Ali Pasha of Ioannina

Ali Pasha first surfaces in the record as a bandit leader tangling with Ottoman officials across Albania and Epirus. He pivoted into the empire's own machinery, rising through posts until 1788 when he was named pasha of the Sanjak of Ioannina. From there he stretched his grip across eight sanjaks - Yanina, Delvina, Vlora and Berat, Elbasan, Ohrid and Monastir, Görice, and Tirhala - delegating chunks to his sons Veli and Muhtar, who governed the Morea and reached down to the Gulf of Corinth by 1792. He called the whole expanse "Albania" in his letters; so did the Europeans. His respect for other faiths, his war on bandits, his appetite for loot, and his resistance to Ottoman military reform earned him both admirers and enemies. By 1820 the Porte had had enough and declared him a rebel. He was killed in 1822 at seventy-eight or seventy-nine after a siege, and the Greek uprising that followed began as an offshoot of his revolt.