Ottoman geographer Hadji Khalfa (1609-1657) wrote that during the mid seventeenth century the nahiya (sub-district) of Bilisht was populated by a mixed Albanian and Bulgarian population and the Christian element was declining due to local disturbances and inhabitants converting to Islam. In the early nineteenth century, the ethnic border between Albanians and the neighbouring Slavic (Bulgarian) population ran close and to the east of Bilisht. Between 1805–1807, the British traveller William Martin Leake passed through the area, referred to the ethnic border and stated that the people of Bilisht spoke Albanian.