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Bursa
History of Bursa
The earliest known human settlement near Bursa's current location was at
Ilıpınar Höyüğü around 5200 BC. It was followed by the ancient Greek city
of Cius, which Philip V of Macedon granted to Prusias I, the King of Bithynia, in
202 BC. Prusias rebuilt the city and renamed it Prusa . After 128 years of
Bithynian rule, Nicomedes IV, the last King of Bithynia, bequeathed the entire
kingdom to the Roman Empire in 74 BC. An early Roman Treasure was found in
the vicinity of Bursa in the early 20th century. Composed of a woman's silver
toilet articles, it is now in the British Museum.
Bursa became the first major capital city of the early Ottoman Empire following
its capture from the Byzantines in 1326. As a result, the city witnessed a
considerable amount of urban growth throughout the 14th century. After
conquering Edirne (Adrianople) in East Thrace, the Ottomans turned it into the
new capital city in 1363, but Bursa retained its spiritual and commercial
importance in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I built
the Bayezid Külliyesi (Bayezid I theological complex) in Bursa between 1390
and 1395 and the Ulu Cami (Grand Mosque) between 1396 and 1400. Bursa
remained to be the most important administrative and commercial centre in
the empire until Mehmed II conqueredConstantinople in 1453. The population
of Bursa was 45,000 in 1487.
During the Ottoman period, Bursa continued to be the source of most
royal silk products. Aside from the local silk production, the city imported raw
silk from Iran, and occasionally from China, and was the main production
centre for the kaftans, pillows, embroidery and other silk products for the
Ottoman palaces until the 17th century.
Following the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Bursa became one
of the industrial centres of the country. The economic development of the city
was followed by population growth and Bursa became the 4th most populous
city in Turkey.
The city has traditionally been a pole of attraction, and was a major centre for
refugees from various ethnic backgrounds who immigrated to Anatolia from
the Balkans during the loss of the Ottoman territories in Europe between the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. The most recent arrival of Balkan Turks took
place in the 1940s until the 1990s, when the communist
regime in Bulgaria expelled approximately 150,000 Bulgarian Turks to
Turkey. About one-third of these 150,000 Bulgarian Turkish refugees
eventually settled in Bursa.
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