Notes on the book “ALI TEPELENA” by François Pouqueville

On February 21, it will be exactly 189 years since the forty-year drama and comedy played by Ali Pasha Tepelena on the European political and military stage, and the tragic, behind-the-scenes closing of the curtains by the powers of the time. From the day of his death until today, his head was indeed cut off, but his life, his deeds, and the thoughts of scholars were not only not cut off, but all along the way through the centuries, they have been written, distorted, transformed,

exploited according to the times and interests, goals, desires, and perspectives, linked intentionally or unintentionally to the links of the great European, Balkan, or narrower historical chain.

After the fall of the communist dictatorship—I repeat, communist, as there are other dictatorships that might be called democratic or liberal, but which might have the same goals, perhaps not like the communist one, but often even worse goals. Be they systems, circles of intellectuals, or individuals who get muddled in their own thoughts, or who are driven by the interests of their career, name, fame, or narrow personal interests...

During my frequent visits to Albania for publishing or family matters, the book by the French Consul Pouqueville about the time and rule of Ali Pasha Tepelena, translated by Ardian Klosi, fell into my hands. The book in question is also accompanied by a section titled “In Place of an Afterword.” To tell the truth, I often dislike these afterwords. This dislike has a specific reason for me, which is why I want to make it public, as follows:

The afterword, to me, is like the work of those who discuss things after the roundtable has closed. They speak to clarify what was not said, what was not understood, what was not explained. The values of those things that were not understood and that the understander discovered, were clarified by the one giving his thoughts on them. And this is the honorable, the knowledgeable, the wise man, who lets out the barks of the afterwords, for what “others have barked” in their own interest, in the interest of the time, to diminish or manipulate values, to distort them in the interest of their goals, and adding (I say) the thoughts of what was previously said for his own interests.

Since the translator, afterword writer, analyst, historian, writer, and thinker Ardian, after ten years of work in study and translation, supported also by the French Foreign Ministry—I repeat, supported by the French Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Cultural Relations, as he says in the book he has translated. Ardian analyzes and clarifies what Pouqueville had not clarified in his book, but which he can no longer clarify either (because he is not alive), so Mr. Ardian Klosi casts his veto and does it. At the same time, to bring to our time the values that we had supposedly lost, or that systems, individuals, and internal political struggles had denied us.

I read the book in question by Pouqueville in 1991 and have passed it through my hands many times, as a result of my several years of work on the values, ethnography, songs, and history of the Arvanites, which I have published from time to time, but which will soon be compiled into a separate book, which includes Ali Pasha, as well as the truths about his life, politics, flourishing, and the fall of his career.

Right at the beginning of the book, the merits of the author Pouqueville are written, as a consul, a Member of the French Academy, etc., etc., etc. These are done right at the start to prepare the reader for the seriousness of what they are about to read, the values, the historical importance of the time, and supposedly the truths that had been lost for two centuries and were found by the gentleman in question. “Bullshit,” my grandmother used to say, who lived for 110 years, who knew six occupations and six dictatorships, including today’s, the same dictatorship, but in a new form...

In truth, throughout human life, for great people who make a name, wealth, and bring about a national (or international) social change, there comes after them a series of supposed “historians, analysts, psychologists,” who bring to light the “truths,” the unsaid things, or the things said according to their own analyses. This also applies to the book in question. In short, Pouqueville, intentionally or unintentionally, throws mud at Ali behind his back, but when he was near him, he applauded and sang his praises. After his fall, he hurls caves and rocks at him, supposedly in the name of personal and historical truth.

In the analysis or study, as the translator Ardian calls it—because it is one thing to translate and another to analyze, and my friend does both—he says that Pouqueville was a politician, an envoy politician of Napoleon (and after Napoleon). So, he knew how to play the cards of politics in his own interest and that of his politics. And he does not clarify that Ali wanted the seven islands of the Ionian Sea that the French held, and the most important of them, Corfu. Ardian forgets to say (or does not know) that Ali supported the English and their goals in the Ionian Sea. He forgets that these were contrary to the interests of Pouqueville and French politics. He forgets to say that, in those years, Kolokotronis became a general by high English command, which we often see in his photos, but we do not ask why?

All this, because Pouqueville’s strategic goals were on the opposing side.

To read the book of a politician today, after two centuries, and to analyze it in the present day, with today’s assessments, today’s ideology, today’s psychology, in today’s historical conditions, means that the analyst’s mind is out of the orbit of the events, the time and conditions in which they occurred, the historical-political circumstances that created these clashes. This is neither convincing nor true, but ridiculous.

Here is how Mr. Ardian puts it:

“Relations with the vizier had many swings, depending also on the political events of the day, on the relations with Bonaparte’s Empire.”

Simple, beautiful, clean. So Pouqueville’s relations did not depend on him, but on those who had sent him to bark in their interest, and when his barks were not heard, Bonaparte’s hound barked on the opposing side and insulted Ali Tepelena. These relations broke down even worse when Ali came out openly against the goals of French politics in the Ionian Sea and against the Ottoman Empire. And this happened at the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 between Napoleon and Russia. France did not want the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, as its interests were tied to the influence France had in the Ionian Sea, but also in other parts of the Balkans.

If you read the book carefully in our time, you understand that he fabricates things as he pleases, dramatizes and spins them, clarifies and mixes them in the way that suits him. Always, after every event that occurred, having analyzed it through the mouths of others, he closes the discourse by saying that a woman told him this, somewhere an old man, somewhere a child, there a shepherd, but without ever mentioning the person’s name and without painting any portrait of them. He is in Delvinë when the pasha is killed, in Berat when the pasha is killed, in all the conflicts, right up to the death of Ali’s mother, Hanko, about whom I will dwell a little in the interest of truth. Here is how Pouqueville writes:

“The modern Olympias, Hanko, who had long suffered from uterine cancer, the shameful fruit of her debauched life, ended her career like Ali’s youngest blood brother. The man who told me these details added that, eroded by a devouring ulcer, she gave up the ghost in waves of rage, vomiting horrific curses against eternal Providence.”

Please analyze it yourselves, dear readers. In the present day, these kinds of historical declamations seem ridiculous, directed at a mother, regardless of whether she is Ali’s or someone else’s. Her cancer, discovered by the doctor, Pouqueville, came from the debauched life that Ali’s mother led—very ridiculous... But as if this were not enough, he spins and spins Ali’s oaths of revenge over her corpse. These word games have nothing to do with a historical book, but with a cheap novel where the author fabricates bizarre scenes to plunge the reader into anxiety and the search for the conflict’s resolution. He acts as in the tragedies of Hamlet, where brother killed brother, mother killed son, and sister gouged out her lover’s eyes so as not to see the marital treason he committed. These fairy tales and many others, Pouqueville serves from his platter, and we are supposed to eat and enjoy them? No, gentlemen. About another man’s mother, Pouqueville adds that she was a whore, but does he say such a thing about his own? He insults Ali, but he spent days and nights in his harem together with his brother. And finally, does Ardian know that at Ali’s meeting with the Turks on the day his head was cut off, the French were the third party, the mediators, the organizers of the negotiating table? And who is to tell me that Pouqueville was not its organizer too, because he represented French diplomacy in Greece.

Further down, the honorable scholar emphasizes that, “When Byron speaks of Pouqueville in ‘Childe Harold,’ his portrayal of this extraordinary man is inaccurate,” and he does not even translate his statement at all. The scholar, from what he read, studied, or the cards of writing interests, writes and translates the words of the cleric T.S. Hughes, puts them in quotation marks, and takes care of the calligraphy and spelling mistakes because he elevates Pouqueville’s name; therefore, dear readers, I do not like afterwords.

Here are the games or templates of modern times:

After the fall of Napoleon, Pouqueville, as consul in Patras, saves thousands of people from massacres. Pouqueville, a priest, a politician, who even though Napoleon falls, still remains in politics—this, yes, shows his ability, his cunning, and his careful spinning of wool in French politics. Pouqueville, a writer and a historian of his time, who cooks delicious stews, throwing in the spices of French interests and bringing them out into the European propaganda market. Ardian eats from this stew, and does not sense that it has neither oregano, nor pepper, nor salt in it. The stew is an opium to increase the values for himself, his interests, and the forefathers who sent him to bark for them, and to throw ashes in the eyes of his contemporaries, and later, even the afterword writer himself who tasted it and translated it for ten years.

History written by the victors reminds me of the history of the communist party, but also of the post-communist one, of today’s. History is always fabricated, fantasized, multiplied to create conviction and to make as much noise as possible, to take hold and last as long as possible in people’s minds. But with one difference: when it is written, it brings you more headaches, because it brings supposed facts and truths but with specific goals, which future generations find harder to clarify and to learn the truth and its goals of all colors.

Then the scholar writes:

“Pouqueville’s convictions were that the way the ruler treated the Christians, the crimes, the exploitation, were the cause of the Greek revolution.” Why, and for what reason Pouqueville speaks like this, the analyst and translator neither understands nor asks to find out. Why does Pouqueville speak only of the Christians; how many Muslims were there in Greece at that time, I ask?

Or is Pouqueville making the same mistake that today’s Greeks make when they say Ali was a Turco-Albanian? Or today when they call Muslim Albanians Turks. They do not know how to separate nationality from faith, or they do it with some other goal. So, what could the conviction of Pouqueville the priest have been in this regard, in the direction of both faiths?

After Pouqueville returned to Paris—appraisals, decorations, he receives academic titles, why?

Pouqueville was a consul; what were all these appraisals for a priest consul, or a doctor-writer? All these titles were given to him for his politics of France’s interests; they spoke against Islam, because at that time wars were as much political-economic as they were religious.

Further down, the scholar cooks up another stew, into which, to give the dish a bad taste, he throws the good opinions of the figures of the National Awakening about Ali. He is unable to know and understand that the Awakening figures needed a name, deeds, and the attention they had drawn in the international arena, whether the scholar likes it or not. He analyzes the words of Sami Frashëri, here the values and there the “flaws” he expressed, then somewhere he tacks on a caveat, because that was the time, and my patriot Sami was also in the clutches of the other faith.

Then he starts dealing with Konica. To achieve his goal, he begins to dig into his bloodline biography, just like Enver Hoxha did to his opponents—very nice indeed. Or like Sali Berisha, who to this day curses communist politics, and at the same time acts like a communist toward the people or his political opponents.

Is this how analyses of such national figures are done, even if they are like Genghis Khan or Hitler? This is done by those who cannot see beyond the brambles others have thrown in front of them for their short-term interests.

Wherever there is a spade of dirt thrown over Ali’s figure, the author offers no analysis. Where he is elevated, a version is attached, an accompanying postage stamp to his envelope to diminish or dismiss what he possesses, whether visible or invisible at first glance.

As for the analysis of the one-party era and the figure of Ali, Ardian the analyst spins the thoughts of the system and tries to knit sweaters with them to put on others, but these sweaters are plain, without style, without patterns, and without persuasive power. They are logs grown in the shade, which, even when put in the fire, do not burn, but only make smoke and distance you from historical truth. During the time of the one-party system, Ali Pasha did not have a single bust on Albanian territory to show his name, his deeds, and his nationality. The scholar also says that Ali’s territories were not all in Albania... excuse me, dear readers, Ali was in the territory of Pyrrhus, but it seems to me the scholar is myopic.

The scholar and translator Ardian has a major problem, either borrowed or served to him, and here it is:

In the “History of the Albanian People,” he says, the events are told badly, differently from how Pouqueville told them. Tell me, dear Ardian, why must they be as Pouqueville wrote them; what is your opinion or that of your friends? Based on what we said above, why should we listen to Pouqueville’s violin, who, when he was near Ali’s court and when Napoleon fell, sang his praises, and later beat the town crier’s drum to insult him? Why should we listen to Pouqueville’s violin and not the harmonized orchestra of Byron, Leake, Hobhouse, Holland, Hughes, Durham, etc., etc., etc.

The German scholar FALLMERAYER writes after the Greek revolution that Albanians make up the overwhelming majority in Greece. For this, I, who have lived in Greece for 20 years, can give you facts from 1870 to 1907 from the Greek administration and documentation themselves. When he had not yet expressed this fact, the Greeks offered him the chair of history, which he did not accept, and when he brought the truths to light, they insulted him, cursed him, stoned him in the streets of Athens, and then did not translate him for 180 years. This was also to our detriment. This is how the battle lines are drawn, dear friend: what did not interest the Greeks interested us. What damages us with Pouqueville interests the Greeks, who never rest regarding Ali and his name. The same happens with Pouqueville the consul, priest, historian, doctor, and politician in his relations with Ali Pasha and France. Behind his words hide all the titles of interests and diplomatic trades of the time that had to do with his figure and the pashalik of the Albanian vizier.

Thanks to his controversial politics, politics that clashed with his contemporaries, his powerful collisions with the greatest superpowers of the time, and the tragic conclusion of his 40-year drama, Ali Tepelena became known in Europe and the world. Otherwise, he would have remained in a corner of the dustbin of the history of his time, and forgotten even in your time, Mr. Ardian, like many other pashas. For these reasons and others, which you do not know, but if you look for them you will find and learn them, some love Ali’s fame and some fight it, some fight his harem, some dream of it, some hate his violence, some seek it, some hope for it, and some search for his treasure to this day. But his treasure was the history and the deeds he left to time, with their good and bad, with enemies and friends, with those who hated him but also admired him at the same time. Ali’s life and work are a long road that must be trodden carefully; the signs of his footprints must be uncovered with goodwill, without being influenced by others, but by seeing and touching the truth up close, along with the good or bad taste it leaves. The wheat must be well separated from the chaff, which makes the bread bitter, but also ruins your appetite and makes you sick. Therefore, before making superficial analyses, or throwing on the table dishes cooked by chefs with certain agendas, the spoon must be dipped deep into the great cauldron of history, and the taste of the ideas thrown in must be savored carefully... because otherwise we make grave mistakes that history will not forgive us for in the future; it will laugh at us and point its finger at us.

My friend!

It was not necessary for the reader to read your study to understand Pouqueville; do not overestimate yourself with such offerings. The thought that by dealing with great figures you climb onto the pedestal of the greats is wrong.

The study is yours, but there is no reason for it to be attached to Pouqueville; I believe Pouqueville does not need a defense attorney. What he fabricated, he wrote for us to read, but that does not mean we will be taken for fools. As you can see, the river of history has been flowing for 200 years, and it has broken many logs against the rocks, or washed them up on the gravel banks, while carrying its current into the great sea of history.

If Ali Pasha Tepelena is discussed, fought over, or praised, this shows that he is a complex figure who has drawn the attention of scholars for what he did, and that new, still unknown windows are opening, through which, by following the stream to its source, the truth is sought, be it historical, social, or private. To paint his true portrait, we have no reason to rely on Pouqueville, nor on other Pouquevilles, but we must search the granaries of history thoroughly to see where they have hidden the truths from us, and then paint a cosmopolitan portrait of him that remains for history and the nation, whether of his merits or his weaknesses.