Souliotes


The Souliotes were an Orthodox Christian Albanian tribal community in the area of Souli in Epirus from the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century, who via their participation in the Greek War of Independence came to identify with the Greek nation.
They originated from Albanian clans that settled in the highlands of Thesprotia in the Late Middle Ages and established an autonomous confederation dominating a large number of neighbouring villages in the mountainous areas of Epirus, where they successfully resisted Ottoman rule for many years. At the height of its power, in the second half of the 18th century, the Souliote confederacy is estimated to have consisted of up to 4,500 inhabitants. After the revolution, they migrated to and settled in newly independent Greece, and assimilated into the Greek people. The Souliotes were followers of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. They spoke the Souliotic dialect of Albanian and learnt Greek through their interaction with Greek-speakers. They are known for their military prowess, their initial resistance to the Ottoman Albanian ruler Ali Pasha and final trusted alliance with him when he rebelled against the Ottoman Porte in the failed attempt to create an independent state, and later for their contribution to the Greek cause in the revolutionary war against the Ottoman Empire under leaders such as Markos Botsaris and Kitsos Tzavelas.
The first historical account of rebellious activity in Souli dates from 1685. During the 18th century, the Souliotes expanded their territory of influence. As soon as Ali Pasha became the local Ottoman ruler in 1789 he immediately launched successive expeditions against Souli. However, the numerical superiority of his troops was not enough. The siege against Souli was intensified from 1800 and in December 1803 the Souliotes concluded an armistice and agreed to abandon their homeland. Most of them were exiled in the Ionian Islands. On 4 December 1820, Ali Pasha constituted an anti-Ottoman coalition joined by the Souliotes, to which they contributed with 3,000 soldiers, mainly because he offered to allow the return of the Souliotes to their land, and partly by appeal to their shared Albanian origins. After the defeat of Ali Pasha and with the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, the Souliotes were among the first communities to take arms against the Ottomans. Following the successful struggle for independence, they settled in parts of the newly established Greek state and assimilated into the Greek nation, with many attaining high posts in the Greek government, including that of Prime Minister. Members of the Souliote diaspora participated in the national struggles for the incorporation of Souli to Greece, such as in the revolt of 1854 and the Balkan Wars with Ottoman rule ending in 1913.

Geography

Name

The Souliotes were named after the village of Souli, a hilltop settlement in modern Thesprotia, Greece. Souli gradually became the name of the entire region where the four main Souliot settlements are located. Souli as a region is not attested in any sources before the 18th century. François Pouqueville, the French traveler, historian and consul in Ioannina, and others in his era theorized that the area was the ancient Greek Selaida and its modern inhabitants descendants of the Selloi, an ancient Greek tribe that inhabited the region in antiquity. This hypothesis was fueled and proposed in the context of the rise of romanticism in Europe and the ideological return to the ancient past. Such views had little acceptance in historiography and were already rejected as early as the publication of the History of Souli by Christoforos Perraivos.
The origin of the toponym Souli is uncertain. Perraivos attributed the name to an Ottoman official in the region who was killed in a battle against the Souliotes, who gave his name to their village. In contemporary historiography, this theory is considered to be a constitutive myth designed to link the name of Souli with the narrative of struggles of its inhabitants against Ottoman officials. Historically, this view has been rejected as it would imply that the Souliotes had no name for their main village and region before the killing of a single Ottoman official. Fourikis goes as far as proposing that Perraivos invented this explanation himself. At the end of the 19th century Labridis proposed that Souli may derive from one of the earliest Cham Albanian clan leaders who settled in the area and gave his name to it as was the habit in tribal settlements. Fourikis rejected an origin of the toponym from a personal name and proposed that it simply derived from the Albanian word sul which is found as a geographical toponym in other areas where medieval Albanian clans settled. It may also be interpreted as 'watchpost', 'lookout', or 'mountain summit'. The view of Fourikis is the most commonly accepted theory in contemporary historiography. Psimouli considers the etymological aspects in the theory of Fourikis acceptable, but rejects the view the toponym Souli emerged from the region's geomorphology, because none of the four settlements of the tetrachori is placed on a mountaintop or an outlook but at an altitude of no more than 600 m. The author notes that while the mountain peaks which surround Souli have Albanian toponyms, none of them was actually named sul by the clans which settled there. Hence, Psimouli proposes that "Souli" or "Siouli" refers to a personal name -the first name or cognomen of the progenitor of the Albanian immigrant group that settled there - as happened in other settlements like Spata or the neighbouring Mazaraki or Mazarakia. The name itself metaphorically may have referred to his height as a tall person.

Settlements

The core of Souli consisted of four villages, namely: Souli, Avariko, Kiafa and Samoniva. In time the confederation expanded and included additional seven villages. The latter became the outer defensive ring in case of an attack. Both groups of villages were also collectively called Souli. At the peak of their power, in 1800, Souliot leaders estimated that their community numbered c. 20,000 inhabitants. Vasso Psimouli estimates a total population of c. 4,500 for the Souliot villages. Of these, she estimates that up to 1,250 were living in the "eptachori", among whom 500 were armed, according to Perraivos, organized in 18 clans, while the other 3,250, in 31 clans, were living in the "tetrachori" and provided c. 1200 armed men.
Several surrounding villages, c. 50–66, which became part of the Souliote confederation were known as Parasouli. Parasouliotes could join the Souliotes to armed operations but they had no representation in the Souliote government. In case they displayed distinction in warfare they received permission to settle in Souliote villages and enjoyed the same rights and duties as the Souliotes.

Early history

Most scholars agree that the first inhabitants of Souli settled there in the middle of the 16th century as groups of shepherds. The earliest inhabitants came from southern Albania and the plains of Thesprotia. Vasso Psimouli holds that Souli was chosen as a place of permanent settlement by a subgroup of one of the two Albanian immigrant pastoralist populations that arrived in the area organized in large kinship groups in the mid-14th century, a time of power vacuum after the death of Stefan Dušan and demographic decline of the Greek agrarian population due to the plague. One Albanian immigrant group, that of the Mazreku, could reach the area from the north through Vagenetia, while the other from the south via Rogoi. Authors who traveled in the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries argue that the initial core of clans which formed the Souliotes gradually grew and expanded in other settlements. George Finlay recorded that "the Chams reserve the name Suliote for 100 families who, by virtue of birth, belonged to the military caste of Suli". According to Finlay, this population increased from other immigrant clans which joined them. Modern sources argue that the gradual settlement of families and tribes of different origins in Souli unlikely, because of the lack of sources testifying the abandonment of villages in the 17th century and also due to the limited ability of the pastures of Souli to maintain superfluous population and to the closed character of tribal organization, which is not open to accepting outsiders in mass.
The Souliote population was located in inland Thesprotia and for much of the 16th century remained away from the plagues and military events which affected coastal Epirus. This was an era of demographic increase for the area. The Souliote clans were pastoralist communities. Demographic pressure, environmental conditions and lack of grazing grounds gradually created social conditions, which led many Souliote clans to engage in pillaging and raiding other Souliote clans and primarily the neighbouring, lowland peasant communities as a means to combat lack of means of subsistence. In the 18th century, the occasional use of raiding as a means of subsistence became an institutionalized activity of Souliote clans which systematically raided the lowland peasants. The price of weapons in the 17th century had decreased which made their acquirement much easier and the naturally defensive position of Souliote clans in their hilltop settlements made immediate intervention by the Ottoman authorities difficult.

Society

Patrilineal clans

The Souliotes were organized in patrilineal clans which they called in Albanian farë. Membership in the fara was exclusively decided via patrilineality. Indicative of this condition is the translation of M. Botsaris of the Greek term genos which is the exact equivalent to fara as gjish which in Albanian means grandfather. Each fara was formed by the descendants of a common patrilineal progenitor whose personal name became the clan name of the entire fara. It was led by a single clan leader who was its representative, although this practice was under constant negotiation as a leader may not have been acceptable by all members of the fara. Each clan was further divided in brotherhoods. As such, in time, it had the tendency to branch out in new clans which were formed as the original one grew in size and could no longer hold its cohesion as one unit under one leader. Members of the fara enjoyed privileges of settlement in specific villages and had the right to use in common specific natural resources which had been assigned to it.
All heads of clans gathered in the general assembly which Lambros Koutsonikas recorded in Greek as Πλεκεσία, a term that can be linked to the Albanian pleqësia. This acted as the highest political structure of Souliot society which was responsible for solving disputes, formulating tribal laws, arbitrage between clans in dispute and the enforcement of decisions of the council against members of the community. It was a space where the different fara of Souliot society negotiated with each other their position in Souliotic society. The assembly was held in the open courtyard next to the church of St. George in Souli. The decisions of the pleqësia were not written down but agreed upon via the oral pledge of besë to which all heads of clans were bound. The concept of besa was the foundation for agreements not only within Souliot society but functioned as the basis for any agreements which Souliotes made with outsiders, including hostile forces in times of war. The significance of this concept is highlighted by the fact that M. Botsaris translates besë in Greek as threskeia and i pabesë as apistos. As each clan acted autonomously of the general assembly of their leaders, they could sign agreements with outsiders which contradicted the agreements which the Souliot community signed as a whole and this was a common cause of friction among the Souliot clans.
A detailed recording of the Souliot clans appears for the first time by Perraivos. According to his notes, at the end of the 18th century, 450 families which belonged to 26 clans lived in the village of Souli. In Kiafa, there were 90 families which belonged to four clans. In Avariko, five families which belonged to three clans and in Samoniva 50 families which belonged to three clans. As the Souliot population, new clans were established from existing ones and formed the population of the seven villages around core Souli. There was an informal hierarchy among Souliot clans in the second half of the 18th century which was determined by the fighting power of each fara and its size. The Botsaris clan was one of the oldest and most powerful in all four villages of core Souli. Georgios Botsaris in 1789 claimed that his clan could field 1,000 men against Ali Pasha followed by the Tzavellas and Zervas clans each of which could field 300 men and other smaller clans with 100 men each. George Botsaris presented himself as "the most respected individual among the Souliots" and his son Dimitris presented his father as the captain of the Souliots and himself as the commissioner of the Albanians. It is evident that in this period of Souliot history, social stratification among the clans had created an environment which led weaker clans to coalesce around stronger ones and be represented by them. The role, however, of the pleqësia was to stop such differentiation and maintain relations of equality in the community. Until the fall of Souli in 1803, the Souliot community never accepted to have a single leader from one clan and even in times of war each clan chose its leader from its own ranks. Thus, the Souliot tribal organization remained one which preserved the collective autonomy of each clan until its end. Social stratification was expressed since the second half of the 18th century in social practices of the Souliots, but was never institutionalized.
Name in AlbanianName in GreekSettlement
BoçariBotsarisSouli
XhavellaTzavellasSouli
KuçonikaKoutsonikasSouli
DhrakoDrakosSouli
DanglliDanglisSouli, Samoniva
BucaBoutziasSouli
ShehoSeosSouli
ZharbaZarbasSouli
VelloVeliosSouli
KallojeriKalogerosSouli
ThanasiThanasisSouli
KashkariKaskarisSouli
DoraTorasSouli
VasoVasosSouli
PapajaniPapagiannisSouli
TodiTodisSouli
ShahiniSachinisSouli
ManxhoMantzosSouli
PallamaPalamasSouli
BuzbuBousbosSouli
MatiMatisSouli
ZervaZervasKiafa
NikaNikasKiafa
FotoFotosKiafa
PandaziuPandazisKiafa
SallatariSalatarisAvariko
BufiBoufisAvariko
XhoriTzorisAvariko
BekaBekasSamoniva
HërraIrasSamoniva

The Souliotes wore red skull caps, fleecy capotes over their shoulders, embroidered jackets, scarlet buskins, slippers with pointed toes and white kilts.