Vlora (Awlonya, Valona)

Awlonya, called Valona or in Albanian Vlora, is a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, about four kilometres inland from the harbour of its bay. It played an important part in antiquity as Aulon. ¹

In June 1417 the Ottoman armies entered the area of Valona and occupied the town, together with the fortress of Kanina and Berat. The general Hamza Beg became commander-in-chief of Awlonya. The Ottomans, who had never before possessed an Adriatic port, soon began to build ships there. In 1418 Venice made a vain attempt to regain Awlonya for its former owner, Rugina, widow of Duke Mrksa. Awlonya remained Ottoman property, admitted Christians as farmers of taxes, and was governed by a sanjak-bey; it was an important bulwark against the West. Mehmed II twice used it as a base for raids on Apulia, Italian territory only some 75 km away; Gedik Ahmed Pasha, a capable servant of the sultan, kept it as a base for ambassadors and emissaries sent to Italy. ²

Apart from Albanians and Slavs, the inhabitants of the fourteenth century were mostly Greeks, who belonged to the autocephalous archbishopric of Ohrid until the eighteenth century. The Vloras, who had been in the nearby fortress of Kanina since the time of Bayezid II and were related to him by marriage, traced their origin to Ghazi Sinan Pasha. In the seventeenth century the fortress of Awlonya had high walls with many bastions, a mosque endowed by Sulayman the Magnificent, and a tower identical with the White Tower of Salonica. The Bektashi order seems to have been very active around Valona. Albanian independence was declared in Awlonya in 1912 and the town seceded from the Ottoman Empire. From 1914 to 1920 it was occupied by the Italians, and in the First World War it was an important base in the Balkans. By the Treaty of Rapallo the bridgehead, with the island of Saseno as the exception, was returned to Albania. From April 1939 to autumn 1943 Awlonya, with the rest of Albania, was again in foreign hands (the scan breaks off at this point). ³