Strumica

Strumica stands in a fertile basin in southeastern Macedonia, beneath the hill known as the Tsar's Towers. The town takes its name from the Strumica River, a tributary of the Struma that flows through the basin. In Roman times it was called Tiberiopolis; in the Middle Ages, Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian rulers successively held the town and its surrounding country.

After the Ottoman conquest in 1383, Strumica became known as Ustrumca. Turkic pastoralists settled in the area, and the town's Christian and Muslim communities appear in Ottoman tax registers. In 1519 the register counted 1,450 Christians and 1,330 Muslims. By the seventeenth century Strumica was the seat of a local judicial district, and the Ottoman travellers Haji Khalifa and Evliya Çelebi described its Islamic buildings.