Ali Pasha - Ali Pasha As Ruler

Ali Pasha As Ruler

During the early days of his rule he was personally known for his alertness. He soon became a well-known Albanian Muslim figure, He also commanded one of the largest battalions of Albanian Janissaries; his servicemen also included men such as Samson Cerfberr of Medelsheim. Ali Pasha adhered to the Sufi Order of the Bektashi Brotherhood. Ali Pasha was also known to have fasted during the month of Ramadan.

Ali's policy as ruler of Ioánnina was mostly governed by expediency; he operated as a semi-independent despot and pragmatically allied himself with whoever offered the most advantage at the time. In fact, it was Ali Pasha and his Albanian soldiers and mercenaries who subdued the independent Souli.

Ali Pasha wanted to establish in the Mediterranean a sea-power which should be a counterpart of that of the Dey of Algiers, Ahmed ben Ali. In order to gain a seaport on the Albanian coast that was dominated by Venice, Ali Pasha formed an alliance with Napoleon I of France, who had established François Pouqueville as his general consul in Ioannina, with the complete consent of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III.

After the Treaty of Tilsit, where Napoleon granted the Czar his plan to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, Ali Pasha switched sides and allied with the Britain in 1807; a detailed account of his alliance with the British was written by Sir Richard Church. His actions were permitted by the Ottoman government in Constantinople. Ali Pasha was very cautious and unappeased by the emergence of the new Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and his despotic Turkish yolk in the year 1808.

Lord Byron visited Ali's court in Ioánnina in 1809 and recorded the encounter in his work Childe Harold. He evidently had mixed feelings about the despot, noting the splendour of Ali Pasha's court and the Greek cultural revival that he had encouraged in Ioánnina, which Byron described as being "superior in wealth, refinement and learning" to any other Greek town.

In a letter to his mother, however, Byron deplored Ali's cruelty: "His Highness is a remorseless tyrant, guilty of the most horrible cruelties, very brave, so good a general that they call him the Mahometan Buonaparte ... but as barbarous as he is successful, roasting rebels, etc, etc.."

Different tales about his sexual proclivities emerged from western visitors to Pasha's court (including Byron, the Baron de Vaudoncourt, and Frederick North, Earl of Guildford). These documenters wrote that he kept a large harem of both men as well as women. Such accounts may reflect the Orientalist imagination of Europe and underplay the historical role of Pasha rather than telling us anything concrete about his sexuality.

Ali Pasha, according to one opinion, "was a cruel and faithless tyrant; still he was not a Turk, but an Albanian; he was a rebel against the Sultan (Mahmud II), and he was so far an indirect friend of the Sultan's enemies". Throughout his rule he is known to have maintained close relations and corresponded with famous leaders such as Husein Gradaščević, Ibrahim Bushati, Mehmet Ali Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha.

Though certainly no friend to the Greek Nationalists (he had personally ordered the painful execution of the Klepht Katsantonis), however his rule brought relative stability. It was only after his forceful deposition that the people of Greece objected the rule of Sultan Mahmud II and the newly appointed Hursid Pasha and thus began the Greek War of Independence.

Ali Pasha was using Greek almost as his official language, and over the gate of his castle in Yannina there was an inscription in Greek in which he claimed descent from King Pyrrhus of Epirus. It is reported that he was conversing with foreigners in Greek.

A long epic poem known as the Alipashiad consists of more than 10.000 lines is dedicated to the exploits of Ali Pasha. The Alipashiad was composed by Haxhi Shekreti, an Albanian Muslim from Delvino and was written entirely in Greek.