Kavajë

Kavajë lies on the western Albanian plain, south of Durrës and near the Adriatic coast. The Roman Via Egnatia passed through this region on its way from the sea towards the Bosphorus. In the later Middle Ages, the Skuraj and Matrangaj families held lands around Kavajë; the Matrangaj made their centre at nearby Bashtovë and controlled part of the coastal country.

The town appears in an Ottoman land register of 1431–1432. When the traveller Evliya Çelebi visited in the seventeenth century, he found gardens, vineyards and stone houses on the plain. He described a busy bazaar shaded by mulberry trees, where people from Durrës and Bashtovë came to buy goods, and inns accommodated travelling merchants. The judge of Durrës, he wrote, made his residence in Kavajë rather than in the coastal fortress.