Few people know that in Smolyan, similar to the Agushe konak in Mogilitsa, there is an equally grandiose konak of the Kjorhodjov family. Its most famous representative is the Ahachelebi warlord Salih agha… The first warlord ruler of the Derebbeys in the Middle Rhodope, with an area approximately the size of the present Smolyan district, was the famous Mehmed Khoja. He was a native of Zabardo, lived at first in Chepelare, studied at the Imaret Mosque in Plovdiv, and was elected ruler at a pan-Rhodopean assembly in Rudozem, after which he lived and ruled the area from Raykovo, where he also built a konak.
This was in 1752. “Mehmed Khoja was a wise and just ruler. He defended the Christian population, reduced by the Turks, and helped it to rise culturally and livelihood-wise. He died in 1779 and was buried in the Raykov Mohammedan cemetery, where his grave is still preserved – next to the Imam’s house” (Dechev 1926; 1968: 442).
However, it can definitely be said that if not him, then his ancestral rule, which lasted for nearly a hundred years through his son Suleiman agha and his grandson Salih agha, had a decisive influence, writes Peter Marinov in his research. Salih Agha ruled his military from 1798 to 1838, i.e. round forty years.
The same was one of the descendants of Isein Bey – the ruler of the mountain “Kesariitsa” in the Rhodope Mountains, who in 1727 settled from the town of Gyumurdzhina in the settlement “Chepelare”, in the mountain permanently, together with his flocks and then took a wife, marrying a local pretty widow – the Pomak Fikree, left alone with two male children – Ismail and Mehmet.
During his reign, a long-lasting hidden enmity was created between Salih agha and the Pasha of Gyumurdzhina, Emin Bey, as the Sultan’s representative, which enmity could not have no underlying tribal overlay.
In the end Salih Agha was tricked into coming to Gyumurjina, ostensibly to be given a reward and a nishan (order) for his forty-year rule of the müdürluk, but the very first night of his arrival he was attacked and put to death in the courtyard of the government konak. He thus became a scapegoat for the efforts of the Turks to complete the complete “subjugation” of the Rhodope region. He gave a turning point to the events in this direction, he restrained the pogroms, and it is his work to preserve the Bulgarians here, write the researchers, without, however, belittling the bloody actions of Salih Aga in this region. There is certainly much to read about the history of those times. The remaining Konaks in Smolyan only remind us of them, as our concrete squares will remind us of the next generations…
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