Bursa

Bursa, the administrative center of Bursa Province in northwestern Turkey, ranks as the country’s fourth-most populous city and the second-most populous in the Marmara Region, trailing only Istanbul. As of a 2025 year-end estimate, the province holds about 3,263,011 residents, with the city itself home to roughly 2.5 million people. A major hub for Turkey’s automotive industry, Bursa also offers numerous tourist attractions. Historically known as Prusa (or Prousa in Ancient Greek), it was sometimes called Prusa near Olympus or Prusa under Olympus. The city served as the capital of the Ottoman Beylik—and later the early Ottoman Empire—from 1335 until the 1360s. Its modern nickname, Yeşil Bursa (“Green Bursa”), reflects the parks, gardens, and extensive forests in and around the city. Bursa features orderly urban growth and sits on a fertile plain. Early Ottoman sultan mausoleums are found here, along with many Ottoman-era buildings, thermal baths, old mansions, palaces, and museums. Mount Uludağ, known in antiquity as Mysian or Bithynian Olympus, looms over the city and hosts a ski resort. The shadow play characters Karagöz and Hacivat are, according to some accounts, based on historical figures who lived and died in Bursa during the 14th century.

The earliest known settlement near Bursa’s current location dates to around 6000 BC at the Ilıpınar Mound. Later, the Bithynian king Prusias I founded the city of Prusa, also called Prusa ad Olympum for its position at the foot of Bithynian Olympus (today’s Mount Uludağ). Its hot springs were known as “royal waters.” In 75/74 BC, the last Bithynian king, Nicomedes IV, bequeathed his entire kingdom to the Roman Republic in his will. A letter from Roman author Pliny the Younger, then governor of Bithynia and Pontus, to Emperor Trajan (r. 98–117) mentions that baths were built in Prusa after imperial permission. An early Roman artifact—a set of silver toiletry items for women—was discovered in Bursa and has been held by the British Museum since 1913.

Under Byzantine rule, Prusa prospered after Emperor Justinian I built a palace there, according to Encyclopædia Britannica. By 562, it had become a garrison city with imperial guards. Already by the mid-6th century, Prusa was a famous center for silk textile manufacturing. The Ottomans captured Bursa from the Byzantines in 1326 and made it their capital. During Ottoman rule, the city saw significant urban growth, including hospitals, caravanserais (such as the Koza Han), and madrasas, and the first official Ottoman mint was established there. After conquering Adrianople (later Edirne) in East Thrace, the Ottomans moved the capital there in the 1360s. Though no longer a capital, Bursa retained spiritual and commercial importance. Sultan Bayezid I built the Bayezid I Complex (including the Bayezid I Mosque) between 1390 and 1395, and the Grand Mosque of Bursa between 1396 and 1400. Following Bayezid’s defeat and capture at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 by Emir Timur, Timur’s grandson Muhammad Sultan Mirza pillaged and burned Bursa. Timur then placed the city under a son of Savcı Bey. During the Ottoman interregnum after Bayezid’s death, Bursa came under the control of co-ruler Îsâ Çelebi. In May 1403, Mehmed Çelebi annexed Bursa after the Battle of Ulubad. A 1487 folio records 174 quarters in Bursa, inhabited by 6,457 tax-paying heads of households.

Bursa was a hub for the Ottoman silk trade, with a dockyard for cargo ships and a role in distributing silk and other Eastern goods—especially from Ming China—to the Mediterranean, including Italian city-states like Genoa and Florence. It also lay on the land route of Armenian trade networks. The city became a resort town with many springs, centered in an area called Cekirge, featuring Ottoman hammams like Eski and Yeni Kaplıcas. During a Devshirme levy in 1603–4, villagers from the Christian village of Eğerciler (later Eğerce) in Bursa, which supplied sheep to Istanbul, claimed their children were needed as shepherds and that officers had taken some despite no obligation. The Ottoman government ordered the children returned. In 1827, Bursa became the capital of Hüdavendigâr Eyalet, and from 1867 until the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution in 1922, it served as the capital of Hüdavendigâr Vilayet. In July 1915, under the Committee for Union and Progress government, thousands of Orthodox Christians were forced from their coastal homes and took refuge in Bursa.