Dhimitër Jonima

Dhimitër Jonima (? – 1409) was an Albanian nobleman from the Jonima family. He initially resisted the Ottomans - namely at the Battle of Kosovo - before becoming their vassal, and he eventually switched to become a vassal of Venice. He was the lord of the lands that encompassed the trade route from Lezhë to Prizren, holding possessions between Lezhë and Rrëshen.^[1]

Dhimitër Jonima
Died	1409
Wars and battles	Battle of Kosovo
Noble family	Jonima family
Issue	?–1402: Ottoman vassal 1402–1409: Venetian pronoier as vassal of Koja Zaharia

Resistance and Ottoman vassalage

Together with other Albanian noblemen, Dhimitër Jonima is mentioned as a participant of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, having been one of the main leaders of the Albanian forces that fought on the side of Lazar's Christian coalition against the Ottomans.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

He suffered another defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire shortly after the Ottoman forces captured Shkodër in 1393. He then acted as a mediator between them and Marco Barbadigo, the husband of Helena Thopia who was in possession of the castle in Krujë during this period.^[8] In 1402, as an Ottoman vassal and together with other Albanian noblemen, he fought alongside Bayezid I's forces in the Battle of Ankara.^[9]

Venetian vassalage

By 1399, Jonima had already been given the right to take shelter in Shkodër and Durrës by the Venetians.^[10] After the Ottoman defeat, Jonima became a vassal of Koja Zaharia, whose territory sat to the north of Jonima's possessions. They were initially unwilling vassals of the Ottomans, but Koja and Jonima would eventually accept the suzerainty of the Venetian Republic by feigning the defeat of a large force under their command at the hands of the Venetians. After this, their territories and roads were placed under Venetian protection.^{[11][12][13][14]}

Jonima recognised the influence of the Dukagjini family in the northern Albanian regions, and so he developed good diplomatic relations with them and communicated with foreign chancellors (Venetians in particular) on their behalf. He maintained positive diplomatic relations with most of his neighbouring lords. He is last mentioned by sources in 1409 as the lord of Shufadaj, a coastal trading town near Lezhë, and is supposed to have died in the same year.^[15]

Other members of the Jonima family are later mentioned in the Shkodër region, but they never reached the fame or standing of Dhimitër Jonima. Even long after his death, in 1431, upon the defeat of Gjon Kastrioti by Ottoman forces, the lands taken from him that had once belonged to the Jonima family were registered by Ottomans as the vilayet of Dhimitër Jonima.^[16]

Annotations

His name has been spelled "Demetrius Jonima", "Dimitri Jonima", "Dmitar Gonoma", and in Albanian: Dhimitër Jonima.