Despotate of Arta

The Despotate of Arta was a despotate established by Albanian rulers during the fourteenth century — the western Greek polity shown on the map — after the defeat of the local Despot of Epirus, Nikephoros II Orsini, by Albanian tribesmen in the Battle of Achelous in 1359. In the late spring of that year Nikephoros II, the last Orsini despot of Epirus, fought the Albanians near the river Acheloos in Aetolia and lost; the victors under Karl Thopia created new states in the southern territories of the old despotate, and the Serbian self-proclaimed Emperor of Serbs and Greeks, Simeon Uroš, granted the Albanian lords specific regions with the Byzantine title of despotes to secure their loyalty. By the late 1360s two Albanian principalities had emerged — one with its capital in Arta under Pjetër Losha, the other centred in Angelokastron under Gjin Bua Shpata — and after Losha's death in 1374 the despotates of Arta and Angelokastron were united under Shpata's rule. In April 1378 the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, Juan Fernández de Heredia, set out to take Arta but failed and was captured by Shpata, who sold him to the Ottoman Turks for a huge prize. The despotate ceased to exist in 1416, when it passed to Carlo I Tocco.