pilgrimage Centered at Text and Memory: The Lapidar in Qukës-Pishkash

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize the lapi-dar at Qukës–Pishkash, Librazhd, into the political and social setting of its period and beyond. In doing so, we aim, first, at presenting the monument; second, at dem-onstrating that lapidars were not static monuments, but rather reference points for the socio-political life of the regional and capital center; last but not least, we shall endeavor to show how Albania’s communist regime, in its understanding of the importance of pilgrimage in religious practices, attempted to establish a political religion by creating, through the lapidar at Pishkash, a pilgrimage centered at text and memory to commemo-rate the 1943–4 winter march of the First Offensive Bri-gade in the mountainous zones of Çermenikë, Librazhd, Gramsh, and Korçë, in the course of Albania’s National Anti-Fascist Liberation War. To this aim, we have assem-bled factual and empirical evidence regarding the mon-uments and combined them with socio-anthropological evidence from the study of pilgrimage.