Introduction | The Green Mosque and Tomb | Karagöz Puppets | Muradiye and Around
The heart of Bursa is charming Gazi Park, book-ended on east and west by two amazing mosques, and bordering the city’s covered market. It was the logical place to begin our exploration of the city. If we’d had more time in the city, we could have happily spent an entire day here.
The Ottoman Empire is generally thought to have emerged in 1299, beginning with the ascension of Osman Gazi. Osman united a number of Turkish emirates and, just before his death in 1326, was able to capture Bursa (then the Byzantine city of Prousa). It was the first great military of the nascent empire… and far from the last.
Bursa enjoyed its golden years during the reign of Osman’s son, Orhan, who promoted it to capital of his young empire. So it was no surprise to find a mosque here named in his honor. The Orhan Gazi Camii was built in 1339 in the center of the city. Unfortunately, due to the funerary proceedings of Bursa’s recently deceased football president, we weren’t able to spend more than a couple seconds inside. Instead, we walked a few meters over to the other awesome ancient mosque in Bursa’s town center.
The Ulu Camii was built in 1399 by Orhan’s grandson Bayezid I, who went by the name of “Yıldırım” (“Thunderbolt“). He earned this nickname for his military prowess, especially evident during one of the greatest Ottoman victories of all time. In the 1396 Battle of Nicopolis, Bayezid the Thunderbolt routed a combined force of Germans, French, Bulgarians, Italians, Romanians and Hungarians: basically the entire Christian army of Europe.
Before the battle, Beyazid had vowed to erect twenty mosques in Bursa should he emerge victorious. Perhaps he didn’t expect to win, because instead of the twenty promised mosques, he ended up building just one. Apparently hoping nobody would remember his exact wording, he gave it twenty domes. The resulting Ulu Camii is one of the more architecturally interesting mosques we’ve seen. The twenty small domes are arranged in a 4×5 grid, lending the interior a sense of grandiosity.
Just outside of the Ulu Camii is the entrance to the Koza Han, or “Cocoon Hall”. Bursa was once a terminal stop along the Silk Road from China and, throughout the centuries, the fine fabric has remained the focus. Hundreds of vendors in the beautiful old han concentrate on silk, and the prices seem to be more than reasonable. (Though you should probably take my word with a grain of salt, as I’m the polar opposite of an authority on silk-shopping.)
The Koza Han is connected to Bursa’s bewildering covered bazaar, which extends in all directions through halls, into courtyards, down underground, along tiny passages and onto upper floor terraces looking down on tea gardens. In terms of size and confusion, Bursa’s bazaar is nearly the equal of Istanbul’s. The main difference? Things are much cheaper. We picked up an awesome coffee grinder for a third of the price we’d seen in the Grand Bazaar. In retrospect, we probably should have done all of our souvenir shopping during our stay in Bursa.
Locations on our Bursa Map: Orhan Gazi Camii | Ulu Camii | Koza Han
