Sandžak-beg Valone Mustafa-beg Milivojević / Mustafa-bey Milivojevic, the Sandjak-bey of Valona

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present Mustafa-bey Milivojevic, a nobleman of Bosnian origin, as the Ottoman governor of the sanjak of Valona in Albania. The people of Dubrovnik maintained contact with him even in distant Valona, and sent him selected
intelligence informations due to his previous merits while he was the sandjak bey of Herzegovina, as well as the importance of his new position, and the fact that his recognizible political career was on the upward trajectory. Due to the timely arrival of informations, which was partly a result of their mediation, he was up to date with current political events. The paper explores the connections and correspondence of the people of Dubrovnik with Mustafa-bey in the political context of preparation and unfolding of the Ottoman-Venetian military conflict for supremacy on the Adriatic-Ionian coast. The Sandjak-bey of Valona retained a significant role in the naval war, in which he showed himself as a capable statesman. Attention is also drawn to the direction of Mustafa-bey’s possible later career ascent, since he subsequently acquired the title of pasha. The view of Mustafa Bey’s governorship is from a medieval perspective, based on archival materials in Latin and Old Italian. Extensive holdings of this type of material, especially the State Archives in Dubrovnik, although they contain a lot of information of a regional character, have been neglected and generally unused in Ottoman studies.