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Ioannina

Ioannina is first documented in 1020 and may have taken name and site from a monastery of St. John the Baptist. Taken by Bohemond, eldest son of Robert Guiscard, in the 11th century, it was visited in 1160 by Benjamin of Tudela. However, loannina dates its importance, from the influx of refugees in 1205 from Constantinople and the Morea and its consequent fortification by Michael I Angelos. An archbishopric was established here between 1284 and 1307. In 1345 Ioannina was captured by the Serb Stefan Dusan, proclaimed in the following year Emperor of Serbia and Greece. In 1431 it surrendered to the army of the Sultan Murad II. In 1618, after an abortive rising led by Dionysos 'Skylosophos' the fanatic Bp of Trikkala, the Christians were expelled from the citadel and their churches destroyed. Nevertheless, in 1666 the town was rich and populous.

Its zenith was reached under Ali Pasha, (born in 1741 at the Albanian village of Tepeleni), a brilliant, resourceful and vindictive adventurer who alternately fought and served the Sultan of Turkey. Having assisted the Turks in their war of 1787 against Austria, he was made Pasha of Trikkala in 1788, in which year he seized Ioannina, then, a town of 35,000 inhabitants, and made it his headquarters. In 1797 he allied himself with Napoleon, however, the very next year he took Preveza from the French. In 1803 he subdued the Suliots. After 1807 his dependence on the Porte was merely nominal. Byron visited Ioannina in 1809, while Col. W. M. Leake, the great topographer of Greece, who was British resident, and Henry Holland was Ali Pasha's doctor. In 1817 Ali entered into an alliance with the British, who gave him Parga. At length the Sultan decided to eliminate this daring rebel. Ali was captured at loannina after a siege and executed there in 1822. Two years before his death, besieged by Ismail Pasha, he had set fire to the town. The Congress of Berlin (1878) assigned Epirus to Greece but it remained in Turkish hands for over 35 more years. On 21 February 1913, the Greek army entered Ioannina and besieged it.

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