Oral traditions and fragmentary stories were collected and interpreted by writers who travelled in the region in the 19th century about the early history of Krasniqi.
Johann Georg von Hahn recorded the first oral tradition about Krasniqi's origins from a Catholic priest named Gabriel in Shkodra in 1850. According to this account, the first direct male ancestor of the Krasniqi was
Kastër Keqi, son of a Catholic Albanian named
Keq who fleeing from Ottoman conquest settled in the Slavic-speaking area that would become the historical
Piperi tribal region in what is now Montenegro. His sons, the brothers
Lazër Keqi (ancestor of
Hoti,
Ban Keqi (ancestor of
Triepshi),
Merkota Keqi (ancestor of
Mrkojevići) and
Vas Keqi (ancestor of
Vasojevići) had to abandon the village after committing murder against the locals, but
Keq and his younger son
Piper Keqi remained there and
Piper Keqi became the direct ancestor of the Piperi tribe. The name of the first ancestor,
Keq, which means
bad in Albanian, is given in
Malësia to only children or to children from families with very few children (due to infant mortality). In those families, an "ugly" name (
i çudun) was given as a spoken talisman to protect the child from the "
evil eye. The name
Kastër has also been recorded as
Krasno,
Kras or
Krasto.
Edith Durham recorded a similar story from Marash Uci, elder of
Hoti. According the story, the ancestors of the Krasniqi are said to have stemmed from
Bosnia and migrated through Montenegro to the area of
Reç, north of
Shkodra. Then, sometime after 1600, they moved inland to the area of Dushaj i Epërm, east of
Fierza, in what is broadly their present region. Here they took over land that had been settled by the
Gashi and gradually drove the latter tribe eastwards. In the process of establishing themselves as a tribal unit, they also drove the
Thaçi westwards across the
Drin River. The reference to
Bosnia might actually refer to the region of
Plav (eastern Montenegro), where the mountains of Hoti (
malet e Hotit) are located. The name
Kastër and its variants correspond to a settlement that appears in the Decani chrysobulls of 1330 as
Krastavljane and in the defter of the
sanjak of Scutari in 1485 as
Hrasto. This toponym's etymology probably comes from the Slavic word
hrasto (oak). It had ten households and its head household was that of
Petri, son of Gjonima. One of the household heads,
Nika Gjergj Bushati was related to the
Bushati fis. Villages that later were part of Krasniqi that appear in the defter of 1485 are Shoshan (20 households) and Dragobia (six households). == Genetics ==