ESSAD, Pasha, Albanian soldier and adven turer: b. about 1865. The descendant of a powerful and wealthy family—the Topdani — who maintain to this day a sort of feudal authority and splendor, Essad began his varied career in the Turkish army. His elder brother, Ghani, became a secret instrument of Abdul Hamid II for the no.seless removal of ob noxious personages. A relative of one of his victims murdered Ghani, and was in turn shot down by Essad on Galata bridge in broad day light. Combining the profession of a bandit chief with that of a soldier, Essad Pasha had at all t.mes a host of Albanian clansmen at his command. He espoused the cause of the Young Turks in 1908 and, after the revival of the constitution, was sent to Constantinople as a deputy from Durazzo, the Alban.an capital. It was Essad Pasha who announced to the sultan that the committee had decided to depose him. On the outbreak of the Balkan Wars (q.v.) he was appointed commander-in-chief to defend Albania with some 18,000 troops. With the garrison of Jamna he defended that place for three months when he surrendered to the Greelcs with 30,000 men on 6 March 1913; six weeks later he surrendered Scutari to the Montengrins. It appears that Essad Pasha
cherished ambitions to create Albania an inde pendent state with himself as ruler, and there were strong grounds to believe that the two capitulations—of Janina and Scutar.—were the price he pa.d for eventual recognition, in addi tion to which he received a handsome fee from Russia. The selection by the powers of Prince William of Wied to be king of Albania nullified the hopes of Essad Pasha, who now became Minister of War unner the new regime. Before long, however, he was fomenting an insurrec tion and was deported. The king of Albania had soon to flee from the country himself, and Essad Pasha, under Italian protection, returned to Durazzo in October 1914 in the role of dicta tor. He was elected president of the Albanian provisional government. He dismissed the Austrian Minister — whose government had sup ported the claims of Ismail Kemal Bey for the kingsfhp — and strengthened the remnants of the Serbian army with his own forces against the Austrians and Bulgarians. In 1916 it was reported diat Essad Pasha had fled to Italy.