezi has challenged this view, noting that although the Ragusans sent an envoy to Balsha’s capital in Ulqin to invite him to stay in Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik, Croatia) for a brief period of time, it does not necessarily confirm his physical presence there. Malltezi further points out that the Ragusans received Gjergj II’s response to their invitation in the final days of August 1389, nearly two months after the battle, leaving open the possibility that he had indeed taken part in the conflict.³⁰ Whatever the case, Albanian historiography continues to present Gjergj II Balsha as a notable participant in the battle, whilst non-Albanian scholars remain divided.

After Muzaka and Balsha, Dhimitër Jonima was the most prominent of the other Albanian lords mentioned as participants in the battle, identified by several scholars as one of the principal leaders of the Albanian forces.^{15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31} Ruling the coastal town of Shufada at the mouth of the Mat river in northern Albania and its surrounding territories, Jonima would become an Ottoman vassal in the years following the battle. He would eventually accept Venetian vassalage after the Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, in which multiple Albanian lords, alongside other Ottoman vassals, fought under Sultan Bayezid I in a major loss at the hands of the Timurids.

Northern Albania in 1406, a year into the First Shkodra War. The approximate domains of Dhimitër Jonima are depicted at their greatest extent.

Both armies at the Battle of Kosova are believed to have consisted of numerous ethnic groups. Modern scholars generally accept that the Ottoman army was possibly composed of significant non-Turkish contingents alongside the main Turkish forces. The earliest Serbian chronicle of the Battle, likely drafted only a few years after the event, claimed that the Ottoman army included Bulgarians, Greeks and Albanians, while an early Italian chronicle written within two decades of the Battle stressed the presence of Greek and Christian soldiers in the Ottoman ranks. The latter went as far as to attribute the Ottoman victory to “5,000 Christian crossbowmen … and many other soldiers on horseback,” singling out the Greeks and Genoese in particular.

Noel Malcolm notes that although the reference to Genoese forces may reflect the author’s own biases as a Florentine (as Genoa and Florence were rival Italian city states), the Italian chronicle may still contain some truth; Genoese soldiers participated in an Ottoman-backed usurpation of the Byzantine throne in 1390 alongside Greek and Turkish troops. The usurper, John VII Palaiologos, had travelled to Genoa in May 1389 as an Ottoman vassal to rally support for his claim on the Byzantine throne. It is on this basis that Malcolm claims that a Genoese, Greek and Turkish coalition may have already been operating at Fushë Kosovë in June 1389.³

There is also evidence of Serbian and Bulgarian participation on the Ottoman side. This may be attributed to two Serbian rulers of lands in present-day North Macedonia and Bulgaria. Konstantin Dejanović and the aforementioned Marko Mrnjavčević. The latter had already suffered territorial losses in 1371 at the hands of Andrea II Muzaka and another independent Albanian lord, Andrea Gropa.¹⁸ By the time of the Battle of Kosova, Konstantin and Marko had become Ottoman vassals; as such, their obligations included the provision of military support, making it highly likely that their troops fought in Murad’s army. For this reason, many historians maintain that one or both of the Serbian rulers fought at the battle on the side of the Ottomans.³

The presence of Albanians in the Ottoman ranks is far less certain than that of the aforementioned groups. By the late 14th century, the Ottomans had already begun to exert their influence on Albanian territories, making it conceivable that some Albanians also fought on the Ottoman side. In fact, the Catholic Albanian tribes of Kelmendi and Mirdita (an ethnographic region which consists of numerous smaller tribes and bajraks) later claimed in folklore that they had fought on the Ottoman side at Kosova and had been granted privileges as a reward. Such traditions, however, are not regarded as historical reality in modern scholarship. Rather, they are often understood as later-date oral inventions intended to justify tax exemptions or to preserve local privileges within the Ottoman political system.^{3, 13}

Another aspect of the battle that has entered Albanian folklore, especially epic poetry, is the supposed assassination of Sultan Murad I at the hands of Miloš Obilić, or Millosh Kopiliqi in Albanian. Like most details surrounding the battle, the manner of Murad’s death is uncertain. Contemporary Ottoman chronicles uniformly depict the Sultan’s death as an assassination carried out by a single Christian soldier, but the manner in which it occurred varies according to the author. In 1935, Aleksej Olesnicki, a Russian orientalist of Ukrainian descent, became the first scholar to offer an analysis of all such accounts, concluding that the Ottoman writers themselves lacked knowledge of the event. Olesnicki based this on the lack of detail, both in  descriptions of the assassin as well as the circumstances of the act; the only consistent detail was that Murad was left without his guards – probably during the fighting – and later found dead upon their return.³² 

The figure of “Miloš” emerges only later in the sources. A Bulgarian account written sometime between 1413 and 1421 was the first to attribute this name to the assassin. In 1497, Bosnian writer Konstantin Mihailović recorded the name as “Miloš Kobila,” while the more familiar form “Miloš Obilić” does not appear in historical records until the 18th century. It is this late invention cited by all present-day Serbian authors as well as numerous non-Serb scholars and writers, who, according to Malcolm, are “well aware that it is a completely spurious emendation.”^{3, 5}

Early Western accounts offered alternative versions of Murad’s death and the identity of his killer. A Florentine report from 1389, relaying news from King Tvrtko of Bosnia, spoke of a band of twelve knights who broke through Ottoman lines and killed the Sultan in his tent. Later Italian and Catalan chronicles expanded on this story, with some even claiming that Lazar himself had led the charge. Modern scholarship regards such tales as mostly symbolic or legendary rather than factual, but also as proof that Murad’s assassination was tied to the idea of a heroic Christian act in the years after the battle.

This aspect of the Kosova Myth has also entered Albanian folklore in the form of Millosh Kopiliqi; in the Albanian version, Millosh is depicted as an Albanian warrior from the village of Kopiliq in Drenica. In fact, the root of this figure’s original given surname in non-Albanian sources – Kobila – has been suggested to be related to the Albanian and Vlach word kopil/copil, meaning “child” or “bastard child.” Since then, only the Albanians have preserved the memory of this mostly folkloric figure under his original given surname.^{3, 5, 21} However, there is no historical evidence whatsoever that justify an Albanian or Serbian identity for either Miloš or Millosh; instead, evidence suggests that the legend is actually based on a Hungarian knight.^{3, 5}

Indeed, the most complete version of Murad’s death comes from an anonymous Catalan chronicle written before 1402, which, though embedded in a romance tale, provides unusually detailed descriptions of the battle and Ottoman customs. It recounts how a Hungarian commander led a contingent of knights who broke through the Ottoman lines; amid the confusion, one of them charged Murad directly, piercing him with a lance before being cut down by arrows.

This account is strikingly consistent with other early reports. Later traditions tied this “big Hungarian man” to Lazar’s Hungarian son-in-law Nicholas Garai, one of the most powerful magnates of his day, whose retainers may have been present at the battle. Some scholars have even suggested that the celebrated “Jugović brothers” of Serbian epic song were originally Hungarian retainers, their name having been distorted in oral tradition. From this perspective, the mythologised figure who became known as “Miloš Obilić” may owe his origins not to a specific Serb soldier but rather the memory of elite Hungarian knights who played a prominent role in the battle as part of Lazar’s coalition.^{3, 5}

16th century Ottoman depiction of Ottoman Sultan Murad I.

The Battle of Kosova remains one of the most consequential debated and mythologised events in Balkan history. While many of its details remain obscure, later generations have recast it into a foundational narrative for Serbia as part of the Kosova Myth. Centred on Lazar’s martyrdom and the legendary slaying of Sultan Murad, this narrative was elevated as a symbol of Serbian victimhood, resistance and perceived eternal claim to Kosova.

Over time, it was also weaponised to frame Albanians as the historical adversary of the Serbs. From the 19^th century onwards, the multi-ethnic medieval battle was transformed into a symbolic marker of an “eternal conflict” between Serb and Albanian. Stripped of its ideological layers, the battle emerges not as an exclusively Serbian affair, but as a clash that drew in many Balkan peoples: Albanians, Hungarians, Bosnians, Vlachs and Croats alike. Actors from all these ethnic groups played a role on the side of the anti-Ottoman coalition in a deeply complex and shifting geopolitical environment, with Teodor II Muzaka standing out as the Albanian lord whose combat and death on the field scholars are most certain of.

Ultimately, although the Kosova Myth has been appropriated and reshaped to serve a narrow narrative, the reality of 1389 points to a shared experience of the wider Balkans – Christian or Muslim, Southern Slavic, Albanian, Hungarian, and Turk alike. Far from being the sole property of one nation’s memory, the Battle of Kosova was a turning point in which the destinies of several Balkan peoples converged – and it remains part of their common historical inheritance.

Sources:

1.  Turton & Gonzalez, ‘Cultural Identities and Ethnic Minorities in Europe’ (1999), pg. 72 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Cultural_Identities_and_Ethnic_Minoritie/3CgSAQAAIAAJ?hl=en

2.  Alexander Greenawalt, ‘Kosovo Myths: Karadžić, Njegoš, and the Transformation of Serb Memory’ (2001) pgs. 52-53 - https://www.yorku.ca/soi/Vol_3/_PDF/Greenawalt.pdf

3.  Noel Malcolm, ‘Kosovo, a Short History’ (1998), pgs. 58-80 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iDoQf4fX_zniQUjdNXJFf2kGUlcpRIZw/view

4.  Sabrina Ramet, ‘Civic and Uncivic Values Serbia in the Post-Milošević Era’ (2011), pgs. 267-408https://dokumen.pub/civic-and-uncivic-values-serbia-in-the-post-miloevi-era-9789639776999.html

5.  Marko Attila Hoare, ‘Serbia, a Modern History’ (2024), pgs. 18-21 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Serbia/s8_2EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PT56&printsec=frontcover

6.  Vladislav Boskovic, ‘King Vukasin and the Disastrous Battle of Marica’ (2009) - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/King_Vukasin_and_the_disastrous_Battle_o/oTdPlvMRYeUC?hl=en&gbpv=0

7.  Edmond Malaj, ‘Relations between Albanians and Hungarians during the Middle Ages’ (2025), pg. 242 - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edmond-Malaj/publication/389642438_Relations_between_Albanians_and_Hungarians_during_the_Middle_Ages/links/67caee76d75970006506b561/Relations-between-Albanians-and-Hungarians-during-the-Middle-Ages.pdf

8.  Fan Noli, ‘George Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405-1468)’ (1945), pgs. 129-130 – https://archive.org/details/georgecastriotis00noli/page/n281/mode/2up

9.  Enver Rexha, ‘Historiografia serbe për Betejën e Dytë të Kosovës, 1448’ (2018), pg. 246 - https://konferenca.al/ih-rks/article/view/811

10.  Ignatije Midić, “Pravoslavlje i Evropa,” (2003), pg. 40–41.

11.  Hupchick & Cox, ‘The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans’ (2001), pg. 51, https://archive.org/details/palgraveconciseh0000hupc/page/n51/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater&q=%22Battle+of+Kosova%22

12.  Selcuk Aksin Somel, ‘The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire’ (2010), pg. 36 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_A_to_Z_of_the_Ottoman_Empire/UU8iCY0OZmcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA36&printsec=frontcover

13.  Bedri Muhadri, ‘The Battle of Kosova 1389 and the Albanians’ (2021), pgs. 436-452

14.  Skënder Anamali, ‘Historia e Popullit Shqiptar, Volume I’ (2002), pgs. 253, 260, 322-324 and more for the Muzaka/Jonima/Balsha etc – https://archive.org/details/HistoriaePopullitShqiptar/page/n323/mode/2up?q=1389

15.  Varoshi and Kadzadej, ‘THE BATTLE OF FUSHË-KOSOVA AS A PROLOGUE TO THE ORGANIZED ANTI-OTTOMAN PAN-BALKAN RESISTANCE IN LEF NOSI'S COLLECTION’ (2022), pgs. 3-17 https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1264610

16.  Dejan Djokić, ‘Whose Myth? Which nation? The Serbian Kosovo Myth Revisited’ (2009), pgs. 1-25 - https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/3455/1/Kosovamyth2.pdf

17.  Gabriele Rebecchi, ‘LA POSIZIONE ALBANESE RISPETTO ALLA QUESTIONE DEL KOSOVO’, pgs. 1-45 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/25816851?seq=7

18.  John V. A. Fine, ‘The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest’ (1994) pg. 290-291 - https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009950604&seq=306

19.  George Christos Soulis, ‘The Serbs and Byzantium During the Reign of Tsar Stephen Dušan (1331-1355) and His Successors’ (1984), p. 142 – personal download

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21.  Anna Di Lellio, ‘The battle of Kosovo, 1389: an Albanian epic’ (2009), pg. 12 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Battle_of_Kosova_1389/IDEqAQAAIAAJ?hl=en

22.  Genc Myftiu, ‘Albania, a Patrimony of European Values’ (2000), pgs. 4, 14 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Albania_a_Patrimony_of_European_Values/xHQtAQAAIAAJ?hl=en

23.  Jens Reuter, ‘Serbien und Kosovo – Das Ende eines Mythos’ (1999), pgs. 629-645 - https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/soeu-1999-4811-1202/html

24.  Georges Castellan, ‘History of the Balkans : from Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin’ (1992), pg. 54 - https://archive.org/details/historyofbalkans0000cast/page/54/mode/2up?q=Gjonima

25.  Fehmi Rexhepi, ‘Gjergj Kastrioti - Skënderbeu dhe epoka e tij’ (2024), pg. 223 - https://albanica.al/revista_kosova/article/view/5379/7053

26.  Grabiela Rojas Molina, ‘Decoding Debate in the Venetian Senate’ (2022), pg. 90 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Decoding_Debate_in_the_Venetian_Senate/b6SGEAAAQBAJ?hl=en

27.  Oliver Jens Schmitt, ‘Ottoman Albania and Kosovo, Albanians and Serbs, sixteenth–eighteenth centuries’ in ‘The Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeast European History’ (2020), pgs. 18-25 - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429464799-4/ottoman-albania-Kosova-albanians-serbs-sixteenth%E2%80%93eighteenth-centuries-oliver-jens-schmitt

28.  Egidio Ivetic, ‘History of the Adriatic: A Sea and Its Civilization’ (2022), pg. 25 - https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/History_of_the_Adriatic/q91xEAAAQBAJ?hl=en

29.  Sima Ćirković, ‘Živeti sa istorijom. Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji’ (2020), pgs. 396-397 - https://www.helsinki.org.rs/serbian/doc/Svedocanstva%2041.pdf

30.  Luan Malltezi, “The Battle of Fushë Kosovë (1389) and the contribution of the Albanians”, The Battle of Kosova 1389 (Summary of studies), Tirana, 2005, pg. 71.

31.  Wolfgang Petritsch, ‘Kosovo - Kosova: Mythen, Daten, Fakten’ (1999), pgs. 32-33 -

 https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Kosova_Kosova/Pn5pAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

32.  Aleksej Olesnicki, ‘Turski Izvori o Kosovskom Boju’ (1935), pg. 65 –  https://www.scribd.com/document/367272189/Aleksej-A-Olesnicki-Turski-izvori-o-Kosovskom-boju-pdf-pdf

Biography

Bleron Zajmi was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, to Albanian parents from Rrafshi i Dukagjinit and Struga. Having obtained his Honours in Medical Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), he will begin his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at UNSW in 2026. His interests extend beyond the lab, centering on Albanian history and identity, as well as the dialogue between heritage and modernity.