DURAZZO, a seaport of Albania. Pop. (1924) about 10,000, of whom 7o% are Mohammedans, 25% Orthodox, and 5% Roman Catholics. Most of the merchant class are of Vlach origin. Durazzo is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop and a Greek metropolitan. It is built on the slope of Mt. Durazzo and stretches down into a picturesque valley, but is surrounded by marshes, dotted with lakes, and the water supply, from wells, is far from satisfactory. The old crenellated walls are dilapidated; plane trees grow on the gigantic ruins of the old Byzantine citadel, and the harbour, commodious and safe when used by the Venetian galleys, is gradually becoming silted up, sandbanks rendering the approach difficult. The only features worthy of notice are the quay with its rows of cannon, and the viaduct, 75o ft. long, which crosses the marsh to the road to Tirana. The chief exports are olive oil, wheat, oats, barley, skins, tobacco, sumach and sheep. Salt is obtained by evaporation, and there are brick kilns in the district, while the making of the national costumes is an important industry.
Epidamnus, the ancient name of Durazzo, was founded by a joint colony of Corcyreans and Corinthians towards the close of the 7th century B.C., and from its admirable position and the fertility of the surrounding country, soon rose into considerable importance, and played a part in bringing about the Peloponnesian War (431-4o4 B.C.) . In 312 B.C. the city was seized by the Illyr ian king Glaucias, and shortly after it passed to the Romans, who changed its name to Dyrrachium, and it again rose to importance. It was a favourite point of debarkation for the Roman armies; the great military road known as the Via Egnatia led from Dyrrach ium to Thessalonica (Salonica) ; and another highway passed southwards to Buthrotum and Ambracia. Broad swamps rendered the city almost impregnable, and in 48 B.C. Pompey made his last successful resistance to Caesar here. After the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. Augustus made over Dyrrachium to a colony of his veterans; it became a civitas libera, and reached the sum mit of its prosperity at the end of the 4th century when it was made the capital of Epirus Nova.
Its bishopric, created about A.D. 58, was raised to an arch bishopric in 449. In 481 the city was besieged by Theodoric the Goth, and during the loth and nth th centuries was frequently attacked by the Bulgarians. In I081 it was stormed by Robert Guiscard, the Norman, and in 1185 it fell into the hands of King William of Sicily; was surrendered to Venice in 1202, and in 1268 came into the possession of Charles of Anjou. In 1273 it was destroyed by an earthquake, but soon recovered from the disaster, and became an independent duchy under John of Anjou (1294-1304), and afterwards under Philip of Otranto. In 1333 it was annexed to Achaea, in 1336 to Serbia, and in 1394 to Venice. The Turks captured it in 1501, and held it till 1913. In that year Essad Pasha set up a government of his own in Durazzo, but in 1914 Prince William of Wied landed there as King of Albania, and Essad fled to Italy. His partisans, however, attacked the town, and three months later Prince William abandoned the. country.
At Kavaja, near Durazzo, an Albanian American School of agriculture was founded in 1925 for the promotion of better methods of cultivation and cattle raising. It has already done much excellent work in this direction, as well as the building of schools for boys and girls. At the end of 25 years the under taking is to be transferred to the Albanian government as a National School of Agriculture.
D'URBAN, SIR BENJAMIN British general and colonial administrator, entered the British army in 1793. In 1794 he took part in operations in Holland and Westphalia. In he served under Sir Ralph Abercromby in San Domingo. He spent the years 1800–o5 at the Royal Military college, and then served in Hanover under Lord Cathcart. In Nov. 1807 he went to Dublin as assistant-quartermaster-general, being transferred suc cessively to Limerick and the Curragh. He joined the army in the Peninsula in 18o8 and acted as quartermaster general to General (afterwards Viscount) Beresford in the reorganization of the Portuguese army. He served throughout the Peninsular War, be ing present at Busaco, Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vitoria, the Pyrenees, the Nivelle, the Nive and Toulouse. He was made a K.C.B. in 1815. He remained in Portugal until 1816. In 1819 he became major general and in 1837 lieutenant general. From 1829 he was colonel of the 51 st Foot.
Sir Benjamin began his career as colonial administrator in 182o as governor of Antigua. In 1824 he was transferred to Demerara and Essequibo, then in a disturbed condition owing to a rising among the slaves consequent on the emancipation movement in Great Britain. In 1831 he carried out the amalgamation of Ber bice with the other counties, the whole forming the colony of British Guiana, of which D'Urban was first governor. The four years of his governorship in Cape Colony (1834-38) were of great importance in the history of South Africa. They witnessed the abolition of slavery, the establishment of a legislative council and municipal councils in Cape Colony, the first great Kafir war and the beginning of the Great Trek. The firmness and justice of his administration won the cordial support of the British and Dutch colonists. The greater part of 1835 was occupied in repelling an unprovoked invasion of the eastern borders of the colony by Xosa Kafirs. To protect the inhabitants of the eastern province Sir Ben jamin extended the boundary of the colony to the Kei river and erected military posts in the district, allowing the Xosa to remain under British supervision. But Lord Glenelg, secretary for the col onies in the second Melbourne administration, adopted the view that the Kafirs had been the victims of systematic injustice. In a despatch dated Dec. 26, 1835, he instructed D'Urban to give up the newly annexed territory. At the same time Sir Andries Stock enstrom, Bart. (1792-1864), was appointed lieutenant governor for the eastern provinces of the colony to carry out the policy of the home Government, in which the Kafir chiefs were treated as being on terms of full equality with Europeans. One result of the new policy was to recreate a state of insecurity, bordering on an archy, in the eastern province, and this condition was one of the causes of the Great Trek of the Dutch farmers which began in 1836. In various despatches D'Urban justified his position, characterizing the trek as due to "insecurity of life and property occasioned by the recent measures, inadequate compensation for the loss of the slaves, and despair of obtaining recompense for the ruinous losses by the Kafir invasion." (See SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF, and CAPE COLONY.) D'Urban was relieved of his office (May I, 1837), but remained governor until the arrival of his successor, Sir George Napier, in Jan. 1838.
During his governorship Sir Benjamin helped the British settlers at Port Natal, who in 1835 named their town D'Urban (now writ ten Durban) in his honour, but his suggestion that the district should be occupied as a British possession was vetoed by Lord Glenelg. D'Urban remained in South Africa until April 1846. In 184o he was made a G.C.B., and in 1842 declined a high military appointment in India offered him by Sir Robert Peel. In Jan. 1847 he took up command of the troops in Canada, and held it at the time of his death at Montreal on May 25,