Albania— Tattoo scenes & cities

In High Albania, published in 1909, the traveller Edith Durham records what she saw among the Christians of northern Albania: at Jubani, most of the boys had a cross tattooed on the back of the right hand. Among the Christian tribes of Skreli, men and women very commonly added the crescent and the sun.

She notes that Muslims tattooed a double triangle instead. In her account, the custom was found among Catholic and Muslim Albanians alike, but never among Orthodox or Muslim Slavs, and the most tattooed tribes of the north said they had fled Bosnia to escape the Turks. She saw in it the remnant of a belief older than Christianity: a reading of her time.