Manisa

Traces of prehistory in the Manisa region, although few in number, nevertheless include two very interesting finds that shed much light on western Anatolia's past. The first are the fossilized footprints, numbering more than fifty and dated to around 20.000-25.000 BC, discovered in 1969 by MTA, Turkey's state body for mineral exploration, in Sindel village near Manisa's depending district of Salihli and referred to under that village's name. Some of these footprints are on display today in Manisa Museum while their site of origin of Sindel, where there are also prehistoric paintings, will reportedly become Turkey's first geopark through a joint project with the European Commission.

The second finds are tombs contemporaneous with Troy II (3000-2500 BC) and found in the village of Yortan near Kırkağaç district center, north of Manisa. Original burial practices observed in these sepulchres led scholars to the definition of a "Yortan culture" in Anatolia's prehistory, many of whose aspects remain yet to be explored.[5]

Central and southern parts of western Anatolia entered history with the still obscure Luwian kingdom of Arzawa, probably offshoots, as well as neighbors and, after around 1320 BCE, vassals of the Hittite Empire. Cybele monument located at Akpınar on the northern flank of Mount Sipylus, at a distance of 7 km (4 mi) from Manisa on the road to Turgutlu is, along with the King of Mira rock relief at Mount Nif near Kemalpaşa and a number of cuneiform tablet records are among the principal evidence of extension of Hittite control and influence in western Anatolia based on local principalities. Cybele monument by itself represents a step of innovation in Hittite art where full-faced figures in high relief are rare. The first millennium BC saw the emergence in the region of "Phrygians" and "Maeonians", the accounts concerning which are still blended with myths,[lower-alpha 1] and finally of Lydians. Such semi-legendary figures like the local ruler Tantalus, his son Pelops, his daughter Niobe, the departure of a sizable part of the region's population from their shores to found, according to one account, the future Etruscan civilization in present-day Italy, are all centered around Mount Sipylus, where the first urban settlement was probably located, and date from the period prior to the emergence of the Lydian Mermnad dynasty. It has also been suggested that the mountain could be the geographical setting for Baucis and Philemon tale as well, while most sources still usually associate it with Tyana (Hittite Tuwanuwa) in modern-day Kemerhisar near Niğde.[6]

In the early 7th century BC, the Lydians under the newly established Mermnad dynasty, with the present-day Manisa region as their heartland expanded their control over a large part of Anatolia, ruling from their capital "Sfard" (Sard, Sardes, Sardis) situated more inland at a distance of 62 km (39 mi) from Manisa. The vestiges from their capital which reached our day bring together remains from several successive civilizations.

Roman artifacts in Archaeological Museum of Manisa

In classical antiquity, Romans knew the city as Magnesia ad Sipylum. There, in 190 BC, forces of the Roman Republic defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great in the Battle of Magnesia. Magnesia ad Sipylum became a city of importance under Roman rule, and though nearly destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius (Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD), was restored by that emperor and flourished through the period of the Roman empire.

In 1076 the Byzantine Empire lost the city to the Seljuks in the aftermath of the 1071 Battle of Manzikert.The subsequent Crusader victory at the Battle of Dorylaeum (1097) allowed the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I to recover Magnesia. It was an important regional centre under Byzantine rule, and during the 13th-century interlude of the Empire of Nicea of 1204 to 1261. Magnesia housed the Imperial mint, the Imperial treasury, and served as the functional capital of the Empire of Nicea until the recovery of Constantinople in 1261.[7] Ruins of the Nicean-era fortifications attest to the city's importance in the Late Byzantine period, a fact also noted by the Byzantine historian George Akropolites, writing in the 13th century.

Muradiye Mosque (Manisa) designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan

In the early 13th century the region of Magnesia was subject to repeated raids by invading Turkish bands.[8] 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.[8] As a result of the Turkish invasion in the region and the destruction of the city the area was largely abandoned.[8] 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.[8] 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.

16th century hospice and mental hospital built by Ayşe Hafsa Sultan in Manisa.

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.[9] 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.[10]

Scenes from 2010 Mesir Paste Festival (Mesir Macunu Festivali). Ayşe Hafsa Sultan and Merkez Efendi (top left) are incarnated each year by a renowned actress and actor.

Between 1595–1836, the sanjak of Saruhan (Magnesia) remained attached to the Eyalet of Anadolu, as in the time of the Ottoman crown princes. Between 1836–1867 the city and its depending region was made part of the short-lived Eyalet of Aydın, which became a vilayet with the administrative reforms of 1867. During this phase, Saruhan (Manisa) even had an eyalet of its own under its name as the "Eyalet of Saruhan" between the even shorter period 1845–1847. The seat of the province to which Saruhan sanjak depended was the city of Aydın (1827–1841 and 1843–1846) at first, and was later moved to Smyrna (1841–1843, 1846–1864).

Magnesia was one of the first cities in the Ottoman Empire to benefit from the arrival of a railway line, with the 93 km (58 mi) Smyrna Cassaba Railway, whose construction was started from Smyrna in 1863 and which reached its first terminus at Manisa's depending Kasaba in 1866. This railway was the third started within the territory of the Ottoman Empire at the time and the first finished within the present-day territory of Turkey.[lower-alpha 2] Instead of being laid along the direct route eastwards from Smyrna to Kasaba, about fifty kilometers in length, the line built drew a wide arc advancing first to the north-west from İzmir, through its Karşıyaka suburb to whose foundation it contributed greatly, and curves eastwards only from Menemen on, crossing the former sanjak and the present-day province center of Manisa to join Kasaba (now Turgutlu) from the north. The first concession under the name was granted to a locally based English entrepreneur named Edward Price, who founded the company and built the line. This railway was extended further east by the same company between 1872–1875 to reach Alaşehir at a distance of 76 km (47 mi) from Kasaba and a connection northwards starting from Manisa itself was built between 1888–1890 to reach the lignite-rich Soma, another dependency of Manisa, through a 92 km (57 mi) line. Price sold the whole network in 1893 to the Franco-Belgian group Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which extended it further east to Afyonkarahisar in 1896 and further north to Bandırma in 1912.[11] The line was nationalized in 1934 by the young Republic of Turkey in the frame of a general move started in the 1920s regarding Turkey's railways.

Preparation of Manisa Kebab, a local specialty.

Manisa train station

After the Young Turk revolution (1908) the local Greek community was subject to wide scale boycott, as noted by the local British ambassador.[12] Magnesia was temporarily occupied by the Greek Army on May 26, 1919 during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), before finally being recaptured by the Turkish army on September 8, 1922. The retreating Greek army burned the city. Over ninety percent of Magnesia was destroyed by the retreating Greek army as part of the scorched-earth policy.[13] James Loder Park, the U.S. Vice-Consul in Constantinople at the time, who toured much of the devastated area immediately after the Greek evacuation, described the situation in the surrounding cities and towns of Smyrna he has seen, as follows:[14] "Magnesia...almost completely wiped out by fire...10,300 houses, 15 mosques, 2 baths, 2,278 shops, 19 hotels, 26 villas...[destroyed]." Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross wrote: "Out of the eighteen thousand buildings in the historic holy city of Magnesia, only five hundred remained."[15]

Magnesia was rebuilt and became the centre of Saruhan Province in 1923 under the new Turkish Republic. The province's name was changed to Manisa, as was the city itself, in 1927.

• Tantalus - Founder of the city of Tantalis and father of Pelops and Niobe
• Mermnad dynasty - House of Lydia which ruled an important part of Anatolia in the 7th and 6th centuries BC

• Pausanias (geographer) (possibly) - Greek traveller, geographer, and writer of the 2nd century AD

• Saruhan dynasty - Turkish Beylik dynasty which ruled Manisa region in the 14th century
• Lala Mehmed Pasha - Ottoman grand vizier of the 16th century
• Gelenbevi Ismail Efendi - Ottoman mathematician and academic
• Karaosmanoğlu family - Dynasty of regional lords (ayan) who governed with great autonomy between mid-18th and mid-19th century from their bases in Akhisar, Manisa and İzmir and also produced notable members later such as the author Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu
• Gregory (Orologas), Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Ayvalik, executed by the Turkish Army in 1922

• Ahmet Bilek - Olympic gold medalist in wrestling
• Ahmet bin Carlak, aka Tarzan of Manisa - environmentalist
• Asuman Dabak - Film and theater actress
• Caner Erkin - Football player
• Demet Evgar - Film and theater actress
• Hilmi Özkök - General and former Chief of the General Staff of Turkey
• İlhan Berk - Poet
• Kenan Evren - General, military coup leader and 7th President of Turkey
• Ruhi Sarıalp - Olympic bronze medalist in triple jump
• Sinan Erdem - former volleyball player and head of Turkish National Olympic Committee
• Yusuf Atılgan - Novelist and dramatist

Manisa is twinned with:[21]