But if the idea of an independent and peculiar Albanian race and nationality is shown to be false by ethnological research and by historical documents, it is a still greater error and a ridiculous pretension to say that the town of Jannina is the centre and the capital of the Albanian idea and nationality. This argument, which for some time past has been going the round of Europe, and which has found supporters in Italy,--in the Italian Government unfortunately,--is truly pitiable, and unworthy of being seriously debated, in the view of those who are at all acquainted with the history of modern Greece. But since, in these times of vain questions and useless and sophistical debates about the peoples of the East, much has been written and argued on this question in the European press, we think it may not be out of place to give some information on the political and intellectual state of Jannina, its population, and the historical and moral traditions of the town, which was formerly, prior to the creation of the new kingdom, the intellectual capital of Hellenism.
Jannina is, of all the districts of Epirus, that in which the Greek population is the most numerous and the most compact. Out of 100,000 inhabitants of this district, there are only 5000 Mussulmans; and these also are of Greek origin, because they all speak Greek. And in Turkey in Europe, Jannina is the most Hellenic village, in which there is not one inhabitant who does not speak the language of the country. It is, perhaps, an historic curiosity, but still it is a fact which has already been proved, that the Sublime Porte has no right of conquest over this town, because Jannina has not been conquered by the Turks, but has only recognized the Turkish rule by a treaty which guaranteed to it all the rights of self-government--rights which were afterwards trampled under foot in consequence of a rising in the unfortunate town. In the seventeenth century, at the very dawn of the Hellenic revival, Jannina was already a centre of light which illumined the dark sky of Hellenism; for a long time this part of Epirus was the mother-country of the greatest patriots, and the most earnest propagators of national education. Athens was but a village, known only through history, when this town was already the central point of the national consciousness; the capital of the learning of the dispersed nation, which was without a political official centre. In the famous school of this town, afterwards called [Greek: Zôsimaia Scholê] (The School of Zosimas), illustrious professors taught Greek literature; and, according to the testimony of many travellers, Jannina was the town whose inhabitants spoke the most correct Greek. Our national historian, M. Papparigopoulos, speaks thus of it in his French work, already well known and esteemed in Europe[77]:--"Jannina especially became a true nursery of teachers, who in their turn were placed successively at the head of other schools in Peloponnesus, in continental Greece, in Thessaly, in Macedonia, at Chios, at Smyrna, at Cydones, at Constantinople, at Jassy, at Bucharest." The intellectual superiority of this town lasted until the death of Ali Pasha and the creation of the new kingdom, when the centre of the moral and political activity and work of the nation was transferred to Athens, the town which, from its grand traditions, was worthy to become once more the capital of the great Hellenic idea. But the school of Jannina still remains one of the most renowned and the most useful centres for the propagation of the learning and literature of Ottoman Greece. At this day, for the foreigner who visits the capital of the kingdom of the Hellenes, the first spectacle which will attract his attention will be that majestic view of national monuments, worthy to be compared with the most renowned monuments of the European cities: these are the University, the Academy, the Polytechnic School, the Arsakion, the Seminary of Rizari, &c., all eloquent witnesses of the patriotism and self-sacrifice of the nation.