Aydın

Aydın, also known as Güzelhisar ("Beautiful Fortress") and formerly Tralleis, is a town in western Anatolia, 60 to 80 metres above sea level. It lies at the foot of the Gevizli Dağı (Messogis), which forms the northern boundary of the valley of the Büyük Menderes (the Maeander of antiquity), on the small river Tabak Çayı (formerly Eudon). The town is surrounded by fields and gardens, and the railway from İzmir to Afyon Karahisar runs through it. It is the capital of the vilayet of the same name. The vilayet, with 294,407 inhabitants, consists of the kazas of Aydın, Bozdoğan, Çine, Karacasu, Nazilli and Söke. The town had 18,504 inhabitants in 1945; at the end of the nineteenth century Cuinet counted 36,250, with a strong Greek minority. ¹

Tralleis was first occupied by the Turks after the victory of the Saljuq sultan Alp Arslan over the Emperor Romanus IV at Malazgirt in 1071, but it was surrendered after the crusaders' victory at Dorylaeum in 1097. The Turks occupied it a second time, together with the Maeander valley, in 1176, after the victory of Kılıç Arslan II over the Emperor Manuel; the emperor soon won it back. Sahil Bey, the commander of the emir of Menteshe, brought it finally under Turkish rule in 1280, in the time of Ghiyath al-Din Kay-Khusraw III, and from then on it was known as Güzelhisar. In 1310 another Turkish prince, Aydınoğlu Mehmed Beg, took the town, and his family name was added to its name. The actual capital of the principality was, however, generally Birgi. ¹

The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I absorbed the principality of Aydın, but Timur re-established it. In 806/1403 the town and the principality came finally into Ottoman hands, and from then on formed a sanjak of their own, with Tire as capital, within the eyalet of Anadolu. In the eighteenth century the sanjaks of Aydın and Saruhan together formed the hereditary governorship of the family of the Karaosmanoğlu. Mahmud II brought the region back under direct Ottoman administration in 1249/1833, when it became a vilayet again; in 1850 it was placed under the vilayet of İzmir as a sanjak. Kemal Atatürk re-established it as a vilayet in 1924. In the war between Turkey and Greece the town was burnt down in September 1922. ²

The historical buildings of the town include the Uways Cami (before 998/1589), the Ramadan Pasha Cami (1000/1594-95), the Süleyman Bey Cami, and the Cihanzade Cami, built in 1170/1756 by Cihanzade Abd al-Aziz Efendi. ³