first appearance of Albanians within the Despotate of Epirus is recorded in Byzantine sources as nomads. The wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between Russia and the Ottoman Empire negatively impacted the region. Increased conversions to Islam followed, often forced, such as those of 25 villages in 1739 which are located in current day Thesprotia prefecture. During the Ottoman period members of the Cham community owned most large farmlands in the region. There is no evidence that Albanian national ideologies had strong support among the local Muslims in the late Ottoman period. On the other hand, the local Orthodox Albanian speaking population, as well as the rest of the Orthodox community, remained Greek-oriented and identified themselves as Greeks. For the Greek state, however, the possibility of Orthodox Albanian speakers being recruited into the ranks of Albanian nationalists was a source of constant anxiety. However, despite efforts of state and national activists the local population was not nationalised in this period. Thus Kyrios Nitsos, a Greek educationalist in 1909 noted that local Orthodox Albanian speakers did not refer to themselves as Greek yet instead as Kaur which connoted Christian and did not find the term insulting, while Muslim Albanian speakers identified themselves as Muslims or Turks. In late Ottoman period within the Balkans the terms "Muslim" and "Turk" became synonymous and Albanians were conferred and received the term "Turk" while having preferences to distance themselves from ethnic Turks. In the early 20th century Muslims constituted a little over one-third of the total population of Thesprotia, most of them were Albanian speakers. On the other hand, the Orthodox community, or the "Greeks", as known to contemporary Ottoman classification were Greek, Albanian and Aromanian speakers: In the highlands of Mourgana and Souli there were mostly Greek speakers, while in the lowlands of Margariti, Igoumenitsa and Paramithia Albanian speakers. In January 1907 a secret agreement was signed between Ismail Qemali, a leader of the then Albanian national movement, and the Greek government which concerned the possibility of an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. According to this, the two sides agreed that the future Greek-Albanian boundary should be located on the Acroceraunian mountains, thus leaving Chameria to Greece. Qemali's reasons for closer ties with Greece during this time was to thwart Bulgarian ambitions in the wider Balkans region and gain support for Albanian independence. The following years the Muslim Albanians of the sanjak