About 1760 a Moslem chieftain, Mehemet of Bushat, after obtaining the pashalik of Scutari from the Porte, succeeded in establishing an almost independent sovereignty in Upper Albania, which remained hereditary in his family for some generations.
Khaired-Din, succeeding Arouj, drove the Spaniards from the Penon (1530) and was the founder of the pashalik, afterwards deylik, of Algeria.
In the latter part of the 18th century and the first years of the 19th it was constantly the scene of bloody dissensions between two rival parties, one led by the local janissaries, the other by the sherifs (religious); and the Ottoman governors took the side, now of one, now of the other, in order to plunder a distracted city, too far removed from the centre to be controlled by the sultans, and too near the rebellious pashalik of Acre and the unsettled district of Lebanon not to be affected by the disorders natural to a frontier province.
The governorship of the pashalik was long hereditary in the originally Christian family of the `Abd-al-Jalil, until the Porte, during the course of the 19th century, succeeded after a long and severe contest in establishing a more centralized system of government.
Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa captured the city in 1520 and annexed it to his Algerian pashalik.