The League of Prizren (Albanian: Besëlidhja e Prizrenit or Lidhja e Prizrenit), officially the League for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nation (Albanian: Lidhja për mbrojtjen e të drejtave të kombit Shqiptar), was an Albanian political organization that was officially founded on June 10, 1878, in the old town of Prizren in the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. It was suppressed in April 1881.
The Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin assigned areas inhabited by Albanians to other states. The potential partition and fragmentation of Albanian territories in the Ottoman Empire forced Albanian leaders to organize their own defence and to consider the creation of an autonomous administration, as Serbia and the other Danubian Principalities had enjoyed before their independence.
The league was established at a meeting of 47 Ottoman beys. The initial position of the league was presented in the document known as Kararname. With that document, Albanian leaders emphasized their intention to establish autonomy within the Ottoman Empire by supporting the Porte and "to struggle in arms to defend the wholeness of the territories of Albania". The document said nothing explicitly about reforms, schools, autonomy or the union of the Albanian population within one vilayet, but under the influence of Abdyl Frashëri, that initial position changed radically and resulted in demands for an independent Albanian state and open war against the Ottoman Empire.
The 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula, leaving the empire with only a precarious hold on Albania and the eastern Balkans. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece fueled the rise of resistance. The first postwar treaty, the abortive Treaty of San Stefano signed on March 3, 1878, assigned areas claimed by the League of Prizren to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary and the United Kingdom blocked the arrangement because it awarded Russia a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in Berlin.
The overall situation influenced Albanians to organize themselves as the Local Councils for National Salvation with the aim to protect the Albanian populated lands. By the end of 1877 the issue of defending territorial integrity had become difficult. On December 13, 1877, the Serbs declared war on Ottoman Empire, as did Montenegro. Both were supported by the Russian Army and spread their attacks across the northern parts of Albania. The Albanians were unable to defend several regions and cities in the northeast and northwest of Albania. Upon occupation of these lands, the Ottoman administrators (of mainly Albanian origin) fled the territories and/or were expelled. During the Russo-Turkish war, the incoming Serb army expelled most of the Muslim Albanian population from the Toplica and Niš regions into Kosovo, triggering the emergence of what became the League of Prizren (1878–1881) as a response to the Great Eastern Crisis.
Influenced by these events the Local Councils for National Salvation merged into a single coordination body. The Albanians, on December 12, 1877, established in Istanbul the Central Committee for the Defense of Rights of the Albanian Nation.
The Treaty of San Stefano triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians and Bosniaks, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1877, influential Albanians in Constantinople – including Abdyl Frashëri, the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years – organized a committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the areas where Albanian communities existed during that time. The committee's members were Ali Ibra, Zija Prishtina, Sami Frashëri, Jani Vreto, Vaso Pasha, Baca Kurti Gjokaj and Abdyl Frashëri.
We wholeheartedly wish to live in peace with all our neighbours, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria... We do not want and do not ask anything of them, but we are all determined to protect that which is ours.The League of Prizren was created by a group of Albanian intellectuals to resist partition among neighboring Balkan states and to assert an Albanian national consciousness by uniting Albanians into a unitary linguistic and cultural nation. During the meeting in Prizren a kararname was signed by 47 beys on June 18, 1878. The document represented an initial position, mainly supported by landlords and individuals related to the Ottoman administration. In Article 1 of this document, these Albanian leaders restated their intention to preserve and maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans by supporting the Porte and "to struggle in arms to defend the wholeness of the territories of Albania". Article 6 of the same document restated the hostility of the Albanians to the independence of both Bulgaria and Serbia. "We should not allow foreign armies to tread on our land. We should not recognize Bulgaria's name. If Serbia does not leave peacefully the illegally occupied countries, we should send bashibazouks (akindjias) and strive until the end to liberate these regions, including Montenegro."
On the first meeting of the league the decision memorandum (kararname) said nothing explicitly about reforms, schools, autonomy or the union of the Albanian population within one vilayet. It was at first not an appeal for Albanian independence, or even autonomy within Ottoman Empire but, as proposed by Pashko Vasa, simply the unification of all claimed territory within one vilayet. The participants wanted to return to the status quo before the start of Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The main aim was to defend from immediate dangers. Soon that position changed radically and resulted in demands of autonomy and open war against the Ottoman Empire as formulated by Abdyl Frashëri.
Just as we are not and do not want to be Turks, so we shall oppose with all our might anyone who would like to turn us into Slavs or Austrians or Greeks, we want to be Albanians.In July 1878, the 60 member board of the League of Prizren, led by Abdyl Bey Frashëri, sent a letter to the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin, asking for the settling of Albanian issues resulting from the Turkish War. The memorandum was ignored by the congress, which recognized the competing claims of Serbia and Bulgaria to territories surrendered by the Ottoman Empire over those of the Albanians. The League of Prizren feared that the Albanians would not win in their claims to Epirus over Greece, and organized an armed resistance in Gusinje, Shkodra, Prizren, and Yanina. The San Stefano treaty was later superseded by the Treaty of Berlin at the insistence of Austria-Hungary and Britain. This latter treaty, however, recognized the rival claims of other nations in the region over those of the Albanians.
The Congress of Berlin ignored the memorandum from the league with German chancellor Otto von Bismarck even proclaiming that an Albanian nation did not exist and that Albania was "just a geographic notion". Bismarck showed his disdain for excessive involvement in Balkan affairs, saying "The whole Balkan is not worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and Podgorica and areas around the mountain towns of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also gained some territory with an Albanian population. The latter, the vast majority of whom were loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses.
On June 10, 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly Muslim religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the Ottoman vilayets of Kosovo, Monastir and Yanina, met in the city of Prizren, Kosovo (then Ottoman Empire). Around 300 Muslims participated on the assembly, including delegates from Bosnia and the mutasarrif (administrator of sanjak) of Prizren as representative of the central authorities, and no delegates from Scutari Vilayet. The delegates set up a standing organization, the League of Prizren, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The league of Prizren consisted of two branches: the Prizren and the southern branch. The Prizren branch was led by Iljas Dibra and it had representatives from the areas of Kırçova (Kicevo), Kalkandelen (Tetovo), Priştine (Prishtina), Mitroviça (Mitrovica), Vıçıtırın (Vushtrri), Üsküp (Skopje), Gilan (Gjilan), Manastır (Bitola), Debre (Debar) and Gostivar. The southern branch, led by Abdyl Frashëri consisted of sixteen representatives from the areas of Kolonjë, Korçë, Arta, Berat, Parga, Gjirokastër, Përmet, Paramythia, Filiates, Margariti, Vlorë, Tepelenë and Delvinë. In these regions the movement was primarily Muslim, due to the fact that most of the Orthodox population was under Greek influence. On the other hand, in the northern regions both Muslim and Catholic populations supported the objectives of the League of Prizren.