Babadag

Babadag lies among the wooded hills of northern Dobruja, beside a lake formed by the Taița River. Marshland separates it from the broad waters of Lake Razim near the Black Sea. The town's name is associated with the thirteenth-century dervish Sari Saltik, who is said to have led Turkoman settlers into this country. One of the tombs attributed to him stands here; the traveller Ibn Battuta knew the town as Baba Saltuk.

Sultan Bayezid I conquered Babadag during his Danube campaign of 1393. Under Murad IV, work began on a fortress in 1633, although by 1650 only its foundations and towers had been raised. In the seventeenth century the town sometimes served as winter headquarters for an Ottoman grand vizier during wars with Russia, linking this lakeside settlement to campaigns along the empire's northern frontier.