Founding
central district and city in Edirne Province, Turkey
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Edirne (; Turkish: [e.ˈdiɾ.ne]), historically known as Orestias, Orestiada, Adrianople, or Adriana, is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated 7 km (4.3 mi) from the Greek and 20 km (12 mi) from the Bulgarian borders, Edirne was the second capital city of the Ottoman Empire from the 1360s to 1453, before Constantinople became its capital.
The city is a commercial centre for woven textiles, silks, carpets and agricultural products and has a growing tourism industry. It is the seat of Edirne Province and Edirne District. Its population is 180,002 (2022).
The city was founded by and named after the Roman emperor Hadrian as Hadrianopolis (Adrianople in English, ; Ἁδριανούπολις in Greek) on the site of the Greek city of Orestias, which was itself founded on an earlier Thracian settlement named Uskudama. The Ottoman name Edrine (ادرنه) is derived from the Greek name. The name Adrianople was used in English until the Turkish adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928, after which Edirne became the internationally recognised name. In Bulgarian the city is known as Одрин (Odrin).
The area around Edirne has been the site of numerous major battles and sieges starting from the days of the Roman Empire. The vagaries of the border region between Asia and Europe gave rise to Edirne's claim to be the most frequently contested spot on earth.
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.
Adrianople/Edirne was ceded to Greece by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, but recaptured and annexed by Turkey after the Greek defeat at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, also known as the Western Front of the larger Turkish War of Independence, in 1922. Under the Greek administration, Edirne (officially known as Adrianople) was the capital of the Adrianople Prefecture.
From 1934 onwards Edirne was the seat of the Second Inspectorate General, in which an Inspector General governed the provinces of Edirne, Çanakkale, Tekirdaĝ and Kırklareli. The Inspectorate Generals governmental posts were abandoned in 1948, but the legal framework for them was only abolished in 1952 during the government of the Democrat Party.
Adrianople historically served as a religious center for multiple Christian communities. The city was the seat of a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and an Armenian bishop. It was also the center of a Bulgarian diocese, though this was not officially recognized and the diocese was deprived of a bishop. Small communities of Protestants and Latin Catholics—mainly foreigners—were present as well. The Latin Catholics were under the authority of the vicariate-apostolic of Constantinople.
After the city fell to the Ottomans around 1369, its church declined significantly, as its properties were confiscated and its Metropolitan was taken prisoner and died in captivity. According to a 1380 synodal document:
[Andrianople] fell years before to the hands of the barbarians, with God’s permission, and most of its populace was taken away captive, especially the upper class with its own shepherd and teacher; the remainder (of the populace) has remained there without a leader until the present. Nor was that protector of the Church able to return to the Queen of Cities so that he even passed away there [in captivity].
In a document from 1389, it is stated that the new Metropolitan of Andrianople could not enter the city, and was forced to continue his duties from Constantinople, where he was allowed to temporarily assume the seat of Agathopolis. The Metropolitan lamented in a document that:
His most holy metropolitanate formerly boasted of many and great good things within the empire of the Rhomaioi, and it was so prosperous that it was able to provide for the many poor people and to furnish them generously with the necessities. But by permission of God, this city was also wasted by the Turks, as every city and land of ours was, and those inhabititing the city became captives. Shortly thereafter Christians returned and settled in the city, but the metropolitanate [here his residence in the city] and all the famous churches were taken by the foreigners, as were also all lands and properties and yearly revenues so that it is not [now] known if ever they existed. Not even cells remain for the dwelling and rest of the Metropolitan.
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.
Edirne has a borderline humid subtropical (Cfa) and hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa) in the Köppen climate classification, and a temperate oceanic climate (Do) in the Trewartha climate classification. Edirne has hot, moderately dry summers and chilly, wet and often snowy winters.
Highest recorded temperature:44.1 °C (111.4 °F) on 25 July 2007Lowest recorded temperature:−19.5 °C (−3.1 °F) on 14 January 1954
Edirne consists of 24 quarters:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Edirne”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.