born. He boasted that he belonged to the conquering race, and that
he descended from an ancient Anatolian family which had crossed into
Albania with the troops of Bajazet Ilderim. But it is made certain by
the learned researches of M. de Pouqueville that he sprang from a native
stock, and not an Asiatic one, as he pretended. His ancestors were
Christian Skipetars, who became Mussulmans after the Turkish invasion,
and his ancestry certainly cannot be traced farther back than the end of
the sixteenth century.

Mouktar Tepeleni, his grandfather, perished in the Turkish expedition
against Corfu, in 1716. Marshal Schullemburg, who defended the island,
having repulsed the enemy with loss, took Mouktar prisoner on Mount
San Salvador, where he was in charge of a signalling party, and with a
barbarity worthy of his adversaries, hung him without trial. It must
be admitted that the memory of this murder must have had the effect of
rendering Ali badly disposed towards Christians.

Mouktar left three sons, two of whom, Salik and Mahomet, were born of
the same mother, a lawful wife, but the mother of the youngest, Veli,
was a slave. His origin was no legal bar to his succeeding like his
brothers. The family was one of the richest in the town of Tepelen,
whose name it bore; it enjoyed an income of six thousand piastres, equal
to twenty thousand francs. This was a large fortune in a poor country,
where, all commodities were cheap. But the Tepeleni family, holding the
rank of beys, had to maintain a state like that of the great financiers
of feudal Europe. They had to keep a large stud of horses, with a great
retinue of servants and men-at-arms, and consequently to incur heavy
expenses; thus they constantly found their revenue inadequate. The most
natural means of raising it which occurred to them was to diminish the
number of those who shared it; therefore the two elder brothers, sons of