Antiquity , bronze, 2nd century AD, at
Bursa Archaeological Museum The earliest known human settlement near Bursa's current location was at the
Ilıpınar Mound in . It was followed by the Bithynian city of
Prusa, which was built by
King Prusias I of Bithynia. The city was also referred to as
Prusa ad Olympum after its location at the foot of the Bithynian Olympus (present day
Mount Uludağ). One of the known characteristics of Prusa at that time was its hot springs that's dubbed as the "royal waters". In 75/74 BC,
Nicomedes IV, the last king of
Bithynia, bequeated his entire kingdom to the
Roman Republic in his last testament before he died. According to a letter that's written to
Roman Emperor Trajan () by Roman author
Pliny the Younger, then the
Imperial Governor of
Bithynia and Pontus, constructions of
baths took place in Prusa after a permit by the reigning emperor.
An early Roman artifact was found in Bursa. It was composed of woman's silver toiletry articles. It is currently reserved in the
British Museum since 1913.
Middle Ages Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that, when Prusa was under
Byzantine rule, the city prospered after the
Byzantine Emperor Justinian I built a palace there. Prusa then became a garrison city in 562, where imperial guards were stationed. Already by the mid-6th century, Prusa was known as a famous silk textile manufacturing centre. in Bursa Bursa became the capital city of the early Ottoman Empire following
its capture from the Byzantines in 1326. During the Ottoman rule, the city witnessed a considerable amount of urban growth, such as the building of hospitals,
caravanserais (including the
Koza Han), and
madrasas. The first official Ottoman mint was established in the city. After
conquering Adrianople (later
Edirne) in
East Thrace, the Ottomans turned it into the new capital city in the 1360s. No longer a capital city, Bursa still retained its spiritual and commercial importance in the Ottoman Empire. In Bursa, the
Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I built the Bayezid I Complex (which contains the
Bayezid I Mosque) between 1390 and 1395 and the
Grand Mosque of Bursa between 1396 and 1400. After the defeat and capture of Bayezid in the
Battle of Ankara by the forces of
Emir Timur in 1402, the latter's grandson,
Muhammad Sultan Mirza, had Bursa pillaged and burned. Timur then assigned the administration of Bursa to his protégé, a son of
Savcı Bey. Bursa was later put under the control of Ottoman co-ruler and pretender
Îsâ Çelebi during the
Ottoman interregnum following the death of Bayezid in captivity. On May 1403, Bursa was annexed by
Mehmed Çelebi in the aftermath of the
Battle of Ulubad. According to a folio, Bursa is recorded to have a total of 174
quarters which was inhabitated by 6,457 tax-paying heads of households in 1487. Bursa was a hub of the Ottoman silk trade. The city housed a
dockyard for many cargo ships and became a place of distribution of silk and other commodities from the East, particularly
Ming China, to the rest of the
Mediterranean world, which included the
Italian city-states, particularly
Genoa and
Florence. Bursa was a part of the land route of the Armenian trade networks. Bursa also became a resort town with many springs, centered in an area named Cekirge, such as the Ottoman
hammams Eski and Yeni Kaplıcas. Sometime during a
Devshirme levy in 1603-4, the villagers of Eğerciler (later called
Eğerce), a Christian village in Bursa and provider of sheep to Istanbul, declared that the children of the village were very much needed as shepherds. They also asserted that even though they were not obliged to give any children to the army, the officers took some anyway. The Ottoman government responded by issuing a decree that commanded the return of the children. In 1827, bursa was set as the capital of
Hüdavendigâr Eyalet until, following the
Vilayet Law, the
Hüdavendigâr Vilayet from 1867 to the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.
Modern Era In July 1915, thousands of the Orthodox Christian populations took refugee in Bursa under the order of the Ottoman government under the political party
Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) after being forced out of their coastal villages. This mass-migration worsened the conditions of the Greek population of Bursa, who have previously managed to survive the attacks and boycotts of 1914. Deportation orders later came to the Armenian population of Bursa after a series of deportations in
Adapazari. Many of the Protestant population of Armenian descent in Bursa were initially spared from deportation. Killings even occurred in Çengiler, a village outside of Bursa, after some villagers tried to resist deportation. During the
Greco-Turkish War, the Greek
troops of Asia Minor captured Bursa in the early July of 1920 after clashes with Turkish forces around the city. On 11 September 1922, the
Turkish Nationalist Army recaptured Bursa during the
Great Offensive. Bursa's industry, which was based off of foreign-owned silk factories since the 19th century, was accelerated and improved by the production of other industrial sectors, such as textile production, automotive manufacturing, and agriculture-based industries. Public factories and private industrial enterprises are also enstablished in the city later during the Turkish Republic. Immigrations to Bursa happened as early as 1877, when many of the Ottoman population migrated from
Rumelia,
Romania, and
Bulgaria fleeing the
Russo-Turkish War. The immigrants in Bursa later settled in neighborhoods enstablished by the then-serving
Vali,
Ahmed Vefik Pasha. A major part of the Muslim immigrants of Turkish descent also settled in Bursa after forced migration from
Bulgaria in between 1950-51 and also in 1989. Bursa became an immigrant city due to its status as a large city alongside Istanbul,
İzmir, and
Ankara due to its industries and bussinesses, which increased employment opportunity. The city was also more preferred to other larger cities by the immigrants from the northeast provinces of Turkey due to perceived similarity of culture, climate, and geography with their home provinces.
Jewish community Bursa was initially the home to a small
Romaniote Jewish community that settled there before the Ottoman conquest in 1326. The Jewish community later underwent a demographic shift with the arrival of
Sephardic Jews who arrived in the city after the expulsion from Spain after the
Alhambra Decree in 1492, with
Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) overtaking the
Judeo-Greek as the community's main language. == Geography ==