Ali Pashà, originally Ali Aga of Stolac, the seat of his hereditary castle and possessions, was a scion of the renegade nobility of Herzegovina, and had been enabled to aid the Grand Signior against his reactionary Mahometan vassals, by resorting to the bold expedient of arming his rayah retainers. He appears to have been a man endued above the average with the Turkish aptitude for dissimulation. While the Christians were useful to him, he was profuse in his promises of reward, and used to swear to them ‘by the golden cross’ that their taxes would be abolished with the exception of a hundred paras yearly of haratch. But, once in the Vizierial palace of Mostar, he increased the haratch, levied the tithes with greater rigour, doubled the other taxes, and, only anxious to conciliate the Moslems of his Pashalik, allowed his agents to treat the rayahs with greater cruelty than ever. On the pretence of seizing Christians who, after fleeing to Montenegro, might presume, with brigandish intent, to revisit the Herzegovina, he used to send detachments of fanatical officers, who made the circuit of the Christian villages, and ill-treated or murdered whom they pleased, under the pretence that they were Uskoks, as these refugees were called, or had sheltered such. A native historian, a monk of Mostar,[304] has related with a Herodotean simplicity the history of the civil war in the Herzegovina and the reign of the terrible Vizier; and the picture which he gives of the sufferings of the rayahs, of the sort of justice which was meted out to them in the country districts, and the sights with which the tyrant in the palace of Mostar was wont to feast his eyes, may serve to open people’s eyes to the character of the government in this part of the Sultan’s dominions during the years immediately preceding the Crimean War. We must remember that the writer is a monk, but there is a charming naïveté about the following narrations.
If the Pashà had a weakness, it was for impaled heads of rayahs, so that when these Uskok hunters were disappointed of legitimate game, they used to resort to a rough and ready way of securing the Pashà’s approbation. Thus in 1849 Ali Pashà sent Ibrahim, his Cavass-Basha, to collect Uskoks. ‘Ibrahim,’ says our native historian, ‘tarried in Drobniaki till October, but found no work there wherewith to keep his hands warm. Therefore he betook himself to the village Cerna Gora,[305] and after he had passed the night there, he gave orders to the villagers that one out of every house should come forth and accompany him to Piva. The poor villagers came forth as he bade them; but when they had gone with him one hour’s distance from their dwellings, their hands were bound, and here, on the plain near Lysina, the Cavass-Basha Ibrahim shot them dead one after the other. And thus were slain fifteen men, Christians all, miserable indeed in their life-time, but guiltless before the all-high God. And wherefore were they slain? For naught, but that there should be fewer Vlachs.’[306]...
‘The greatest delight of the Vizier was to look upon Christian heads impaled. From his palace in Mostar he could not see the fortress walls, and therefore had he them made higher that he might see them when he lay at meals; and round about the whole fortress he set up palisades of pointed oak-staves, which he topped with Christian heads. At these then looked he from his window, and his heart leapt thereat for joy. If he would oppress any man, he straightway spake and said, “Wilt thou never cease to trouble me, till such time as I hew thy head from thy body, and bid them stick it on the palisades?—then shalt thou give me peace at last!” Upon this fortress there were 150 staves, and upon each stave was always fixed a dead man’s head.[307] But when his murderous bands brought a fresh head, and there was room wanted for it, then Ali Pashà bade them take one or more of the dried heads down, and throw them into the street, where the children were wont to kick them about for sport, and no man durst take them away.’
But Ali Pashà himself fell at last into disfavour with the Porte, and his intrigues with the Mahometan magnates of Bosnia in their final revolt against the Sultan in 1850 brought on his head the vengeance of the second conqueror of Bosnia, Omer Pashà. The catastrophe of our satrap, like the episodes of his tyranny, was thoroughly Eastern, and as the closing scene of the drama is laid with poetic fitness on the bridge of Mostar, I may be allowed once more to have recourse to our Herzegovinian historian.
‘The old, lame Ali Pashà was forced to limp on foot, with a staff in his hand, to the bridge over the river Narenta—and there they set him for mockery on a lean and mangy mule, and in such a plight Omer Pashà led with him our Ali Pashà, even he who for so many years had ruled the Herzegovina according to his will, and had done there so many evil deeds; but Ali Pashà was sore vexed at his abasement, and straightway began to rail at Omer Pashà, and amongst other things he said: “Why dost thou torment me thus? Thou art a Vlach[308] and the son of a Vlach! From whom hast thou authority to drag me thus? Aye, and had I taken arms against the Sultan himself, it is not to thee belongs the right to treat me as one taken in battle, wert thou three times Seraskier. Therefore, O unclean Vlach! send me rather to my Padishah, that he may judge me, and vex me not in my old age.” But when Omer Pashà heard this, he feared lest peradventure he himself should suffer damage at Stamboul; for Ali Pashà had many friends there amongst those in high places, to whom he was wont to send much money from the Herzegovina. So Omer Pashà, turning these things over in his mind, in the end perceived that it were better if Ali Pashà were no longer of this world. And lo! at night, at two of the clock, was heard the sound as of a shot, and there came tidings to Omer Pashà that it had so chanced a gun had gone off, and behold the ball had passed through Ali Pashà’s head. Thus died Ali Pashà, Rizvanbegović, on the twentieth day of March, 1851.’
Mostar contains about 18,000 inhabitants,[309] and is therefore a considerable town for this part of the world. For trade, it has long been the chief staple of Herzegovina, and was renowned of old for its manufacture of Damascened swords. The wares, however, here are much the same as those of Serajevo, so that I have little to record of the streets of Mostar, except that one old Turk—whose principles I respect—swore by the beard of the Prophet that he would never sell the meanest knife on his shop-board to a dog of a Giaour; and that one Mostar damsel—about whose principles I will not enquire, but of whose amiability there can be no question—deftly dropped her veil as we passed her doorway, and favoured us with a private view of a not uncomely face.[310] Indeed we noticed that in the lower valley of the Narenta generally the use of the veil is not so rigorously enforced as usually in Bosnia, though the face-covering is absolutely discarded only at Jablanica and the adjoining district.
There was one very pleasant feature about the streets of Mostar, and that was the abundance of fruit. The peaches were poor; but melons, figs, and the grapes at about a halfpenny a pound, even when a Frank was a purchaser, were delicious. The grapes, of which the Mostar wine famed throughout all these lands is made, are of magnificent calibre, and are celebrated in Serbian song. When the bride of Mahmoud Pashà[311] speeds with the choicest delicacies of earth to comfort princely Mujo, these are not forgotten in the dainty menu. The lady hides beneath her richest garments:—
Rosy sweets wrapped up in golden vestments,
Yellow honeycomb in silver dishes,
And spring-cherries all preserved in honey;