The work is inspired by and named after Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Albanian ruler of the increasingly independent Pashalik of Yanina, describing, in heroic style, his life and military campaigns.
This was due to the fact that the Orthodox church, unlike the Catholic one, "was never to be convinced of the utility of writing in the vernacular as a means of converting the masses".
[4] In the epic poem, Ali's war against the Souliotes is formalistically presented as a religious conflict, as the author refers to the Orthodox rebels as the Din Diijman "enemies of the faith".
Moreover, Souliotes' religious identity as Christians held no particular relevance for Ali, as from a cultural perspective he ought to have favored them as being of Albanian descent like himself, rather than Greek, Vlach, or Turkish.
[7] The Alipashiad consists of 15,000 lines and was written in installments in the first years of the 19th century, when Ali Pasha was at his height as the powerful and semi-independent ruler of the Pashalik of Yanina.