Albania for King Zog Committee
| Albania for King Zog Committee (AKZ) | |
|---|---|
| Founded | attested 1325 (first trace) |
| Refounded | 1987 (present incarnation) |
| Headquarters | Ghent, Belgium |
| Status | Archives partially lost; ongoing reconstruction |
| Website | zog.org (1987–2001) |
The Albania for King Zog Committee (AKZ) is an international learned society and semi-secret association devoted to Balkan monarchy, cultural survivals, and esoteric historiography. Despite its modern association with Albanian monarch King Zog (1895–1961), the Committee had borne some form of the name “Albania for King Zog” — rendered in medieval records as Zogh, Tsog, or Zogu — for centuries before his reign.
The coincidence that a 20th-century monarch would later bear the same name has long divided historians: some consider it an accident of etymology, others an example of uncanny foresight, and a minority treat it as evidence of deliberate myth-making across generations. What is not disputed is that the phrase “for King Zog” has been central to the Committee’s identity for at least seven centuries.
Origins
The earliest surviving mention of the Committee is dated 1325, in a notarial record from Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik) that refers to a confraternity pro Rege Zogu responsible for sponsoring a chapel lamp in the Dominican church. Similar references, often fragmentary, appear in Venetian account books of the 14th and 15th centuries, where the group is linked with guilds of scribes and itinerant scholars.
By the late Ottoman period, the “Zog” name had become associated with a loose network of salons in Skopje, Krujë, and Thessaloniki, devoted to the preservation of genealogies, royalist folklore, and speculative antiquarianism. The precise relationship between these circles and the modern Committee is uncertain, as archival continuity was repeatedly broken by war, fire, and deliberate suppression.
From the 18th century onward, more systematic gatherings were held in Vienna and Venice, where émigré Balkan aristocrats and sympathetic intellectuals formalized the rituals and iconography still referenced by the contemporary AKZ.