Akhisar

Akhisar lies in the fertile inland country north of Manisa, at the site of ancient Thyatira. Its Christian community was one of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation. The later name Akhisar, “white fortress”, echoes the Greek Asprokastro, a name associated with the town's Byzantine defences. Ancient remains lie among the streets of a settlement that continued through successive changes of rule.

In the early fourteenth century Thyatira entered the lands of the Saruhanid rulers. By the end of that century the expanding Ottomans had taken Akhisar, which became a district of the Saruhan sancak. Its fields and roads linked the town to Manisa and the wider western Anatolian interior, while the memory of Thyatira endured in Christian traditions and the surviving traces of the ancient city.