It is very common that people in United States ask me of where does my ascent comes from. Most of them look confused when I tell them I’m from Tirana Albania. For those of you that do not know Tirane is the Capital of Albania.

As far as the name of Tirana goes there are different hypotheses of where the origin of the name comes from. Some say that the word ‘THERANDA’ that Latin and Greek sources like to refer to the area, ‘te ranat’ is a word used by the lokals then which it means the fallen things or materil. Because of the fallen rains swept down from the nearby mountains that crated the flat surface of Tirana.

Some say it named by the military leader Sulejman Pasha at the time of Turkey’s conquest of Persia, somewhere in the 17th century, after the capital of Presia Terhan (now Iran).

Some say Prokop the 6th century Byzantine historian to refer to a castle that was build on Mountain Dajti, in the 1st cenury BC which ruins are now totally extant.

The first person to write a story of Albania was Martin Barleti, he stated that in 15th century there was a Great and Small Tirana. ‘Tirane e Madhe dhe Tirane e Vogel’. Which some of that terminology is still used today.

From the 1583 registration records historians found that Tirana had about 2900 houses, with 20,000 lokals.

It was Sulejman Pasha that started the city in 1614 and his only first constructions were a hamam (Turkish sauna) a Mosque and a bakery. It tool about two centuries later that the Topani family from Kruja was controlling the city.