Thásos

Thasos is a mountainous island in the northern Aegean, close to the coast of Macedonia. In antiquity its gold mines and pale marble made it valuable, while its wine traveled beyond the island's shores. Centuries later, as Byzantine power receded, the Genoese Gattilusi family gained control of Thasos and linked it to their other possessions in the Aegean.

In 1455 Domenico Gattilusi surrendered the island to Sultan Mehmed II. Thasos remained within the Ottoman world, with local communities retaining a measure of internal self-government. In 1813 Sultan Mahmud II granted the island to Muhammad Ali of Egypt in recognition of his services in Arabia. Its inhabitants thus came under the authority of a ruler whose career had begun across the water at Kavala.