The Dardani (; ; ) or Dardanians were a Paleo-Balkan people, who lived in a region that came to be known as Dardania after their settlement there."Δαρδάνιοι, Δάρδανοι, Δαρδανίωνες" Dardanioi, Georg Autenrieth, "A Homeric Dictionary", at PerseusLatin Dictionary They were among the oldest Balkan peoples, and their society was very complex. The Dardani were the most stable and conservative ethnic element among the peoples of the central Balkans, retaining an enduring presence in the region for several centuries.
Ancient tradition considered the Dardani to be an Illyrian people.Strabo's geography - Illyria - 'The Bessi live in huts and lead a wretched life; and their country borders on Mount Rhodope, on the country of the Paeonians, and on that of two Illyrian peoples — the Autariatae, and the Dardanians'Strabo: The Geography - Illyria - 'The Ardiaei were called by the men of later times "Vardiaei." Because they pestered the sea through their piratical bands, the Romans pushed them back from it into the interior and forced them to till the soil. But the country is rough and poor and not suited to a farming population, and therefore the tribe has been utterly ruined and in fact has almost been obliterated. And this is what befell the rest of the peoples in that part of the world; for those who were most powerful in earlier times were utterly humbled or were obliterated, as, for example, among the Galatae the Boii and the Scordistae, and among the Illyrians the Autariatae, Ardiaei, and Dardanii, and among the Thracians the Triballi; 316that is, they were reduced in warfare by one another at first and then later by the Macedonians and the Romans'Kosovo: A Short History p. 363 'As Papazoglu notes, most ancient sources classify Dardanians as Illyrians. Her reasons for rejecting this identification in a later essay, ‘Les Royaumes’, are obscure. There were Thracian names in the eastern strip of Dardania, but Illyrian names dominated the rest; Katicic has shown that these belong with two other Illyrian "‘onomastic provinces’ (see his summary in Ancient Languages, pp. 179-81, and the evidence in Papazoglu, ‘Dardanska onomastika’).' Strabo, in particular, also mentioning Galabri and Thunatae as Dardanian tribes, describes the Dardani as one of the three strongest Illyrian peoples, the other two being the Ardiaei and Autariatae.Strabo's geography - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0239 As Dardanians followed their own peculiar geographical, social and political development in Dardania, some ancient sources also distinguish them from those Illyrians dwelling in the central and southern coast of the eastern Adriatic Sea and its hinterland, who had constituted their own socio-political formation, referred to as 'Illyrian kingdom' by ancient authors. The Dardani were also related to their Thracian neighbors. In Roman times, Thracian names appear in the eastern strip of Dardania, and several Thracian and Dacian placenames also appear there, such as Dardapara and Quemedava,Vladimir Georgiev (Gheorghiev), Raporturile dintre limbile dacă, tracă şi frigiană, "Studii Clasice" Journal, II, 1960, 39-58. but Illyrian names dominated the rest.Kosovo: A Short History p. 363 'As Papazoglu notes, most ancient sources classify Dardanians as Illyrians. Her reasons for rejecting this identification in a later essay, ‘Les Royaumes’, are obscure. There were Thracian names in the eastern strip of Dardania, but Illyrian names dominated the rest; Katicic has shown that these belong with two other Illyrian "‘onomastic provinces’ (see his summary in Ancient Languages, pp. 179-81, and the evidence in Papazoglu, ‘Dardanska onomastika’).' Nevertheless, ancient authors have not identified Dardanians with Thracians, and Strabo explicitly makes a clear distinction between them.
The Kingdom of Dardania was attested since the 4th century BC in ancient sources reporting the wars the Dardanians waged against their south-eastern neighbor – Macedon – until the 2nd century BC. The historian Justin, a main source about the history of the Macedonian kings, refers to an 'lllyrian war' between 346 and the end of 343 BC, fought by 'Dardani and other neighbouring peoples' against Philip II of Macedon, who won the conflict. After the Celtic invasion of the Balkans weakened the state of the Macedonians and Paeonians, the political and military role of the Dardanians began to grow in the region. They expanded their state to the area of Paeonia, which definitively disappeared from history, and to some territories of the southern Illyrians. The Dardanians strongly pressured Macedon, using every opportunity to attack it. However the Macedonians quickly recovered and consolidated their state, and the Dardanians lost their important political role. The strengthening of the Illyrian (Ardiaean–Labeatan) state on their western borders also contributed to the restriction of Dardanian warlike actions towards their neighbors.
The Dardani sided with Rome in the Roman-Macedonian Wars, continuing their clashes with Macedon. After the defeat of Macedon in the Third Macedonian War, the fragile Dardanian-Roman alliance weakened, in particular after the Senate's decision not to return to the Dardanian kingdom the territory that had been previously conquered by the Macedonians, notably Paeonia, which the Dardani claimed as their own territory. The Senate only recognized the Dardani the right to trade salt. Thereafter, from sworn enemies of Macedonia, the Dardani became enemies of Rome. Dardanians fought against Roman proconsuls, and were finally defeated probably by Marcus Antonius in 39 BC or by Marcus Licinius Crassus in 29/8 BC. The Romans created the province of Moesia also including the territory of Dardania. After the Roman emperor Domitian divided the province of Moesia into Moesia Superior and Moesia Inferior in 86 AD, the Dardani were located in southern Moesia Superior. A Roman colony was established at Scupi in Dardanian territory under the Flavian dynasty. In the 2nd century AD Dardanians were still notorious as brigands (latrones dardaniae). During the late Imperial period their territory was the homeland of a number of Roman emperors, notably Constantine the Great and Justinian I.
Inscriptions from the Roman and Byzantine period have been found in Dardania, including one in the ancient city of Ulpiana which reads Urbem Dardania and two in Scupi which read Dardanus and Albanoi or Albanopolis.
Name The ethnonym of the Dardani has been attested in ancient Greek literature as , and , and in Latin as Dardani. The term used for their territory was (). The root Dard-/Derd- is attested outside the Dardanian region and the Trojan-Dardanian area in several other ancient ethnonyms, personal names, and toponyms: Derdas, a praetor of the Epirotes;Ab Urbe Condita 29.12.11.1 , name of Macedonian-Elimiot princes; in Thessaly; in Lesbos; in ancient Apulia Dardi, a Daunian tribe, Derdensis a region and , a Daunian settlement. The suffix -ano in Dard- was common to multiple Indo-European languages.
The names of the two main Dardanian tribes – Galabri/Galabrioi and Thunatae/Thunatai – have been respectively connected to the Messapic Kalabroi/Calabri and Daunioi/Daunii in Apulia (south-eastern Italy), of Palaeo-Balkan provenance.
Etymology The name Dardan- (ethnonym: /; toponym: /) is traditionally connected to the same root as , the Albanian word for 'pear', as well as Alb. , , 'farmer'. The ethnonym Pirustae, which is attested since Roman times for a tribe close to the Dardani or living in Dardania, is considered to be the Latin translation of Dardani (cf. Latin pirus "pear"), which would confirm the link with the Albanian .
In 1854, Johann Georg von Hahn was the first to propose that the names Dardanoi and Dardania were related to the Albanian word ("pear, pear-tree"). This is suggested by the fact that toponyms related to fruits or animals are not unknown in the region (cf. Alb. "sheep" supposedly related to Dalmatia, Ulcinj in Montenegro < Alb. "wolf" etc.). "Names of individuals peoples may have been formed in a similar fashion, Taulantii from 'swallow' (cf. the Albanian tallandushe) or Erchelei the 'eel-men' and Chelidoni the 'snail-men'. The name of the Delmatae appears connected with the Albanian word for 'sheep' delmë) and the Dardanians with for 'pear' (dardhë)." Albanian typical toponyms formed with the same root as dardhë have been attested: Dardhan-i (in 1467 CE), Dardhanesh-i (1431), Dardhasi (1431), Dardas (1467), Dardhë-a (1417), Darda, Dardhicë-a (1431). Several modern toponyms are found in various parts of Albania, including Dardha in Berat, Dardha in Korça, Dardha in Librazhd, Dardha in Puka, Dardhas in Pogradec, Dardhaj in Mirdita, and Dardhës in Përmet. Dardha in Puka is recorded as Darda in a 1671 ecclesiastical report and on a 1688 map by a Venetian cartographer. Dardha is also the name of an Albanian tribe in the northern part of the District of Dibra.
Opinions differ on the etymon of the root in Proto-Albanian, and eventually in Proto-Indo-European. On the basis of an alleged connection between Albanian dardhë and Greek "wild pear", a common Indo-European root has been tentatively reconstructed by scholars: "thorn bush"; ; "thorny, grain, barley". However it has been suggested that this connection is only conceivable assuming an ancient common Balkano-Aegean substrate word for Albanian and Greek. A proposed Indo-European root "a thorny plant", with the Proto-Albanian form reconstructed as , is not clear. More recently for the Albanian dardhë the Proto-Albanian has been reconstructed, itself a derivative of "to tip out, pour, spill, secrete, cast (metals)" < PAlb . In Old Albanian texts the root is recorded not umlautized: . It continues Proto-Albanian , which is close to onomatopoeic Lithuanian "to rattle" Latvian "to creak", Welsh "to mumble, to gumble" (the semantic development of "pear" that occurs in Albanian can also be seen in the Slavic parallel , "pear, pear tree" < , "to crumble, to break", and also in the Indo-European parallel "pear" < ). Slavic toponyms with "Kruševo" (from Proto-Slavic kruša, "pear") and other related toponyms particularly found in the area of the ancient Dardani have been proposed as South Slavic translations of Darda- toponyms.Baliu, Begzad (2012). Onomastika e Kosoves: Ndermjet miteve dhe identiteteve [Onomastics of Kosovo: Between Myth and Identity] (PDF). Era. p. 73. ISBN 978-9951040556.
Other roots have been connected to the name Dardan- by some scholars. It has been proposed a possible link to darda "bee", maybe originally with the meaning of "noise", "chatter", compared with Sanskrit dardurá- "frog", "pipe", Lithuanian dardėt́i "to rattle", "chatter" (which however is regarded by Orel as an onomatopoeic form connected to Albanian derdh, hence to dardhë, see above), Gkreek δάρδα · μέλισσα "bee", sometimes interpreted as μόλυσμα "stain", δαρδαίνει · μολύνει "to stain", both late antique attestations from Hesychius (5th century CE) and with aberrant semantics. Another link has been made with the PIE root *dhereĝh- "to hold", "strong", which would have evolved to dard- in consistency with the phonetic change of voiced palatal velars that are a characteristic trait of Albanian.