The semi-autonomous coastal enclave of Himara had long been a source of trouble. They were steadfast old allies of the Suliotes and both sought refuge in each other’s territories. With their close links to Italy, the Himariotes had a long history of resisting Ottoman occupation and professional soldiering, their young men finding employment in the rival armies of Venice and the Kingdom of Naples. The Venetians had their own Reggimento Cimarrioto which they had deployed in their wars in the Morea and used to garrison their Ionian possessions but with their decline the Himariotes were used on a more irregular basis. Good relations with Venice who controlled the straits was vital to their shipping and a boost to their income in times of privation and their collaboration had helped the Venetians maintain forts along the coast. The Russians too recruited sailors for their navy from the area and like the Suliotes, the Himariotes had supported the Russians in the failed Orlov Revolt. The Porte saw Himara as a weak link in its defences and, as nominal subjects of the Sultan, owing taxes and military service, their actions were highly questionable. As governor of Delvino, Ali could claim jurisdiction and in 1785 he moved against them. Rather than the open conflict with the Porte pursued by his rival pasha in Scutari who was courting the Austrians, Ali could subdue the Himariotes on behalf of the Sultan, strike a blow against Venice and consolidate his own power at the same time. Despite little assistance from their friends Russia and Venice, they even approached Austria for help, Himara held out. Ali had other matters on his mind.
His first attempt to rule in Ioannina had been a failure. He had made enemies of both the Greeks and the Turks and protestations were sent to the Porte. After his refusal to give up the post, he was ousted in favour of a resurgent Kurt Pasha. Before he could make any attempt to retake Ioannina, he was then called on to fulfil his duties to the Sultan. The alternative expansionist policies of Kara Mahmud Pasha of Scutari were trying the patience of the Porte. While Ali had been busy in Himara, Kara had been invading Montenegro in the hope of creating an independent state with the blessing of Austria and Russia. During the following campaign Ali may have acquitted himself well, but the general outcome was not a great success. The Alipashiad credits Ali with capturing the important town of Ochrid in Macedonia, taking 2,000 prisoners and sending 1,000 heads to Constantinople, much to the pleasure of the Sultan. Despite the poem’s attempt to make Ali the hero of the hour who brings Mahmud to heel, Mahmud had managed to sow discord amongst his enemies, including defections from Ali’s Albanians, forcing an accommodation with the Porte. There is a suggestion that these defections were due to a lack of commitment on Ali’s part, but he showed enough loyalty to the Sultan against his insurrectionist rivals to enhance his position within the Porte. From the government’s point of view at least it was useful to pit overreaching regional leaders against one another in the hope that they would be mutually weakened.
Ali was soon called away again to support the Turkish war effort led by the Grand Vizier Koca Yusuf Pasha after resumption of hostilities along the Danube. It was during this war with Russia and Austria (1787–1791) that he is said to have entered into secret correspondence with Prince Potemkin, by this time the ex-lover of Catherine the Great, promising his allegiance to Russia if Turkey lost the war. The story is that his favourite nephew Mahmud was taken prisoner by the Russians and during the negotiations for his release, Ali and Potemkin discussed matters to their mutual advantage. Ali was fully aware of Catherine’s intentions regarding Greece and the revival of the Byzantine Empire. Under Potemkin’s influence the first step was the creation of a new independent Orthodox princedom of ‘Dacia’ from the Ottomans’ Danubian provinces with Potemkin as Prince. They exchanged gifts, and a regular correspondence between them was commenced, from which Ali entertained strong hopes of being acknowledged sovereign of Epirus once his friend had taken Constantinople and installed Catherine’s grandson Constantine as Emperor. Richard Davenport claimed in his Life of Ali Pasha (1836) to have seen a watch ‘set in diamonds’ that Potemkin gave to Ali as a show of his ‘esteem for his bravery and talents’. Despite the Russian success Potemkin’s relations with Catherine had soured. Hughes asserts that this correspondence, along with other contacts that Potemkin had with Greek and Turkish chieftains, became known to Catherine and probably brought about his death, presumably alluding to the rumour that he had been poisoned at Jassy during the peace negotiations. For Ali, campaigns like these would have been a learning experience where he witnessed first-hand the discipline of the janissaries and the European troops on a large scale. Although the war did not go well for Turkey, they lost the Crimea to Russia, personally for Ali it was another step forward. Rather than the trail of bloody murders that Pouqueville delights in to account for his promotion, including that of the treacherous Selim Bey Kokka of Delvino whom he supposedly stabbed with his own hand on the orders of the Porte, it was as a reward for his services in war that he was awarded the pashalik of Trikkala in Thessaly.
Fig. 24: The Turkish Army advances on Sofia in Bulgaria in 1788, by Lucas Hochenleitter.
In the meantime Kurt Pasha had died. Kurt was succeeded in Berat by his ally, Ibrahim Pasha, who would continue the rivalry with Ali for control of central Albania. Despite this there was a power vacuum left on Kurt’s death and the Porte, as usual accepting the reality on the ground, gave back to Ali control of Ioannina, to the displeasure of some of the inhabitants who fled the city for the remote areas. Threatened by Ali’s surrounding of the city in a show of strength with forces raised from his new domains in Thessaly and a fake document of authority from the Sultan, the colourful account has it that the inhabitants of Ioannina were hoodwinked into letting him in before the Porte could do anything about it. Other traditions suggest that Ali had garnered enough support from the notable families of Ioannina and the important surrounding villages willing to petition the Sultan for his appointment. For instance, through their commercial activities the wealthy families of Kapesovo in Zagori had connections in Constantinople and by cultivating such alliances Ali was able to create a network with links to the capital. The Alipashiad makes much of Ali’s connection with Zagori, suggesting it was part of his inheritance bequeathed by his father. Most accounts of Ali attribute him with influence in high places at the capital and a willingness to use bribery as well as persuasion to achieve his ends, and Hughes credits his advancement to more than a little financial coercion through his friends. That some of the inhabitants would welcome Ali as a liberator was due to the state of near anarchy that prevailed within the town walls, with feuding families taking potshots at one another from the windows of their fortified houses; a situation of lawlessness reminiscent of that between Montagues and Capulets in fourteenth century Verona. Hughes’ theory was that his petitions failed, so acting before news could arrive he inveigled his way in before any action could be taken. Ali’s own court archives give the earliest known reference to him as ‘pasha of Giannena’ as 15 March 1788, a date probably close enough to his seizure of power, a moment that made him the de facto autonomous ruler of the area for the next thirty-four years. The formal recognition of Ali’s position by Abdul Hamid was one of the last acts of his reign; a post confirmed by Selim III on his succession.
Fig. 25: Ioannina (1820) by Charles Robert Cockerell.
Once installed Ali made sure of his situation by looking after the right people, courting those who needed his favours and recompensing his supporters with positions and rewards. The pashalik of Ioannina was followed by his appointment to the long coveted post of dervendji-pasha with the responsibility of keeping communication with the Porte open. With these formal titles to back up his authority it was now time to consolidate his power within Epirus by other means. Like his mother before him, Ali realized that advantage could be attained and sustained through alliances cemented by marriage and with Ibrahim installed in Berat, this was a good moment to shore up his north-eastern flank while he dealt with matters in southern Epirus. The marriages of his sons, like his own, would be made for
strategic advantage. Hughes tells us that Mukhtar and Veli and his nephew Mahmud Bey were duly married to daughters of Ibrahim Pasha of Berat and Avlona, who having previously shunned his advances, was now obliged to acquiesce; this is independently confirmed by Ismail Kemal Bey, Ibrahim’s great-nephew. Ali’s sister, Shainitza, likewise was a commodity and she was married off to Suleyman of Argyrocastro, the town Ali had long had his eyes on. Suleyman’s family came from nearby Libokovo in the Zagori region, where Ali built a fortified seraglio as his sister’s dowry. According to Leake she had been married previously to Suleyman’s brother Ali, but he had died, or was murdered by his brother with Ali Pasha’s connivance. Shainitza’s son Adem became governor of Libokovo and her daughter by her first husband was in turn married to Veli Bey of Klisura. With Ioaninna and his network of alliances in place, he could now turn to the vexing problems to the south and the coast, where Venetian authority had undermined the efforts of previous governors.
1 Modern Greek kalaboki, a general term for maize or dhurra (Egyptian corn).
2 Aga: an honorific title for a civilian or military officer or elder.
3. Modern Bursa in north-west Anatolia, the Ottoman capital before Erdine.
4. Bey: title of nobility.
5. A Sufi order of Islam from central Anatolia, also known as ‘Whirling Dervishes’.
6. Today in Greece near the Albanian border.
Chapter 4
Ali Pasha’s Life: The Fall
Ali’s early life gives no indication that he was seeking kingly power at the outset. With hindsight the chroniclers played up or invented moments of good fortune to mark out Ali as a fated man and rather like Macbeth and the witches, the idea of ascending to the ‘throne’ was nurtured by mystics and fortune-tellers. In the same manner, much is made of him cynically removing rivals one by one by murder and intrigue. If Ali had a moment when it became clear the path was opening for him to be more than a provincial ruler it was with the acquisition of the pashalik of Ioannina and the control of the mountain passes. His fortunes were enhanced by the fact that he achieved this at a time when there was a momentous shift in the international political situation that put Epirus at the centre of diplomatic intrigue. The likelihood is that Ali, like any opportunist, took each step as it came, taking advantage of the new realities to play one party off against another and as his power increased his ambition merely increased with it until the realization dawned that he could carve out a little empire for himself, chipping away a bit at a time without directly threatening the Sultan. A priority was the neutralization of the various disruptive factions competing with one another, the klephts, the armatoli, the Albanian beys and agas, the Christian notables, so as to bring the whole region under a centralized government system. He could achieve this with the apparent blessing of the Sultan on the pretext that he was weakening the arbitrary actions of the armatoli and the ayans (powerful Muslim landowners) that caused distress amongst the peasant population. Ali was the master of utilizing petty rivalries and the art of divide and rule. Under the cloak of bringing justice to all he could attack the rich and powerful, earning a reputation amongst the poor farmers of being, in Finlay’s words, ‘a hard man but a just pasha’ while lining his own pockets. Rather than the random acts of previous Muslims defending the Empire he would be systematic and justified, seen as doing his duty as the Sultan’s vassal.
An extreme example of Ali’s ruthless opportunism and exploitation of a situation was how he dealt with Moscopole in modern Albania, a once wealthy mountain city near Konitza. Said to be the largest town in the Balkans, it was a leading Aromanian (Vlach) and Greek intellectual centre, well endowed with schools, a hospital, an orphanage and numerous churches. It was such an important centre of culture that it possessed the first printing press in the region outside Constantinople from which progressive, and to the authorities dangerous, ideas were disseminated. When the inhabitants learnt of the Russian intention to aid a Greek uprising in the Morea they made the mistake of letting their support for the Orlov Revolt be known, and in consequence they were raided by Albanian irregulars in 1769. After a series of attacks at the hands of brigands, the town was already in a reduced state when Ali delivered the coup de grâce in 1788. Given their past sympathies and with Turkey at war with Russia it was perhaps a convenient time to deliver such a destructive blow to the town that it could never regain its former position. Referred to as Bossigrad in many of the sources, the reason for Ali’s attack, carried out with his usual trickery and with the aid of the armatoli, Palaiopoulos and Kanavos, was that he was ridding the passes of bandits. Kir Petros, a native of Konitza, informed Leake that Moscopole and Konitza previously contained 5,000 to 6,000 houses, but after the ‘tyranny of the pashas’ they were reduced to 800. Petros, who worked in the service of Ali, put much of the present distress of the local Christian population down to the avarice of the Bishop of Ioannina. Whether this was a factor or not, with their town destroyed the population of Moscopole moved elsewhere, many of the elite fleeing to Thessaly and Macedonia, or even further afield to Vienna, Budapest and on to Transylvania where they were influential in awakening the national consciousness of the Romanians. Berat and Konitza were the main beneficiaries from Moscopole’s commercial collapse. The presence of many disposed artisans and merchants from Epirus in towns out of Ali’s reach indicates that these actions were part of a policy to ruin economic rivals in order to enrich his capital at Ioannina. One beneficiary was Monastir, along with its neighbouring villages. Monastir was enriched to such an extent by fleeing Christian Aromanian craftsmen and tradesmen that it would eventually supersede Ioannina as the regional centre after Ali’s fall.
Fig. 26: Ioannina and Corfu.
The pashalik of Ioannina included Thesprotia, which was home to the semi-autonomous Muslim Tsamides and the Christian Suliotes, a situation Ali would not be prepared to endure. Theoretically the Suliotes paid their dues to an official based in Ioannina, the spahi, at this time Bekir Bey. Leake tells us that Ali wanted to take this directly into his own hands, and when Bekir refused he was promptly put in prison. Up till then the Suliotes had been dutiful subjects paying their taxes. This seems rather at odds with the fact that various pashas and armies had made several attempts to subdue them over the course of the century and they were renowned terrorizers of the surrounding villages. Their recourse to armed resistance appears something of a chicken and egg situation, Leake apologizing for their behaviour as their only recourse to Turkish intimidation. To shore up their position the Suliotes had formed a confederacy that dominated a large number of neighbouring villages. Only thirty miles south-west of Ali’s capital at Ioannina Suli posed a constant threat, because within its romantic and precipitous mountain stronghold it was so remote that even in the Second World War the British were able to set up an airbase there from where they could operate virtually undisturbed by the Germans. With a population of no more than 450 families divided into 19 clans, it could muster a fighting force of 1,500 men. With Turkey engaged in its war against Russia and Austria on the Danubian border their lawless activities, which were again causing disquiet amongst the locals, were more than an irritant. A diplomatic success scored by Russia in the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji (1774) that concluded the previous war was the acknowledgement by the Ottomans of Catherine as protector of the Orthodox Christians within the Empire. This gave her an excuse to interfere over the border with her agents fanning the flame of discontent. Once again she invited the Greeks to throw in their lot with Russia in order to divert Turkish forces. This time her pleas fell largely on deaf ears; the Peloponnesians were no longer enthusiastic, still suffering as they were from the reprisals of the Albanian irregulars for their part in the Orlov rebellion.
The ever-eager Suliotes were another matter and they responded positively to Catherine, thus providing Ali with an ideal opportunity, to move against them as a loyal supporter of the Sultan. Contemporary accounts also implicate Ibrahim Pasha and his allies in inciting the Suliotes ag
ainst Ali; but the fact that, in March of 1789, the chieftains of Suli wrote to Louitzis Sotiris, the primate of Vostitsa (modern Aigio) in the Morea and a Russian agent, declaring that they had gathered 2,200 men ready to take up arms against Ali as the Sultan’s representative in Epirus, confirms Russian involvement. Forewarned of the Suliotes’ intentions Ali immediately mobilized his forces. He attacked Suli with his old allies the Tsapari family and the agas of Paramythia and a force of 3,000 men. Luckily for Ali, the Russians having encouraged them once again their support fleet failed to materialize. Ali’s first assault was beaten back with considerable losses, and spurred on by their success, the Suliotes turned rogue and joined forces with klephtic bands from the Pindus, ravaging both Greek and Albanian villages in Acanarnia as far as Arta and up to loannina itself. The failure of the Russians scuppered any plan of the Suliotes joining forces with the sea captain Lambro Kanzani (Lambros Katzonis) who was fighting with the Russian navy in the Aegean. They were said, however, to have supplied men to Kanzani when he, having also been abandoned by the Russians, turned pirate and began harrying Turkish shipping. Kanzani, who dined with Byron in Constantinople in 1809, achieved further fame by making an appearance in Don Juan and The Bride of Abydos.
Fig. 27: Map of Suli by William M Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, Vol. 1 (1835).
The actions of the Suliotes had lost them friends amongst the armatoli, and if Ibrahim was involved he may have had a change of heart, the arrangements for Veli’s marriage to one of his daughters have been put to around 1792. Having failed in his direct assault on Suli, Ali turned to another tactic, guile, and an art with which he would be popularly associated. In the klephtic song known as ‘Katsoudas’, his ruse to capture an adversary is to dupe him with an offer of friendship. Katsoudas is invited to Ioannina to join Ali’s service. At first Katsoudas is warmly entertained by Ali, inducing him to lower his guard, confess his misdemeanours and hand over his booty; then as he bows his head in submission in comes the executioner and ‘off went his head’. This reputation for double-dealing and deception became a major component of the various versions of Ali’s dealings with the Suliotes. Their fame for uncompromising resistance and Ali’s attempts to crush them ensured that their confrontations would take on mythical proportions almost from the outset. All the chroniclers dwell on the same details. In 1792 Ali was mustering an army said to have numbered up to 10,000 men to attack Argyrocastro in response to the town’s lack of enthusiasm in accepting his imposition of a Bey. This was apparently merely an elaborate feint to lure the Suliotes out from their mountain stronghold. Ali wrote in Greek to the Suliote captains Georgios Botsaris and Lambros Tzavelas asking for their assistance. Several translations of the letter are given in the accounts; the one quoted below was made by Sir William Eton from a copy given to him by a dragoman who was in Ioannina at the time:
Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina Page 11
