This extraordinary man was born in Tepeleni, a small village of Albania, in the year 1741. His ancestors had been distinguished among the wild chieftains of the district, and his mother, a woman of ferocious energy of character, determined that he should not degenerate. He became expert in all manly exercises, and, at a very early age, distinguished himself among the Kleftes, or robbers, of the country. While absent at a wedding, the inhabitants of Gardaki, a neighbouring and rival village, rushed into Tepeleni, and carried off his mother, and sister Shaïnitza, whom they abused. He vowed he would never rest till he stuffed the cushions of his divan with the hair of all the women of Gardaki. This vow he religiously kept; and after exterminating the inhabitants, and razing the village to the ground, the long tresses, which are the pride and ornament of Albanian women, were shorn from their lifeless remains, and the ferocious sister of Ali exulted while she reposed on the cushions which were stuffed with them.
After a career of crime, in which his cruelty and perfidy were as distinguished as his courage and ability, he at length made himself master, under various pretexts, of all the towns and fortresses in the country, and destroyed, with unrelenting cruelty, every rival whom by force or fraud he could get into his power. He was then confirmed by the Turks in the pashalik of all Albania, and he made Joannina his residence, and the capital of his territory. Here he invited all the distinguished travellers in Europe to visit him; and by their reports, his name soon expanded beyond the obscurity of his native mountains.
After enjoying for half a century this celebrity, the Turks became jealous of his power, and determined to depose him. He resisted all their open efforts, and at length fell a victim to a perfidy equal to his own. A pasha paid him a friendly visit, and, after many professions of good will, rose to take his leave, and made him the usual obeisance. Ali returned it, and before he could recover himself, his visitor stabbed him in the back, and his yatagan passed directly through his heart, and out of his breast. Thus perished, at the age of eighty-one “the old lion,” as the Turks denominated him. His head was cut off, and despatched, with his last wife, Vacilesso, to Constantinople, where it was exposed for three days on a silver dish in the courts of the seraglio. The heads of his four sons and grandson were sent after him; and they are all interred, with suitable monuments, outside the walls of Constantinople, and are the first objects seen by travellers after passing the Selyvria gate. The body was embalmed, and buried with that of his first wife, Fatimah or Ermineh, in a mausoleum he had erected for her on the esplanade of the seraglio at Joannina, where it overlooks the lake, as represented in our illustration.
| T. Allom. | W. H. Mote. |
HALT OF CARAVANIERS AT A SERAÏ.
BULGARIA.
The interior of the Turkish empire is constantly traversed by large bodies of men, who proceed together for protection; and their object is either commerce or devotion. We have already given some account of the first−the second remains to be noticed.