Qualla: Bursa https://qualla.com/bursa en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:31 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bursa https://qualla.com/bursa Bursa: Introduction https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit Benutzer: Zimpuni, Public domain. Before there was an Ottoman Empire, there was Bursa. The city sits on the lower northern slopes of Mount Uludag, looking out across the Marmara plain toward the sea, and from 1335 until the early 1360s it was the seat of a small Turkish beylik that would eventually swallow Constantinople and rule three continents. The first Ottoman sultans are buried here. The first Ottoman mint was struck here. The Grand Mosque, with its twenty domes paid for after a battlefield vow, still anchors the old city. Bursa is where the empire learned what it would become before it became too big to fit inside one valley.

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Image: Benutzer: Zimpuni | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bursa: Prusa Under Olympus https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit E4024, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before the Turks arrived, this corner of Bithynia was Greek. Around 200 BC, King Prusias I rebuilt an older settlement here and named it after himself - Prusa, sometimes Prussa, the city under Olympus, since classical writers called the mountain looming above it the Mysian o...

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Image: E4024 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-prusa-under-olympus.mp3 0:06 2 full Bursa: The First Capital https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit Christine und Hagen Graf from Fitou, France, CC BY 2.0. In 1326, after a long siege, Orhan, son of Osman, took Bursa from the Byzantines. Within a decade his court had moved here, and Bursa became the capital of an entity still small enough that historians call it the Ottoman beylik - the principality that would, in another century an...

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Image: Christine und Hagen Graf from Fitou, France | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-the-first-capital.mp3 0:06 3 full Bursa: Silk and the Long Road https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit Adbar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bursa's wealth came from silk. The city sat near the western terminus of the Silk Road, the great overland route from China across central Asia to the Mediterranean, and during both Byzantine and Ottoman centuries Bursa was where Eastern silk was sorted, sold, and shipped on to G...

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Image: Adbar | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-silk-and-the-long-road.mp3 0:06 4 full Bursa: Yesil Bursa https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit Ahmet Baris Isitan, CC BY-SA 3.0. The modern nickname is Yesil Bursa - Green Bursa - for the parks, the plane trees, and the vast forests of Mount Uludag rising directly behind the city. Uludag itself climbs to 2,543 metres and now hosts one of Turkey's most popular ski resorts, reached from the city by an 8.8-ki...

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Image: Ahmet Baris Isitan | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-yesil-bursa.mp3 0:06 5 full Bursa: After the Capital Moved https://qualla.com/bursa/ Photo credit User:Darwinek, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the Ottomans took Adrianople - now Edirne - in the 1360s, the capital moved west. Bursa lost the court but kept its mosques, its tombs, its silk markets, and its place at the spiritual centre of the dynasty. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the capital moved aga...

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Image: User:Darwinek | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/x/h/s/bursa-wp/sxhs-bursa-after-the-capital-moved.mp3 0:06 6 full