PASURIA DHE PRONAT E ALI PASHË TEPELENËS DHE TË FAMILJES SË TIJ
Wealth and Property of Tepedelenli Ali Pasha and His Family

Summary/Abstract: Ali Pasha and his family made a sizeable fortune while he was the governor of the region. As it is understood from archival documents, they had a large amount of property such as farms, gardens, vineyards, mansions, inns, as well as valuable materials and cash. The answer to the question of how could they have acquired such a fortune are various. Force, and forced confiscation, purchase and bribes could be listed among the ways of acquiring assets. Farms belonging to Ali Pasha formed a large part of his properties and fortune. He created considerable number of revenue sources by opening areas under his control to farming. Furthermore, he acquired stable income from farms that were transformed from villages. The farm lands in the hands of the reaya were obtained by the pasha through of pressure and direct threats. A third of the outputs from those farms were given to Ali Pasha. Another method of creating farms was confiscating land by paying an amount proportional to the agricultural land area. An identical approach used in transforming the farms in the territory owned by different people paying a fee in order to bring the land under his control. Tepedelenli Ali Pasha was the most powerful figure in the Balkan Peninsula during the 18th and 19th centuries. When his power reached its peak in 1812, he was the de facto sovereign of the region in the south of Durazza-Manastir-Salonica line which included modern Greece and Albania. The properties held by Ali Pasha and his sons can be categorized into three groups as follows: various iltizam (Tax farming) revenues from the farms and other areas; precious items Metals, gold silver, cash and receivables not clear from other people. The last two items, receivables, precious items and cash have been determined from the defters (registers, record box), which were acquired after the death of Ali Pasha, and also from the statements of Ali Pasha and his son’s relatives and their registrars. After the uprising the properties belonging to the family and their supporters were confiscated, officials were appointed with the task of immediate registration and then registers were prepared. According to the resolution made by authorities in Istanbul in 1821, all estates and real estate confiscated became the property of the Imperial Mint (Darphane-i Amire). In terms of the farms, as a result of research it appears that there were more than 900 farms belonging to Ali Pasha and his family. A great number of these farms were in the Ioannina, Delvine, Trikala, Vlore and Gjirokaster (Ergiri) sanjaks. It is estimated that their annual revenue was more than two million kuruş. Ali Pasha’s real estate were mostly included in zeamet, timar and mukataat and formed by registered villages. Tepedelenli Ali Pasha and his sons sometimes bought the land by paying an amount of money and at other times acquired the land by using force and then transformed it into farming areas.

• Details
• Contents