According to Ermanno Armao(sq), Spas is first mentioned in documents from 1307, as it lay along an old medieval route from the Adriatic Sea to Pukë and then to Gjakova. That same year, two Venetian merchants were attacked in the village by a statesman of the Serbian king, Stefan Milutin. In 1377, a tax of two beans was levied in Spas for each embarkation crossing the Drin.[2]
The village is later recorded in the three Ottoman defters of 1529–1536, 1571, and 1591.[3] In June 1638, Frang Bardhi wrote: "The eighth village is Spas, with four houses and eight inhabitants, which has the Church of Saint Stephen as its parish church." Vicko Zmajević also mentioned the village in 1703.[4]
In the second half of the 19th century, Ivan Jastrebov noted: "There used to be no village by the name Spas. It seems this name is quite popular, yet according to the chrysobull of 1348, there was once a small settlement here named Krsti. The church there bore the name of the Pantocrator."[2] Jastrebov further recorded that in Spas, while the mosque was being built on the site of the old Catholic Church ruins, three small church bells were found, and they came into the possession of the inhabitants of Fan, who bought them with the financial help of the Propaganda Fide.[5] This is also supported by a 1939 work by Dom Nikollë Kimza, parish priest of the village of Kalivarë in Mirditë, who records that in Spas, around 170 years earlier, a church bell dating to 1436 and weighing about 100 kg had been sold to the village of Kalivarë.[2]
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Albania