, edit. 1854, vol. i pp. 96, 97) describes Ali as
"a short man, about five feet five inches in height, and very fat, though not particularly corpulent. He had a very pleasing face, fair and round, with blue quick eyes, not at all settled into a Turkish gravity. His beard was long and white, and such a one as any other Turk would have been proud of; though he, who was more taken up with his guests than himself, did not continue looking at it, nor smelling and stroking it, as is usually the custom of his country-men, to fill up the pauses of conversation."
Dr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Holland, in his
Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly, and Greece in
1812-13, pp. 125, 126 (1815), gives an account of his first interview with Ali:
"Were I to attempt a description of Ali, I should speak of his face as large and full; the forehead remarkably broad and open, and traced by many deep furrows; the eye penetrating, yet not expressive of ferocity; the nose handsome and well formed; the mouth and lower part of the face concealed, except when speaking, by his mustachios and the long beard which flows over his breast. His complexion is somewhat lighter than that usual among the Turks, and his general appearance does not indicate more than his actual age ... The neck is short and thick, the figure corpulent and unwieldy; his stature I had afterwards the means of ascertaining to be about five feet nine inches. The general character and expression of the countenance are unquestionably fine, and the forehead especially is a striking and majestic feature. Much of the talent of the man may be inferred from his exterior; the moral qualities, however, may not equally be determined in this way; and to the casual observation of the stranger I can conceive from my own experience, that nothing may appear but what is open, placid, and alluring. Opportunities were afterwards afforded me of looking beneath this exterior of expression; it is the fire of a stove burning fiercely under a smooth and polished surface.... The inquiries he made respecting our journey to Joannina, gave us the opportunity of complimenting him on the excellent police of his dominions, and the attention he has paid to his roads. I mentioned to him generally Lord Byron's poetical description of Albania, the interest it had excited in England, and Mr. Hobhouse's intended publication of his travels in the same country. He seemed pleased with these circumstances, and stated his recollection of Lord Byron."
Dr. Holland brought back to England a letter to Byron from Ali (see Letter to Moore, September 8, 1813). A further account of Ali, together with a portrait, will be found in Hughes's
Travels in Sicily, etc.
(pp. 446-449). He again (1813) "asked with much apparent interest respecting Lord Byron." At the close of the Napoleonic struggle, the interest of this country was excited by the resistance of Parga to his arms, especially as, during the late war, the Pargiotes had received the protection of Great Britain. After the fall of Parga (1819), Ali's power roused the jealousy of the Sultan, and it was partly in consequence of his open defiance of the Porte, that insurrections broke out in Wallachia, and that Ypsilanti proclaimed himself the liberator of Greece. The Turkish troops, under Kurchid Pasha, gradually overpowered Ali, and, at the end of 1821, shut him up in his citadel of Janina. In the following January he surrendered, and was at first treated with respect. But on February 5, 1822, Ali was informed that the Sultan demanded his head. His answer was to fire his pistol at the messenger. In the fray that followed he was killed. Another and better account (Walsh's
Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to England