Kelmendi Highlands

The Kelmendi Highlands lie at the northern end of the Albanian Alps, in the Great Highlands. Kelmendi is bordered to the south by Hoti, Kastrati and Shala, to the east by Gashi and Krasniqe and to the north by Vasojevicët, Kuči, Triepši and Gruda.

His name comes from the Latin word clemens-tis, ie: wise, simple, good. Foreign Albanologists, as well as Albanian ones, explain the origin of this tribe according to the concepts of folk legends. However, we find a documented surname of this tribe in the year 1353, with the name Gjergji, the son of Gjergj Kelmendi from Spasë, and as a well-organized tribe, we meet him in 1497.

• The municipality of Kelmendi today has 6,344 inhabitants, concentrated in the villages of: Vermosh, Lëpushë, Selcë, Tamarë, Brojë, Kozhnja, Nikç and Vukël.

• The inhabitants of this tribe live mainly around the two sources of the Cem river, Vukli e Selca and the Vermoshi river.

• We are dealing with an ancient tribe, which during the Slavic-Avar barbaric invasions in our lands remained completely underground until the 11th century.

• In the detailed records of the Book of Sanjak of Shkodra from 1497, before the Turkish invasion, the Kelmendas lived in two villages: the village of Selçisha, where the village of Liçeni was located, and the village of Çpaja-Spai-Ishpaja, where four villages were located.

Kelmendas call them hardworking and brave people.

•At the time of the National Renaissance, among those men from the Great Highlands who participated in the Albanian League of Prizren in 1878, was the villager Ujke Gila, as the eldest brother of the four Bajraqs that Kelmendi had.