What is "souliotes"

The Souliotes were an Orthodox Christian community of the area of Souli, in Epirus, known for their military prowess, their resistance to the local Ottoman ruler Ali Pasha, and their contribution to the Greek cause in the Greek War of Independence, under leaders such as Markos Botsaris and Kitsos Tzavelas. The Souliotes established an autonomous confederacy dominating a large number of neighbouring villages in the remote mountainous areas of Epirus, where they could successfully resist Ottoman rule. At the height of its power, in the second half of the 18th century, the community (also called "confederacy") is estimated to have comprised up to 12,000 inhabitants in about 60 villages. The community was classified as Greek in the Ottoman system of social classification because they were Orthodox Christians, yet spoke Albanian besides Greek because of their Albanian origin.

• Balázs Trencsényi, Michal Kopecek: Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770–1945): The Formation of National Movements. Central European University Press, 2006, ISBN 963-7326-60-X, S. 173. “The Souliotes were Albanian by origin and Orthodox by faith”.
• Giannēs Koliopoulos, John S. Koliopoulos, Thanos Veremēs: Greece: The Modern Sequel : from 1831 to the Present. 2. Edition. C. Hurst & Co., 2004, ISBN 1-85065-462-X, S. 184
• Eric Hobsbawm: Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. 2. Edition. Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-43961-2, S. 65
• NGL Hammond: Epirus: the Geography, the Ancient Remains, the History and Topography of Epirus and Adjacent Areas. Clarendon P., 1967, S. 31
• Richard Clogg: . Hurst, Oxford 2002, S. 178. [Footnote] “The Souliotes were a warlike Albanian Christian community, which resisted Ali Pasha in Epirus in the years immediately preceding the outbreak the Greek War of Independence in 1821.”
• Miranda Vickers: The Albanians: A Modern History. I.B. Tauris, 1999, ISBN 1-86064-541-0, S. 20. “The Suliots, then numbering around 12,000, were Christian Albanians inhabiting a small independent community somewhat akin to tat of the Catholic Mirdite trive to the north”.
• Nicholas Pappas: Greeks in Russian Military Service in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. Institute for Balkan Studies. Monograph Series, No. 219, Thessaloniki 1991, .
• Katherine Elizabeth Fleming: The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha's Greece. Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00194-4, S. 59. “The history of the Orthodox Albanian peoples of the mountain stronghold of Souli provides an example of such an overlap.”
• André Gerolymatos: The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Basic Books, 2002, ISBN 0-465-02732-6, S. 141. “The Suliot dance of death is an integral image of the Greek revolution and it has been seared into the consciousness of Greek schoolchildren for generations. Many youngsters pay homage to the memory of these Orthodox Albanians each year by recreating the event in their elementary school pageants.”
• Henry Clifford Darby: Greece. Great Britain Naval Intelligence Division. University Press, 1944. “… who belong to the Cham branch of south Albanian Tosks (see volume I, pp. 363-5). In the mid-eighteenth century these people (the Souliotes) were a semi-autonomous community …”
• Arthur Foss (1978). Epirus. Faber. pp. 160-161. “The Souliots were a tribe or clan of Christian Albanians who settled among these spectacular but inhospitable mountains during the fourteenth or fifteenth century…. The Souliots, like other Albanians, were great dandies. They wore red skull caps, fleecy capotes thrown carelessly over their shoulders, embroidered jackets, scarlet buskins, slippers with pointed toes and white kilts.”
• Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (1983), "Of Suliots, Arnauts, Albanians and Eugène Delacroix". The Burlington Magazine. p. 487. “The Albanians were a mountain population from the region of Epirus, in the north-west part of the Ottoman Empire. They were predominantly Muslim. The Suliots were a Christian Albanian tribe, which in the eighteenth century settled in a mountainous area close to the town of Jannina. They struggled to remain independent and fiercely resisted Ali Pasha, the tyrannic ruler of Epirus. They were defeated in 1822 and, banished from their homeland, took refuge in the Ionian Islands. It was there that Lord Byron recruited a number of them to form his private guard, prior to his arrival in Missolonghi in 1824. Arnauts was the name given by the Turks to the Albanians”.