The Stream

On September 2, 1457, Europe witnessed one of its most remarkable stands against Islamic aggression: the little-known Battle of Albulena, fought in the rugged heart of Albania.

To understand why this clash mattered, one must first understand its commander: George Kastrioti, better remembered as Skanderbeg (“Lord Alexander”). His name, once thundered with admiration across Europe, is now scarcely known in the West. Yet, as even the Enlightenment historian Edward Gibbon conceded, his life reads like a romance: “He abjured the prophet and the sultan, and proclaimed himself the avenger of his family and country.”

Skanderbeg’s story begins in tragedy. Born into the Kastrioti royal house, he was taken hostage as a child by the Ottoman Turks, forcibly converted to Islam, and trained to be a janissary. He rose quickly — renowned for his generalship, commanding thousands of Turks. But beneath the Ottoman honors, he nurtured another loyalty. At the first real opportunity, he defected, reclaimed his Christian faith, and returned to Albania. There he became a fugitive-warrior, exchanging the life of a pampered general for hardship in the mountains — yet also for freedom and the defense of his homeland.

From 1443 until his death in 1468, he shielded Albania against the world’s most formidable empire. Time and again, the Ottoman sultan hurled wave after wave of jihadist armies against him. Skanderbeg, often outnumbered 10 to one, repelled them all. Twenty-four battles and sieges ended in his favor. It is little wonder he has been styled “the Albanian Braveheart.” Marin Barleti, his first biographer, wrote that Skanderbeg “waged a new war every day, fought a battle every hour, and confronted the empire of the Turks with the strength of a single man.”

The Battle of Albulena was his masterpiece. In May 1457, an army of 80,000 Turks — led by Skanderbeg’s treacherous nephew Hamza, who had betrayed his uncle out of envy — burned and ravaged his way into the fertile valley of the Mat River. Hamza knew Skanderbeg’s trademark guerrilla style, so the Albanian hero was forced to innovate. He dispersed his mere 8,000 fighters into small bands, lurking in forests and mountain paths, harassing but never engaging the enemy. For three long months, the Ottomans saw only ragged patrols. They began to believe the myth of Skanderbeg had collapsed. One Ottoman chronicler sneered that he had “fled to the mountain fastness to save his skin.”

Then, on September 2, the trap was sprung. Reuniting his hidden forces beneath Mount Tumenishta, Skanderbeg descended like a thunderbolt. To the blare of horns and shouts of “Christ and freedom!” he and his cavalry smashed into the unsuspecting Turkish camp. Hamza insisted it was a small force, but panic gripped the vast Muslim host. The Albanians cut them down mercilessly. By the end, as many as 30,000 Ottomans lay slain or captured — a catastrophe the empire would not soon forget.

The consequences reached far beyond Albania. For decades, Skanderbeg kept the Ottomans from using Albania as a springboard into Italy. Only after his death did Sultan Muhammad II finally land in Otranto (1480) — but by then, time was short, and the sultan died the following year. Had Skanderbeg not delayed the Turkish advance by 30 years, Muhammad might well have reached Rome itself, realizing his boast to ride into and stable his horse in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Recognition of Skanderbeg’s service to Europe continued long after his death. In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution honoring the 600th anniversary of his birth, calling him “statesman, diplomat, and military genius, for his role in saving Western Europe from Ottoman occupation.” Generations earlier, the British Major General James Wolfe (1756) had marveled that Skanderbeg “excels all the officers, ancient and modern, in the conduct of a small defensive army.” Historian William J. Armstrong in 1905 declared that the Albanian hero’s feats eclipsed even those of Godfrey of Bouillon or Richard the Lionheart, and he could only be compared to the legendary King Arthur.

Indeed, the literature alone testifies to his renown: more than a thousand books in over 20 languages, and countless operas and plays have been dedicated to him in the centuries since his death. “The memory of Scanderbeg,” wrote Gibbon, “still breathes a patriotic enthusiasm into the bosom of the Albanians.”

Skanderbeg lived as few men dared — renouncing privilege to fight for faith and freedom, defending a small mountain people against the strongest empire of his time. The Battle of Albulena remains not just an Albanian triumph, but one of Europe’s great victories.

For the full account of Skanderbeg—and of other Christian heroes who resisted jihad—see Defenders of the West.