Orhan Takes Bursa and Gives the Ottomans a Capital

Situated on the northwestern slopes of Mount Uludağ overlooking a fertile plain, the ancient city of Prusa developed over centuries under Bithynian, Roman, and Byzantine administration. The settlement came under Roman control when the kingdom of Bithynia was bequeathed to Rome by Nicomedes IV in the first century BC, and it was known for its thermal waters and later as a Byzantine fortress town. Its fortified position placed it directly in the path of the emerging Ottoman beylik as the principality expanded across northwestern Anatolia in the early fourteenth century.

Bursa fell in 1326 to Orhan, son of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. Osman had begun a long blockade of the city, about 1308 by one account, and did not live to see it end, although sources differ on exactly when he died. The surrender marked a pivotal moment for the Ottoman polity. Bursa became the first capital of the Ottoman state, a role it kept until Adrianople replaced it in the early 1360s. Even after administrative supremacy shifted toward Thrace, Bursa retained profound symbolic, political, and spiritual importance, housing the mausoleums of the earliest Ottoman rulers.