The Alipashiad or Alipashias is a Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 epic poem, written in early 19th century by the Muslim

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

 Albanian

Albanians

Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...

 Haxhi Shehreti. The work is inspired by and named after Ali Pasha

Ali Pasha

Ali Pasha of Tepelena or of Yannina, surnamed Aslan, "the Lion", or the "Lion of Yannina", Ali Pashë Tepelena was an Ottoman Albanian ruler of the western part of Rumelia, the Ottoman Empire's European territory which was also called Pashalik of Yanina. His court was in Ioannina...

, the Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 lord of Ioannina

Ioannina

Ioannina , often called Jannena within Greece, is the largest city of Epirus, north-western Greece, with a population of 70,203 . It lies at an elevation of approximately 500 meters above sea level, on the western shore of lake Pamvotis . It is located within the Ioannina municipality, and is the...

, Epirus

Epirus

The name Epirus, from the Greek "Ήπειρος" meaning continent may refer to:-Geographical:* Epirus - a historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans, straddling modern Greece and Albania...

, describing, in heroic style, his life and military campaigns.

Background and historical value

Although Ali Pasha was Albanian, he used Greek in his courtly dealings, since this was the dominant language in the regions he controlled. Moreover, the use of Greek language in various works of Albanian authors was very common. In accordance to this, the composer of the Alipashiad, who was Ali's personal ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

eer, Haxhi Shehreti, composed this work in Greek language, considering it a more prestigious language in which to praise his master.. William Leake says that Shehreti had no Greek education and knew only the colloquial Greek of Albania and its borders. The language of the poem, therefore (according to Leake) represents the vulgar dialect of those countries .


Historically, the Alipashiad contains the unusual feature of being written from the Muslim point of view. Apart from describing Ali's adventures the poem describes Ioannina, which was a center of Greek culture and renaissance that time, as well as the activities of the local mercenaries (Armatoles) and revolutionaries (Klephts) that Ali had to deal with.

Text and date

The Alipashiad consists of 15,000 lines and was written in installments in the first years of the 19th century, when Ali Pasha was at his height as the powerful and semi-independent ruler of much of Ottoman Greece

Ottoman Greece

Most of Greece gradually became part of the Ottoman Empire from the 15th century until its declaration of independence in 1821, a historical period also known as Tourkokratia ....

. The poem is written in a modern demotic Greek language

Dimotiki

Demotic Greek or dimotiki is the modern vernacular form of the Greek language. The term has been in use since 1818. Demotic refers particularly to the form of the language that evolved naturally from ancient Greek, in opposition to the artificially archaic Katharevousa, which was the official...

 and contains some dialectical interference and foreign expressions. A copy of the poem was found by the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 antiquarian

Antiquarian

An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...

 and topographer, William Martin Leake

William Martin Leake

William Martin Leake, FRS , British antiquarian and topographer, was born in London.After completing his education at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and spending four years in the West Indies as lieutenant of marine artillery, he was sent by the government to Constantinople to instruct the...

, in 1817. In 1835 he published 4,500 lines of the Alipashiad. The entire poem was published by the Greek historian Constantine Sathas

Constantine Sathas

Constantine Sathas was a Greek historian and researcher. He is considered one of the founders of Byzantine and post-Byzantine studies in Greece. He did archival research in Greece, Constantinople, Venice, Florence etc...

in his volume Historical Disquisitions in 1870.

External links

• Leake William Martin. Travels in northern Greece. J. Rodwell, 1835.
• Κ. Ν. Σάθα. Ιστορικαί διατριβαί H Αληπασιάς, του Τουρκαλβανού Χατζή Σεχρέτη. (The Alipashiad, of the Turkalbanian Hadji Sehreti) in "Ιστορικαί Διατριβαί" (Historical Disquisitions), Athens, 1870, pp. 123-336 (original text of the Alipashiad with comments and bibliography on Ali Pasha, in Greek).
• Irakli Koçollari The Alipashiad of Haxhi Shehreti Onufri, 1997 (Albanian)