Manisa

Manisa lies under Mount Sipylos at the head of the Gediz plain, on the site of Magnesia ad Sipylum. Turkish raiders laid the district waste in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and after the failed Byzantine defence in 1302 most of the Greeks fled to the coast. In 1313 Saruhan Bey took the ruined town and made it his capital. He built a fleet that raided the Greek shores and Thrace, and endowed mosques, madrasas and libraries; the Great Mosque of 1366–67 survives from his dynasty.

Bayezid I received Manisa peacefully from the last Saruhanid in 1390. After Ankara in 1402 the Saruhanids returned briefly, and the Ottomans held the city again by 1410–12. From 1437 until 1595, fifteen Ottoman princes, among them Mehmed II and Süleyman the Magnificent, governed Manisa as training for the throne. Around 1700 it was known for its cotton markets and a leather named after it, and was the terminus of caravans from the east.