110 



ALL 



exclaimed AH, Uien but fourteen years oliL " Who- 

 ever rises against Uiee, 1 will (lash out his teeth, 

 t. :u- inn his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O 

 |>rophct, I will be Uiy vizier." Ali kept his word; 

 distinguished l>oih by eloquence and valour, he 

 became one of the main pillars of the new faith, and 

 obtained Uie name of the Lion of GW, always vic- 

 torious. He also received Fatima, the daughter of 

 i in- prophet, in marriage. After the death of 

 ( Ulmmn, he became caliph, and finally lost his lift- 

 by assassination, at Cufa, in the sixty-third year of 

 his age. There was something of grandeur in Uie 

 primitive simplicity and fanatical heroism of the first 

 followers of .Mahomet, and Ali formed one of the 

 most conspicuous examples of the conjunction. The 

 Mahommcdan schism caused by Uie murder of Ali, 

 i- well known, and his sect is called S/tiites, or 

 heretics, by the Sonnites, or orthodox. The Per- 

 sian*, a part of the I'sbec Tartars, and some of the 

 princes of India, remain followers of Ali to this day. 

 His posterity are numerous, and are allowed to 

 wear green turbans, in honour of their descent from 

 the prophet. There is extant, among various writ- 

 ings attributed to Ali, a collection of a hundred 

 maxims or sentences, which have been translated by 

 Golius and Ockley. 



ALI ; pacha of Yanina (Tepeleni), generally 

 called Ali Pacha ; a bold and crafty rebel against 

 the Porte ; an intelligent and active governor of his 

 province ; as a warrior, decided and able ; as a man, 

 a very fiend. His life is a curious exemplification 

 of Uie state of the Turkish empire. He was born 

 at Tepeleni, in 1744, of a noble family, which stood 

 at the head of an independent tribe, the Toczides ; 

 and was the grandson of a bey named by the Porte. 

 arly life was unfortunate, but his extraordinary 

 strength of mind, which shrank from no danger nor 

 crime, united with great address, raised him to 

 princely independence. The neighbouring pacha 

 had stripped his rather of all his possessions. After 

 his death, his mother, a warlike and cruel Albanian, 

 placed her son, Uien sixteen years old, at the head 

 of her dependents. He was defeated, and taken 

 prisoner; but the Curd pacha was so much struck 

 with his beauty and vivacity, Uiat he set him at 

 liberty, after chastising him. A. then commenced 

 robber, but was so unfortunate that he fled into the 

 mountains, where, to keep himself from starving, he 

 pawned his sabre. In this situation, his mother 

 scornfully advised him to put on a woman's garment, 

 and serve in the haram. In a second attempt at 

 plunder he was wholly defeated, and concealed him- 

 self in a ruined building, where, brooding over his 

 fate, he sat, unconsciously pushing up the ground 

 with a stick. He struck something hard, anf found 

 a chest containing gold. With this treasure he 

 raised 2000 men, gained his first victory, and return- 

 ed in triumph to Tepeleni. From this time he was 

 continually fortunate, but, at the same time, false 

 and cruel. On the day of his return, he murdered 

 his own brother, whom he thought guilty of treach- 

 ery, and confined his mother to the haram, under 

 pretence of her liaving poisoned the deceased, where 

 she soon after died from grief and race. A. now 

 continued his robberies, regained the favour of the 

 Porte by assisting in the subjugation of the rebel- 

 lious vizier of Scutari, and possessed himself of the 

 estates which had been taken from his father, as 

 well as of some Grecian cities. He then attacked 

 the pacha Selim of Delvino, who was obnoxious to 

 the Porte, and caused him to be beheaded, by which 

 means he became his successor. At length the 

 divan, in which he had obtained great influence by 

 bribery, named him lieutenant of the dervendgi 

 pacha, whose duty it was to preserve the highways 



secure ; but, instead of attending to the duties of 

 hi- oilice, A. sold commissions, in the name of the 

 grand signior, to the richest bands of robbers, and 

 thereby gave tin-in legal authority to plunder. The 

 dervcndgi pacha ;.nd his lieutenant were now de- 

 posed, but A. purchased anew the favour of the 

 prime minister. He rendered Mich important ser- 

 vices to Uie I'orte with his bold Albanians, in the 

 war with Russia and Austria (begun I TNT), although 

 he carried on a secret correspondence with prince. 

 Potemkin, that Uie Porte luiimd him pacha of 

 Tricala in Thessaly. He immediately posse-, d 

 himself of Uie city of Yanina, l>\ showing a forget! 

 finnan, which gave him the city i.nd the citadel, 

 and then compelled the inhabitants to si<;n a petition 

 to the sultan, requesting him to give them A. for a 

 governor. He likewise compelled them u, pay him 

 a large sum of money, with which he bribed the 

 divan, who granted the request. He afterwards 

 entered into an alliance with Bonaparte, who sent 

 him engineers to build him fortifications ; but when 

 Napoleon was defeated in Kgypt. those places on 

 the coast of Albania, which had belonged to the 

 Venetians, and were now under the dominion of the 

 French, were seized by A. Parga (q. v.) alone 

 made a successful resistance. But he contrived 

 that, iu the treaty between Russia and the Porte, in 

 1800, all the Venetian places on the main land 

 (and, therefore, Parga) should be surrendered to 

 the latter power. He then attacked the brave 

 Suliotes (q. v.), and conquered them in 1803, after a 

 three years' war. The Porte now made him gover- 

 nor of Romania, where he continued his system oi 

 oppression still more openly than before. He then 

 revenged on the inhabitants of Gardiki an injury 

 which they had done to his mother, forty years be- 

 fore, by putting to death 739 of Uie descendents of 

 Uie perpetrators, they Uiemselves being all dead. 

 Security nnd quiet now reigned in his dominions ; 

 the roads were well constructed; commerce flourish- 

 ed ; so that European travellers, with whom A. was 

 glad to converse (see Hughes' Travels in Greece), 

 acknowledged in him an active and intelligent 

 governor. In 1807, he entered again into an alli- 

 ance wiUi Bonaparte, who sent him M. Pouqueville, 

 as consul general, and from Uiis time his dependence 

 on the Porte was merely nominal. His object iu 

 this alliance was, to have Parga and Uie Ionian 

 islands included in the peace of Tilsit. Failing to 

 attain Un's end, he made an alliance wiUi the Eng- 

 lish, and gave them many advantages ; whereupon 

 Parga was restored nominally to the Porte, but in 

 reality to A. He afterwards caused it to be inserted 

 in his gazette, that Maitland, who was the British 

 lord high commissioner of the Ionian islands, had 

 received from the Porte, at Ins recommendation, the 

 order of the crescent. When A. thought himself 

 strongly fixed in his power, he caused some of the 

 capitani (q. v.) of the Greek Armatolics, who had 

 hitherto rendered him assistance, to be murdered 

 (among them, the father of Ulysses, the famous 

 chief), and had the murderers also put to death, 

 that he might not be known as the author of the 

 crime. At length, in 1820, the Porte determined to 

 crush him. Ismail Pascho Bey, with 5000 Turks, 

 and supported by the capitani, who brought 10,000 

 soldiers to his standard, advanced against him. The 

 Greeks surrounded his positions in the passes of the 

 mountains, so that he was compelled to throw him- 

 self, with all Ins troops, into the citadel of Yanina, 

 well provided with every thing. From hence he 

 set Yanina on fire. Pascho Bey had no ordnance 

 fit for besieging the city, and was suspected by the 

 Porte, because he had called the Christians to his 

 1 assistance. The Porte theref"*-,? gave the chief 



