established as one of the most powerful viziers under the
Ottoman government. Success only stimulated his insatiable
ambition. He earned the confidence of the Porte by the cruel
discipline he maintained in his own sanjak, and the regular
flow of tribute and bribes which he directed to Constantinople;
while he bent all his energies to extending his territories
at the expense of his neighbours. The methods he adopted
would have done credit to Cesare Borgia; they may be studied
in detail in the lurid pages of Pouqueville. Soon, by
one means or another, his power was supreme in all central
Albania. Two main barriers still obstructed the realization
of his ambition, which now embraced Greece and Thessaly, as
well as Albania, and the establishment in the Mediterranean
of a sea-power which should rival that of the dey of Algiers.
The first of these was the resistance of the little Christian
hill community of Suli; the second the Venetian occupation
of the coast, within a mile of which--by convention with the
Porte--no Ottoman soldier might penetrate. It needed three
several attacks before, in 1803, Ali conquered the Suliot
stronghold. Events in western Europe gave him an earlier
opportunity of becoming master of most of the coast towns. Ali
had watched with interest the career of Bonaparte in Italy, and
the treaty of Campo Formio (1797), which blotted the Venetian
republic from the map of Europe, gave him the opportunity he
desired. In response to his advances commissaries of the
French republic visited him at Iannina and, affecting a
sudden zeal for republican principles, he easily obtained
permission to suppress the ``aristocratic'' tribes on the
coast. His plans in Albania were interrupted by the war against
Pasvan Oglu, the rebellious pasha of Widdin, in which Ali
once more did good service. Meanwhile international politics
had developed in a way that necessitated a change in Ali's
attitude. Napoleon's occupation of the Ionian Islands and
his relations with Ali had alarmed Russia, which feared that
French influence would be substituted for her own in the
Balkan peninsula; and on the 5th of September 1798 a formal
alliance, to which Great Britain soon after acceded, was signed
on behalf of the emperor Paul and the sultan. Once more Ali
turned Turk and fought against his recent friends with such
success that in the end he remained in possession of Butrinto,
Prevesa and Vonitza on the coast, was created pasha ``of three
tails'' by the sultan, and received the congratulations of
Nelson. But the campaign of Austerlitz followed, then the
peace of Pressburg which guaranteed to Napoleon the former
dominions of Venice, and finally the treaty of Tilsit,
which involved, among other things, the withdrawal of the
Russians from the Ionian Islands and the Albanian coast.
Amid all the momentous changes the part of Ali was a difficult
one. He had, moreover, to contend with domestic enemies,
and with difficulty defeated a league formed against
him by some Mussulman tribes, under Ibrahim of Berat and
Mustapha of Delvinon, and the Suliots. He knew, however,
how to retain the confidence of the sultan, who not only
confirmed him in the possession of the whole of Albania
from Epirus to Montenegro, but even in 1799 appointed him
vali of Rumelia, an office which he held just long enough
to enable him to return to Iannina laden with the spoils of
Thessaly. He was now at the height of his power. In 1803
the Suliot stronghold fell; and he was undisputed master of
Epirus, Albania and Thessaly, while the pashalik of the Morea
was held by his son Veli, and that of Lepanto by his son
Mukhtar. Only the little town of Parga held out against him
on the coast; and in order to obtain this he once more in 1807
entered into an alliance with Napoleon. The French emperor,
however, preferred to keep Parga, as a convenient gate into
the Balkan peninsula, and it remained in French occupation
until March 1814, when the Pargiots rose against the garrison
and handed the fortress over to the British to save it from
falling into the hands of Ali, who had bought the town from
the French commander, Cozi Nikolo, and was closely investing
it. The cordial relations between Napoleon and the pasha
of Iannina had not long continued. Ali was angered by the
refusal to surrender Parga and justly suspicious of the
ambitions which this refusal implied; he could not feel
himself secure with the Ionian Islands and the Dalmatian
coast in the hands of a power whose plans in the East were
notorious, and he was glad enough to avail himself of Napoleon's
reverses in 1812 to help to rid himself of so dangerous a
neighbor. His services to the allies received their reward.
Still bent on obtaining Parga, he sent a special mission to
London, backed by a letter from Sir Robert Liston, the British
ambassador at Constantinople, calling the attention of the
government to the pasha's supereminent qualities'' and his
services against the French. After some hesitation it was
decided to evacuate Parga and hand it over to the Ottoman
government, i.e. Ali Pasha. The convention by which this
was effected was ultimately signed on the 17th of May 1817,
being ratified by the sultan on the 24th of April 1819.
By its terms the Pargiots were to receive an asylum in the
islands, the Ottoman government undertaking to pay compensation
for their property. Ali had no difficulty in finding the
money; the garrison, as soon as it was received, marched
out with the bulk of the inhabitants; and the last citadel
of freedom in the Balkans fell to the tyrant of Iannina.1
Ali's authority in the great part of the peninsula subject to
him now overshadowed that of the sultan; and Mahmud II., whose
whole policy had been directed to destroying the overgrown
power of the provincial pashas, began to seek a pretext for
overthrowing the Lion of Iannina, whose all-devouring ambition
seemed to threaten his own throne. The occasion came in 1820
when Ali, emboldened by impunity, violated the sanctity of
Stamboul itself by attempting to procure the murder of his
enemy Pacho Bey in the very precincts of the palace. A decree
of disposition was now issued against the sacrilegious vali,
who had dared ``to fire shots in Constantinople, the residence
of the caliph, and the centre of security.'' Its execution was
entrusted to Khurshid Pasha, with the bulk of the Ottoman forces.
For two years Ali, now over eighty years of age, held his
own, in spite of the defection of his vassals and even of his
sons. At last, in the spring of 1822, after a prolonged siege
in his island fortress at Iannina, which even the outbreak
of the Greek revolt had not served to raise, the intrepid old
man was forced to sue for terms. He asked and received an
interview with Khurshid, was received courteously and dismissed
with the most friendly assurances. As he turned to leave the
grand vizier's tent he was stabbed in the back; his head was
cut off and sent to Constantinople. Notwithstanding their
treason to their father, his sons met with the same fate.
In spite of the ferocious characteristics which have been
suggested in the above sketch, Ali Pasha is undoubtedly one
of the most remarkable, as he is one of the most picturesque,
figures in modern history; and as such he was recognized
in his own day. His court at Iannina was the centre of a
sort of barbarous culture, in which astrologers, alchemists
and Greek poets played their part, and was often visited by
travellers. Amongst others, Byron came, and has left a record
of his impressions in ``Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,'' less
interesting and vivid than the prose accounts of Pouqueville,
T. S. Hughes and William M. Leake. Leake (iii. 259) reports
a reproof addressed by Ali to the French renegade Ibrahim
Effendi, who had ventured to remonstrate against some
particular act of ferocity: ``At present you are too young at
my court to know how to comport yourself. . . . You are not
yet acquainted with the Greeks and Albanians: when I hang up
one of these wretches on the plane-tree, brother robs brother
under the very branches: if I burn one of them alive, the
son is ready to steal his father's ashes to sell them for
money. They are destined to be ruled by me; and no one but Ali
is able to restrain their evil propensities.'' This is perhaps
as good an apology as could be made for his character and
methods. To the wild people over whom he ruled none was
needed. He had their respect, if not their love; he is the hero
of a thousand ballads; and his portrait still hangs among the
ikons in the cottages of the Greek mountaineers. All accounts
agree in describing him in later life as a man of handsome
presence, with a venerable white beard, piercing black eyes
and a benevolent cast of countenance, the effect of which was
heightened in conversation by a voice of singular sweetness.
AUTHORITIES.--Apart from the scattered references in the
published and unpublished diplomatic correspondence of the
period, contemporary journals and books of travel contain
much interesting material for the life of Ali. Of these may
especially be mentioned Francois C. H. L. Pouqueville, Voyage en
Moree, a Constantinople, en Albanie, &c. (3 vols., Paris,
1805), of which an English version by A. Plumptre was published
in 1815; ib. Voyage dans la Grece (5 vols., Paris, 1820,
1821). Pouqueville, who spent some time as French resident
at Iannina, had special facilities for obtaining firsthand
information, though his emotionalism makes his observations
and deductions at times somewhat suspect. Very interesting
also are Thomas Smart Hughes, Travels in Greece and Albania
(2 vols., 2nd ed., Lond. 1830); John Cam Hobhouse (Lord
Broughton), A Journey through Albania, &c. . . . during
the years 1809 and 1810 (Lond., 4to, 1813, a new ed., 2
vols., 1855); William Martin Leake, Travels in Northern
Greece (4 vols., Lond. 1845). See also Pouqueville's Hist.
de la regeneration de la Grece, 1740-1824 (4 vols.,
Paris, 1824, 3rd ed., Brussels, 1825); R. A. Davenport,
Life of Ali Pasha, vizier of Epirus (1861). (W. A. P.)
1 In his report on the Ionian Treaty presented to Lord
Castlereagh at the congress of Vienna in December 1814, Sir
Richard Church strongly advocated, not only the retention of
Parga, but that Vonitza, Prevesa and Butrinto also should be
taken from Ali Pasha and placed under British protection, a
measure he considered necessary. for the safety of the Ionian
Islands. ``Ali Pasha,'' he wrote, ``is now busy building
forts along his coast and strengthening his castles in the
interior. In January 1814 he had 14,000 peasants at work on
the castle of Argiro Castro, and about 1500 erecting a fort at
Porto Palermo, nearly opposite Corfu.'' In 1810 he had erected
a fort directly opposite Santa Maura commanding the harbour.
The fate of Parga created intense feeling at the time in
England, and was cited by Liberals as a crowning instance of
the perfidy of the government and of Castlereagh's subservience
to reactionary tendencies abroad. The step, however,
was not lightly taken. In occupying the town the British
general had expressly refrained from pledging Great Britain
to remain there; and the government held that any permanent
occupation of a post on the mainland carried with it risks of
complications out of all proportion to any possible benefit.
ALIAGA, a town of the province of Nueva Ecija, Luzon,
Philippine Islands, about 70 m. N. by W. of Manila. Pop.
(1903) 11,950. It has a comparatively cool and healthful
climate, and is pleasantly situated about midway between the
