Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II 1851-1855 After a series of somewhat monotonous years Brussa began to be more interesting, owing to the arrival of several groups of State prisoners from all parts of the Ottoman Empire. Some of these prisoners had been removed from their homes for the crime of protesting against the abuses of the Turkish Government, others, for daring to cast off the Moslem cloak with which, for a time, they had covered their Christian faith. There were also a number of political refugees as guests of the Sultan, chiefly Europeans. If I remember rightly, the first to arrive were some descendants of the family of All Pasha Tepeledin, that brigand adventurer who had come to the front in Albanian affairs at the close of the eighteenth century, and who by means of treachery and bribery had succeeded in obtaining the Pashalik (Governorship) of Janina from the Sultan. Ali Pasha Tepeledin had been beheaded in 1822 and his fortune, which was supposed to be enormous, is said to be buried deep in the sands of the river which flows by Janina. The children of Ali Pasha were reduced to penury and despair, and his son attempted suicide by swallowing a lot of arsenic. Regretting his action in time he is KOPT PRISONERS 23 believed to have saved his life by half strangling himself in order to prevent the poison circulating in his system, and by swallowing the whites of eighty eggs! Another State prisoner was Emir Bekir, a Kopt and a great Syrian chieftain. He was accompanied by his staff, which included an Archbishop who was both friend and father confessor. This was a very interesting set of people who appeared to have suffered much and who were full of dignity and Christian resignation. The Emir looked like an old saint with his snow- white hair and beard, and with a reverent aspect of t...