Kara Mahmud Pasha

Mahmud was the son of Mehmed Pasha Bushati, the governor of the pashalik of Scutari.[1] When Mehmed Pasha died in June 1775, the Sultan's rule was not returned to northern Albania; he was succeeded by his young son, Mahmud Pasha.[2]

Other important families were the Rotul dynasty, which ruled Prizren from the 1770s to 1836, and the Gjinolli family whose members ruled Prishtina and Gjilan (Srb.: Gnjil-ane), becoming so powerful in the early nineteenth century that they were called the 'second rulers' of Kosovo after the Sultan. In the late eighteenth century, however, there was just one local dynasty that could rival - and did in fact openly challenge - the Sultan: the Bushati or Bushatli family of Shkodra.

'Old Mehmet’ Bushati became governor of the sancak of Shkodra (which included Pec) in 1757, and then gradually extended his rule over the whole of northern Albania. His ambitions of becoming an independent prince were cut short by his death in 1775, but his younger son Mahmut had similar plans;

In the 1780s his rebellious character brought him into conflict with the Ottomans.[3] He conquered parts of Southern Albania and much of Kosovo[4] Several times he campaigned in Kosovo: in 1795, for example, he took his army to Prizren, smashed the forces put up against him by the local Rotul dynasty, and installed his own nephew as governor of the town. The Catholic chronicler who recorded these events was enthusiastic in his praises of the man: 'I would go so far', he wrote, ‘as to compare him to a Maccabaeus, and even to the venerated Skanderbeg; if only he had been a Catholic, in my opinion he would have been the equal of either of them.'[5] He modelled himself after Skanderbeg, and set up a 'Confederation of Illyria', based in Montenegro and called for both Albanians and Slavs for support[6]

Archbishop Mazarek wrote that he was a just ruler, good to ‘Christians' and very active against robbers, and that his protection of the Christians was one of the things the Ottoman authorities held against him. Like other Catholics of this period, however, Mazarek used 'Christian' to mean ‘Catholic’ only, he also wrote that Mahmut ‘has taken countless purses of money from the Serbians, and has robbed them of all their possessions, food and livestock, and has taken the lot to Shkodra’'. And in general Mazarek observed that many of the civil wars between the various lords of Kosovo were stirred up by Mahmut Bushati, as part of a deliberate policy of divide and rule.[7]

Mahmut's death in 1796 came just as he was embarking on his most ambitious plan of all: a conquest of much of the western Balkans as an independent ally of the revolutionary French army. [8]

His brother Ibrahim Pasha continued to rule Scutari under the Ottoman sultan until his death in 1810. Ibrahim served as Beylerbey of Rumelia and played an important role on crushing the First Serbian Uprising led by Karađorđe.

• A northern Albanian folkloric song dealing with Mahmud Pasha's conflict with the Montenegrins is Kanga e Kara Mahmud Pashes Kundra Malazezve (The Song of Kara Mahmud Pasha against the Montenegrins).[9]

• In Albanian he is known as Kara Mahmud Pashë Bushati. In Serbian, he is known as Mahmut-paša Bušatlija (Махмут-паша Бушатлија), or simply Kara-Mahmut (Кара-Махмут). Robert Elsie calls him by the Albanian neologism "Kara Mahmud Pasha Bushatlliu".

• Anscombe, Frederick (2006). The Ottoman Balkans: 1750-1830. Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers. ISBN 978-1-55876-383-8.
• Hickok, Michael Robert (1997). Ottoman Military Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia. Leiden, New York, Köln: BRILL. ISBN 90-04-10689-8.
• Jazexhiu, Olsi (2002). The Albanian Pashalik of Shkodra under Bushatlis 1757 – 1831. Kuala Lumpur: IIUM. Archived from the original on 2015-06-27.
• Jaxhezi, Olsi. "Kara Mahmud Pashë Bushati: Bualli i Shkodrës". Archived from the original on 11 April 2011. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
• Jelavich, Barbara (1983). History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-25249-0.
• Malcolm, Noel (1998). Kosovo: A Short History. Washington Square, New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-5598-3.
• Roberts, Elizabeth (2007). Realm of the Black Mountains: A History of Montenegro. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-4601-6.
• Shaw, Stanford (1971). Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III (1789-1807). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674068308.
• Stanojević, Gligor; Vasić, Milan (1975). Istorija Crne Gore (3): od početka XVI do kraja XVIII vijeka. Titograd: Redakcija za istoriju Crne Gore. OCLC 799489791.