oughout Europe and to be
immortalized as the national hero of his country. Gjergj (b. 1403) soon
won the sultan's favor, distinguished himself in the Turkish army,
converted to Islam, and was bestowed the title of Skander Bey (Lord
Alexander), which, in Albanian, became Skanderbeg or Skenderbey.

In 1443 Hungarian King Hunyadi routed at Nish the sultan's armies, in
which Skanderbeg held command; Skanderbeg fled to his native land and
seized from the Turks his father's fortress at Kruje. His defection and
reconversion to Christianity and the creation in 1444 of the League of
Albanian Princes, with himself as its head, enraged the Ottomans, who
began a series of intense campaigns that lasted until Skanderbeg's
natural death in 1468. In his wars against the Turks, Skanderbeg was
aided by the kings of Naples and the popes, one of whom, Pope Nicholas
V, named him Champion of Christendom.

Skanderbeg's death did not end Albania's resistance to the Turks;
however, they gradually extended their conquests in Albania and in time
defeated both the local chieftains and the Venetians, who controlled
some of the coastal towns. The Turkish occupation of the country
resulted in a great exodus of Albanians to southern Italy and Sicily,
where they preserved their language, customs, and Eastern Orthodox
religion.

One of the most significant consequences of Ottoman rule of Albania was
the conversion to Islam of over two-thirds of the population. As the
political and economic basis of the Ottoman Empire was not nationality
but religion, this conversion created a new group of Muslim Albanian
bureaucrats, who not only ruled Albanian provinces for the sultans but
also served in important posts as _pashas_ (governors) in many parts of
the empire. A number of them became _viziers_ (prime ministers), and
one, Mehmet Ali Pasha, at the beginning of the nineteenth century
founded an Egyptian dynasty that lasted until the 1950s.

Some of the Albanian beys and pashas, especially in the lowlands, became
almost independent rulers of their principalities. One of these, Ali
Pasha Tepelena, known in history as the Lion of Yannina, whose
principality at the beginning of the nineteenth century consisted of the
whole area from the Gulf of Arta to Montenegro. By 1803 he had assumed
absolute power and negotiated directly with Napoleon and the rulers of
Great Britain and Russia. The sultan, however, becoming alarmed at the
damage Ali Pasha was doing to the