mohairs, carpets, spices and leather from Bursa and Istanbul. Some citizens of Vlorë even had business associates in Europe.
Albanians could also be found throughout the empire, in Iraq, Egypt, Algeria and across the Maghreb as vital military and administrative retainers. This owed largely to their early use as part of the Devşirme system. The process of Islamization was an incremental one, commencing from the arrival of the Ottomans in the 14th century (to this day, a minority of Albanians are Catholic or Orthodox Christians, though the vast majority became Muslim). Timar holders, the bedrock of early Ottoman control in Southeast Europe, were not necessarily converts to Islam, and occasionally rebelled; the most famous of these rebels is Skanderbeg (his figure would be used later in the 19th century as a central component of Albanian national identity). The most significant impact on the Albanians was the gradual Islamisation process of a large majority of the population, although such a process only became widespread in the 17th century. Mainly Catholics converted in the 17th century, while the Orthodox Albanians followed suit mainly in the following century. Initially confined to the main city centres of Elbasan and Shkoder, by this period the countryside was also embracing the new religion. The motives for conversion according to scholars were diverse, depending on the context. The lack of source material does not help when investigating such issues.
Albania remained under Ottoman control as part of the Rumelia province until 1912, when the first independent Albanian state was declared. The formation of an Albanian national consciousness dates to the latter 19th century and is part of the larger phenomenon of the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire.
Era of Nationalism
The first organization that opposed the partition of Albania and pushed for greater autonomy was the League of Prizren, formed on 1 June 1878, in
