There is little local employment apart from that provided by the state, and Delvinë benefits little from the tourist boom in Sarandë.

Pietro is the first noble of the Shpata family mentioned in history and he may have been from the region he controlled including Delvinë but nothing conclusive can be said.

[citation needed] The separate Sanjak of Delvina was established in the mid-16th century[8] due to the need to secure Ottoman control in the region towards potential Venetian infiltration from nearby Butrinto and to control the rebellious zone of Himara.

[10] In an ecclesiastical entry of 1635, the Codex of the church of Delvinë written in Greek noted that the Muslim population had increased and dwelt in quarters inhabited by Orthodox Christians, had confiscated their churches and converted them into mosques, thereby forcing the non-Islamized Christians to move to other quarters of the town.

[12] In his own time, Ajaz Mehmet Pasha – a native Albanian – governed the Sanjak-bey of Delvinë.

They consist of simple verses and invocations made by the pilgrims who visited this important centre.

Delvina hosted dervishes of the Halveti order, which was spread towards Albania by Helvacı Yakub Efendi around 1530.

In 1878 a Greek revolt broke out, with a unit of 700 revolutionaries, mostly Epirotes from the Ionian Islands, taking control of Sarandë and occupied Delvinë.

[24] In the early 20th century a çetë (armed band) consisting of 200 activists of the Albanian National Awakening was formed in Delvinë.

[25] During the Balkan Wars and the subsequent Ottoman defeat, the Greek Army entered the city on March 3, 1913.

[26] In June 1914 the town hosted the constituent assembly of the representatives of Northern Epirus that discussed and finally approved the Protocol of Corfu, on July 26, 1914.

However, much of the fighting in the 1997 Albanian civil unrest took place there, and the city is now depopulated, like most of rural Albania, and many buildings still show visible signs of the war.

In the early 19th century during the rule of Ali Pasha, British diplomat William Martin Leake arrived in town on December 24, 1804.

The Greeks occupied the eastern suburbs called Láka and consisted of about thirty families, ten of whom had the surname Kanáki.

[30] The town has a majority population of Albanians alongside communities of Greeks and Balkan Egyptians.

It consisted of Jews from Spain who had come to Delvinë when under Ottoman rule and had close connections to the large Jewish community in Ioannina.