Ali Pasha, Lion of Ioannina

by Eugenia Russell

  Slaves in Ottoman society could reach positions of high status and similarly a number of Ali’s slaves and members of his harem went on to prosper. Odysseus Androutsos, who later would become a prominent figure in the Greek War of Independence, was taken and brought up in Ali’s seraglio from a baby, becoming, at the age of 12, Ali’s favourite pipe-bearer. Born in Preveza, he was the son of a brigand leader who had spent years fighting Ali until, during the conflicts of 1789, his father was betrayed by the Venetian authorities. As Odysseus grew his exploits became notable enough to be celebrated by the balladeers; he was said to be able to divine water amongst the rocks and leap over the backs of seven horses. In a piece of typical bravado he pitted himself against Ali’s swiftest stallion. As George Waddington recounts it in his A Visit to Greece in 1823:

  Fig. 46: Ali Pasha and Kira Vassiliki (1848) by Paul Emile Jacobs.

  The race was to be performed on rising ground and the man to keep pace with the beast till the latter should fall down dead. In case of failure he was to forfeit his head to the indignation of his noble competitor. The Pasha accepted the challenge for his horse, as well as the condition proposed by the challenger, the execution of which he prepared to exact with great fidelity. The animals ran in his presence, - the biped was triumphant, and became from that moment the distinguished favourite of the master.

  As a prize Odysseus was given a bride chosen from the harem. Whether this is fable or not, when he was 18, he had become trustworthy enough for Ali to appoint him the armatolic of Livadia, a position his father had once held. Rather than play the rebel though, in the next twelve years he carved out his own virtual fiefdom in Boeotia, which he ruled in imitation of his master with the same brutal efficiency. In 1821 when Ali was losing his grip on power, Odysseus cannily slipped off to the Ionian Islands. When the Greeks rose up in revolt he was then in a position to see an opportunity like Ali before him, gather 5,000 of his old comrades and set himself up in his old stamping ground as virtual dictator of the whole area known as Eastern Greece, from Parnassos to Athens.

  Ali had a pragmatic attitude to captives. Captives were commodities and as such they could be expendable, used as bargaining tools or prove useful in some other capacity. Georgios Karaiskakis was born in a monastery near Arta, the son of an armatole and a nun, but soon he was running with the klephts of Antonis Katsantonis in the southern Pindus. He exhibited such daring and cunning that by the age of 15 he was leading his own band, much as Ali had done himself. Eventually, along with Katsantonis he was rounded up by Ali’s men and sent to prison in Ioannina, but unlike Katsantonis who underwent a brutal death, he survived. His strong character must have shone through for he made such an impression that he then rose up through the ranks in Ali’s service to become his bodyguard. This harmonious relationship was not to last. Karaiskakis fell out of favour and returned to the life of a klepht. When the Greek insurrection broke out he too joined the ranks of the revolutionaries. Unlike Odysseus he was content to fight for the cause, helping to lift the siege of Missolonghi and distinguishing himself in battle at Arachova and Distomo. He died trying to raise the Ottoman siege of Athens.

  This ‘meritocratic’ aspect of Ali’s rule was a mirror of life at Constantinople, where apologists for Ottoman rule point out that the Turks operated an open system of advancement. All the peoples of the Empire could reach the highest ranks if they progressed through the proscribed channels, the harem being one, conversion to Islam being another. Non-Muslims who were ‘people of the Book’, the Bible, in other words Christians or Jews, while being allowed to practise their religion were required to pay extra in taxation and were restricted in their activities and rights. Each religious group was organized as a separate entity (millet) within which it looked after its own affairs and disputes according to its own laws. In line with Ottoman practice Ali too tolerated Ioannina’s significant Jewish community and paid due respect to the Greek Orthodox priesthood which wielded considerable authority amongst its followers. In Constantinople, the Greeks from the Phanar district had overcome their disadvantages to such an extent that they became indispensable to the Ottoman government. One of the attributes of the Turks often admired by Westerners was their perceived nobility and disdain for commerce. On the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the urban Greek, Jewish and Armenian populations found that the most profitable course open to them was either as a merchant or a dragoman (an interpreter, official guide and often all-round fixer between the Turks and their non-Ottoman contacts); the obsequious Levantine of this type became a caricature much despised in the West. The Phanar Greeks gained such wealth and influence through commerce that they were able to maintain their own educated professional class. The Turks found they required their expertise and Phanariotes began to occupy vital diplomatic positions within the Empire, infiltrating the government hierarchy almost to the top. After a time it was customary for Greeks to hold the posts of grand dragoman (official interpreter of the Divan, the Grand Council) or grand dragoman of the fleet. Eventually they even became princes or hospodars of the semi-autonomous provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. The Turks’ dependence on their Greek administrators would come back to haunt them. An extreme example was the Mavrokordatos family who achieved considerable success in a number of posts but their descendants would go on to be influential in the creation of an independent Greece. Alexander Mavrokordatos was the grand dragoman responsible for drafting the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs. He was succeeded by his son Nicholas, who went on to be Hospodar of Moldavia and Wallachia, initiating a dynasty that lasted until another Alexander switched to the Greek cause. This Mavrokordatos became president of the first National Executive in 1823 and then prime minister of an independent Greece.

  By Ali’s time the use of Greeks in a clerical and professional capacity was common throughout the Empire, complementing their considerable influence at the capital. And as with the capital, so with Ali’s Ioannina, where Greeks occupied several layers within his own administration. But at the Porte there was a significant difference; the official language of the court and government was carried out in Turkish. In the Balkans, Turkish was spoken by most Muslims except in Bosnia, Albania and southern Greece, where the local languages thrived amidst a mixed population of Slavs, Albanians, Greeks and Vlachs. In true Ottoman style, Ali maintained his own bureaucracy, but the language of his court was Greek. Ioannina was situated in a largely Greek-speaking region and under the Ottomans Albanian was not officially recognized; it did not become a fully written language with its own alphabet until the mid-nineteenth century. How proficient Ali was in written Greek is open to debate, but he was bilingual in both languages. Despite the low levels of literacy in the Ottoman Empire, written Greek was well established, so it was logical for Ali to call on his literate Greek subjects to staff his administration.

  Ali retained four Greek secretaries to correspond with the various beys, agas, and governors of his provinces. Hughes, who was not sympathetic to what he perceived as the Greeks’ willingness to cooperate with Ali’s despotism, describes two of the secretaries, named Mantho and Costa, as ‘men of the most crafty and subtle disposition, the ready instruments of all the pasha’s schemes of vengeance and of power.’ The most trusted was Manthos Oikonomou from the Zagori village of Koukouli, who was Ali’s private secretary and advisor. Oikonomou was given responsibility for the negotiations with the British for the purchase of Parga between 1817 and 1819. Like many of his compatriots he was able to fulfil these duties while at the same time, unknown to Hughes, being a member of the Filiki Eteria. The visitors to Ali tell of numerous secretaries, but it was a broad description. John Coletti (Ioannis Kolettis) from Siraco, high up in the Pindus Mountains south of Ioannina, was the secretary who met Byron and Hobhouse. Typical of many educated Greeks he spoke a number of languages: German, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, and Turkish. His birthplace may have been remote but according to Pouqueville and Leake it supplied capes for Napoleon’s armies
and also possessed a library where European newspapers could be found. Coletti or Kolettis, in fact a Hellenised Vlach, had studied medicine in Pisa in Italy, where he had come into contact with the Italian freedom fighters, the Carbonari. Kolettis was no ordinary secretary then, and on his return to Greece he served both Ali and Mukhtar as their personal physician, all the while pursuing his nationalist sympathies in the Filiki Eteria. Like Mavrokordatos, he would play his part in the Greek War of Independence, becoming a leading member of the initial independent administration and the first prime minister of the Greek State.

  Leake tells us that Ali’s less cultured rival at Berat, Ibrahim Pasha, employed a Greek treasurer and physician, the learned George Sakellarios. Sakellarios who was born in Kozani was forced from his pleasant home in Ambelakia in Thessaly by Ali to fill this role. Educated in Hungary and Vienna, Sakellarios was also a poet. He is credited with introducing Shakespeare to Greece, but his association with Rigas and the Vienna circle of nationalists meant he had to be careful. Sakellarios too went on to be Ali’s doctor. Evidently Ali’s doctors had to be all-rounders, secretaries and interpreters as required. It appears Ali had four Greek doctors in total, three of whom were surrounding him when Holland paid his respects; along with Sakellarios the other two he names as Metaxa and Lucas Bia. The Bia family had cleverly attached themselves to Ali to such a degree that he sent Lucas to receive a medical education in Italy and Germany. When Holland was in Larissa he met Bia again where he had been called to give advice to another Greek doctor Ioannis Velara who was in the service of Veli, then pasha of Thessaly. Being a man of many trades would seem to have been either a requirement or an advantage depending on your point of view. Psallida, the teacher in Ioannina who was met by Byron and a number of the British travellers, was required to double up his duties by providing his expertise in the local courts and councils. He was also employed as an advisor to Ali who sent him on several diplomatic missions. One of his reports on his activities in Corfu, where he had been dispatched to procure explosives, weaponry and other war-related materials, made a particular point of the high prices being charged by the British. His daughter was married to the doctor, Lucas Bia. Ability in languages was a prerequisite for a dragoman and important Western visitors were often supplied with a Greek interpreter and guide in this capacity, like Georgio Fousmioti who attended Byron and Hobhouse at Tepelene. Byron was an honoured guest so he was also attended by Ali’s favourite dragoman and secretary, Spyros Kolovos. Kolovos had a strange reputation for acting on Ali’s behalf as a sponsor of an alchemist who had the misfortune to be hung when his endeavours to change base metal into gold failed. Kolovos himself was captured and tortured by the Turks while visiting Corfu on a mission to procure munitions in 1820. Ali’s other senior dragoman, described by Edward Everett as ‘Prince Chanzerly of Joannina’, was Hatzeris Beyzade, the son of Constantine Hangerli, the executed Prince of Wallachia.2

  Not all the administrative posts were occupied by Greeks. Holland relates that ‘I have seen a Christian, a Turkish and a Jewish secretary sitting on the ground before him… a principle which is carried through every branch of his government’. Although Leake tells us that Ali was his own ‘Kehaya and Hasnadar’, representative and prime minister, not even trusting his own sons and transacting everything himself that did not have to be done in writing, he surrounded himself with strong men willing to do his bidding. His most important servant was Suliman, who held such authority it was believed he might succeed Ali rather than Mukhtar or Veli. When Ali was not in residence at Tepelene he left the seraglio in the charge of Yusef Aga Arapi, a Moor, who Leake refers to as ‘nominally His Highness’s Hasnadar’, whose duties extended to ridding Ali of any individuals that crossed him. Like the Sultan, Ali ran his own council or Divan where individual responsibilities did not have specified titles. His war council however was mainly made up of his most trusted Albanians, among them his sons Mukhtar and Veli, Abdullah Pashe Taushani of Elbasan, from an established Albanian family who guarded his northern frontier, Omar Vrioni and Veli Gega. In addition to his military duties, Ali entrusted Omar as his treasurer. An exception to the rule was his close councillor Thanasis Vagias or Athanasi Vaya, as Hughes calls him, ‘his favourite and most successful general, who might indeed be styled commander in chief’. Intimate to Ali’s deepest secrets, Vagias had free access to him night and day. A Greek from Tepelene, he had led the attack against Gardiki.

  Ali employed a number of Europeans in various capacities, some voluntarily others not. Ali’s ‘prime minister’ in Hughes’ opinion was Mahomet Effendi, who he describes as:

  a silly old man who studies astrology and occult sciences till he thinks himself gifted with inspiration, and will pore for many hours together over an old globe, though he knows not whether the earth moves round the sun, or the contrary: it would be well if he were content to pronounce oracles upon science and politics; but he is withal a violent bigot, fierce and implacable against heretics or unbelievers, and ready to execute the most horrid commands of his despotic ruler.

  Leake, who calls him Mehmet Effendi and Ali’s secretary for foreign affairs, tells us that he was originally from Rome and called Marco Quirini (variously Guerini, Guéri or Gheri). That he was a persecutor of unbelievers shows that despite changing his religion he had not changed his zeal for orthodoxy; in Rome he had been a member of the inquisition. After a period as a missionary in Aleppo he was in Malta at the time of the arrival of the French expedition to Egypt and with his knowledge of Arabic he was appointed by Napoleon as his secretary-interpreter. On his return journey to Europe, Quirini was travelling on the same Italian vessel, the Madona di Montenegro, as Pouqueville and Bessières and was captured by pirates to be sold as a slave and ending up in Ioannina where he decided that the best course of action, if he was ever to see freedom again, was to convert to Islam and enter Ali’s service. Leake thought that for a ‘man of acuteness, sense, and learning’ it was a hard service ‘among comrades with whom he can scarcely exchange an idea’. But Ali had ‘according to his usual policy, already persuaded him to take a wife, and now that he has him in his power, scarcely gives him the means of existence’. Ali also employed, but rarely paid:

  a Milanese, who had previously been employed by the Pashás of Berát and Skodra, and who has undertaken to complete a foundry at Ioánnina: there are also a French engineer, a carpenter, who makes gun carriages, a Dalmatian watchmaker, and an Italian smith. These people, though really able men in their professions, will soon be forced to leave his service from the want of encouragement.

  Many of Ali’s foreign workers, such as landscape gardeners and architects, had either been captured or coerced into service. Other foreign experts, particularly military, he acquired through diplomatic means. In addition to these Ali’s court included numerous minor officials and hangers-on. Mukhtar was able to run his own considerable court financed from his income as pasha of Berat.

  Ali the Landowner

  Ali’s position of supremacy was consolidated through the acquisition of his own private estates to provide him with a constant revenue stream. Strong-arm tactics and force only achieved so much. Progressively Ali exploited the chiflik system to swallow up districts as his personal fiefdom and making him a major landholder;3 a prime example of a local potentate who increased his private estates at the expense of the peasants. Some land, although not in Ali’s name, could be controlled through marriage. Libokavo was a chiflik of Ali’s sister not far from Argyrocastro through her marriage to Suleyman from a prestigious local family. Her son Adam went on to become governor. The more usual method was to establish a foothold in a village by acquiring some land, sometimes by merely claiming it as a right, then to put pressure on other villagers to sell to him by driving them into debt at high interest rates through extraordinary exactions, and sometimes by the expediency of quartering his Albanian soldiers in their houses. When the peasants could no longer pay, Ali took the village as his chiflik and the villagers became in effect h
is tithe-paying serfs. Ali did not always have it his own way, but the villagers held out at a severe cost. The inhabitants of Delvinaki were subjugated to a level of taxation which they could not pay, so the difference was made up with an increased number of Albanian soldiers quartered on the town. Henry Holland was informed by a villager that this imposition was aimed at Ali ‘obtaining proprietorship of the town’. The villagers were holding out possibly in the hope that Ali might increase the sum he was offering for the purchase. Holland comments that ‘While on the one hand this bears the marks of unwarranted oppression, on the other it shews a somewhat more regulated despotism than might be expected from other acts of the man’.

  In research carried out in 1835 by Professor Christoforos Philitas it was claimed Ali and his family held over 900 chifliks, mainly in Epirus, but throughout Thessaly and Macedonia as well. They held twenty-six villages in the Speracheios valley in central Thessaly alone. As Ali pushed south from his Epirus homeland, he acquired further fiefs in the Ottoman region of Livadia (central Greece). Here 107 villages have been identified as having belonged jointly to Ali and his sons. Ali held a further 13 himself and Veli Pasha owned 15 with 157 zeugaria of land, equivalent to around 157 peasant farms. Veli also held numerous villages in his own right around the Gulf of Corinth, yielding fifty-five zeugaria. Not all regions were suitable for this kind of appropriation. As Finlay noted, Acarnania in western Livadia was a region where ‘property is generally private in a country of graziers and shepherds’. Even so Ali may have held some chifliks here that included forests as well as grazing land.