Shalës

Shalës is a village and a former municipality in the Elbasan County, central Albania. At the 2015 local government reform it became a subdivision of the municipality Cërrik. The population at the 2011 census was 3,842. The municipal unit consists of the villages Shalës, Licaj, Kurtalli, Xibrake, Xherie and Kodras.

Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering or bedding less than one centimeter in thickness, called fissility.  Mudstones, on the other hand, are similar in composition but do not show the fissility.