The revolt of the brigand Ali Pasha Tepelenë, the most infamous of the local Ottoman authorities who have profited from the weakening control of Constantinople over its empire, is the precipitating factor in the Greek War of Independence.

Ali Pasha, born to a powerful clan from Tepelenë, had spent much of his youth as a bandit.

He had risen to become governor of the Ottoman province of Rumelia, which includes Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, before establishing himself in 1788 in Janina (now Ioánnina), building in northwest Greece a sizable and wealthy personal fiefdom that threatens the sultan's rule in the southern Balkans.

Like the late Kara Mahmud Bushati, his counterpart in northern Albania, Ali Pasha, called the Lion of Janina, wants to create an autonomous state under his rule.

When Ali Pasha forges links with the Greek revolutionaries, Sultan Mahmud II decides to destroy him.

The sultan first discharges the Albanian from his official posts and recalls him to Constantinople.

Ali Pasha refuses and puts up a formidable resistance (which Britain's Lord Byron will soon immortalize in poems and letters).

Ottoman agents assassinate Ali Pasha in January 1822 and send his head to Constantinople. (It will nevertheless take eight more years before the Sublime Porte will move against Mustafa Pasha Bushati in Shkodër, which has been virtually independent since 1760, when the Bushati family took control.)

The Sublime Porte, having crushed the Bushatis and Ali Pasha, in 1835 divides the Albanian-populated lands into the vilayets of Janina and ...

...Janina, ...

The formation by the Ottoman Empire of the Danube vilayet is followed in 1867 by those of Janina (Ioánnina) and ...

...Janina, ...