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Ioannina: The City Where Power Became Visible
At the end of the eighteenth century, anyone arriving in Janina found an Ottoman city in which the sultan’s orders coexisted with the increasingly decisive will of its provincial governor. Merchants, soldiers, local notables and foreign envoys all had to reckon with a man who could intervene in the affairs of the city and in the balance of power across the surrounding region.
That man was Ali Pasha of Tepelena.
To understand his rise, it is not enough to trace the military campaigns, alliances and violence that accompanied the creation of his dominion. We must look at Janina, now Ioannina in Greece. It was in this city on Lake Pamvotida that Ali gradually consolidated the administrative, economic and military foundations of his authority.
The fortresses, palaces, markets and roads told a story that official titles alone could not convey. Ali was an Ottoman governor, yet he enjoyed freedom of action far beyond the ordinary administration of a province.
For Ali, Janina became much more than a residence: from here he could govern through offices, markets, armed men and personal connections. Much of his political life would unfold around this city.
A city before Ali Pasha
By the time Ali consolidated his hold over Janina, around 1788, the city already had a long history. It was not a remote settlement waiting for a ruler to make it important.
Its inland position in Epirus connected it to the surrounding mountain regions and to trading routes reaching the Adriatic, the Ionian Islands and major centres of the Ottoman Empire. Merchants and craftsmen worked there, while sections of the urban population had developed economic and cultural ties extending far beyond the province.
The city was also home to communities differing in language, religion and social standing. Muslims, Christians and Jews participated in its economic and urban life, although in different roles and circumstances. Greek-speaking residents played a particularly important part in the city's cultural and educational life, while Albanian-speaking populations were an integral part of the wider territory in which Ali established his power.
This society cannot be described through the national categories that would take shape in the following century. In the late eighteenth century, religious identities, local affiliations, family ties, languages and political loyalties overlapped without necessarily matching the borders of modern nations.
Ali inherited a city already rich in commerce and connections. He made use of them, encouraged certain activities and concentrated in Janina administrative functions and military resources that had not previously all answered to him.
The city thus became the day-to-day centre of his government.
1788: the recognition of an emerging power
Securing Janina changed Ali's standing in the eyes of those with whom he dealt.
Until then, his rise had depended on a combination of Ottoman appointments, relationships with local notables, command of armed followers and an ability to intervene in rivalries between governors and influential families.
His establishment in Janina, documented between late 1787 and early 1788, offered something different: a prestigious administrative seat, a firmer economic base and the opportunity to exercise influence through institutions that already existed.
The sources do not agree entirely on how he established himself there. Nineteenth-century biographies often emphasise manoeuvres, intrigues and the use of force. Diplomatic records, by contrast, place these events within the wider competition between provincial authorities, urban communities and the central government.
Russian diplomatic documents studied by the historian Grigorij L. Arsh record the resistance Ali encountered in earlier attempts to gain control of Janina. According to Arsh's reconstruction, recognition by the Sublime Porte probably came no later than the first months of 1788; no single day of conquest can be established with certainty. The transition required dealings with imperial authorities and local interests alike.
No single event, then, can adequately explain his accession to the government of the city.
Once established, Ali used his new position as a base from which to extend his influence gradually.
The title of pasha gave him authority within the Ottoman order. His actual power, however, also rested on the resources he could control personally: men, revenues, territories, information and political relationships.
The title granted in Constantinople mattered, but it was not enough to explain the extent of his influence.
The capital and its political landscape
Janina's physical setting itself helped explain the organisation of urban life.
The lake bordered the urban landscape. The fortified citadel offered a point of defence and control, while the bazaar and other commercial spaces were where goods, money and news circulated.
The residences of the pasha and his family added another dimension: the ruler's physical presence.
The accounts of Richard Alfred Davenport and François Pouqueville, written from different perspectives, convey the importance of these places. The castle, the fortified complex of Litharitsia, the palaces and the residences associated with Ali's sons formed a geography of power spread across the city.
Those buildings did more than display prestige.
Control of fortified buildings allowed Ali's forces to hold the urban centre. The residences housed trusted associates, officials and political interlocutors. Reception rooms became places where favours were negotiated, petitions presented and loyalties demonstrated.
For anyone seeking an audience with the governor, this arrangement of spaces had very practical consequences.
Those drawn into Ali's orbit needed to know where to go, whom to approach, which intermediaries could secure a hearing and what a decision against them might mean.
Power did not reside in official documents alone. It could be seen in the arrangement of spaces, the presence of armed men, personal relationships and the governor's ability to decide the fate of those dependent on him.
Janina had become a place where provincial authority took on the character of a court.
Governing through people and information
An armed detachment could impose a decision, but it could not ensure that the decision would still be obeyed months later in villages and communities far from the city.
The territory had to be understood, news gathered, opponents identified, alliances anticipated and disputes addressed before they became open threats.
Travellers' accounts, read alongside diplomatic records, offer glimpses of this network of people and interests, although they reveal only part of it.
The pasha's administration relied on officials, intermediaries, military commanders, relatives and trusted followers. A personal relationship with Ali was often crucial to the exercise of authority.
Appointments, duties and benefits could strengthen loyalty. Losing the governor's confidence, by contrast, could endanger a person's standing, property and even personal safety.
Alongside the structures of Ottoman administration, therefore, operated a system of relationships directly centred on the pasha.
Ali exploited rivalries between local groups, sought the support of notables and combined negotiation with coercion. His ability to govern also stemmed from understanding his interlocutors' interests and turning their divisions to his advantage.
The network worked as long as those relationships remained secure.
Authority so closely dependent on the ruler himself could be effective in the short term, but it made the entire system reliant on his presence and on the endurance of personal loyalties.
Ali's strength therefore also depended on men who, under different circumstances, might change sides.
Trade, security and control of resources
Janina drew goods and people from a territory extending far beyond its walls.
Ali had an interest in keeping merchandise moving, controlling regional connections and making certain routes safer. Sources credit him with work on roads and bridges and with efforts to suppress banditry.
Yet a safer road should not be confused with general prosperity: what benefited a merchant might impose a very different burden on a village or a family subject to the government's demands.
For merchants, a route less exposed to attacks could mean more predictable journeys, fewer losses and opportunities to expand trade. For the ruler, that same route provided revenue and a means of control.
For Ali, making a road passable also meant making it possible to monitor the traffic and draw income from it.
Protecting a trading route encouraged commerce, but it also enabled the movement of people and goods to be watched. Controlling a market could support economic activity while allowing pressure to be exerted on those who worked there.
Revenues sustained the pasha's administration and military forces. Those resources, in turn, helped him maintain control over the territory from which they came.
The same roads that brought merchandise into Janina could carry troops and enable revenues to be collected.
Sources that acknowledge Ali's administrative ability should not be dismissed simply because they also condemn his cruelty. Equally, his economic initiatives should not be interpreted as a programme of modernisation in the contemporary sense.
His primary objective remained the preservation of his rule.
Some of his decisions could favour particular economic activities. Others brought levies, confiscations and forms of dependence that burdened communities and their representatives.
Bustling markets and harsh exactions could exist side by side in the same city.
A city of schools and differences
Alongside palaces and garrisons, Janina had schools, teachers, clergy and merchant families who helped books circulate. This tradition was firmly rooted long before Ali's arrival: to credit him with its creation would erase an important part of the city's history.
Educational institutions associated particularly with Greek Orthodox culture helped make Janina a recognised intellectual centre in Epirus. This coexisted with the region's religious and linguistic diversity. Urban society did not correspond to a single national identity in the modern sense, and travellers' accounts, often attentive mainly to the communities they knew best, must be read without projecting later political identities onto the past.
Ali's relationship with this society cannot be reduced to a simple policy of patronage or persecution. His court employed people able to write, translate, administer and negotiate; communities sought some measure of protection and autonomy within a political order that could also impose pressure and restrictions. The available sources do not, however, justify attributing to the pasha a comprehensive programme of educational reform.
The schools and those who supported them remind us above all that Janina had a life of its own. Ali's government affected many of its activities, but it did not create them.
A capital seen through European eyes
Janina's reputation also spread through foreign observers. Travellers, officials and diplomatic intermediaries described a centre where local affairs intersected with Mediterranean interests. Their perspective was hardly neutral: admiration for Ali's energy was frequently mixed with denunciations of violence, a taste for the picturesque and the political expectations of their countries of origin.
François Pouqueville, the French consul in Janina, offers close observations of the city and its court, but his hostility towards Ali requires his account to be compared with other sources. Davenport, the author of a nineteenth-century biography, must likewise be read with a distinction between his reconstruction of events and his literary portrayal of the man. Hobhouse, for his part, personally observed Ali's court at Tepelena in 1809: his descriptions must not automatically be transferred to the settings of Janina.
For European observers, Janina offered a distinctive view of Ottoman politics: a city formally subject to the Porte where affairs involving distant territories and foreign interests were discussed. Ali's freedom of action, precisely because it operated within that imperial framework, had limits he could not ignore.
The city and the limits of personal rule
Janina gave Ali Pasha something no mountain stronghold could have provided on its own: institutions, revenues, a complex urban society and a setting in which his authority could be made visible. This transformation did not sweep away Ottoman structures; it placed alongside them a system of personal loyalties, family interests and coercion.
This history shows why it would be misleading to describe Ali either solely as an enlightened administrator or as a tyrant detached from the politics of his age. Protection for certain forms of trade could coexist with confiscation; skill in negotiating with foreign powers with the suppression of rivals; the city's cultural vitality with an atmosphere of fear.
Ali needed Janina at least as much as Janina had to reckon with him. From there he could administer a vast territory, receive intelligence and negotiate with different interlocutors; he could not, however, entirely escape the Porte or extinguish the interests of the city's communities. As personal loyalties began to waver, the limitations of that arrangement became apparent.
It was from this capital, and the network of relationships converging upon it, that the Lion would turn his gaze towards the sultan and Europe. The move from provincial politics to Mediterranean diplomacy will be the subject of the next instalments.
From the miniseries to the third volume in the book series
The articles in the “Lion of Ioannina” miniseries, published free of charge on the “Albanian Chronicles” blog, offer an introduction to the life and times of Ali Pasha of Tepelena. The questions explored in these pages — the city, its institutions, relations with the Porte and with Europe — are developed in greater depth in “The Lion of Ioannina: Ali Pasha of Tepelena. Power, Blood and Diplomacy in the Ottoman Balkans”, the third volume in the “Albanian Chronicles” book series, scheduled for release on 9 December 2026. The miniseries will remain freely accessible; the book will offer readers a comprehensive account of the Lion's historical journey.
Sources and references
• Richard Alfred Davenport, The Life of Ali Pasha, Vizier of Epirus, Surnamed Aslan, or the Lion, London, 1837; a critical reading of the chapters concerning Janina and the pasha's administration.
• F.-C.-H.-L. Pouqueville, Voyage de la Grèce, 2nd edition, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1826, vol. I; a firsthand account to be compared with diplomatic records.
• Quentin and Eugenia Russell, Ali Pasha: Lion of Ioannina. The Remarkable Life of the Balkan Napoleon, Barnsley, Pen & Sword Military, 2017.
• Grigorij L. Arsh, Ali Pasha dhe Bushatllinjtë në dokumentet ruse [Ali Pasha and the Bushatli Family in Russian Documents], Albanian translation by Vladimir Bregu, Tirana, Botimet M&B, 2022; especially the period 1787–1788.
• John Cam Hobhouse, Travels in Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 & 1810, vol. I, revised edition, London, John Murray, 1858; an account of his visit to the court at Tepelena in 1809.
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