northern part of Thessaly remained in Greek hands. Lacking a central authority, however, the area fractured among competing rulers. The north came under control of the Byzantines from Thessalonica, while in the centre three rival magnates, Stephen Gabrielopoulos of Trikala, a certain Signorinos, and the Melissenos, or rather Maliasenos, family in the east around Volos, emerged. Gabrielopoulos was the most successful of the three, and soon managed to gain recognition of his rule by the Byzantine court, which granted him the title of sebastokrator. The Maliasenoi on the other hand seem to have turned to the Catalans for support. With the loss of Neopatras and the rise of Gabrielopoulos, Trikala became the new political centre of Thessaly. At about the same time, larger groups of Albanians, such as the tribes of the Malakasioi, Bouoi, and Mesaritai, began to raid and settle in Thessaly, although smaller groups of Albanians may have been present in the region already from the late 12th century. When Gabrielopoulos died in , the Epirote ruler John II Orsini () tried to take advantage of the situation and seize his lands, but the Byzantines under Andronikos III Palaiologos () moved in and established direct control over the northern and western part of the region. Andronikos himself made agreements with the transhumant Albanian tribesmen of the Pindus mountains and appointed Michael Monomachos as governor of the region. It is unclear over which parts of Thessaly Byzantine control was restored: John Kantakouzenos claims that the campaign restored the old Epirote–Thessalian border (i.e. the Pindus mountains), while the modern researcher Božidar Ferjančić suggests that the Byzantines recovered eastern and central Thessaly, but that the western part remained under Epirote rule until Orsini's death three years later, when this area too came under Byzantine control. The successful Byzantine reconquest was led by Andronikos III's friend and chief aide, John Kantakouzenos. Thus when the Byzantine civil war of 1341–47 broke out between Kantakouzenos and the regency for the underage John V Palaiologos, Thessaly and Epirus quickly rallied to his side. Kantakouzenos' cousin, John Angelos, ruled the two regions until his death in 1348, whereupon they fell to the expanding Serbian Empire of Stefan Dushan. Dushan appointed his general Gregory Preljub as governor of Thessaly, which he ruled, probably from Trikala, until his death in late 1355 or early 1356. In 1350, Kantakouzenos, now emperor, launched an attempt to reconquer Thessaly, but after