Ostren i Vogël

Ostren i Vogël (Bulgarian and Macedonian: Мало Острени, romanized: Malo Ostreni) is a village in the former Ostren Municipality in Dibër County in northeastern Albania. At the 2015 local government reform it became part of the municipality Bulqizë.^[1] It is situated within the Gollobordë region.

Ostren i Vogël Мало Острени
Village
Ostren i Vogël
Coordinates: 41°37′11″N 20°28′11″E
Country	Albania
County	Dibër
Municipality	Bulqizë
Municipal unit	Ostren
Time zone	UTC+1 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+2 (CEST)

Demographic history

Ostren i Vogël (Mali Ostrani) appears in the Ottoman defter of 1467 as a village in the timar of Karaca in the vilayet of Dulgoberda. The settlement had a total of seven households and the anthroponymy recorded attests to a mixed Albanian-Slavic character, with a slight predominance of Albanian personal names and patronyms (e.g., Kallam son of Gjergji, Nikolla son of Pelgrini). A certain Leka from Ohrid appears as among the household heads: Gjuro Luknisha, Mihoja son of Andrija, Gjureci son of Mihoja, Kallam son of Gjergji, Nikolla son of Pelgrini, Leka from Ohrid, and Gjureci son of Meksha.^[2]

In an 1878 report, reflecting 1873 statistics, Ostren i Vogël was recorded as having 90 households with 155 Slavic Muslims (Pomaks) and 103 Bulgarian Christians.^[3]

According to statistics gathered by Vasil Kanchov in 1900, the village of Ostren i Vogël was inhabited by 78 Christian Bulgarians and 400 Muslim Bulgarians. However, Kanchov noted that the inhabitants of the village preferred to be called Albanians and that they spoke Albanian.^[4]

The "La Macédoine et sa Population Chrétienne" survey by Dimitar Mishev concluded that the Christian population in Malo-Ostreni in 1905 was composed of 120 Bulgarian Exarchists.^[5]

The village of Ostren i Vogël is inhabited by an Albanian population which dominates demographically in the village.^[6] Other inhabitants of Ostren i Vogël are speakers of an Eastern South Slavic language,^[7] of whom in the village traditionally consist of a mixed Slavic Orthodox Christian (Macedonian) and Muslim (Torbeš) population.^[6]