From salary to resistance: mobility, employment, and violence in Dibra, 1792–1826

ABSTRACT

This article traces the military employment patterns of the highlanders of Dibra in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It addresses how the Albanian highlanders found different opportunities for military employment in a period largely associated with political instability. The Albanians as ‘mountain bandits’ have been regarded as the primary culprit of the violence that ravaged the Balkans. The same bandits, this article shows, constituted at the same time the irregular forces the Ottoman army came to rely on in the late eighteenth century. By demonstrating different prospects of employment with which the Albanian irregulars were preoccupied, it provides a broader perspective to observe the turmoil the Balkans underwent in a period of political instability. This article also deals with the intricate interplay between the Albanian irregulars and the Ottoman military administration. It reinserts the Albanian bandits-cum-irregulars into the background of the military reforms. Showing how different prospects for military employment that ranged from freelance plunder to service either for the imperial army or the retinue of the rogue Albanian pashas came to clash with the discourse of military reforms, this article also traces the increasing tension between the Albanian irregulars and the modernising Ottoman army.

KEYWORDS:

• Ottoman Empire
• Albanians
• bandits
• irregulars
• recruitment
• military

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dimitris Stamatopoulos and the committee members of the conference ‘Balkan Worlds III: Power Networks in the Imperial and Post-Imperial Balkans (18th–20th c.)’, which was held in Thessaloniki on October 6–9, 2016, for offering me the opportunity of the earliest version of this article. I am indebted to Cengiz Kırlı, Yaşar Tolga Cora, and Veysel Şimşek for their help, suggestions, and comments on the earlier versions of the manuscript. Finally, I thank Hannah Lau for her meticulous revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives (hereafter BOA), C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (June 1792).

2. An account on Osman of Mat, without the connection with his patron Yusuf Bey, is discussed also by Frederick F. Anscombe, Albanians and “Mountain Bandits” in The Ottoman Balkans, 1750–1830, ed. Frederick F. Anscombe (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), pp.89–90. In this period, one kese meant 500 akçe whereas 1 kuruş equalled 120 akçe. For the Ottoman currency units, see Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.163.

3. BOA, C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (25 June 1792).

4. Ibid.

5. BOA. C. DH. 9/427, no date.

6. After Prilep, the mullah and his forces resided in Kičevo, another town in the modern Republic of Macedonia, harassing the inhabitants. The mullah promised their withdrawal on condition of payment of nearly 104 kuruş. Being too poor to pay such an amount, they paid 50 kuruş instead, ensuring that Molla Yunus returned to Dibra.

7. BOA. C. DH. 34/1655, no date.

8. BOA, C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (25 June 1792). In another document, Torkullu Mehmed Sipahi is said to have offered 10 kuruş per Albanian who would help realise his cause. Cf. BOA. C. DH. 128/6365, 21 Şevval 1206 (12 June 1792).

9. The number of the bandits is not certain as it varies in documents. Two documents list 2000, while another document indicates 1500. Cf. BOA, C. DH. 128/6365, 21 Şevval 1206 (12 June 1792); C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (25 June 1792); BOA. C. DH. 34/1655, no date.

10. C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (25 June 1792).

11. Yücel Özkaya, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Dağlı İsyanları (1791–1808) [The Mountaineer Rebellions in the Ottoman Empire (1791–1808)] (Ankara: Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakülyesi Yayınları, 1983); Anscombe, Albanians and “Mountain Bandits”; Antonis Anastasopoulos, Albanians in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Balkans in The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, the Greek Lands: Toward a Social and Economic History, ed. Elias Kolovos, et al. (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2007).

12. Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Military Recruitment Strategies in the Late Eighteenth Century in Arming the State: Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775–1925, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999), p.21. For a classical work on armed irregulars, called interchangeably ‘sekbân’ or ‘levend’ depending on political conjecture and the military reform, respectively, see Mustafa Cezar, Osmanlı Tarihinde Levendler [The Irregulars in the Ottoman History] (Istanbul: İstanbul Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi, 1965).

13. For the seminal works on the New Order, see Stanford J. Shaw, ‘The Origins of Ottoman Military Reform: The Nizam-ı Cedid Army of Sultan Selim III’, The Journal of Modern History Vol.37, no.3 (1965), pp.291–306; Avigdor Levy, ‘Military Reform and the Problem of Centralization in the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.18, no.3 (1982), pp.227–49.

14. Tolga U. Esmer, ‘Economies of Violence, Banditry and Governance in the Ottoman Empire Around 1800’, Past & Present Vol.224, no.1 (2014), pp.163–99; Ali Yaycıoğlu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016).

15. Today, Dibra as a town is in the Republic of Macedonia. As an administrative region, however, it is a district (Rrethi i Dibrës), whose headquarter is located in Peshkopi (Debre-i Zîr). The latter borders on the districts of Mat and Mirdita to the West, Kukës to the North, Bulqiza to the South and the Republic of Macedonia to the east. Robert Elsie, Dibra in Historical Dictionary of Albania (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2010), p.111.

16. For brief information on Dibra and Peshkopi, see Nathalie Clayer, Aux origines du nationalisme albanais: La naissance d'une nation majoritairement musulmane en Europe (Paris: Karthala, 2007), pp.89–95.

17. The mountains, which were Reçi, Dardha, Çidhna, Muhurri, and Luznia in the lower Dibra and Gryka e Vogël, Gryka e Madhe, Bulqiza, and Selishta in the upper Dibra, respectively, constituted their own bajraks. Clayer, ibid., p.91. Needless to say, being ‘highlanders’ in the nineteenth century meant being savage as the population in the mountains were the target of Europeans who assumed to bring ‘civilisation’ to these ‘tribal savages’ while they were also identified as Muslims who needed to be ‘re-educated’ in their faiths. Isa Blumi, ‘Contesting the Edges of the Ottoman Empire: Rethinking Ethnic and Sectarian Boundaries in the Malësore, 1878–1912’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.35, no.2 (May 2003), p.240.

18. Peter Bartl, Die albanischen Muslime zur Zeit der nationalen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung (1878–1912) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1968), p.68. According to the poll tax census carried out in 1845/1846, there were 1889 non-Muslims in the two Dibra regions. BOA. C. DH. 186/9257, 1246 (1845/6).

19. In 1918, pastures constituted 35.70 per cent of the cultivated soil in Albania, forests 34.30 per cent, and meadows 1.90 per cent, respectively. Siegfried Gruber and Robert Pichler, ‘Household Structures in Albania in the Early 20th century’, The History of the Family Vol.7, no.3 (2002), p.356.

20. Ibid., p.357.

21. Michel Palairet, The Migrant Workers of the Balkans and Their Villages (18th Cent.-World War II) in Handwerk in Mittel- und Südosteuropa: Mobilität, Vermittlung und Wandel im Handwerk des 18 bis. 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Klaus Roth (Münich: Selbstverlag der Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, 1987), p.24.

22. Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Migration into Eighteenth-Century “Greater Istanbul” as Reflected in the Kadi Registers of Eyüp’, Turcica no.30 (1998), p.173.

23. Palairet, The Migrant Workers, pp.23–4.

24. Robert Pichler, Strategies of Migrant Workers in the Highland Villages of Southern Albania in the 19th and 20th Centuries in Household and Family in the Balkans: Two Decades of Historical Family Research at the University of Graz, ed. Karl Kaser (Wien: Lit, 2012), p.422. Bathhouses in Istanbul were also particular destinations for Albanians in the eighteenth century. For further information, see Nina Ergin, ‘The Albanian Tellâk Connection: Labor Migration to the Hammams of 18th-Century Istanbul, Based on the 1752 İstanbul Hamâmları Defteri’, Turcica no.43 (2011), pp.231–56; Mapping Istanbul's Hammams of 1752 and Their Employees in Bread from the Lion's Mouth: Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (New York; Oxford: Berghahn, 2015). For the Albanian towns sending migrants to Istanbul at the turn of the nineteenth century, see also Cengiz Kırlı, ‘A Profile of the Labor Force in Early Nineteenth-Century Istanbul’, International Labor and Working-Class History no.60 (2002), p.136.

25. Michel Palairet, The Balkan Economies c. 1800–1914: Evolution without Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.345.

26. M. Münir Aktepe, Patrona İsyanı (1730) [The Patrona Rebellion (1730)] (Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1958), p.170; Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing at the End of the Eighteenth Century: Between Crisis and Order (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), p.23.

27. Fariba Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p.59.

28. For the rebellion in 1740, see Robert W. Olson, ‘Jews, Janissaries, Esnaf and the Revolt of 1740 in Istanbul: Social Upheaval and Political Realignment in the Ottoman Empire’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Vol.20, no.2 (1977), pp.185–207.

29. In the eighteenth century, the surveys of places of ‘trouble’ in Istanbul, i.e. bathhouses and coffeehouses and so on, were a frequent tool of the policy. Accordingly, expulsion of unemployed Albanian migrants was not confined to Istanbul. Ergin, Mapping Istanbul's Hammams, p.108; Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment, p.129; Eyal Ginio, ‘The Administration of Criminal Justice in Ottoman Selânik (Salonica) during the Eighteenth Century’, Turcica Vol.30 (1998), p.189.

30. Anscombe, Albanians and “Mountain Bandits”, p.102.

31. See, for instance, the imperial orders restricting the employment of Albanian mercenaries under the service of the Balkan notables, BOA. C. DH. 23/1135, 20 Zilkade 1214 (15 April 1800); BOA. C. DH. 83/4126, 29 Zilkade 1214 (24 April 1800).

32. See, for instance, BOA. C. DH. 304/15169, Ramazan 1214 (January/February 1800); BOA. C. DH. 23/1135, 10 Rabiulevvel 1218 (30 June 1803); BOA. C. DH. 22/1089, 20 Rabiulevvel 1218 (10 July 1803). On Ali Pasha's rise, see the seminal work of Dennis N. Skiotis, ‘From Bandit to Pasha: First Steps in the Rise to Power of Ali of Tepelen, 1750–1784’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.2, no.3 (1971), pp.219–44. For a recent study, see Katherine Elizabeth Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha's Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

33. BOA. C. DH. 34/1694, 10 Zilhicce 1218 (22 March 1804).

34. Pichler, Strategies of Migrant Workers, p.436.

35. For the cases of Swiss and Scottish irregulars, see John Casparis, ‘The Swiss Mercenary System: Labor Emigration from the Semiperiphery’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) Vol.5, no.4 (1982), pp.593–642; James Miller, The Scottish Mercenary as a Migrant Labourer in Europe, 1550–1650, in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013). Accordingly, Albanian stradiots served in the early modern armies of Europe. Frank Tallett, Soldiers in Western Europe, c. 1500–1790, in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), p.163.

36. Clayer, Aux origines du nationalisme albanais, p.91.

37. For the law, see Margaret Hasluck, The Unwritten Law in Albania (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1954); Shtjefën Gjeçov and Leonard Fox, eds., Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit = The Code of Lekë Dukagjini (New York: Gjonlekaj Pub. Co., 1989). For a comparative account on customary laws, see Caspar ten Dam, ‘How to Feud and Rebel: 1. Violence-values among the Chechens and Albanians’, Iran & The Caucasus Vol.14, no.2 (2010), pp.331–65; ‘How to Feud and Rebel: 2. Histories, Cultures and Grievances of the Chechens and Albanians’, Iran and the Caucasus Vol.15, nos.1–2 (2011), pp.235–73; Stéphane Voell, Identity and Traditional Law in Albania and Georgia in Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity in Southeast Europe and the Caucasus, ed. Thede Kahl and Iona Nechiti (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2016).

38. For blood feuds in other isolated societies, see Jenny Wormald, ‘Blood Feud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland’, Past & Present no.87 (1980), pp.54–97; Christopher Boehm, Blood Revenge: The Enactment and Management of Conflict in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (2nd ed, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987); Stephen Wilson, Feuding, Conflict and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

39. Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘Introduction: Understanding Changes in Military Recruitmen and Employment Worldwide’, in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), p.32.

40. Anastasopoulos, Albanians in the Eighteenth-Century, p.46.

41. Gültekin Yıldız, Neferin Adı Yok: Zorunlu Askerliğe Geçiş Sürecinde Osmanlı Devleti'nde Siyaset, Ordu ve Toplum (1826–1839) [The Private has No Name: Politics, Military, and Society in the Ottoman State during the Transition to Conscription Army (1826–1839)] (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2009), p.198; Virginia H. Aksan, Mobilization of Warrior Populations in the Ottoman Context, 1750–1850 in Fighting for a Living, A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), p.344.

42. Halil İnalcık, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700’, Archivum Ottomanicum Vol.VI (1980), p.303. For a general account of the irregulars, see Cezar, Osmanlı Tarihinde Levendler. However, Rhoads Murphey warns that one should take the ‘sekbân domination of the empire’ with a grain of salt due to the total number of the irregulars. Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700 (London: UCL Press, 1999), p.190.

43. Virginia H. Aksan, ‘Locating the Ottomans Among Early Modern Empires’, Journal of Early Modern History Vol.3, no.3 (1999), p.121.

44. Aksan, ‘Ottoman Military Recruitment Strategies’, p.28.

45. Particularly, the Porte hired 2700 Albanian irregulars, 1500 of which were to be raised by İbrahim Pasha of Shkoder. Kahraman Şakul, The Evolution of Ottoman Military Logistical Systems in the Later Eighteenth Century: The Rise of a New Class of Military Entrepreneur in War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and Mediterranean, 1300–1800, ed. Jeff Fynn-Paul (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), p.324.

46. BOA. C. DH. 13/628 29 Cemaziyelahir 1224 (11 August 1809).

47. For this kind of recruitment, see Jan Lucassen and Erik Jan Zürcher, Introduction: Conscription and Resistance. The Historical Context in Arming the State: Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775–1925, ed. Erik Jan Zürcher (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999), pp.5–7.

48. Virginia Aksan, Ottoman War and Warfare, 1453–1812, in War in the Early Modern World, ed. Jeremy Black (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p.168.

49. Y. Hakan Erdem, Perfidious Albanians and Zealous Governors: Ottomans, Albanians and Turks in the Greek War of Independence in Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760–1850. Conflict, Transformation, Adaptation, ed. Antonis Anastasopoulos and Elias Kolovos (Rethymno: University of Crete, 2007), p.214; Aksan, ‘Ottoman Military Recruitment Strategies’, p.29; Halil İnalcık, Arnawutluk in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, et al. (2nd ed, Leiden: Brill, 1960), pp.657–58.

50. Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.214; İnalcık, Arnawutluk, pp.657–58.

51. Tallett, ‘Soldiers in Western Europe’, p.139.

52. Lucassen and Zürcher, Introduction: Conscription and Resistance, p.6. For Mehmed Ali Pasha, see Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

53. Cengiz Kırlı, ‘Tyranny Illustrated: From Petition to Rebellion in Ottoman Vranje’, New Perspectives on Turkey Vol.53 (2015), p.12.

54. Şakul, The Evolution of Ottoman Military, p.326; Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.215.

55. Yaycıoğlu, Partners of the Empire, pp.1–2.

56. Anscombe, Albanians and “Mountain Bandits”, p.96.

57. Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Military and Social Transformation, 1826–28: Engagement and Resistance in a Moment of Global Imperalism in Empires and Autonomy: Moments in the History of Globalization, ed. Stephen M. Streeter, John C. Weaver, and William D. Coleman (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2009), p.66.

58. Considering that most provincial notables of the eighteenth century, if not earlier centuries, came from the bandits, as Barkey claims, the bandits ‘represented alternative centres of militarization that were dealt with in the old patrimonial style, through incorporation and reward’. Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p.17.

59. Tolga U. Esmer, ‘Notes on a Scandal: Transregional Networks of Violence, Gossip, and Imperial Sovereignty in the Late Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol.58, no.1 (2016), p.105.

60. On Kara Mahmud Pasha, see Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp.230–36.

61. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-İ, no date.

62. The harassment continued as the pasha deceived the inhabitants of Dibra by collecting 6000 kuruş in return for the seized sheep. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-E, no date.

63. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-İ, no date.

64. Robert Elsie, The Tribes of Albania: History, Society and Culture (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015), p.269. Bajraks were part of the greater fis (clan) structure by which the Ottomans facilitated the draft of Albanians for the Ottoman army. Stéphane Voell, ‘The Kanun in the City. Albanian Customary Law as a Habitus and Its Persistence in the Suburb of Tirana, Bathore’, Anthropos Vol.98, no.1 (2003), p.93.

65. I borrow the ‘bilateral factionalism’ from Jane Hathaway, Bilateral Factionalism in the Ottoman Provinces in Provincial Elites in the Ottoman Empire: Halcyon Days in Crete V: A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 10–12 January 2003, ed. Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2005).

66. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-E 7 Ramazan 1209 (28 March 1795).

67. BOA. 70/2952-J, no date

68. Esmer, ‘Notes on a Scandal’, p.104.

69. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-G, no date; BOA. HAT. 70/2052-K.

70. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-E 7 Ramazan 1209 (28 March 1795).

71. BOA. HAT. 70/2952-E 7 Ramazan 1209 (28 March 1795).

72. Miller, The Scottish Mercenary, p.177.

73. BOA, C. DH. 27/1340 5 Zilkade 1206 (June 1792).

74. Esmer, ‘Economies of Violence’, p.168.

75. BOA. HAT. 79/3271-A, 3 Cemaziyelevvel 1215 (22 September 1800).

76. The governor also noted that Ali Pasha of Ioannina and Yusuf Bey of Dibra were sent letters for their contribution; it seems, however, that they did not send any soldiers. BOA. HAT. 96/3875-A, 3 Cemaziyelevvel 1215 (22 September 1800). BOA. HAT. 96/3875 7 Cemaziyelevvel 1215 (26 September 1800). On ‘sons of the conquerors’, see M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, Rumeli'de Yürükler, Tatarlar ve Evlâd-ı Fatihan [Nomads, Tatars and the Sons of Conquerors in Rumelia] (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, 1957), pp.74–5; Reşat Kasaba, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), pp.72–74; Y. Hakan Erdem, Turks as Soldiers in Mahmud II's Army: Turning the Evlad-ı Fatihan into Regulars in the Ottoman Balkans in Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, ed. Sabine Rutar (Zurich and Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2014).

77. For the term ‘confederative military symbiosis’, see Aksan, Ottoman Military and Social Transformation, p.66.

78. BOA. HAT. 57/2612-A, 3 Rabiulevvel 1216 (14 July 1801).

79. BOA. C. DH. 156/7775, Evâhir-i Rabiulevvel (9 August 1801)

80. BOA. HAT. 57/2612-A, 3 Rabiulevvel 1216 (14 July 1801).

81. BOA. HAT 53/2472 21 Cemaziyelahir 1216 (29 October 1801). Kile is originally a measurement of volume. Ágoston, warning about regional variations, notes that 1 kile equals 36 litres. Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p.244.

82. BOA. HAT 53/2472 21 Cemaziyelahir 1216 (29 October 1801).

83. Ibid.

84. BOA. HAT. 57/2612-C, no date. With regards to the artillery, the governor noted that there was none in Bitola directing the discussion of the matter to the Ottoman government. BOA. HAT 53/2472 21 Cemaziyelahir 1216 (29 October 1801).

85. BOA. HAT. 96/3865-D, 12 Rabiulahir 1218 (1 August 1803); BOA. HAT. 96/3865-E, Rabiulahir 1218 (August 1803); BOA. HAT. 96/3865-İ, Rabiulahir 1218 (August 1803).

86. Hamiyet Sezer Feyzioğlu, ‘19. Yüzyıl Başlarında Arnavutluk'ta İktidar Mücadelesi [Power Struggle in Albania in the Early 19th Century]’, Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Tarih Bölümü Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi Vol.23, no.36 (2004), p.111 ff.

87. BOA. C. DH. 66/3268, 9 Receb 1223 (31 August 1808).

88. BOA. HAT. 252/14313, 13 Cemaziyelahir 1227 (24 June 1812).

89. Particularly, Yusuf Bey of Dibra approached Kara Mustafa Pasha of Shkoder, Mahmud Pasha of Prizren, Mustafa Pasha of Gjakovë, Receb Pasha of Tetovo, and Malik Pasha of Prishtina. BOA. C. DH. 58/2862, 9 Receb 1227 (19 July 1812).

90. BOA. HAT. 281/16735, no date.

91. BOA. HAT. 401/21401, 22 Ramazan 1234 (15 July 1819).

92. BOA. HAT. 401/21401, 22 Ramazan 1234 (15 July 1819). Evidently the hostility had two sides, each side sending their own petitions to the Ottoman government. See, for instance, the petitions penned by the deputy judge (nâ’ib) of Dibra, see BOA. HAT. 401/21401-İ, no date; BOA. HAT. 401/21401-F, no date; and those by the notables of Peshkopi BOA. HAT. 401/21401-C, no date; BOA. HAT. 401/21401-H, no date, and the one penned by Abbas Bey BOA. HAT. 401/21401-E, no date.

93. BOA. HAT. 670/32684, no date.

94. Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, Humiliation and Reconciliation in Northern Albania: The Logics of Feuding in Symbolic and Diachronic Perspectives in Dynamics of Violence: Processes of Escalation and De-Escalation in Violent Group Conflicts, Sociologus, ed. Georg Elwert, Stephan Feuchtwang, and Dieter Neubert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), pp.135, 143.

95. Nathalie Clayer, Local Factionalism and Political Mobilization in the Albanian Province in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Consul Caught up in a Conflict between Villagers and the Ottoman Authorities in Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman Empire: Studies in Honor of Suraiya Faroqhi, ed. Eleni Gara, M. Erdem Kabadayı, and Christoph K. Neumann (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2011), p.204.

96. BOA. HAT. 729/34698, no date. In another correspondence, the number of highlanders varies between 8000 and 10,000. Cf. BOA. HAT. 401/21401-B, no date.

97. BOA. HAT. 729/34698, no date.

98. BOA. HAT. 400/21032-I, 7 Receb 1235 (20 April 1820); BOA. HAT. 400/21032-J, 7 Receb 1235 (20 April 1820).

99. BOA. HAT. 670/32684, no date.

100. BOA. HAT. 400/21032-I, 7 Receb 1235 (20 April 1820); BOA. HAT. 400/21032-J, 7 Receb 1235 (20 April 1820).

101. On the Greek War of Independence and the Greek irregulars, see, respectively, Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821–1833 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Dennis N. Skiotis, Mountain Warriors and the Greek Revolution in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, ed. V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Giannes S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece, 1821–1912 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); Achilles Batalas, Send a Thief to Catch a Thief: State-Building and the Employment of Irregular Military Formations in Mid-Nineteenth Century Greece in Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Politics and State Formation, ed. Diane E. Davis and Anthony W. Pereira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

102. Similar to the Albanians, the line between the armatoloi and klephts was extremely fine as most of the former were selected from the pool of the latter by the Ottomans. Skiotis, Mountain Warriors, pp.311–13.

103. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, pp.26–7.

104. Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.220.

105. BOA. HAT. 481/23558, 17 Cemaziyelevvel 1237 (9 February 1822); BOA. C. DH. 215/10709, 5 Cemaziyelahir 1237 (27 February 1822).

106. BOA. HAT. 937/40510-A, 23 Şaban 1238 (5 May 1823).

107. BOA. HAT. 911/39854, 11 Zilkade 1238 (20 July 1823). The infamous nickname ‘dark’ were mostly associated with the banditry in the late eighteenth century, Kara Mahmud Pasha being the most notable example.

108. BOA. HAT. 911/39854, 11 Zilkade 1238 (20 July 1823).

109. BOA. HAT. 911/39854, 11 Zilkade 1238 (20 July 1823).

110. Tallett, ‘Soldiers in Western Europe’, p.149.

111. Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.215.

112. According to Seyyid Ali Pasha, after the departure of the mercenaries, the chiefs had only ten men under their command despite initially bringing 100 men. Ibid.

113. Quoted in Veysel Şimşek, ‘The First “Little Mehmeds”: Conscripts for the Ottoman Army, 1826–53’, The Journal of Ottoman Studies no.44 (2014), p.290.

114. BOA. HAT. 922/40080-B, 15 Zilkade 1238 (24 July 1823).

115. Ibid. The Zoguoğlu family, or the Zogolli in Albanaian, was one of the four families ruling Mat in the nineteenth century, from which Ahmed Zogu, to be later known as King Zog, stemmed in the twentieth century. Elsie, The Tribes of Albania, p.269.

116. Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.220.

117. BOA. HAT. 928/40290, 23 Safer 1239 (29 October 1823). For other sieges of Missolonghi, see David Brewer, The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle For Freedom from Ottoman Oppresion (New York and London: Overlook Duckworth, 2011), pp.269–71.

118. BOA. HAT. 920/40026, 13 Ramazan 1240 (1 May 1825).

119. BOA. HAT. 905/39715-N, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825).

120. BOA. HAT. 905/39715-M, 25 Rabiulahir 1241 (7 December 1825).

121. BOA. HAT. 904/39695, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825).

122. Apart from the mercenaries of Dibra and Mat, who were 320 in number and commanded by twenty chiefs (bölükbaşı), the rest were, unsurprisingly, northern Albanian. That is, Rüstem Ağa and Sinan Ağa from Prizren, Receb Aga from Skopje, Süleyman Ağa and Arif Aga from Prishtina, İbrahim Aga from Tetovo, and Çam Muhtar Ağa and Topal Numan Ağa commanded 600 Albanians. BOA. HAT. 904/39695-C, no date.

123. BOA. HAT. 904/39695-A, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825). Reinkowski discusses, in the case of Mirdite, another group of Albanian highlanders, the transformation of Albanians from an ethnic group offering good service and loyalty to their association with pejorative terms like ‘bonehead’. Even though he dates the transformation to have taken place in the 1860s, the invective directed at the Albanians evidently has earlier origins. Maurus Reinkowski, The Imperial Idea and Realpolitik - Reform Policy and Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire in Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen (Göttingen: Vandenhock & Ruprecht, 2011), p.467.

124. BOA. HAT. 904/39695, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825).

125. BOA. HAT. 904/39695, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825).

126. BOA. HAT. 904/39695, 27 Rabiulahir 1241 (9 December 1825).

127. Erdem, Perfidious Albanians, p.215. Noting the frustration with the conduct of the Ottoman troops, Skiotis claims that 2000 to 3000 Albanian highlanders rebelled against the Ottoman forces during the war. Skiotis, Mountain Warriors, p.326.

128. BOA. HAT. 406/21194, 11 Cemaziyelevvel 1243 (30 November 1827).

129. Criminal surety, or kefâlet senedi, according to Canbakal, usually refers to the responsibility of submitting defendants either to a court or to the authorities. As these sureties evolved in the later centuries, they also came to mean vows to ʻmaintain order, to collaborate with authorities, to deliver culprits, or less commonly, to be obedient themselvesʼ. Hülya Canbakal, ‘Vows as Contract in Ottoman Public Life (17th–18th Centuries)’, Islamic Law and Society 18, no. 1 (2011), pp.92–3. Cf. Işık Tamdoğan, ‘Nezir ya da XVIII. Yüzyıl Çukurova'sında Eşkıya, Göçebe ve Devlet Arasındaki İlişkiler [Nezir or the Relations among the Bandits, Nomads, and State in 18th Century Çukurova]’, Kebikeç no.21 (2006), pp.135–46.

130. BOA. HAT. 406/21194, 11 Cemaziyelevvel 1243 (30 November 1827).

131. BOA. HAT. 407/21232, 11 Cemaziyelevvel 1243 (30 November 1827). Association of the rebels with a pejorative discourse was an established tradition in the Ottoman chroniclers. Felix Konrad, ‘Coping with “the Riff-Raff and Mob”: Representations of Order and Disorder in the Patrona Halil Rebellion (1730)’, Die Welt des Islams Vol.54, no.3/4 (2014), p.393.

132. Even though it is not clear, Hasan Bey, Yusuf Bey's son, assumes the administration of the town once again. BOA. HAT. 407/21237, 19 Cemaziyelevel 1243 (8 December 1827).

133. BOA. HAT. 406/21194, 11 Cemaziyelevvel 1243 (30 November 1827), emphasis added.

134. The pasha was to receive 5000 kuruş as pension in addition to monthly payments of 1000 kuruş. BOA. HAT. 669/32646, no date.

135. For the establishment of the regular army, see Yıldız, Neferin Adı Yok.

136. Kasaba argues that almost half of the Ottoman army consisted of locally recruited irregular troops in the campaigns in which the Ottomans participated in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Kasaba, A Moveable Empire, p.100.

137. Yıldız, Neferin Adı Yok; Kahraman Şakul, ‘Osmanlı Askerî Tarihi Üzerine Bir Literatür Değerlendirmesi [A Literature Review on Ottoman Military History]’, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi Vol.1, no.2 (2003), p.570.

138. Hakan Erdem, Recruitment for the “Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad” in the Arab Provinces, 1826–1828 in Histories of the Modern Middle East: New Directions, ed. Israel Gershoni, Hakan Erdem, and Ursula Wökock (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002).

139. Şimşek, ‘The First “Little Mehmeds”’, p.271.

140. For information on the tacit contract, see Yıldız, Neferin Adı Yok, pp.238–9.

141. Ibid., pp.139–40.

142. Tobias Heinzelmann, Changing Recruitment Strategies in the Ottoman Army, 1839–1856 in The Crimean War 1853–1856: Colonial Skirmish or Rehearsal for World War, ed. J. W. Borejsza (Warszawa: Neriton, 2011), p.30.

143. James J. Reid, ‘Irregular Military Bands and Colonies in the Balkans under Ottoman Rule 1789–1878’, Études balkaniques no. 3 (1996), p.151; Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse 1839–1878 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000), p.136. For the Circassians, see Mehmet Beşikçi, ‘Başıbozuk Savaşçıdan “Makbul” Tebaaya: 1877–1878 Osmanlı-Rus Savaşı'nda Osmanlı Ordusunda Çerkez Muhacirler [From Irregular Warriors to “Acceptable” Subjects: Circassian Refugees in the Ottoman Army in the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War]’, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi no. 23 (Fall 2015), p.87.

144. Şimşek, ‘The First “Little Mehmeds”’, p.279.

145. Heinzelmann, Changing Recruitment Strategies, p.31.

146. Tobias Heinzelmann, Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda Genel Askerlik Yükümlülüğü 1826–1856 [From the Holy War to National Defence: Conscription in the Ottoman Empire 1826–1856] (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2009), p.166.

147. Şimşek, ‘The First “Little Mehmeds”’, p.278. The resistance against conscription, however, was not monolithic. For instance, Ali Hakkı of Dibra, a notable of the town in the 1840s, tried to incorporate himself into the Ottoman administration by offering his intermediary services for conscription in northern Albania. Heinzelmann, Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına, pp.164–5.

148. For brief information on the rebellion, see Theodor Ippen, Beiträge zur inneren Geschichte Albanens im XIX. Jahrhundert in Illyrisch-Albanische Forschungen, ed. Ludwig Von Thallóczy (Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1916).

149. Veysel Şimşek, ‘The Grand Strategy of the Ottoman Empire, 1826–1841’ (PhD thesis, McMaster University, 2015), pp.76–7.

150. Quoted in Reid, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire, p.130.