TIRANA, Sept. 1 – Aleksandar StipÄević, a Croatian academic who specialized in the study of the Illyrians, died this week. He was 85.
StipÄević, whose roots are from an Arbà«resh village in Croatia, won a lot of praise for his work, culminating with his 1974 book, “The Illyrians.”
He was born in 1930 in the village of Arbanasi near Zadar, Croatia, then located in the Kingdom of Italy.
An archaeologist, bibliographer, librarian and historian, StipÄević was a full professor at the University of Zagreb from 1987 until his retirement in 1997. He was a also member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo.
His Albanian roots started in 1726, when 21 Albanian families (Arbanasi) left their homeland to escape Turkish occupation and religious persecution and settled a few kilometers south of Zadar. The Republic of Venice, which governed Dalmatia at the time, took the immigrants in under its protection, creating a small colony of Arbà«resh Albanians, similar to earlier ones set up in southern Italy.
