Edirne — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Roman and Byzantine period

The city was reestablished by the Roman Emperor Hadrian on the site of Orestias (named after its mythological founder Orestes), which was itself built on a previous Thracian settlement known as Uskadama, Uskudama, Uskodama or Uscudama. Hadrian developed it, adorned it with monuments, and changed its name to Hadrianopolis (Anglicised as Adrianople). Licinius was defeated here by Constantine I in 324, and Emperor Valens was killed by the Goths here during the Battle of Adrianople in 378.

During the period of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the Crusaders were defeated by the Bulgarian Emperor Kaloyan at the Battle of Adrianople in 1205. In 1206 the Latin regime gave Adrianople and the surrounding area to the Byzantine aristocrat Theodore Branas as a hereditary fief. Theodore Komnenos, Despot of Epirus, took possession of it in 1227, but three years later was defeated at Klokotnitsa by Emperor Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria. In 1321, Andronikos III set up his base in Adrianople, initiating the First Palaiologan civil war against his grandfather, Emperor Andronikos II.

Ottoman period

The exact date of the Ottoman conquest of Adrianople is disputed. While some sources place the conquest in 1361 or 1362, other historians argue that the city likely fell later in the decade during the reign of Sultan Murad I. Due to its strategic position at the junction of major Balkan land and river trade routes, Adrianople had long served as an important regional center during the Byzantine period, and these geographic and commercial advantages contributed significantly to its importance as an early Ottoman capital. The city became "Edirne" in Turkish, reflecting the Turkish pronunciation and Murad moved the Ottoman capital here from Bursa. Mehmed the Conqueror (Sultan Mehmed II) was born in Adrianople, where he came under the influence of Hurufis dismissed by Taşköprüzade in the Şakaiki Numaniye as 'certain accursed ones of no significance', who were burnt as heretics by Mahmud Pasha.

The city remained the seat of Ottoman power until 1453, when Mehmed II took Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and moved the capital there. The importance of Edirne to the early Ottomans explains the plethora of early Ottoman mosques, medreses and other monuments that have survived until today although the Eski Sarayı (Old Palace) was largely destroyed, leaving only relatively slight remains. Also, there is evidence of a scriptorium in the Ottoman's Edirne palace during this period.

Uzunköprü Bridge, the world's longest medieval stone bridge, connects Anatolia with the Balkans on the Ergene River and was erected between 1426 and 1443 by the primary architect, Müslihiddin, during the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat II.

That Adrianople/Edirne continued to hold an important place in Ottoman hearts is reflected in the fact that Sultan Mehmed IV left the Topkapı Palace in Constantinople to die here in 1693.

The wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, spent six weeks in Edirne (then Adrianople) in the spring of 1717 and left an account of her experiences there in her The Turkish Embassy Letters. Wearing Turkish dress, Montagu witnessed the passage of Sultan Ahmed III to the mosque, visited the young wife-to-be of his vizier, Damad Ibrahim Pasha and was shown around the Selimiye Mosque.

Adrianople 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. At that time it had about 80,000 inhabitants, of whom 30,000 were Turks; 22,000 Greeks; 10,000 Bulgarians; 4,000 Armenians; 12,000 Jews; and 2,000 more citizens of unclassified ethnic/religious backgrounds.

Adrianople was a vital fortress defending 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 – attempted to coerce the Ottoman Empire into ceding Adrianople to Bulgaria during the temporary winter truce of the First Balkan War. The belief that the government was willing to give up the city created a scandal for the Ottoman government in Constantinople (as Adrianople was a former capital of the Empire), leading to the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) under Enver Pasha. Although it was victorious in the coup, the CUP was unable to stop the Bulgarians from capturing the city after fighting resumed in the spring. Despite relentless pressure from the Great Powers, the Ottoman empire never officially ceded the city to Bulgaria.

Edirne was swiftly reconquered by the Ottomans during the Second Balkan War under the leadership of Enver Pasha (who proclaimed himself the "second conqueror of Adrianople" after Murad I) following the collapse of the Bulgarian army in the region.

The entire Armenian population of the city was deported to Syria and Mesopotamia during the Armenian genocide on 27–28 October 1915 and 17–18 February 1916. Their homes and businesses were sold at low prices to Turkish Muslims.

During the Greek War of Independence, the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), Balkan-Muslims fled to Edirne and became known as Muhacir.

Adrianople 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 Adrianople comprised the sanjaks of Edirne, Tekfurdağı, Gelibolu, Filibe, and İslimye. After land reforms in 1867, the Eyalet of Adrianople became the Vilayet of Adrianople.

Modern ecclesiastical history

Within the city, the parish of Saint Anthony of Padua, run by the Minor Conventuals, operated alongside a girls’ school conducted by the Sisters of Charity of Agram. In the suburb of Karaağaç, there was a Minor Conventual church, a boys’ school managed by the Assumptionists, and a girls’ school run by the Oblates of the Assumption. Mission stations in Tekirdağ and Alexandroupoli maintained schools run by the Minor Conventuals, and Gallipoli had a school managed by the Assumptionists.

Around 1850, from the perspective of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Adrianople was the residence of a Bulgarian vicar-apostolic, overseeing approximately 4,600 Eastern Catholics in the Ottoman vilayet of Thrace, and after 1878, in the Principality of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Eastern Catholics maintained eighteen parishes or missions, with twenty churches or chapels, thirty-one priests—including six Assumptionists and six Resurrectionists—and eleven schools serving 670 students. In Adrianople proper, only a few United Bulgarians were present, including those served by the Episcopal church of St. Elias and the churches of St. Demetrius and Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the latter served by the Resurrectionists, who also operated a college with ninety students. In Karaağaç, the Assumptionists ran a parish and a seminary with fifty pupils.

Additionally, the statistics for Eastern Catholics included Greek Catholic missions in Malgara (now Malkara) and Daoudili (now Davuteli village in Malkara), with four priests and about 200 faithful, as these missions were administratively part of the Bulgarian Vicariate.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Adrianople was later discontinued and exists today only as a titular metropolitan archbishopric, officially named Hadrianopolis in Haemimonto, to distinguish it from other sees named Hadrianopolis.

In 2018, archaeologists discovered the remains of a Byzantine church in Edirne. Built around 500 AD, it represents an early Byzantine period structure.

Notable people

Sultans

Bayezid I (1360—1403), Ottoman sultan from 1389 to 1402

Mehmed II (1432–1481), Ottoman sultan from 1444 to 1446 and 1451 to 1481

Mustafa II (1664–1703), Ottoman sultan from 1695 to 1703

Mahmud I (1696—1754), Ottoman sultan from 1730 to 1754

Osman III (1699—1757), Ottoman sultan from 1754 to 1757

Historical

Caleb Afendopolo (before 1430–1499), Karaite polyhistor

Athanasius I of Constantinople (1230—1310), Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

Athanasius V of Jerusalem (died 1844), Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem

Hagop Baronian (1843—1891), Ottoman Armenian writer, satirist, educator

Elijah Bashyazi (c. 1420—1490), Karaite Jewish hakham

Theodore Branas, Byzantine general

Nikephoros Bryennios (ethnarch), Byzantine general

Abraham ben Raphael Caro, 18th-century Ottoman rabbi

Karpos Papadopoulos (1790s–1871), Member of the Filiki Eteria

Anthim the Iberian (1650–1716), Georgian theologian, scholar, calligrapher, philosopher; assassinated by Ottomans in Edirne.

Theoklitos Polyeidis (1698–1759), Greek scholar, teacher, translator, priest and monk

Dionysius V of Constantinople (1820–1891), Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople

Joseph Halévy (1827—1917), Ottoman-born Jewish-French Orientalist and traveler

Abdulcelil Levni (died 1732), Ottoman court painter and miniaturist

Şahin Giray (1745–1787), last khan of Crimea

Neşâtî (?–1674), Ottoman poet

Georgi Valkovich (1833—1892), Bulgarian physician, diplomat and politician

Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi (died 1732), Ottoman Georgian statesman and ambassador

Stefanos Koumanoudis (1818–1899), Greek archaeologist, university teacher, writer and translator

Charles XII, Swedish king who stayed in the city for most of 1713 during his exile in the Ottoman Empire

Baháʼu'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith, lived in Edirne from 1863 to 1868. He was exiled here by the Ottoman Empire before being banished to the Ottoman penal colony in Akka. Referred to Adrianople in his writings as the "Land of Mystery".

Contemporary

Cem Adrian (born 1980), Turkish singer-songwriter, author, producer and film director

Şevket Süreyya Aydemir (1897—1976), Turkish writer, intellectual, economist, historian

Atılay Canel (born 1955), Turkish football coach

Cavit Erdel (1884—1933), Ottoman Army officer and Turkish Army general

Hüsrev Gerede (1884–1962), Ottoman and Turkish Army officer, politician and diplomat

Avra Theodoropoulou (1880–1963), Greek musician and activist

Ragıp Gümüşpala (1897–1964), 11th Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces

Haşim İşcan (1898–1968), Turkish high school teacher, province governor and the first elected mayor of Istanbul

Kemal Kerinçsiz (born 1960), Turkish ultra-nationalist lawyer

Özlem Kolat (born 1984), Turkish classical clarinet player

Michael Petkov (1850–1921), Bulgarian Eastern Catholic priest

Muharrem Korhan Yamaç (born 1972), Paralympics, world and European champion disabled sport shooter

Nikos Zachariadis (1903—1973), General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece

Edirne

Edirne

Article

Related journals

Live room · 1 here

Related journals

Article

Names and etymology

History

Roman and Byzantine period

Turkish Republic

Ecclesiastical history

Early Ottoman ecclesiastical history

Modern ecclesiastical history

Geography

Climate

Quarters

Attractions

Mosques

Edirne Palace

Other religious monuments

Other historic monuments

Cuisine

Festivals

Economy

Education

Universities

High schools

Twin cities

Notable people