Bilecik

Bilecik stands among the hills and valleys of northwestern Anatolia, close to the early Ottoman frontier. Its Byzantine fortress, known as Belekoma, guarded a settlement on the approaches between the Sakarya valley and the lands around Bursa. The town became closely associated with the beginnings of the Ottoman dynasty and with Şeyh Edebali, a religious figure linked by marriage and tradition to Osman Bey.

Ottoman accounts place the capture of Bilecik by Osman around 1299. The conquest gave the emerging principality a stronghold beyond Söğüt. Edebali maintained a lodge at Bilecik, supported by endowments recorded under Osman and renewed in the time of Orhan. His tomb became a place of remembrance for the dynasty's origins. Muslim and Greek communities lived in different parts of the town, their neighbourhoods reflecting its long history as a meeting point on the Anatolian frontier.