Ali Paşa Tepelenë

Albanian ruler under the Ottoman Empire

• Born: c. 1744
• Birthplace: Tepelenë, Ottoman Empire (now in Albania)
• Died: February 15, 1822
• Place of death: Janina, Ottoman Empire (now Ioánnina, Greece)

Ali Paşa Tepelenë’s Albanian revolt against the Ottoman Empire helped set off the Greek War of Independence, and he himself achieved literary fame in Lord Byron’s epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Early Life

The year in which Ali Paşa Tepelenë (AH-lee pah-SHAH teh-peh-leh-NEE) was born is uncertain but historians estimate it to have been between 1740 and 1750. His father, Veli, the governor (bey) of Tepelenë, a town in southern Albania and a province of the Ottoman Empire, was murdered when Ali was fourteen years old. With his mother, Khamco, the young Ali was forced to flee into the mountains, where he and his mother formed a bandit group that roamed the countryside. Intent on restoring the political prestige and fortunes of the family, young Ali became notorious as the band’s leader. After providing military support to the provincial governor, or pasha, of Negroponte (Euboea), he married the daughter of the pasha of Delvino in 1768. His next step up the ladder included his service to the pasha of Rumelia.

While continuing to enrich himself, Ali kept the roads of his region free of other bandits. His many gifts to the Ottoman government in Constantinople gained favored attention with the ruling Turkish government, and in 1787, the Turks rewarded him by making him provincial governor (pasha) over the territory of Trikkala. As an Ottoman representative, Ali gained even more attention and governmental merit when he defeated the rebellious governor at Scutari, Albania. During the following year, through murder and intrigue, he took control of Janina (also known as Yannina and Ioánnina) in what is now northern Greece.

Life’s Work

In his attempt to create the largest province, or pashalik, within the Ottoman Empire, Ali came to be known as the ruthless and infinitely clever Muslim “Arslan” or “Lion” of Janina. However, he eventually became dissatisfied with being merely another provincial governor at a time when the Ottoman Empire was declining. His new ambition was to rule all of Albania and northern Greece. Through mass deception and continued acts of murder, he brutally extended his power. Eventually, he ruled a region that included much of Albania, Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly, and the Morea.

As his power and territories expanded, Ali Paşa placed his son Veli in Trikkala and later the Morea, and made another son, Mukhtar, the pasha of Lepanto. All this time, through continued murder and extortion, he expanded his authority and increased his wealth until he ruled most of Greece. In 1803, Ali Paşa got control of the Gulf of Arta; the ports of Butrinto, Preveza, and Vonitsa; and the provinces of Elbasan, Delvino, Berat, and Valona (Vlore).

As Ali’s power increased, his attention to the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople diminished. Although he was officially the imperial viceroy of Rumelia, he failed to carry out orders and attempted instead to appease Sultan Mahmud II with extravagant gifts. Eventually, he set himself up as an independent sovereign and courted the sultan’s enemies, the British and French, in an effort to establish a profitable seaport in Janina. Ever self-serving, he also tried to manipulate diplomatic relations among Great Britain’s Lord Nelson, the Russian czar, and even Napoleon I in France.

The European rulers realized the strategic position of Ali’s dominions in the eastern Adriatic. Foreign governments trained Ali Paşa’s troops and favored him with gifts of modern artillery. In 1814, Ali declared war on the French, as Napoleon’s power was fading, and entered into an alliance with Great Britain. Meanwhile, Ali Paşa’s reputation as both a despot and a romanticized “Oriental” sovereign grew throughout Europe. Indeed, during the early nineteenth century, Ali Paşa lived vividly in the European imagination. His harem contained more than six hundred women.

In 1809, Lord Byron, who called Ali Paşa the “Muslim Bonaparte,” traveled with John Cam Hobhouse to Janina in Greece and then to Ali Paşa’s birthplace in the remote and mountainous Tepelenë, Albania. At that time, Janina was considered the center of Greek culture. Although Ali himself was illiterate, he made an attempt at erudition by founding many Greek schools. A Romantic poet, Byron wrote of his travel experience in his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1816), which describes Ali at once as both a gracious, brave, and learned man and a despot capable of “most horrible cruelties.”

Ali Paşa, who stood at only five feet, five inches, thought nothing of murder as a means of eliminating his enemies. Hobhouse described arriving at Janina, where he and his traveling companions spied the dismembered body of a Greek bandit who had been tortured to death on Ali’s command. In 1812, Ali Paşa came to believe that through alchemy he could find immortality; to achieve that goal, he bought a laboratory and hired scientists to staff it. Five years later, when it became clear that the scientists had achieved nothing, he hanged them.

Ali Paşa went to extremes in his seizures of territory. Before long, his enemies, especially those rival feudal lords who had lost land to him, appealed to Sultan Mahmud in Constantinople to remove Ali from power. Continually exasperated by Ali’s repeated attempts to achieve independence, the sultan stripped him of his titles in 1820 and declared him an enemy of the Ottoman Empire. A Turkish army of 20,000 men then attacked Janina. Afterward, Ali Paşa’s allies and even his sons abandoned him. He was promised a pardon if he would surrender, but while he was waiting for the pardon, he was killed in February, 1822, by a Turkish spy. His assassin decapitated him and placed his head on a silver tray for all to view. After three days, his head was sent to Constantinople, where it was put on public display so that Sultan Mahmud and the people of Constantinople could see that their old enemy was indeed finally dead.

Significance

Some historians argue about whether Ali Paşa’s death was a decisive precursor to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. All agree, however, that he played a significant role in bringing about the war. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Greeks had merely survived as a people. During the eighteenth century, especially in the light of the siege of Vienna in 1683, hope emerged that the Greeks might actually succeed in revolting against the Ottoman Empire. By 1819, Sultan Mahmud II attempted to centralize the government of his declining empire. In both European and Asiatic Turkey, provincial pashas appropriated the authority of the sultan. Knowing full well that the Ottoman Empire was no longer indomitable, Ali Paşa supported the Greek struggle for liberation from Turkish rule by encouraging the uprising of the Greek nationalists.

Throughout most of Ali Paşa’s career, the Turkish sultan allowed him great autonomy because he relied on his services. However, in 1820, after Ali ordered the assassination of an enemy in Constantinople, the sultan sent Turkish troops to Janina to remove Ali from power. Ali’s refusal to comply kept Turkish troops engaged while they were needed against the Greeks, who had begun their fight for independence. Ali Paşa’s actions thus split the military and artillery power of the Turks and enabled the Greeks to win their war of independence—in which, incidentally, Ali’s old friend Lord Byron lost his life in 1826. Meanwhile, Ali Paşa won lasting literary fame in Byron’s epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Bibliography

Christowe, Stoyan. The Lion of Yanina: A Narrative Based on the Life of Ali Pasha, Despot of Epirus. London: Modern Age Books, 1941. Comprehensive biography detailing the legendary life of Ali Paşa Tepelenë.

Fleming, K. E. The Muslim Bonaparte. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Scholarly work addressing how modern Greece, in the context of European history, came under a surrogate form of colonial control—in which Greek history and culture became colonized.

McGann, Jerome J. Lord Byron: The Major Works. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2000. Includes Byron’s 1816 Romantic epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which portrays Ali Paşa as an enlightened despot.

Marmullaku, Ramadan. Albania and the Albanians. London: C. Hurst, 1975. Discusses the roles of Ali Paşa Tepelenë and the Albanian people in overcoming the Ottoman Empire after hundreds of years of subjection.

Roesse, David E. In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in English and American Literature from 1770 to 1967. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001. Discusses the beginnings of the Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule and includes the important role of Ali Paşa Tepelenë in its successful outcome.