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But here the minaret with the three balconies is over 223 feet tall and its companion shorter. Both are built of brick like the minaret of the Old Mosque, which this one supplanted as the Friday Mosque of Edirne; they were joined by two more unmatching minarets at the other corners of the rectangular courtyard. The first added is flamboyant, its trunk twisted like barley sugar, but the last is built in finest cut stone, which is why it is the slimmest, with the traditional dignity that became universal after 1500.

Built about 1440, Üç Şerefeli Cami represents the initial step in the evolution of classical Ottoman domes; its dome is almost seventy-nine feet in diameter, but is low and built cautiously with massive supports. Though the mosque is closed for repairs, one may still peer into the charming courtyard, which was spared the prominent canopy added to most other royal fountains by Murad IV in the mid-seventeenth century.

From the mosque of Murad II it is about a mile to Edirne’s two better hotels. I’ve had comfortable if far from luxurious stays in both of them, but I decided to drive the 150 miles back to Istanbul that evening by way of Büyükçekmece. This is the greatest of Sinan’s bridges—a broad, undulating span carried by seven arches built across the marshes in the mid-sixteenth century after Süleyman had to climb onto the roof of a peasant farmhouse to escape a flood.

Halfway to the bridge, I saw endless sunflower fields and several strange hillocks. These were, I knew, unexplored archaeological sites, promising further glories.

Another, more recent article about Edirne I regret I couldn’t include is “Edirne: The Forgotten City,” by Caroline and Andrew Finkel (Cornucopia: The Magazine for Connoisseurs of Turkey, Spring 2007). The authors recommend browsing the Web site of Ayhan Tunca (edirneden.biz), a writer and photographer who publishes a magazine on Edirne, Yöre. The Web site is in Turkish only, but the photographs featured—including some old ones from the days when the city was known as Adrianople—are fantastic. The Finkels also recommend The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 2005) and Godfrey Goodwin’s A History of Ottoman Architecture (Thames & Hudson, 1987).

Bursa

Bursa used to be one of the loveliest cities of western Asia. It is now a large, and sometimes heavily polluted, industrial city, but, if it is no longer as beautiful as it once was, it nevertheless still contains many beautiful things, which it would be foolish to miss.

—JOHN ASH,

Turkey: The Other Guide: Western and

Southern Anatolia

Broussa lay mapped out in all its extent, the sober-coloured buildings overshadowed by lofty trees; and the three hundred and eighty mosques of the city scattered in the most picturesque irregularity along the side of the mountains, and on the skirts of the valley.

—JULIA PARDOE,

The City of the Sultan, 1837

The Birthplace of Empire

HEATH W. LOWRY

IT’S TRUE what John Ash says about Bursa, and the beautiful architecture of this once-famous Silk Road city is often forgotten. You have to try harder in Bursa—its beauty is not readily apparent; its treasures are hidden away. Among its noted monuments are those of Sultan Yıldırım Beyazit (or Thunderbolt), his son Mehmet I, and his grandson Murad II. Beyazit was the son of Murad I, who on the morning of 15 June 1389 was preparing to do battle with a Serbian army under the leadership of Prince Lazar in the Battle of Kosovo. The story has come down to us that before the battle began, a Serbian nobleman claiming to be a deserter with information that would be useful to the Turks was admitted to Murad’s tent, and he plunged a knife into the sultan’s heart. Beyazit then took command and killed Lazar and routed the army, and according to legend, there were seventy-seven thousand Serbians dead. As Hugh and Nicole Pope note in Turkey Unveiled, the Serbs “never forgot or forgave their great defeat at Kosovo.” (Positively the best book