Is Skopje part of Macedonia?
The song is ΠΑΛΙΟΣΙΔΕΡΑ -- Paliosidera (old metals) by Macedonian Vasilis Karras (ΒΑΣΙΛΗΣ ΚΑΡΡΑΣ) -- KARANOS THE FIRST KING OF MACEDON 'it is told how Karanos wanted to send a colony from Argos to Macedonia and then got this miracle from Apollo. (...) When arrived in Macedonia Karanos captured Edessa.' (Annette Harder, Euripides' Kresphontes and Archelaos , p 136) -- SKOPJE IS IN PAEONIA 'the territory of the present Republic of Macedonia was occupied by Paeonia' (Academic American Encyclopedia, p 15) 'The western parts of the present state Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) did not belong to Roman and Byzantine Macedonia. ' (Alexandru Madgearu, Martin Gordon. The wars of the Balkan Peninsula: their medieval origins. p 176) -- SKOPJE IN BYZANTINE TIMES 'In the medieval period Macedonia was closely linked to Bulgaria, thus bolstering the latter's historical claims to the area. Northern Macedonia was conquered by the Bulgar Khans in the ninth century, and remained within the orbit of the First Bulgarian Kingdom until 1218, when the western town of Ohrid - by that time the Bulgarian capital - finally fell to the Byzantines. Under the second Bulgarian Kingdom (1185-1396) things were confused, with the emergent power of Serbia increasingly extending its influence in the area in the 1300s. The central Macedonian town of Skopje was briefly the capital of the greatest of medieval Serbia's rulers, Tsar Dushan.' (Jonathan Bousfield, Dan Richardson, Rough Guides, Richard Watkins. Bulgaria, p 448-449) -- SKOPJE IN OTTOMAN TIMES 'Under Ottoman rule, Macedonia was known officially as the 'Three Provinces', with administrative centres in Thessaloniki, Skopje and Monastir (present-day Bitola in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). At the beginning of the twentieth century, Macedonia was one of the most cosmopolitan regions of the empire, peopled by Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Albanians and Jews. ' (Jonathan Bousfield, Dan Richardson, Rough Guides, Richard Watkins. Bulgaria, p 448) 'Skopje (Shkup in Albanian and Uskub in Turkish) was the centre of the Kosovo vilayet, with Skopje, is shown as one of the 'four Albanian vilayets during the Ottoman Empire'' (Michael Waller, Kyril Drezov, Bülent Gökay. Kosovo, footnote on p69) 'The Greeks are well represented in the vilayet of Salonica. Greeks and Albanians balance Bulgarians in the vilayet of Monastir' (Henry Noel Brailsford, Macedonia; Its Races and Their Future: its races and their future, p 7)
