Hadji Ali Haseki

The career of Hadji Ali Haseki is known chiefly from two sources, written by contemporaries: the journals of the Athenian scholar Ioannis Benizelos, and the memoirs of Panagiotis Skouzes.[13] Although its administrative status in the early Ottoman centuries is unclear, by the 17th century Athens, though formally part of the Sanjak of Eğriboz (Negroponte, modern Chalkida) and hence ultimately under the jurisdiction of the Kapudan Pasha (the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman fleet), formed part of the vakıf of the Haramayn, the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and was administered by the Kizlar Agha (the chief black eunuch of the Imperial Harem).[15] The zabit was complemented by the mufti, the local Muslim religious leader, the kadi (judge, head of the sharia court), the serdar (military governor), and the dizdar (fortress commander of the Acropolis of Athens).Indeed, Benizelos remarks on his appointment to Athens that in 1774, a delegation of Athenians visited Constantinople to request the dismissal of the incumbent voivode, and that thereupon Haseki, using bribery, secured the office for himself.Thereupon the 24 burgher households and the lower classes, supported by the Metropolitan of Athens and the clergy, sent a petition (arz-i hal) denouncing Haseki to the Porte.The Turks then abandoned the city and found refuge in the Acropolis of Athens, while Haseki allowed the local Greeks to move to Salamis Island for safety.The populace gathered at the Church of St. Demetrios Tziritis, near the gate of the Holy Apostles and publicly anathematized the Christian primates who were his supporters—Spyros Logothetis, Nikolas Patousas, Dimitrios Kalogeras, Hadji Pantazis, Konstantakis Yannoulis, Dimitrios Astrakaris, Theodoros Kantzilieris, Stavros Vrondogounis Tomaras and Hadji Salonitis—and then convened an assembly that deposed them from the city council, electing others in their stead, including Bellos, who had been a prominent popular leader against Haseki, and Petros Pittakis.In Athens, two local leaders, Bellos and Bekir, had emerged, and had through force of arms managed to prevent Haseki's emissary from even entering the city and installing his own candidate as voivode.[46][47] Haseki's fortunes took a new blow in 1788, when Esma Sultan died, but he soon managed to turn the situation around through judicious bribery of Cezayirli Hasan Pasha, so that the malikhane was restored to him.Bellos, Nikolas Barbanos and his brother Sotirios, Petros Pittakis, Osman Bey, Balitzikos, and Bekir, were all hanged, while Avram and Mitros Kechagias were strangled later.[49][50] The 24 mid-ranking notables of the city were brought before a row of stakes and threatened with immediate impalement unless they could ransom themselves, and the entire Christian populace was forced to sign a collective promissory note for 400,000 piastres in money and olive oil.[50] According to the contemporary accounts of Benizelos and Skouzes, the voivode "kept for himself all the huge income from the last oil harvest", and demanded from the public twice or thrice his expenses, and his collectors did not hesitate to beat and even kill those who could not pay.[51] Only the three Greek primates, and their followers, who supported Haseki, were exempted from his oppression, and even benefited from it, by buying up the properties of their less fortunate fellow citizens, as did speculators from other parts of the empire.He would either send his own assessors to give a very low estimate of the property's value, or, if the owner were a Christian, simply confiscate it in return for a receipt that he had paid his share of the public promissory note.[54] The contemporary accounts report of his attempt to include in it the beautiful Ergena, who was forced to flee to Livadeia disguised as a Turk, while her husband, Stamatis Sarris, was beaten so brutally that he remained crippled thereafter.[49][55] Haseki simply withdrew from the plague to the monastery of St. John on Mount Hymettus, and from there continued to send his agents to summon the citizens to him or collect debts.[49] Haseki was able to profit both from the Porte's preoccupation with the ongoing war with Russia, as well as the support of the primates, who dismissed the complaints lodged against him in Constantinople as "the malicious gossip of mischief-makers".Haseki closed the gates of Athens and repelled the attack, but this armed clash between two Ottoman governors irked Sultan Selim III, who in 1792 expelled both from their provinces.[59] As soon as he had recovered, the abbot joined with an Athenian delegation, composed of the primates Nikolas Patousas, Stavros Vrondogounis, and Spyridon Palaiologos, who carried recommendatory letters in Turkish and Greek, to ask for Haseki's expulsion.[62] After his execution, Haseki's fortune was confiscated by the Selim III, who assigned it to the newly founded irad-ı cedid treasury, intended to support his reformist efforts.According to Skouzes, most were bought by the head of the Ottoman chancery, the nişancı, and by the Valide Sultan, who turned them once again into vakıfs of the holy cities; from 1796 on the latter were rented by Dionysios Petrakis.