Ali, pasha of Janina, born at Tepeleni, Albania, about 1741, executed in February, 1822. His family had for generations held the town and territory of Tepeleni as a fief from the pasha of Berat. His father, having been driven from his home by his own brothers, afterward besieged them at the head of a troop of klephts and burned them alive. His mother, of the wealthy Kamco family, was noted for her ferocious character. At her instigation the young Ali affiliated with brigands, and having regained his father's estates, made marauding incursions into neighboring territories. His subsequent alliance with the pasha of Janina, and the extent of his depredations, subjected him for some time to the displeasure of the Porte; but after the execution of his father-in-law, the pasha of Delvino, and the marriage of the latter's successor with Ali's sister, lie acquired supporters at the divan, and procured the appointment of sub-inspector of highways, in which post he compounded with robbers for a share of the booty.

His superior was beheaded, while Ali saved himself by timely presents at Constantinople. During the war of 1787 and the succeeding years, between the Porte and Russia and Austria, Ali Pasha, though keeping up a treasonable correspondence with the Russians, rendered good service to Turkey. He obtained the appointment of inspector of public highways, with peremptory orders to suppress brigandage. Levying a strong force, he soon carried out his instructions, and having cleared the roads and made war on his former ally, the pasha of Janina, he concocted a forged order from the Porte under which he occupied that pashalic, the subordinate beys of which were in a state of open revolt. His public services, and still more his bribery, procured him the appointment to the pashalic in 1788, and by force or fraud he extended his dominion over the greater part of northern Greece. He seized the Venetian territories on the coast of Albania so soon as the French army occupied the Italian possessions of the republic in 1797, and opened a negotiation with Napoleon for his support in case the French expedition against Turkey should succeed.

Napoleon sent M. de Pouqueville to Janina; but on the defeat of the French in Egypt Ali Pasha sided with the Turks and the English, and assisted in driving out the French from Prevesa and Parga (1802). He carried on a war of extermination against the Suliotes, an independent Christian mountaineer population of Epirus, and subdued them (1803) after three years' heroic resistance on their part. He still continued to keep up a show of allegiance to the Porte, by which he was appointed governor general of Roumelia. His schemes of aggrandizement were notorious, but he bribed Turkish officials, and never openly set the power of the Porte at defiance. This cautious policy was at last forgotten. Ismail Pasha, a former confidant of Ali, held an appointment at Constantinople. Ali, either from revenge or fear of disclosures, hired assassins to kill him. The attempt having failed, the assassins made a full confession. Ali was now outlawed. An army marched against him, which he at first repulsed (1821), but at last, besieged by Kurshid Pasha in Janina, and deserted by his Ottoman adherents, he retired to a stronghold on the lake, in which he kept his treasures and his magazine, threatening to blow himself up unless he received an amnesty.

The cupidity of the Turks being aroused by his treasure, it became important to secure the place. The incidents of the closing scene are variously narrated; but the general facts are that he was deluded by a pretended firman of pardon into a personal interview with Kurshid Pasha, in which he was attended by a small body of his officers. In this interview the sultan's commands for his decapitation were made known, on which Ali Pasha immediately fired at his enemies, and killed or wounded some, but was himself shot dead. His head was cut off and sent to Constantinople. Only about 20,000,000 francs of his money were found by the Turks. His daughters were sold as slaves; his sons were all put to death; his daughter-in-law was dishonored and drowned. As he contributed to the prosperity of the territories under his rule, he was regarded as rather an enlightened ruler by many Englishmen, including Lord Byron, who visited him at Janina.