Ali Pasha of Tepelena
Ali Pasha of Tepelena is undoubtedly the most colourful of the Ottoman rulers associated with Butrint – not the least due to Lord Byron’s description of him and the accounts by other Grand Tourists who visited his court. The Napoleonic Wars of the 1790s resulted in the fall of the Venetian Republic and the French occupation of the Ionian Island. Butrint, instead, went to Ali Pasha in 1798.
The son of the bey of Tepelena, he took advantage of the weakened control exercised by the central Ottoman authorities to bring large parts of modern-day Greece and Albania under his control. By the end of the 18th century, for the first time Epirus was dominated by a single officer.
Ali Pasha was a ruthless and aggressive ruler, who also improved the infrastructure and Epirus consequently enjoyed a period of increased prosperity. In particular he constructed a network of fortresses – most notably at Tepelena, Gjirokastra and Ioannina.
At Butrint, the small fortress at the mouth of the Vivari Channel has for long been associated with Ali Pasha. It is included on earlier cadastral maps as belonging to the Venetian Gonemi family, and it is possible that the original structure was the ruined house referred to by William Martin Leake in 1805 as a ‘house built by a Corfiot’ that Ali Pasha was keen to purchase. It was certainly in use in 1819 when H.M.S. Glasgow exchanged salutes with the fort’s battery of guns during a conference between Ali Pasha of Tepelena and Sir Thomas Maitland, the British governor of Corfu and the Ionian Islands.
The great powers, not the least France and Britain, had a keen appreciation of the importance of a strong leader in a stable region – especially one that overlooked the sea route through the Mediterranean. Hence both nations dispatched emissaries to the court of Ali Pasha. The bey in turn asked for supplies of weapons and ammunition. Among the cannons displayed in the courtyard of the Acropolis Castle at Butrint, one formed by the Royal arsenal At Woolwich may have been part of a consignment of weaponry from the British in 1809.
Initially tolerated, the Ottoman Sultan ultimately sought to restore the central authority and Ali Pasha was ousted, assassinated and his head delivered to Constantinople in 1822.
In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
Ali reclined, a man of war and woes:
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that aged venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace.
Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 2.62
- Portrait of Ali Pasha by Louis Duprè
- Panorama of Ali Pasha’s castle, Butrint