the new pasha of Negroponte. The holders of that office had always endeavoured to interfere in the affairs of Athens, and the new incumbent already had reasons to resent Haseki. When Haseki refused to send men to the war, despite being ordered to do so by the Porte, the pasha sent a body of 300 soldiers, horse and foot, against him. Haseki closed the gates of Athens and repelled the attack, but this armed clash between two Ottoman governors irked Sultan Selim III, who in 1792 expelled both from their provinces. Haseki was banished to Salonica, but quickly returned to Constantinople. With the aid of his supporters there, he secured his right, as malikhane sahib, to send a voivode of his own to Athens in 1793. His agent continued to extract revenue from Athens and send it to him in Constantinople. Haseki's final downfall came about because of his intrigues in the Sultan's court, where he tried unsuccessfully to undermine the position of the head of the imperial bodyguard in order to replace him. When the latter became aware of Haseki's machinations, he was banished to Chios. Once again, however, Haseki managed to escape his exile, and soon returned to Constantinople. He summoned the Athenian primates there in 1794, and demanded the payment of 200,000 piastres from them. Nevertheless, his position was weakened, and in 1795 the Athenians living in the Ottoman capital encouraged their compatriots to send another deputation to the Porte. The first to head to Constantinople was Dionysios Petrakis, the abbot of the Monastery of the Taxiarchs, who headed a secret delegation, with Nikos Zitounakis and three others, to see the Valide Sultan Mihrişah, whom Petrakis had once cured of mastitis. Petrakis arranged the subordination of his monastery to the Valide Sultan's charitable vakıf, so that he would be free from Haseki's impositions, and begged the Valide Sultan to intervene in favour of Athens, whose terrible condition under Haseki's rule he described to her. She referred him to Çelebi Efendi, head of the military treasury. When Haseki learned of Petrakis' presence in Constantinople, he invited him to his residence, and put poison in his coffee. The abbot, suspicious, did not drink much of the coffee, and vomited the little he had drunk as soon as he left; the poison nevertheless caused his beard to fall off and his teeth to be harmed. As soon as he had