1810-1876 - Early Nineteenth Century
In the course of the nineteenth century the Serbs, the Greeks, the Rumans, and the Bulgars, that is, all the subject nationalities of the Ottomans in Balkania, had in turn revolted against the sultan, but not the Albanians. That was partly due to the fact that they were not to the same degree ground under the heel of the Turk, who, unable to exercise effective rule in the difficult western mountains, had, generally speaking, agreed to leave the Albanians to themselves in exchange for formal submission. As a result their ancient organization into tribes or clans and their cherished customs were hardly affected by the centuries of Turkish overlordship, and in the midst of a progressive Europe they presented the picture of an unchanging primitive society.
In this petrified condition lay a further explanation of their failure to rise against their masters. In order to join the modern procession the Albanians would indispensably have first to acquire something of the modern mentality. However, shut off from the world by the barrier of their mountains and prompted to an educative intercourse, even among themselves, by neither commerce nor highways nor railroads, they were not subjected to influences calculated to introduce them to a new outlook on life.
Ali Pasha (1741-1822), the Lion of Janina, was born to a powerful clan from Tepelenë and spent much of his youth as a bandit. He rose to become governor of the Ottoman province of Rumelia, which included Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, before establishing himself in Janina. Like Kara Mahmud Bushati, Ali Pasha wanted to create an autonomous state under his rule. The dawn of the nineteenth century found Ali Pasha practically independent and flirting succes. When Ali Pasha forged links with the Greek revolutionaries, Sultan Mahmud II decided to destroy him. The sultan first discharged the Albanian from his official posts and recalled him to Constantinople. Ali Pasha refused and put up a formidable resistance that Britain's Lord Byron immortalized in poems and letters.
At the close of the Napoleonic wars and on the termination of the Russo-Turkish conflicts, the Sultan resolved to get rid of Ali Pasha. In 1820, an imperial firman declared Ali an enemy of the Empire and of the Mohammedan religion. Two Turkish armies invaded Albania, and, after two years of siege in his fortresses of Janina, in January 1822 Ali Pasha was taken by ruse and beheaded immediately. Ottoman agents, having assassinated Ali Pasha, sent his head , with those of his three sons and his grandson, was despatched to Constantinople and exhibited in the outer court of the Sarai.
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