Following the Footsteps of Alexander the Great : A Dream Come True

After three years of planning, studying and dreaming about the journey, finally the beginning of a dream, became a reality. On July 25, 1995, Michael Keathley and myself landed at the airport of a former capital city of Pakistan, Rawalpindi. A light drizzle was falling down; it was about 9:00AM. Little did we know that this was the Monsoon season for that part of the world. We felt everything was under control.

We had a prepaid ticket from Pindi to Gilgit, which is a 700 kilometre flight. We took a taxi to the Pakistani Airline office. There we found out to our surprise, all flights to Gilgit or the Chitral Valley were cancelled. We asked if we could board the next day and they replied that we were to be at their office at 11:00 AM in the morning and we will see, weather permitting. Disappointed, we asked the driver to take us to a hotel. As we arrived at the hotel, we noticed that there were no women in the lobby or anywhere on the street. We do recall that on the airplane the women who boarded from Manchester, England, were dressed casually, and as we approached our landing, they all went to the washrooms, dressed in the Muslim dress, loaded with jewellery from head to toe. The men wore very loose baggy pants and a shirt or cover from shoulder to below the knees.

We had our first different cultural encounter with the hotel manager. We asked if he had a room for two; oh yes he replied, it would be thirty dollars American, but Why don't you have some breakfast first and we will get the room ready in the meantime. After we I had our breakfast, the manager said the room which he thought he had available, wasn't, but he had a better room for $38 American. Fine, we said and we accepted it.

After we rested, we decided to go out and look around. The streets were very busy, traffic moving in all directions cars, horse drawn buggies, bicycles-and on foot, constant congestion, but nobody gets, into an accident, also it seems that nobody moves out of the way for anyone. Small Suzuki cars everywhere, but no beggars, keep in mind this is about the centre of Pakistan. If you went south, where the population is enormous, there, I was told, you would find beggars and thieves. The men were very polite, all were dressed the same, and I mean exactly the same. Only men, everywhere, young and old, but no women.

The living standards are very poor, but they are all the same, so this way no one feels short changed. We were glad we took all the vaccinations back home. I believe that is the only thing that would save us. Things are not very clean, also no government assistance of any kind and only up to grade 3 free schooling. No alcohol of any kind, it is pure and simply illegal, or any other drugs. But the one and only drug is cigarettes and they are being exploited with advertising.

The next day, we knew the airport was closed again, so we hired a private taxi to take us to Gilgit. About 300 km up the highway, the traffic stopped still. We went to look and to our sad surprise the mountain had slid and the road was cut off, with big boulders and mud. We asked the Army men when the road would be cleared and they told us not for at least 2 days. So I took out my movie camera and started acting like a tourist. The scenery was spectacular, simply beautiful. Sky high mountains with a rushing river at the bottom of the gourge. People everywhere, some decided to walk past the slide and continue on to their destination. We decided to turn back because we didn’t know any better.

Back we turned, we were furious, mad, very mad. We thought we were doomed, back to Pindi, again no flights, no roads. The next day, this is now two days later, we had breakfast and headed to a Pakistani government office. There we told them our story and the purpose of our trip. The man was very nice, he told us to forget flying, because even if the sky cleared for a short time, government officials would be the first to board and because no flights took off for a week there was a back log of people. Take a 4x4, which is a jeep or stay here for the duration of your holiday. Thanks to Visa, plus 20% for the use of it, because we did not have an American Express, and they did not take any other cards or travellers cheque. We charted a different course, instead of going first to Hunza Valley, we would go west to Chitral Valley and meet the Kalashi people. This was the perfect destination, because I read a lot about the Kalashi people.
First point of interest on the road to Chitral Valley was pointed out to us by the driver, the road built by Alexander the Great and his army. This road was from Kabul, Afghanistan to Calcutta, India. We stopped to take photos and I walked on the same footsteps of Alexander. I felt very touched, 2300 years later, the first Macedonians, Steve Pliakes and Michael Keathly felt part of Alexander. You have to be there to feel the emotions.

As we went on our journey, the driver again pointed one of the narrow passes that Alexander went on. This pass was called the Malakand Pass, and not so far was Kyber Pass. These are mountain tracks, some places they are paved, but most are no more than 4 feet wide. But the road Alexander the Greats army built was solid. I believe the Macedonians were the first road builders and what other way can an army travel. Most of this road was scavanged and only parts remain intact.

The people in these parts of the country are very hard working. They take the mountain and slowly turn it into beautiful terraced and lush fields. Also the aquaduct methods that they use are out of this world. Every village and every household have water right to their homes. All by engineering methods of redirecting the river and making these aquaducts.

As we took a closer look at these people, they have blue eyes, a fair complexion. They are totally different from the Muslim Pakistanis, in fact they do not want to be called Pakistani, because they are not, they stated this to us. Michael and I even joked as to which one of these men were our brothers. As the day came close to the end, we decided to spend the night at a town called Dir. To our amazement, again more of our brothers and sisters were visible. We walked the main street of Dir. There we saw the small shops where people were selling anything they could sell. At the restaurant, we had mountain tea, thin bread called Chipati, a flat, round in the middle loaf of bread. In the east they call it Pita bread. They also served us yogurt or I call it sour cream, and a delicious plate of cucumbers, yogurt and garlic.

The next morning, off we go to Chitral, a Town and the valley called Chitral. It was about 100 km to Chitral, a very remote area, no road as we would call it. River flowing, rocks falling and rivers crossing and blocking the road. Now I understand how these people remained in isolation. We drove to a height of 10,500 feet. It was cold and windy and you couldn’t stand at the edge of the road for fear of being blown over.

People live and make a living from the mountains. We stopped for tea where a family lived and worked. We also bought goat cheese for the long drive. The speed we travelled was not more than 10-20 km/h.

We reached Chitral Valley. It is beautiful. The river flowing through the middle of the valley. The people have very fair complexions, with blue eyes; mind you there were darker people among the lighter skinned or Kalashe as they call themselves. Sadly, creeping civilization is not always good for some people and some areas in the world. But they must accept change, and as change comes, we lose the innocence and the old traditions. As far as Michael and myself are concerned, we came here in the nick of time. The first Macedonians and hopefully not the last.

Daily, I was writing my findings, as we witnessed everything. Early the next morning to be precise July 29, 1995, we are leaving Chitral for another valley called Kalash Valley. It took 2 ½ hours, over the most treacherous road you could imagine. Again, these are not roads, goat trails. If it were not for the jeep, we would never have reached anywhere. Stones were all over the road, falling everywhere, it was very scary. At one time, our driver, a Muslim asked if he could stop the jeep to pray. We agreed and even asked him to pray for all of us. As we approached Kalash valley, we were stopped by an official and he asked us to record the purpose of our trip, the passport number and the length of our stay. Naturally we had to pay him. They told us this is frontier territory and the locals do not like Pakistanis, so we obeyed as instructed.

As we entered the Kalash valley, we could see the beauty before us. The lush scenery, the rivers flowing and merging, the fruit trees, mainly apricots, plums, mulberries and grapes. The vegetation, small plots of land terraced into the mountain, with fresh vegetables growing everywhere. They grow two crops a year on the same plots, thus enabling them to survive because of land shortage. To make a plot of land, first they have to remove all rocks from the lot, then they built a stone wall horizontally so there won’t be any land erosion, then a slow process of planting first grass so that top soil could be retained. All this time an aquaduct has to be built to irrigate the soil and then ahouse will be built to accommodate the rest of the family.

We were met by a young man called Dawoo, who spoke English. He took us to the cemetary and showed us their method of burying people. He said as far back as approximately fifty years go, they were laying the coffin on the ground. This was a custom which came from Afghanistan, but recently they bury their dead under ground. He showed us a place where they gather during their festivities. An open concept with a roof. This is for the summer. There they dance and romance. There were many carvings on wooden posts or pillars. We saw the Macedonian flower, Zdravets on these carvings although the flower does not grow anywhere in Kalash valley or Hunza valley.

We went to the place of worship. An enclosed room, again decorated with carvings on walls and posts, more of the same and also shapes of the sunburst, Alexander’s flag. We asked what religion they worshipped and they said they believe in God, and if you are good in this life, you go up to a beautiful place, and if you are bad, you go down to bad places and suffer forever. They are not Pakistanis and they do not even like the Pakistanis. In their place of worship, I did see the sign of crosses, here they don’t pray, they sing and dance. As we concluded our walk, we finally stopped to rest and have some food. Talking and eating, we learned they were told by their elders and foreigners about Alexander the Great. Also they were told of their blue eyes and fair complexion and that they are descendants of Alexander the Great. All the countries that Alexander conquered, there were Macedonians living there. I asked them if they knew where Alexander was buried and they said maybe Bagdad.

Ever week they have dances at different villages. Kalash Valley has three villages. That same evening, we were asked if we wanted to go to their village dance. Of course we agreed and by 9:00PM we arrived on an open court yard where the dance was being performed. Only single girls dance, from the ages of about 8 to 15 or 16. They all dance the same as all Macedonians, counter clockwise, with a leader and a tall end person. All shoulder to shoulder with their hands stretched. Young girls in the centre of the oro and according to groups and the oldest girls on the outside. Men only observe. I should mention, no cover charge and no other business was conducted, very innocent. All the girls were dressed with their best costumes. Lovely embroidery and head pieces. The band consisted of two drummers, one small and one larger. The drummers sang and tapped their drums. The girls sang and danced. Men dance in the day time, I was told. The dance lasted until about 12:00 or 1:00AM and off to work the next morning.

The next morning we went back to their temple, although that is not what they call it. We took a few more pictures and then off to another valley and more people to see. But we had to use the same road, it was awful. This is when it dawned on me of the movie “Lost Horizons” Shangrila. In the movie it was snow storms and blizzards, with us it was rocks and floods.

On to Hunza, following a mountain range called Hindukush. We came to an old fort about 300 to 400 years old called Massooch. Here we met the owner of the property, who was a Prince before Pakistan took their title and made them commoners. We discussed religion and most of all, Alexander the Great. He told us that every young man, when he grows up wants to be as wise and strong as Alexander. They even study it in school and he told us that he felt he was a descendent of Alexander of Macedonia, who conquered Athens, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan and down to day Pakistan and India, after about four cups of mountain tea, we returned to our tent for the night. The next morning, I found the dogs had chewed up one of my shoes. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and tea. On the road again. What road, 10 km/h was the fastest speed for another day.

We are following the hindukush mountain range with the Gilgit River running in the middle between both sides of the mountains. First stop was at a hotel on the road to Gilgit. The hotel consisted of three tents, one for the staff and two for customers. Bathroom facilities on the river. For lunch we had two little fish the size of smelt flat bread, corn soup and tea. As we drove for a few hours, we stopped by the river to wash our faces. Well, the water was so cold that if you were in it for 10 minutes you would be dead. Off we go chugging along 10 to 20 km/h more or less, until the next stop. Along the way, we found young boys fishing. We bought fish as we went on until we had about 10 of them. We finally found a place to stay, a cabin with no hydro of course. The driver cooked the fish we bought. We also bought some cucumbers and tomatoes, and we had the best drink ever, mountain tea. As I am writing this report three young boys are watching us and wondering what we are doing here in their land, but we must drive on after a nights sleep. I guess all good things in life you have to pay dearly, both physically and financially in order to see or feel.

On the road again. Now the Hindukush mountains become the Karakoram mountains. Spectacular view as usual and the road is called the Karakoram highway, built by China and Pakistan. Finally we reach Gilgit and rested at the Chinar Inn. We finally ordered a can of beer each, cool and delicious. After we drank it, we found out that it was non alcoholic which suited us just fine. We forgot that alcohol is illegal in Pakistan. I admire the Muslim religion, no alcohol. The next morning we are headed towards a town called Karimabad. As you know Gilgit is in Hunza valley. Along the way we stopped to buy apricots, mulberries and grapes, mangos and vegetables. We found a good stream and there we stopped for a picnic. At Karimabad, there was no room so we drove 2 km and came to a village called Altit. We found room here at a hotel called Kissar Inn. A real dream place, a beautiful grape covered shelter throughout the whole courtyard. In front, the mountain Rakaposhi, show capped. We even witnessed an avalanche. A beautiful sight all around us. We decided to have a shower, a very cold shower naturally. That same day we visited a fort called Fort Altit. As we entered the fort, we saw carvings of the flower Zdravets and the Sunburst. After the fort, we went shopping for souveniers and I mean real antiques, carvings and whatever you wished.

The following morning we went to visit the Mir of Hunza. We had a 9:30 AM appointment. A real gentleman, but also a rich one. We told him we are Macedonian and he said he was a descendent of Alexander the Great. We had about a two hour meeting. We covered a lot including the Muslims in Macedonia. He didn’t know there were Muslims in Europe. I gave him presents that I brought along. I should say that I gave presents everywhere I met people of interest to me. He loved the Macedonian Flag. He said that he would make every effort to adopt it as the flag of Hunza. He asked what Macedonia exported because he was very interested in us. I told him we export tobacco, shoes, clothes, jam and wines. He wants closer ties with us and the Republic. In the mean time he wants us to send him anything he could display at all of his hotels. As we departed he told us to stay at his brother’s Inn along the way because it had a museum. What a store, again we saw ancient souveniers, the Zdravets, the flag and real artistic works of art. The museum person told us that a particular stone was from the time of Alexander. I held it in my hand, I was very excited.

The next day we parted for China. We are on the Karakoram mountain range and Karakoram highway and the Gilgit river becomes the Hunza river. What a road, they call it the highway to Heavan, very scenic and very dangerous, rock slides and mud slides. Finally we reached China. The elevation was 17,000 feet above sea level. You could not run around here. I tried and got dizzy, then I realized the air is very thin. We met some Chinese tourists and naturally we told them we were Macedonians from the land of Alexander the Great. By now we weren’t surprised to hear that everybody knew of Alexander of Macedonia. As we left for Gilgit, we stopped along a beautiful river, a true turquoise colour, then we bought some fish and the young man cooked them for us, and made us tea. I believe we got hosed at the next town, which is normal, small amounts to us, but large for them.

The next day the driver took us and showed us his home. Five miles on the mountain, a one room house, dirt floor, chickens living under the bed, the stable was the next room. He had one bull, one water buffalo and two baby ones. He had three girls and two boys. His wife and mother cooked dinner for us, fried meat, okra, yogurt and tea. Inat, the driver, wanted us to sleep at his home that night, but there was no room. He was going to sleep in the stable if we stayed. So we decided to got to the nearest town called Balakose. There we booked at the hotel, had a shower and did our last clothing wash in a pail. The next day will be our last in Pakistan.

We went to a town called Taxila with plenty of history. A monestary with immense Macedonian information, a tremendous find for us. Everywhere we looked, we found history of Alexander. At the souvenir shop we gave the owner the Macedonian flag. At first he didn’t believe, but when he opened a book of all the countries of the world, sure enough there was Macedonia with its flag.

I urge all Macedonians wherever you may be, do not wait for someone else to write your history. Go out and tell the world the truth, see for yourselves, what is out there waiting for you. We must change the course that others took to falsify our history. We are as old as the Egyptians. We did have an Empire, which lasted 500 years. Alexander’s adventure took him about 7,000 miles, to promote culture. We travelled about 200 miles following in his foot steps. Imagine what is out there for us to find, more and more of our roots.

The Greek Propaganda, and the Macedonian facts

THE PROPAGANDA

*Macedonians should not be recognised as Macedonians as they have been of Greek nationality since 2000BC.
*Macedonians whose language belongs to the Slavic family, must not call themselves Macedonians as 4000 years ago they spoke Greek and today still speak nothing but Greek.
*Macedonia has no right to call itself by this name as Macedonia has always been a region and is today a region of Greece.
*Bulgaria's view is that Macedonians are ethnically Bulgarian.
*& that Macedonians are simply Western Bulgarians.
*The Serbs believe that Macedonians are misguided country cousins who belong in a Greater Serbia. (Yugoslavia)


THE FACTS

*Macedonia was never a region of Greece. On the contrary, Greece was often subject to Macedonia. In 1913, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria divided Macedonia into three parts. (BALKAN WARS)
*Ancient Macedonians were a distinct European people and proud of their nationality, their customs, their language and their name. The same applies to their descendants today.
*Ancient Macedonians regarded Greeks as neighbours not as kinsmen. The Greeks treated the Macedonians as foreigners ("barbarians") whose native language was Macedonian not Greek.
*Macedonians claimed kinship with the Illyrians, Thracians and Phrygians, not with Greeks.
*Greeks said Macedonians were "barbarians" (a word which means non-Greek)
*Demosthenes, the great Athenian statesman and orator, spoke of the Macedonian King Phillip2 of Macedon as:
Quote,
"...Not only not Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from anyplace that can be named with honours, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave."[Third Phillipic, 31]
*The Macedonian "barbarian’ defeated Greece at the Battle Of Chaeronea in August 338BC. The date is known as the end of Greek history or as The Macedonian Era.
*Alexander The Great spoke Macedonian and was proud of his ethnicity. However the Macedonian language then was not used as a literacy idiom.
The first native written language in Macedonia is the idiom called Macedonian or Old Church Slavonic (Cyrillic Alphabet) and is the basis of all Cyrillic alphabets today.
*Alexander won his empire with 35,000 Macedonians and only 7,600 Greeks and called it the Macedonian Empire not the Greek Empire.
*Today’s republic was created by Josip Broz Tito the anti-fascist leader of Yugoslavia during the 2nd World War who recognised Macedonians as a distinct nationality with their own language and customs.
*The claims by Bulgaria that Macedonians are of Bulgarian ethnicity are entirely false due to the facts that the Tatars a people from the east who invaded the balkans during Byzantine times mixed with the Gypsies and Turks in the Balkans and created a new race of people which go by the name of Bulgarians.
The Tatars dropped their native name and language in favor for the Macedonian language with its Cyrillic alphabet and customs and created the Bulgarian nation which is east of Macedonia and today has in its boundaries the Pirin region of Macedonia.
*By the Treaty of Bucharest, in August 1913 Macedonia was divided among Greece, Serbia (Yugoslavia) & Bulgaria.
Greece gained Aegean Macedonia and renamed it Northern Greece or Greek Macedonia.
Bulgaria gained Pirin Macedonia and abolished the Macedonian name.
Serbia gained Vardar Macedonia and renamed it Southern Serbia and it was included in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats & Slovenes. Later renamed Yugoslavia.
Macedonian freedom fighters in 1944 created its Macedonian Republic (named Macedonia from then on, not Southern Serbia) but it was not entirely independent.
*Macedonia became a sovereign state in 1991 by referendum. Majority of voters chose independence.
*Therefore,
The claims put forward by Greece that the Ancient Macedonians and present are Greeks, that their native language was Greek, and that Macedonia was a region of Greece are all false. Historical truth is that Greece inhabited by Greeks and Macedonia by Macedonians. The presence of Greek settlements along the coasts which King Phillip 2 destroyed anyway did not change Macedonia’s ethnic character and like wise, a much longer and stronger Greek presence in Egypt did not change that African land into a region of Greece.

The Macedonian Church

There is no data available whether representatives from Macedonia attended the First Ecumenical Synod of Nicea in 325. However, the Second Synod at Serdica in 343 was attended by Parigorius, the first Metropolitan of Skopje, and his suffragan the Bishop of Ulpiana (present-day Liplyan); both supported Orthodoxy. The presence of Parigorius proves that there were organized bishoprics in Macedonia headed by metropolitans and bishops since the first decades of the 4th century. In the 5th century the church in Macedonia was well-organized. Of the two metropolitan's dioceses in Thessaloniki and Skopje, the diocese in Thessaloniki was more influential due to its foundation by the Apostle Paul.
The settlement of Slavs in the Balkans, their Christianization and the development of Slavic liturgy and literacy gave a completely new quality to the development of the church in Macedonia. Prince Boris, after the establishment of the Bulgarian state incorporating a part of Macedonia, ordained Clement as Bishop of Dremvica and Velika (893) with a residence in Ohrid, wherein Clement became the first Macedonian-Slavic bishop. The religious service in his bishopric was, of course, held in the language of the Macedonian Slavs, and Ohrid became an educational, literary and a church center. Branko Panov is of the opinion that, nevertheless, the center of Clement's bishopric was located at some distance from Ohrid, because in his Extensive Hagiography Theophylact of Ohrid writes "Clement used to return from Velika to Ohrid to see for himself whether the inhabitants on earth are strong in spirit and whether they resist the fear of God... being at peace in his communication with God in the monastery, the beauty of which he loved and longed for when he was away from it." With the establishment of Samuil's state, the necessity for an independent Macedonian church became imperative. Until the time of Samuil, the church in Macedonia had been under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Patriarchate founded by Tsar Symeon without the approval of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. At that time eparchies are recorded as existing in the Macedonian towns of Voden, Meglen, Serres, Ohrid and Skopje. The success of the komitopulis' uprising and the wresting of Macedonia away from Byzantine rule (the Bulgarian Empire had fallen in the meantime) demanded that ecclesiastical authority be independent of Byzantine authority and lie close to the secular authority of Samuil, both geographically and ideologically. The center of the church moved to Prespa on the island of Achilles, where Samuil built a magnificent church to house it. The relics of St. Achilles were brought from Larissa, which Samuil conquered in 985.
There is no concrete data as to when Samuil created an autonomous Macedonian archbishopric. Logically, it is most likely that he would begin such immediately after proclaiming himself tsar, which suggests the late 10th century. When he transferred his capital from Prespa to Ohrid, he likewise moved the residence of the archbishopric, known hereafter as the Archbishopric of Ohrid.
Durnovo, in his study Do the Bulgarians have Historical Rights over Macedonian Thrace and Old Serbia? writes that it should be recognized that Ohrid was the capital of Samuil's Slavic-Macedonian empire, and although the empire was labeled as Bulgarian it had nothing in common with the former Bulgarian Empire on the other side of the Danube River. The Macedonian Empire was established "... after the Bulgarians were expelled from Macedonia and it possessed its own separate dynasty and bishops". As Samuil's empire expanded, the jurisdiction of his church was extended as well. The first archbishop of the Archbishopric of Ohrid was Philip, who retained this position from its foundation until the murder of Gavril Radomir in 1015. When Ivan Vladislav took the throne, Philip was dismissed from his post.
Samuil's church did not differ from other eastern churches-it enjoyed all the typical feudal privileges, with estates at its disposal, pareikos (serfs) to cultivate its land and exemption from various dues and taxes. Samuil favored the high clergy to a greater and more pronounced degree than other secular feudal lords. "The independent Macedonian Orthodox Church in Samuil's Macedonian state had the final say in the whole of spiritual and educational life, it regulated legal and family relations and united the people under the symbol of its name, in the spirit of the widely-accepted medieval principle of unity between church and state, in accordance with the apostolic theory that there is no power other than that of God", emphasizes Lidija Slaveska. Secular rights, courts and legislation were the three basic functions of the state, but these were effected by the church as well, as it was organized as an independent social community.
In the history of the Macedonian people, Samuil's state and the Archbishopric of Ohrid played another crucial role. Samuil introduced the language of the Macedonian Slavs to state administration, while the church acknowledged Macedonian as well-not surprising, considering it was the language of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples Clement and Naum. The raising of Macedonian to the level of an administrative and ecclesiastic language encouraged the standardization of dialectal forms.
As Samuil's state shrank in later years, the eparchies in areas now outside its borders broke their ties to Ohrid. Consequently, towards the end of Samuil's empire the Archbishopric of Ohrid exercised its power only in Macedonia, where both the clergy and the people belonged to the same ethnos-the Macedonian. The formation of the Macedonian Slavs as a nation was accelerated by the fact that Macedonia was the basic core of Samuil's state and the Macedonian Slavs its core population. Therefore, Archbishop of Ohrid and Skopje and Metropolitan of Macedonia, his Holiness Dositey, was correct in stating that "There is no need to put a particular emphasis on the fact that the Archbishopric of Ohrid, and later the memory of it, was the only source of Macedonian national awareness."
It is significant that Basil II, after the destruction of Samuil's state, allowed Samuil's church to remain autocephalous-separating the archbishopric from the authority of the Bulgarians. In 1142, on the subject of the five eastern patriarchal thrones Nil Doxopatria wrote that the Bulgarian church, like the one in Cyprus, was autocephalous and had never been subordinated to any of the patriarchies. It was an independent church administered by its own archbishops. He also added: "In the distant past this church was not Bulgarian, but it became so later on, when it was taken over by the Bulgarians and when it was named Bulgarian." But Basil II did not subjugate the archbishopric to the Constantinople Patriarchate. Byzantine sources prove that an instrument was thereby created for cultural and ideological influence on the Slavic population in the conquered areas while at the same time the emperor avoided increasing the power of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Branko Panov holds a similar view. Panov, in studying the life of Archbishop Theophylact, the most passionate of the preachers of Graecism on Macedonian territory, arrives at the conclusion that the role of the Archbishopric of Ohrid under Byzantine rule-from the 12th century to the 15th-states that "The essence of the autocephaly of the Archbishopric of Ohrid lay in the fact that the Archbishop of Ohrid was entitled to govern the subordinated eparchies himself [at the time of Samuil there were 32, later 25, with a continual reduction in the number], where he implemented Byzantine ecclesiastic and state policy. All this proves that the Archbishop of Ohrid was independent in respect the governance of subordinated churches of the Ohrid archbishopric; but this did not imply in respect to Byzantine state and church authorities."
Panov's thesis is part of a more comprehensive and accepted scholarly school arguing that, in addition to Theophylact, many of his Greek predecessors and successors linked the independence of the Archbishopric of Ohrid to the independence of the Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima, established in 535. Emperor Justinian I (527-565) was born in the village of Taurision near Scupi. At his birthplace he built the town of Justiniana Prima, and by a law enacted April 14, 535, divided the region of Eastern Illyricum into two ecclesiastic regions: he left the southern part to the Archbishop of Thessaloniki, while establishing the northern region as an independent archbishopric and raising the Metropolitan of Scupi to the level of an autocephalous archbishop. The Archbishopric of Justiniana Prima included the provinces of Dacia Prima (present-day Serbia) including the town of Vidin; Mediterranean Dacia including the town of Serdica (Sofia); Dardania and Praevalitana including the town of Skadar (Skutari); the northern part of Macedonia Secundus including the town of Vilazar (Titov Veles) and part of Pannonia Prima including Sirmium (Sremska Mitrovica) and Taurunum (Zemun). In 545, Justinian I subjugated Justiniana Prima to the Pope of Rome and from that time forward its archbishops were subordinate to Rome, as noted by Slavko Dimevski. The Greeks archbishops defended the autocephaly of the Archbishopric of Ohrid not because they wished to preserve it as a Slavic church, but to have a free hand in their broadly conceived program of Hellenizing its Slavic congregation.
In the beginning, the relationship between the Ohrid archbishopric and Patriarchate of Constantinople were cordial enough Archbishop of Ohrid Paisius even conducted the Synod in Constantinople in 1565, when Patriarch Joasaph was accused of immonia. One sign of mutual respect was the act passed at the Edirne Council of May 1697, whereby the leading officials of the Archbishopric of Orhid, the Patriarchate of Pech and the Bishopric of Cyprus were proclaimed "the respected three", equal by law to "God's proclaimed four patriarchates." However, the weaker the Archbishopric of Ohrid grew, the more intense the ambition of the Patriarchate of Constantinople to subjugate it and the territory of its diocese. The intrigues of the patriarchate in time became part of its relations towards its sister church, and during periods of cool Austro-Ottoman or Russo-Ottoman relations this was manifested by constant suggestions to the sultan that the archbishopric was a tool of Rome, Vienna or Moscow. Disagreements within the archbishopric itself were to the advantage of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The break between the two came with the appointment of Ananias, protosingel of Patriarch Ioannikios III the Karatzas, as Archbishop of Ohrid. This was an organized and unprecedented move made with the sultan's blessing: the patriarchate, despite the independence of the Ohrid archbishopric, granted the right of appointment of the Archbishop of Ohrid to a group of six to seven archpriests who, at the time, were in the Archbishopric of Constantinople and inclined towards Greek domination of the church. The action of appointing a new archbishop to the vacant position was, in fact, initiated by Graecophile colonists from the Ohrid diocese in the Turkish capital. While formal appointment was effected, Ananias was not accepted by the people of Ohrid and the archbishopric did not recognize the new appointment. Expelling Ananias from Ohrid was the last success achieved by church autonomists in Ohird-by bribing Turkish officials and supporters of the Greek cause among the high clergy of the archbishopric, the patriarchate detached diocese after diocese from it. Finally, on January 16, 1767, Archbishop Arsenius resigned "voluntarily," saying that "...owing to an inability to put in order and satisfy the needs of the Archbishopric of Ohrid, which arose before us one after the other..." he would resign. Dismissed from his post as archbishop, Arsenius was appointed as Metropolitan of the Eparchy of Pelagonia, but on June 24, 1767, he was driven from there as well, "voluntarily"resigning again.
Immediately after deposing Arsenius as archbishop, Patriarch Samoil Chanjeri obtained from Sultan Mustafa III an irade (decree) whereby the Archbishopric of Ohrid was abolished and the eparchies included within the patriarchate. The irade furthermore left the inhabitants of these eparchies with no right of complaint against such a decision. In order to obliterate the archbishopric totally, Constantinople abolished the Eparchy of Ohrid itself, transferring the regional seat of ecclesiastical power to Durres and renaming the eparchy the Eparchy of Durres. The name of Ohrid itself was changed to Lychnidos, with the aim of wiping out anything reminiscent of the Archbishopric of Ohrid. After 800 years Ohrid was abolished both as center of an autocephalous church and as residence of an archbishop, despite the fact that it had occupied that position since the first decades after Christianity had come to the Balkans. Expressing its gratitude to the sultan, on May 15, 1767, the Patriarchal Synod passed an act where it "explained" the reasons for abolishing the Archbishopric. As with the Patriarchate of Pech, abolished a year earlier, it was alleged that the Archbishopric of Ohrid had been illegally established and non-canonically separated from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Hence, the sultan's edict, whereby the archbishopric was eliminated, was both canonical and "just." Slavko Dimevski notes that even the edict to abolish the archbishopric by the Ottoman Sultan, a sworn enemy of Christianity, was not as cruel as the decision made by the patriarchate to obliterate the existence of the Archbishopric of Ohrid.
After achieving its main objective in the abolishment of the Ohrid archbishopric, the Patriarchate of Constantinople took steps to destroy Slavic spiritual and ecclesiastic life in Macedonia and to impose the laws and customs of the Greek church. The first target of course was the Slavonic religious service; clergy were generally replaced by Greeks and graecomans despite the resistance of congregations soon emerged in Bitola, Ohrid, Skopje, Kukush, Lerin and Tetovo. Although the clergy was dominated by Greeks, the lowest orders remained Slavic-the Greeks eschewed these posts as they brought negligible incomes. During the time of the darkest spiritual slavery under the Pharaniots these Slavic clergy, semiliterate and half-educated, succeeded in preserving the traditions of Clement's church and the Archbishopric of Ohrid.

Another evidence, that the Macedonians are not-related with greeks:

HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks

Tissue Antigens 2001 Feb; 57(2):118-127



Department of Immunology and Molecular Biology, H. 12 de Octubre, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. aarnaiz@eucmax.sim.ucm.es

Arnaiz-Villena A, Dimitroski K, Pacho A, Moscoso J, Gomez-Casado E, Silvera-Redondo C, Varela P, Blagoevska M, Zdravkovska V, Martinez-Laso J.



HLA alleles have been determined in individuals from the Republic of Macedonia by DNA typing and sequencing. HLA-A, -B, -DR, -DQ allele frequencies and extended haplotypes have been for the first time determined and the results compared to those of other Mediterraneans, particularly with their neighbouring Greeks. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The following conclusions have been reached:



1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians,



2) Macedonians are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum,



3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles, such as *0305, *0307, *0411, *0413, *0416, *0417, *0420, *1110, *1112, *1304 and *1310. Genetic distances are closer between Greeks and Ethiopian/sub-Saharan groups than to any other Mediterranean group and finally Greeks cluster with Ethiopians/sub-Saharans in both neighbour joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses. The time period when these relationships might have occurred was ancient but uncertain and might be related to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopian people living in pharaonic Egypt.