The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini: the customary law of the highlands and how it was written down

In the highlands of northern Albania and Kosovo, where for centuries the power of the state reached little, life was governed by an oral customary law. It determined how land was divided, how people married, how a guest was received, how disputes were settled and how crimes were punished. This law is known as the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini.

The name

Lekë Dukagjini was a fifteenth-century Albanian nobleman, a contemporary of Skanderbeg. Tradition attributes the Kanun to him, but scholars think many of its rules are older and took shape gradually over the centuries. His name became attached to them as an authority and a symbol.

Shtjefën Gjeçovi

In the early twentieth century the Franciscan priest Shtjefën Gjeçovi (1874–1929) began collecting the rules of the Kanun systematically, listening to elders and to the people who applied them. He published them in instalments in the journal Hylli i Dritës from 1913. Gjeçovi was killed in 1929. The complete book, The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, was published in Shkodra in 1933, after his death, and is divided into books and articles dealing with the church, the family, marriage, the house, work, property, honour and damages.

How the book is structured

In Gjeçovi’s edition the Kanun is divided into twelve books and more than twelve hundred articles. The books deal in turn with the church, the family, marriage, the house and property, work, the transfer of property, the spoken word, honour, damages, crimes, the courts of elders and exemptions. The rules are not phrased like modern laws, but often as short sayings that are easy to remember, because for centuries they were passed on by word of mouth. Gjeçovi also added notes in which he compared Albanian customs with those of ancient peoples, according to the knowledge of his time.

Not one Kanun, but several

The Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini is the best known, but not the only one. In different regions people also knew the Kanun of Skanderbeg, in parts of Malësia and Dibra, the Kanun of Labëria in the south, and smaller local codes. They shared many principles, such as besa, honour and hospitality, but differed in detail, for example in the way disputes were settled or in the size of fines. This shows that Albanian customary law was not a single rigid text, but a living tradition adapted to the life of each region.

Women in the Kanun

The Kanun reflects a patriarchal society. Women did not inherit land and did not take part in the men’s assemblies, while marriages were often decided by families. At the same time women had a special protection: they could not be the target of a blood feud, and in some cases a woman could accompany a man to protect him from attack. The phenomenon of the sworn virgins (burrnesha), women who vowed to live as men and took the role of head of the household when a family was left without a male heir, is also linked to this social order.

Pleqnia: judging without courts

In the absence of state courts, disputes were settled by the pleqnia, a council of older, respected men chosen by the parties or by the village. The elders heard both sides, called witnesses and decided according to the Kanun and local custom. The decision was enforced not by police but by the moral authority of the elders and the pressure of the community. The British traveller Edith Durham, who visited the northern highlands at the beginning of the twentieth century, left detailed descriptions of these assemblies. In many cases the aim of the pleqnia was not only punishment but the reconciliation of the parties, so that the village would not split and blood would not be shed again.

Besa and hospitality

Some of the Kanun's values have become part of Albanian identity: besa, the given word that is not broken, and hospitality. According to the Kanun, an Albanian's house belongs "to God and the guest", and the guest is protected even at the cost of one's life. These values were seen in the twentieth century too, when many Albanian families protected Jews during the Second World War.

The Kanun is not just a list of punishments. It is the effort of a society without a state to keep order, honour and peace.

The blood feud

The darkest side of the Kanun is the blood feud: the right, or duty, to avenge the killing of a family member. In its time the Kanun tried to limit it with rules, such as temporary truces and the ban on killing women and children. But the blood feud caused much death and suffering, and in the decades after 1990 it re-emerged in some areas, often in distorted forms that did not respect even the Kanun's own rules.

In Kosovo, in 1990–1992, a movement led by the folklorist Anton Çetta and young volunteers succeeded in reconciling thousands of feuding families, showing that the tradition of forgiveness was strong too.

How to read it today

1. As a historical document of a society that organised life without state institutions.
2. With pride in values such as besa and hospitality.
3. With a critical eye on rules that violated women's rights and on the blood feud, which have no place in a society under the rule of law.