Bursa

Even after the Ottomans moved their capital to Adrianople in 1363, Bursa kept its spiritual weight, and Bayezid I crowned it with a mosque complex of his own and the Grand Mosque, finished in 1400. Two years later his defeat at Ankara brought Timur's grandson Muhammad Sultan Mirza to the city, which he pillaged and burned. Bursa then passed between Timur's protégés and Bayezid's quarrelling sons until Mehmed Çelebi secured it in May 1403, and it remained one of the empire's chief cities until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

The silk outlasted the court. Bursa handed on Eastern silks, notably from Ming China, to Genoese and Florentine buyers, and Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain after 1492, settling in the Kuruçeşme quarter, became prominent in the trade. Until the 17th century its looms, working Persian raw silk beside the local crop, made most of the caftans, cushions and embroideries of the Ottoman palaces.