Охрид көлінің жағасындағы Struga қаласының тарихы мен этимологиясы

Struga ( ; ) is a town and popular tourist destination situated in the south western region of North Macedonia, lying on the shore of Lake Ohrid. The town of Struga is the seat of Struga Municipality.

The name Struga was first mentioned in the 11th century. It is of Slavic origin. and means a "river bed". The ancient name of the city is Enchalon (Εγχαλών), the ancient Greek word for eel, which may be related to the Illyrian Enchele tribe that was known to live in the region. According to E. Hamp, a connection with Albanian ’ngjalë’ makes it possible that the name Enchele was derived from the Illyrian term for eels, which may have been anciently related to Greek and simply adjusted to the Greek pronunciation. In Polybius the word 'Enchele' is written with a voiceless aspirate kh, Enchelanes, while in Mnaseas it was replaced with a voiced ng, Engelanes, the latter being a typical feature of the Ancient Macedonian and northern Paleo Balkan languages.

In ancient times, the Lake Ohrid region, including Enchalon (ancient name of modern Struga) was inhabited by the Illyrian Enchele and Dassareti tribes. The Via Egnatia ran through the Lake Ohrid region, and is believed to have passed west of Enchalon. Etymologist Qemal Murati believes that the name Strugë a was first used as the name of a village; this name was used in a document of Tsar Dusan in the 14th century in the form of Struga. Later, in the 16th 17th centuries, the Codex of Slepçan, the name 'Strugi' was used. In the 16th century the city was visited by the Venetian Ambassador Lorenzo Bernardo who described it as a city in Bulgaria which was more akin to a small village. He describes the town as an important destination for wheat shipments and a town with fertile plains and valleys, and he speaks highly of the local eel and trout. Struga was visited by Henry Fanshawe Tozer in his travels in the Ottoman Empire, who spoke highly of the region and the Ohrid Lake which he compared to Italian lakes and to Biblical sites such as the Sea of Galilee, he considered Struga to be a head quarters of fishery in European Turkey and that the fishery in Struga was property of the Ottoman Sultan who sublet it to locals for a large sum, he spoke highly of the endemic Ohrid trout. According to him the marshes in the region were turned into a habitable region by the Samuel of Bulgaria at the time when he made the city of Ohrid Bulgarian capital. He visited a large local Bulgarian school and mentioned the admiration that the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena had for the hundred of channels, embankments and watercourses in the city. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Struga was part of the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. Struga is the home city of the Miladinov brothers poets who played a crucial part in the Bulgarian national revival and in whose honor the Struga Poetry Evenings are held in the city. Struga was also the birthplace for a number of IMARO revolutionaries such as Hristo Matov. Struga was the birthplace in 1865 Ibrahim Temo, who would go on to be a doctor and one of the founders of the Ottoman reform movement known as the Committee of Union and Progress. Struga was part of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia since 1945 as part of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia until the 1991 Macedonian independence referendum when Macedonia peacefully seceded from the federation.

Struga is located in an open valley on Lake Ohrid. The Black Drin river (Crn Drim) starts at the lake and divides the city.