Sultanönü

Sultanönü lies on the Anatolian plateau near the Porsuk River, in the country later known as Eskişehir. Its name belonged both to a settlement and to a wider frontier district. Near it were the remains of ancient Dorylaion and the fortress of Karacahisar, but the Seljuk settlement of Sultanönü had a history of its own. Its name, also recorded as Sultan Eyüğü, was associated with a hill on which a Seljuk ruler had pitched his tent. Important roads from the western Byzantine frontier toward Ankara and the Anatolian interior crossed the broad surrounding plateau and plain.

In the late thirteenth century the district was part of the frontier where Osman Bey established his power. Later Ottoman registers recorded a Sultanönü sancak that included Bilecik, Eskişehir, İnönü and Seyitgazi. From a small border principality, the Ottoman state expanded into a realm that organised this earlier frontier as a provincial district.

In the sixteenth century Çoban Mustafa Pasha endowed the Kurşunlu complex in the town. Its mosque and associated buildings were erected between 1517 and 1525, adding a prominent religious foundation to the settlement and a lasting mark of Ottoman patronage. Sultanönü's markets and institutions continued to serve travellers on the roads across the plateau, long after the frontier had moved far beyond its hills.