In the late 17th and 18th centuries, especially after numerous rebellions including during the Great Turkish War and subsequent clashes with Orthodox Russia, Ottoman rulers also made concerted efforts to convert the Orthodox Albanians of Southern and Central Albania (as well as neighboring regions of Greece and Macedonia). Like in the North, conversion was achieved through a diverse motley of violent, coercive and non-coercive means, but raised taxes were the main factor. Nevertheless, there were specific local cases: in Vlora and the surrounding region, the Christians converted en masse once the area was recaptured from the Christian forces in 1590, because they feared violent retribution for their collaboration. In Labëri, meanwhile, mass conversion took place during a famine in which the bishop of Himara and Delvina was said to have forbidden the people from breaking the fast and consuming milk under threat of interminable hell. Across Orthodox regions of Albania, conversion was also helped by the presence of heresies like Arianism and the fact that much of the Orthodox clergy was illiterate, corrupt, and conducted sermons in Greek, a foreign language, as well as the poverty of the Orthodox church. The clergy, largely from the Bosphorus, was distant from its Albanian flocks and also corrupt as well, abusing church tax collection and exacting a heavy tax regime that aggregated on top of punitive taxes imposed directly by the Ottoman state on the rebellious Albanian Christian population aimed at sparking their conversion.