Essad Pasha Toptani or Essat Pasha Toptani ( Alb. Esad pashë Toptani , 1863 - June 13, 1920), also known as Essad Pasha - Ottoman officer, representative of Albania in the legislature of the Ottoman Empire and politician of the revived Albanian state of the early XX century . As an Ottoman military leader, during the Balkan wars [5] he sided with the Balkan Union and proclaimed a state in central Albania, called the Republic of Central Albania with its capital in the city of Durres [6] .
Essad Pasha Toptani | |||||||
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Alb. Esad pashë toptani | |||||||
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Predecessor | Feyzey Bay Alizoti | ||||||
Successor | Turhan Pasha Permeti | ||||||
Birth | |||||||
Death | |||||||
Kind | Toptany | ||||||
The consignment | |||||||
Religion | and | ||||||
Autograph | |||||||
Awards | |||||||
Military service | |||||||
Years of service | 1895-1913 | ||||||
Affiliation | Ottoman Empire Albania | ||||||
Rank | major general | ||||||
Commanded | Scutari garrison | ||||||
Battles | |||||||
Content
- 1 Biography
- 2 Death
- 3 notes
- 4 References
Biography
Essad Pasha was born in 1863 in Tirana , belonging to the Ottoman Empire (now the capital of Albania ). He was a member of the dynasty of prominent landowners Toptani, who founded modern Tirana [7] . His father is Salih-beg Toptani. Essad’s sister, Sadije, was the second wife of Džemal-paše Zogua and the mother of Ahmed Zogu, the future king of Albania, Zogu I.
After the murder of his brother - Gani-bey Toptani - by the Ottoman loyalists, Essad Pasha became a supporter of the opposition Young Turks . Since 1895 he served in the Ottoman army. When the Young Turks came to power in 1908, Essad Pasha had many cases to convince themselves of their hypocrisy and pan-Turkic chauvinism.
By the beginning of the Albanian national uprising of 1912, Essad Pasha served as the head of the Scutari garrison (modern Shkodra), but did not prevent the organization of an anti-Turkish rebellion in Mirdit and central Albania. The uprising was organized with the support of the Kingdom of Montenegro , whose emissaries communicated with the rebels through Scutari. Subsequently, the Montenegrin troops approached the city, but were defeated in an attempt to storm and embarked on a planned siege [8] .
In 1913, Essad Pasha surrendered the Skutari fortress to the Crown Prince of Montenegro Danila Petrovich-Negosh , having concluded an agreement with the Montenegrin command, according to which he withdrew all the personnel entrusted to him with weapons and ammunition - and joined the Albanian rebels in central Albania [5] . Both Cetinje and Belgrade supported the Albanian tribal leaders acting against the government of Ismail Kemali , formed in Vlore , bringing them under the leadership of Essad Pasha [5] .
In 1914, an uprising of Albanian peasants broke out against Prince William I of Weed [9] . It was obvious to the prince and his Dutch officers that Toptani had a hand in this rebellion, which led to the disgrace of the general and his immediate expulsion to Italy [10] [11] . He returned from there in September, after the overthrow of William I. In the fall of 1914, a meeting of the elders of central Albania invited him to lead this region [12] .
First of all, Essad Pasha was concerned about the creation of the financial and economic base of the new state. On September 17, 1914 in Nis, he and the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic signed a secret agreement on a military alliance between Serbia and Albania [13] . Taking advantage of the support of Belgrade , which provided arms to the newly proclaimed republic and Rome , which provided financial assistance to Essad Pasha, Toptani in October 1914 established his authority in the Dibra district, also capturing the interior of Albania and the coastal Durres , which became the official capital of his state [5] .
The outbreak of the First World War shook the power positions of Essad Pasha. At the end of 1914, he had to secretly agree with the annexation by the Kingdom of Hellas of the southern regions of Albania, inhabited by the Greeks and known as Northern Epirus [14] . In 1916, he declared war on Austria-Hungary. At first, he managed to maintain control over most of Albania, but in the same 1916 his country was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian forces, and turned into another bridgehead of the confrontation between Greece (controlling the southern regions), on the one hand, and Austria-Hungary with other. After the war ended, Essad Pasha tried to represent Albania at a conference of victorious powers in Paris .
For the next two years, Essad Pasha sought recognition of Albania as a great power and lobbied for the rejection of the articles of the London Treaty of 1915, which provided for the division of the country.
Death
On June 13, 1920, Albanian parliamentarian Avni Rustemi killed Essad Pasha when he left the Continental Hotel in Paris. Living in Paris, where he was deprived of access to the power levers of the Albanian state, Toptani declared himself as the representative of Albania at the Paris Conference on the post-war reconstruction of Europe , acting in parallel and independently of the official delegation of the Albanian government. The assassination of Essad Pasha in modern Albanian historiography was interpreted as a feat of the bourgeois revolution against the feudal system [15] . In fact, at the time of the assassination, Essad Pasha Toptani did not hold any power in the Albanian state, did not have an official noble title, was neither the landowner, nor the leader of any hill tribe capable of interfering in the modernization processes carried out by the post-war government Albania.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 120340992 // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ 20th century press archives - 1908.
- ↑ Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana - Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana , 1968.
- ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Serbian government and Essad Pasha Toptani
- ↑ Robert Elsie, Essad Pasha Toptani Archived on July 17, 2011.
- ↑ Pettifer, James. Ihsan Bey Toptani (English) // The Independent : newspaper.
- ↑ Prishtina, Hasan. Nji shkurtim kujtimesh mbi kryengritjen shqiptare të vjetit 1912. Shkrue prej Hassan Prishtinës : [] . - Shkodra : Shtypshkroja Franciskane. - "Essad Pasha assured us that he could manage things in Central Albania and Mirdita.". Archived January 10, 2011.
- ↑ Elsie, Robert Albania under prince Wied . “It was obvious to the prince and his Dutch officers that Toptani had his hand in rebellion.” Date of treatment January 25, 2011. Archived January 25, 2011.
- ↑ Heaton-Armstrong, Duncan An Uprising in the Six-Month Kingdom . Gervase Belfield and Bejtullah Destani (IB Tauris, in association with the Center for Albanian Studies) (2005). “Essad Pasha was sent into exile without trial.” Date of treatment January 25, 2011. Archived January 25, 2011.
- ↑ Elsie, Robert Albania under prince Wied . - "the expulsion of Essad Pasha to Italy." Date of treatment January 25, 2011. Archived January 25, 2011.
- ↑ Bataković, Dušan T. , "Serbian government and Essad Pasha Toptani" , The Kosovo Chronicles , Belgrade, Serbia: Knižara Plato, ISBN 86-447-0006-5 , < http://balkania.tripod.com/resources/history /kosovo_chronicles/kc_part2e.html > . Retrieved January 19, 2011.
- ↑ Bataković, Dušan T. , "Serbian government and Essad Pasha Toptani" , The Kosovo Chronicles , Belgrade, Serbia: Knižara Plato, ISBN 86-447-0006-5 , < http://balkania.tripod.com/resources/history /kosovo_chronicles/kc_part2e.html > . Retrieved January 19, 2011.
- ↑ George B. Leon. Greece and the First World War: from neutrality to intervention, 1917-1918 . East European Monographs, 1990, ISBN 978-0-88033-181-4 , p358: “In turn, Essad Pasha kept his promise to support the annexation of Northern Epirus by Greece, which he made in the autumn of 1914. Nevertheless, being ready for a secret agreement with the Greek government on this issue, he took this step only as a counterweight to Italy, not daring to publicly recognize the Greek claims for fear of destabilizing the situation inside the country. ”
- ↑ Miranda Vickers The Albanians: a modern history IB Tauris (2006) page 96 [1]