page_title: Essad Pasha Toptani
section_title: Exile and the Treaty of Niš
hierarchical_section_title: Essad Pasha Toptani / Biography / Exile and the Treaty of Niš
caption_attribution_description: English: Esad Pashë Toptani on Salonika front. Français&#160;: Essad Pacha avec les généraux&#160;: français Maurice Sarrail et italien Carlo Petitti di Roreto.
context_page_description: Essad Pasha Toptani or Esad Pasha Toptani, mainly known as Essad Pasha, was an Ottoman army officer who served as the Albanian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament. He was a prominent politician in early 20th-century Albania. Toptani cooperated with the Balkan League after the Balkan Wars and established a state in central Albania, based in Durrës, called the Republic of Central Albania.
context_section_description: From exile in Rome, he maintained close links with the Serbian and Montenegrin governments. After the outbreak of the First World War, Toptani travelled to Niš, Kingdom of Serbia, where he and Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić signed the secret Treaty of Serbian-Albanian Alliance on 17 September 1914. With Italian and Serbian financial backing he established armed forces, Toptani invaded Dibër on 20 September, and by 3 October 1914 he had taken Durrës without a fight. Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić ordered that his followers be aided with money and arms.
  His power base in central Albania was weakened in November 1914 by an uprising of Muslim rebels who turned against him, but he managed, with Italian support, to hold on to the town of Durrës. When Serbian forces invaded Albania in mid-June 1915, swiftly occupying Pogradec, Elbasan, Tirana and Kavaja, Toptani was put in place as ruler of central Albania from Durrës. Though his rule was not stable because of the First World War. In the end of 1914, Essad secretly agreed with the Greek government to support the annexation of the southern provinces, known to Greeks as Northern Epirus, to the Kingdom of Greece. He soon declared war on Austria-Hungary to show support for the Entente, and profited from the situation enormously by taxing all the Allied supplies sent to the Serbs. When Austro-Hungarian forces swept through much of central and northern Albania in the spring of 1916, Toptani fled to Salonika from there went to France, to represent Albania at the Paris Peace Conference.
  For the next two years, Essad Pasha remained in Paris, attempting to organize recognition for Albania from the Great Powers and reject the secret pact of London, which planned the division of Albania. During this time Tirana and much of central Albania was controlled by his Field Commander, Osman Bali and his most trusted adviser Ramazan Biba, member of a prominent Tirana family.
caption: Essad Pasha in Salonika
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