The area around Edirne has been the site of no fewer than 16 major battles or sieges, from the days of the ancient Greeks. Military historian John Keegan identifies it as the most contested spot on the globe and attributes this to its geographical location. Antiquity[edit] According to Greek mythology, Orestes, son of king Agamemnon, built this city as Orestias, at the confluence of the Tonsus (Toundja) and the Ardiscus (Arda) with the Hebrus (Maritza). The city was (re)founded eponymously by the Roman Emperor Hadrian on the site of a previous Thracian settlement known as Uskadama, Uskudama or Uskodama or Uscudama. It was the capital of the Bessi,[4] or of the Odrysians. Hadrian developed it, adorned it with monuments, changed its name to Hadrianopolis after himself (which would be corrupted into Adrianopolis and shortened to Adrianople), and made it the capital of the Roman province of Thrace. Licinius was defeated there by Constantine I in 323, and Emperor Valens was killed by the Goths in 378 during the Battle of Adrianople (378). Medieval period[edit] In 813, the city was seized by Khan Krum of Bulgaria who moved its inhabitants to the Bulgarian lands towards the north of the Danube. During the existence of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were decisively defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan in the Battle of Adrianople (1205). Later Theodore Komnenos, Despot of Epirus, took possession of it in 1227, but three years later was defeated at Klokotnitsa by Asen, Emperor of the Bulgarians. The date of the capture of the town by the Ottoman Turks is variously proposed by historians from 1361 to 1371. From the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murad I to 1453, Adrianople (its name now Turkified into Edirne) served as the European capital of the Ottoman Empire, until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, which became the empires new capital. Modern period[edit] Edirne in the first quarter of the 20th century. Under Ottoman rule, Edirne was the principal city of the administrative unit, the eponymous Eyalet of Edirne, and after land reforms in 1867, the Vilayet of Edirne. Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was born in Edirne. It was here that he fell under the influence of some Hurufis dismissed by Taş Köprü Zade in the Şakaiki Numaniye as Certain accursed ones of no significance, who were burnt as heretics by a certain Mahmud Pasha.[5] Sultan Mehmed IV left the palace in Constantinople and died in Edirne in 1693. During his exile in the Ottoman Empire, the Swedish king Charles XII stayed in the city during most of 1713.[6] Baháulláh, the founder of the Baháí Faith, lived in Edirne from 1863 to 1868. He was exiled there by the Ottoman Empire before being banished further to the Ottoman penal colony in Akka. He referred to Edirne in his writings as the Land of Mystery.[7] Edirne was a sanjak centre during the Ottoman period and was bound to, successively, the Rumeli Eyalet and Silistre Eyalet before becoming a provincial capital of the Eyalet of Edirne at the beginning of the 19th century; until 1878, the Eyalet of Edirne comprised the sanjaks of Edirne, Tekfurdağı, Gelibolu, Filibe, and İslimye. Edirne was briefly occupied by imperial Russian troops in 1829 during the Greek War of Independence and in 1878 during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The city suffered a fire in 1905. In 1905 it had about 80,000 inhabitants, of whom 30,000 were Muslims (Turks and some Albanians, Romani, and Circassians); 22,000 Greeks; 10,000 Bulgarians; 4,000 Armenians; 12,000 Jews; and 2,000 more citizens of non-classifiable ethnic/religious backgrounds. Edirne was a vital fortress defending Ottoman Constantinople and Eastern Thrace during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. It was briefly occupied by the Bulgarians in 1913, following the Siege of Adrianople. The Great Powers–Britain, Italy, France, and Russia–forced the Ottoman Empire to cede Edirne to Bulgaria at the end of First Balkan War, which created a political scandal in the Ottoman government in Istanbul (as Edirne was a former capital of the Empire), leading to the 1913 Ottoman coup détat. Although it was victorious in the coup, the Committee of Union and Progress was unable to keep Edirne, but under Enver Pasha (who proclaimed himself the second conqueror of Edirne, after Murad I), it soon retook it from the Bulgarians quickly after the Second Balkan War began. It was occupied by the Greeks between the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and their defeat at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, also known as the Western Front of the larger Turkish War of Independence, in 1922. According to the 2007 census, Edirne Province had a population of 382,222 inhabitants. The city is a thriving center of commerce for woven textiles, silks, carpets and agricultural products.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 08:54:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015