Marin Barleti (, ; – ) was a historian and Catholic priest from Shkodër who was a humanist. He is considered the first Albanian historian because of his 1504 eyewitness account of the 1478 siege of Shkodra. Barleti is better known for his second work, a biography on Skanderbeg, translated into many languages in the 16th to the 20th centuries. Life Barleti was born and raised in Scutari (modern Shkodra, Albania), then part of the Republic of Venice. Although there is no debate whether Barleti was a native Shkodran or an Albanian in a geographical sense, scholars variously assert that he was of Italian (DuCange, Iorga), Dalmatian (Giovio, Czwittinger, Fabricius), or Albanian (Zeno, Fallmerayer, Jireček) ethnic origin. In his works Barleti repeatedly calls himself Shkodran (), and then equates being Shkodran with being Epirote, a term used by early Albanian language authors as an equivalent form of the ethnonym "Albanian". In 1474, the Ottoman Empire besieged Shkodra and Barleti participated in the successful defense of the town, both in the first siege in 1474 and the second in 1478. When Shkodra finally fell to the Ottomans in 1479, Barleti escaped to Italy where he would become a scholar of history, classical literature and the Latin language. Soon after Barleti arrived in Venice, he was given a stall at the Rialto meat market as a temporary means of financial aid. In 1494 became a priest after his theological studies in Venice and Padova, and soon was appointed to serve at St. Stephen's Church in Piovene. Works The Siege of Shkodra Barleti's first work was The Siege of Shkodra (, Venice, 1504). It was published several times in Latin and translated into Italian, Polish, French, Albanian, and English. Barleti wrote this work as an eyewitness. Of this work, acclaimed Albanian author Ismail Kadare wrote that "if one were to search for a literary creation wholly worthy of the expression 'monumental work,' it would be hard to find a better example than The Siege of Shkodra." The History of Scanderbeg Barleti's second and largest work was The history of the life and deeds of Scanderbeg, the Prince of Epirus, () was published in 1504 in Venice, and later in Rome between 1508 and 1510; (2nd ed.: Strasbourg, 1537; 3rd ed.: Frankfurt am Main, 1578; 4th ed.: Zagreb, 1743) and translated into German (1533), Italian (1554), Portuguese (1567), Polish (1569), French (1576), Spanish (1588),