Kanun

What it is

The Kanun is not a single book but a family of related codes of custom used by Albanian-speaking communities. It shapes how people marry, inherit, settle quarrels, treat guests and guard their good name. For hundreds of years no one wrote it down. Tribal elders carried it in memory and recited it when a case arose. Because it stood apart from the law of emperors and sultans, communities could settle their own affairs. Scholars describe it as a normative heritage, a legal order a stateless society made for itself.

Origins and history

The customary law of the Albanians reaches far back. Its oldest layers carry pre-Christian ideas, among them reverence for ancestors, animism and totemism, which later mixed with motifs from the Christian era. Some researchers see parallels with the law codes of other Indo-European peoples, and one scholar compared its ethics with the world of Homer. Edith Durham suggested it may go back to the Bronze Age; others have guessed that it continues Illyrian tribal law. Communities lived by it alongside Roman, Byzantine, church, Sharia and Ottoman law, changing it as circumstances demanded.

Names and regional codes

The word kanun came into Albanian through Ottoman Turkish, which had taken it from Arabic, where it meant law. Its Greek root, kanon, meant a rule or a pole. Older Albanian words for the same body of custom include doke, which means custom, and zakon, borrowed from Slavonic. Local names differed: the sharte of Idriz Suli in Labëria, the Venomet of Himara, the Kanun of the Adet in Toskëria, the Canun of the Mountains in Ottoman records. The earliest written collection dates from the nineteenth century, made under Ottoman rule, and further regional codes were gathered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, among them the ones known by the names of Lekë Dukagjini, of Skanderbeg and of Labëria.

Honour and hospitality

Two ideas sit at the heart of the Kanun. Besa is the promise a person gives and must not break; nderi is honour, the standing of a person and of a household. Together they set the tone of daily conduct and explain the weight placed on keeping one's word. Scholars have noticed the same duties in the law of Vedic India and of ancient Greece and Rome: hospitality, the rights of household heads, marriage, compensation for harm. The code was called sacred even though it was not religious, and families of different faiths honoured it alike.

Today and change

The communist state abolished customary practices by law, and many expected the Kanun to fade. It did not. After the 1990s, with state institutions in Albania and Kosovo in disarray, people turned to it again. In Albania it is invoked most often over property. Elders' councils still settle disputes in some districts, and in Labëria they have curbed blood feuds and their consequences since the eighteenth century. Younger people meet the Kanun in scholarship as much as in village life.

How Kanun is kept

Elders hold the knowledge, and they speak when a matter needs settling. A dispute is heard by the elders of the community; they weigh the customary rules, besa and honour, and give a decision. Marriage arrangements, inheritance and boundaries are handled the same way. In the past the code also governed blood feud and the compensation paid for a killing. Councils of elders in Labëria have worked since the eighteenth century to keep feuds from spreading. After the 1990s these informal hearings returned, especially over property.

When and where

The Kanun is not tied to a season, a feast day or a month. It is kept whenever a question of conduct, land or family arises, and it has no fixed hour. Elders passed it on through speech across at least five centuries. For part of the twentieth century the state banned its use, and practice resumed after the 1990s.

It belongs to Albanian-speaking communities, above all in the mountain districts of Albania and in Kosovo. Different districts knew it under local names: in Labëria, Himara, Toskëria, Dibër and the Bregu area. In Albania it is applied most often where property is in question. Ottoman officials of the sixteenth century recorded it as the Canun of the Mountains.

What Kanun means

Those who keep the Kanun treat it as binding, and it was described as sacred though not religious. Its weight came from no ruler: it was thought to descend from a pagan code shared by the tribes, and it held across Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim families alike. For a people without a state, the code stood for order, identity and the right to judge their own affairs. Besa and nderi remain its cornerstones, the basis of how a person is expected to behave.

Questions people ask about Kanun

See also

As-salamu alaykumA traditional Arabic greeting of peace exchanged in daily life and prayerVidovdanA Serbian church feast on 28 June, kept in memory of those who died at KosovoHıdırellezA spring festival marking the meeting of two prophets, celebrated across Turkey and the Balkans.HandshakeA brief clasp of hands to greet, part or seal a deal, with local rules on how it is done

Good reading and sources

• Kanun (Albania) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.