Babadagh

Babadagh, a town in the Dobruja, now part of Romania, takes its Turkish name from the semi-legendary dervish Sari Saltik, said to have led Anatolian Turkmens to the Dobruja in the mid-thirteenth century and to have settled with them near the town. Ibn Battuta's "Baba Saltuk", the furthest outpost of the Turks, is probably the same place. The tomb of Sari Saltik, the most generally accepted, is at Babadagh, and it was a place of pilgrimage. ²

According to Evliya Celebi, Bayezid I first conquered the town for the Ottomans, and Bayezid II consecrated it as a wakf for Sari Saltik and his followers. The final annexation seems to date from 819 AH (1416-7); the region was settled with Tatar colonists. Suleyman stayed there in 945 AH (1538) during his Rumelian campaign. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Cossacks and sometimes Crimean Tatars devastated the town. Under Murad IV a fortress was begun, but by about 1652 it was not manned. In the seventeenth century Babadagh was a concentration point for Ottoman armies, and from 1001 AH (1593) a voyvodalik in the eyalet of Ozu. In 1809 it was occupied by the Russian general Pozorovsky; it was returned in 1812 and ceded to Romania in 1878. ¹