Ottoman Rule
Albanian lords became Ottoman vassals after the Battle of Savra in 1385, and after Skanderbeg the land was ruled from Istanbul for four centuries. It was a period of conversion, of Albanians rising high in the imperial service, and of near-autonomous local rulers, Ali Pasha of Ioannina above all. It also built the towns: Berat and Gjirokastër, both later inscribed by UNESCO, are Ottoman-era architecture still standing and still lived in.
Part of Albania
19 moments in this segment.
- - Pages of the Elbasan Gospel Manuscript. The Elbasan Gospel Manuscript records Orthodox scripture in Albanian using a unique alphabet devised in the eighteenth century. It is one of the earliest substantial texts written in the Albanian language.
- - Albanian yatagan in the Musee barrois. A nineteenth-century Albanian yatagan with damascened metal, ivory and semi-precious stones, held in the Musee barrois in France. Arms of this quality were made in the workshops of Prizren and Shkoder under Ottoman rule.
- - A morning call in Albania, 1864. An illustration from Mary Adelaide Walker's 1864 account of travelling through Macedonia to the Albanian lakes, showing a domestic visit. British travel writers were among the few outside observers of Albanian interiors in the Ottoman decades.
- - Albanian highlanders above Shkoder. An 1877 book engraving of Albanian men in the mountains above Shkoder, made for a British travel account of Ottoman Europe. Images like this shaped how western readers first pictured the Albanian highlands.
- - Photios, Metropolitan of Korce. Photios Kalpidis served as Orthodox metropolitan of Korce and was killed near the village of Bratvica in September 1906. His death marked the violent edge of the church and school rivalries in Ottoman southern Albania.
- - Sarandë harbour seen from the sea. The bay of Sarandë photographed from a ship around 1910, when the town was still an Ottoman coastal village facing Corfu. A century later the same shoreline carries the country's busiest summer resort.
- - The castle of Berat from below. The fortress quarter of Berat rising over the town, photographed by the Dutch officer Lodewijk Thomson in 1913 or 1914. Families have lived continuously inside these walls since the Ottoman centuries.
- - The great mosque of Korce. A French-issued card of the great mosque of Korce around 1918, when the town was under French administration as an autonomous province during the First World War.
- - The mosque and clock tower of Korce. An old postcard of the Iljaz Bey Mirahori mosque and the clock tower of Korce. Both were landmarks of the Ottoman town centre; the mosque survived the 1967 campaign against religion, the clock tower did not.
- - The clock tower of Kavaje on a postcard. The Ottoman clock tower of Kavaje as printed on a souvenir card around 1939, the year Italy invaded. Clock towers were the civic signature of Albanian market towns.
- - The castle of Gjirokaster. The long fortress ridge above Gjirokaster, expanded under Ali Pasha of Tepelene in the early nineteenth century. The stone-roofed town below it grew up as an Ottoman trading and administrative centre.
- - Gazi Mehmed Pasha mosque, Prizren. The domed mosque built at Prizren in 1574, standing beside the League museum. Its complex once included a bathhouse, a library and a madrasa.
- - Bazaar at Kruje. The old bazaar street climbing to the castle at Kruje, photographed in 2014. Rebuilt in Ottoman style, it now sells carpets, copper and Skanderbeg souvenirs to visitors.
- - Painted chimneypiece in the Skenduli house, Gjirokaster. The banquet hall of the Skenduli house in Gjirokaster keeps its carved and painted chimneypiece. The tower houses of Gjirokaster show how wealthy Ottoman-era families in southern Albania lived and decorated.
- - Berat in July 2017. Berat in 2017, its Ottoman houses stacked up the hillside below the castle. The town is often called the city of a thousand windows and is on the UNESCO list alongside Gjirokaster.
- - The minaret of the castle mosque at Krujë. The lone minaret left standing inside Krujë castle, all that remains of the mosque built there in the Ottoman centuries. It stands a few steps from the museum dedicated to the man who fought that empire.
- - Berat from the east wall of the citadel. The town of Berat seen from the eastern wall of the citadel in 2019. People have lived continuously inside these walls since the thirteenth century, in houses wedged between churches and Ottoman-era ruins.
- - Old fountain at the Elbasan bezistan. Work at the old fountain beside the bezistan, the Ottoman covered market of Elbasan, in 2019. Elbasan grew around an Ottoman fortress built in 1466 to press the siege of Kruje.
- - Berat above the Osum. A walk through Berat, whose Mangalem and Gorica quarters and hillside castle preserve one of the best kept Ottoman townscapes in the country. The tiers of windowed houses rise straight from the Osum river.
