The Albanians of Kosovo (, ), also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovar/Kosovan Albanians or occasionally "Kosovars/Kosovans", constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians belong to the ethnic Albanian sub-group of Ghegs, who inhabit the north of Albania, north of the Shkumbin river, Kosovo, southern Serbia, and western parts of North Macedonia. They speak Gheg Albanian, more specifically the Northwestern and Northeastern Gheg variants. According to the 1991 Yugoslav census, boycotted by Albanians, there were 1,596,072 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or 81.6% of population. By the estimation in the year 2000, there were between 1,584,000 and 1,733,600 Albanians in Kosovo or 88% of population; as of 2011, their population share is 92.93%. History Pre-7th century Toponymical evidence suggests that Albanian was spoken in western and eastern Kosovo and the Niš region before the Migration Period. In this era, Albanian in Kosovo was in linguistic contact with Eastern Romance which was presumably spoken in contemporary eastern Serbia and Macedonia. Middle Ages Between 1246 and 1255, Stefan Uroš I had reported Albanian toponyms in the Drenica valley. A chrisobull of the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dušan that was given to the Monastery of Saint Mihail and Gavril in Prizren between the years of 1348-1353 states the presence of Albanians in the Plains of Dukagjin, the vicinity of Prizren and in the villages of Drenica. In the 14th century in two chrysobulls or decrees by Serbian rulers, villages of Albanians alongside Vlachs are cited in the first as being between the White Drin and Lim rivers (1330), and in the second (1348) a total of nine Albanian villages are cited within the vicinity of Prizren. Toponyms such as Arbanaška and Đjake shows an Albanian presence in the Toplica and Southern Morava regions (located north-east of contemporary Kosovo) since the Late Middle Ages. Significant clusters of Albanian populations also lived in Kosovo especially in the west and centre before and after the Habsburg invasion of 1689–1690, while in Eastern Kosovo they were a small minority. Due to the Ottoman-Habsburg wars and their aftermath, Albanians from contemporary northern Albania and Western Kosovo settled in wider Kosovo and the Toplica and Morava regions in the second half of the 18th century, at times instigated by Ottoman authorities. Causes for the Albanian emigration would be the benefits Muslim Albanians received in Kosovo, in contrast to Christian Serbs who left Kosovo to settle further north in Hungary. Some