page_title: Manisa
section_title: Turkish era (Seljuk, Saruhan and early Ottoman periods)
hierarchical_section_title: Manisa / History / Turkish era (Seljuk, Saruhan and early Ottoman periods)
caption_attribution_description: Muradiye Camii, Manisa
context_page_description: Manisa, historically known as Magnesia, Greek: Μαγνγησια, is a large city in Turkey's Aegean Region and the administrative seat of Manisa Province.
  Modern Manisa is a booming center of industry and services, advantaged by its closeness to the international port city and the regional metropolitan center of İzmir and by its fertile hinterland rich in quantity and variety of agricultural production. In fact, İzmir's proximity also adds a particular dimension to all aspects of life's pace in Manisa in the form of a dense traffic of daily commuters between the two cities, separated as they are by a half-hour drive served by a fine six-lane highway nevertheless requiring attention at all times due to its curves and the rapid ascent across Mount Sipylus's mythic scenery.
  The historic part of Manisa spreads out from a forested valley in the immediate slopes of Sipylus mountainside, along Çaybaşı Stream which flows next to Niobe's "Weeping Rock", an ancient bridge called the "Red Bridge" as well as to several tombs-shrines in the Turkish style dating back to the Saruhan period.
context_section_description: In the early 13th century the region of Magnesia was subject to repeated raids by invading Turkish bands. The local population was unable to repulse the Turkish raids. Thus, after an unsuccessful defence led by the Byzantine Emperor most inhabitants fled to the Aegean coast and the European part of the Byzantine Empire. As a result of the Turkish invasion in the region and the destruction of the city the area was largely abandoned. In 1313, Manisa became a permanent Turkish possession when taken by the Beylik of Saruhan, led by the Bey of the same name who had started out as a tributary of the Seljuks and who reigned until 1346. His sons held the region until 1390, when the first incorporation of their lands into the expanding Ottoman state took place. After a brief interval caused by the Ottoman interregnum after the Battle of Ankara, Manisa and its surroundings definitely became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1410.
  Even during the 15th century Magnesia was recorded as being in complete ruins due to the previous Turkish raids. As the central town of the Ottoman Empire's Saruhan sanjak, the city became the training ground for shahzades (crown princes), and it stood out as one of the wealthiest parts of the Empire with many examples of Ottoman architecture built. In a practice started by Murad II in 1437, fifteen members of the Ottoman dynasty, including two among the most notable, namely Mehmed II and Süleyman I, held the administration of the city and of its dependencies in seventeen near-continuous periods until 1595. Although the sanjak of Saruhan officially depended on the eyalet of Anadolu with its seat in Kütahya, a large degree of autonomy was left to the princes for them to acquire the experience of government. This practice was discontinued in 1595, largely due to the growing insecurity in the countryside, precursor of Jelali Revolts, and a violent earthquake dealt a severe blow to the Manisa region's prosperity the same year. 
  Around 1700, Manisa counted about 2,000 taxpayers and 300 pious foundations (vakıf) shops, was renowned for its cotton markets and a type of leather named after the city. Large parts of the population had begun settling and becoming sedentary and the city was a point of terminus for caravans from the east, with İzmir's growth still in its early stages. But already during the preceding century, influent western merchants such as Orlando, often in pact with local warlords such as Cennetoğlu, a brigand (sometimes cited as one of the first in line in western Anatolia's long tradition of efes to come) who in the 1620s had assembled a vast company of disbanded Ottoman soldiers and renegades and established control over much of the fertile land around Manisa, had triggered a movement of more commercially sensitive Greek and Jewish populations towards the port city.
caption: Muradiye Mosque (Manisa) designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan
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