Bektashi Order

Five centuries of Ottoman rule will leave the Albanian people fractured along religious, regional, and tribal lines.

The first Albanians to convert to Islam are young boys forcibly conscripted into the sultan's military and administration.

In the early seventeenth century, however, Albanians will convert to Islam in great numbers.

Within a century, the Albanian Islamic community will be split between Sunni Muslims and adherents to the Bektashi sect.

The Albanian people will also become divided into two distinct tribal and dialectal groupings, the Gegs and Tosks.

In the rugged northern mountains, Geg shepherds live in a tribal society often completely independent of Ottoman rule.

In the south, peasant Muslim and Orthodox Tosks work the land for Muslim beys, provincial rulers who frequently revolt against the sultan's authority.

In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans will try in vain to shore up their collapsing empire by introducing a series of reforms aimed at reining in recalcitrant local officials and dousing the fires of nationalism among its myriad peoples.

The power of nationalism, however, will prove too strong to counteract.

Most of the conversions to Islam in Albania take place in the lowlands of the Shkumbin River valley, where the Ottoman Turks can easily apply pressure because of the area's accessibility.

Many Albanians, however, convert in name only and secretly continue to practice Christianity.

Often one branch of a family becomes Muslim while another remains Christian, and many times these families celebrate their respective religious holidays together.

As early as the eighteenth century, a mystic Islamic sect, the Bektashi dervishes, spread into the empire's Albanian-populated lands.

Probably founded in the late thirteenth century in Anatolia, Bektashism becomes the janissaries' official faith in the late sixteenth century.

The Bektashi sect contains features of the Turks' pre-Islamic religion and emphasizes man as an individual.

Women, unveiled, participate in Bektashi ceremonies on an equal basis, and the celebrants use wine despite the ban on alcohol in the Quran.

The Bektashis will become the largest religious group in southern Albania after the sultan disbands the janissaries in 1826.

Bektashi leaders will play key roles in the Albanian nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century and are to a great degree responsible for the Albanians' traditional tolerance of religious differences.

The Albanian lands during the centuries of Ottoman rule remain one of Europe's most backward areas.

In the mountains north of the Shkumbin River, Geg herders maintain their self-governing society comprised of clans.

An association of clans is called a bajrak.

Taxes on the northern tribes are difficult if not impossible for the Ottomans to collect because of the rough terrain and fierceness of the Albanian highlanders.

Some mountain tribes have succeeded in defending their independence through the centuries of Ottoman rule, engaging in intermittent guerrilla warfare with the Ottoman Turks, who have never deemed it worthwhile to subjugate them.

Geg clan chiefs, or bajraktars, exercise patriarchal powers, arrange marriages, mediated quarrels, and mete out punishments until recent times.

The tribesmen of the northern Albanian mountains recognize no law but the Code of Lek, a collection of tribal laws transcribed in the fourteenth century by a Roman Catholic priest.

The code regulates a variety of subjects, including blood vengeance.

Even today, many Albanian highlanders regard the canon as the supreme law of the land.

The mostly peasant Tosks live south of the Shkumbin River in compact villages under elected rulers.

Some Tosks living in settlements high in the mountains maintain their independence and often escape payment of taxes.

The Tosks of the lowlands, however, are easy for the Ottoman authorities to control.

The Albanian tribal system disappears there, and the Ottomans impose a system of military fiefs under which the sultan grants soldiers and cavalrymen temporary landholdings, or timars, in exchange for military service.

By the eighteenth century, many military fiefs have effectively become the hereditary landholdings of economically and politically powerful families who squeeze wealth from their hard-strapped Christian and Muslim tenant farmers.

The beys, like the clan chiefs of the northern mountains, have become virtually independent rulers in their own provinces, have their own military contingents, and often wage war against each other to increase their landholdings and power.

The Sublime Porte attempts to press a divide-and-rule policy to keep the local beys from uniting and posing a threat to Ottoman rule itself, but with little success.

The weakening of Ottoman central authority and the timar system brings anarchy to the Albanian-populated lands.

In the late eighteenth century, two Albanian centers of power emerge: Shkoder, under the Bushati family; and ...

...Janina, under Ali Pasha of Tepelene.

When it suits their goals, both places cooperate with the Sublime Porte, and when it is expedient to defy the central government, each acts independently.

The Bushati family dominates the Shkodër region through a network of alliances with various highland tribes.

Kara Mahmud Bushati attempts to establish an autonomous principality and expand the lands under his control by playing off Austria and Russia against the Sublime Porte.

In 1785 Kara Mahmud's forces attack Montenegrin territory, and Austria offers to recognize him as the ruler of all Albania if he will ally himself with Vienna against the Sublime Porte.

Seizing an opportunity, Kara Mahmud sends the sultan the heads of an Austrian delegation in 1788, and the Ottomans appoint him governor of Shkodër.

When he attempts to wrest land from Montenegro in 1796, however, he is defeated and beheaded.

Kara Mahmud's brother, Ibrahim, cooperates with the Sublime Porte until his death in 1810, but his successor, Mustafa Pasha Bushati, proves to be recalcitrant despite participation in Ottoman military campaigns against Greek revolutionaries and rebel pashas.

He cooperates with the mountain tribes and brings a large area under his control.

Ali Pasha (1741-1822), the Lion of Janina, was born to a powerful clan from Tepelene and spent much of his youth as a bandit.

He had risen to become governor of the Ottoman province of Rumelia, which includes Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, before establishing himself in Janina.

Like Kara Mahmud Bushati, Ali Pasha wants to create an autonomous state under his rule.

When Ali Pasha forges links with the Greek revolutionaries, Sultan Mahmud II decides to destroy him.

The sultan first discharges the Albanian from his official posts and recalls him to Constantinople.

Ali Pasha refuses and puts up a formidable resistance that Britain's Lord Byron immortalizes in poems and letters.

In January 1822, however, Ottoman agents assassinate Ali Pasha and send his head to Constantinople.

Nevertheless, it will take eight more years before the Sublime Porte willl move against Mustafa Pasha Bushati.