The Fallen Stronghold.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 8 May 1914, Page 2

The Fallen Stronghold.

Adrianople, in point of population and mercantile standing-, ranked as the third city of Turkey hi Europe. It possessed a high sanctity £c Moslem eyes, which will now be nil but destroyed by the triumph oil' the Bulgarians restoring Christian, sway over it after the lapse of five and a half centuries. For nearly a hundred years after its capture by Murad 1., in 1361, Adrianople was the capital of the Sultans, until 1453, when, upon the fall of Constantinople, they transferred their residence to the Golden Horn. It was in the sixteenth century that the great mosque of Sultan Selim 11., the glory of the citj* and one of the masterpieces of Turkish architecture, was erected. Legend has it that when the Sultan realised that the mosque was. likely to be the finest building o? its kind in the Empire, he announced his intention of putting the ar-. chitect to death as soon as he <hac£. j completed his task, so that he might not be tempted to build-, a rival to. ;it elsewhere. The architect, a Bulgarian, heard of the Sultan's reso--1 lution, and determined to outwit, his patron. When the last minarefe of the mosque had been completed, |he fitted U w his shoulders a pair of. wings which he had made for the purpose, leaped out from the tower,, and committed himself to the air, jin the hope of escaping from the I city. Unfortunately, his movements . were impeded by a carpenter's tool j which he had disposed in the fold jof his garment, and he shared the i fate of many of his twentieth-cen-i tury imitators. There are other ; mosques which belong to an even earlier era. The old palace of the Sultans^ I built in the fourteenth century, was blown up by the Turks themselves iit 187S, before the entry of the Russians. Nearly fifty years previouslythe city was captured by the Russians, and the treaty of Adrianople put an end to the war of 1829. ; The magnificent specimens of architecture which Adrianople contains make it imposing from a distance ; [ but the streets are narrow, crooked, and filthy, while the ancient citadel and the walls which formerly surrounded the place have long been in ruins. The greater part of the eastern quarter was burnt, doun in 1905, and has not been rebuilt,. It has been described as an immense on el-grown village, and, indeed, it covers an area large enou;;a to contain a population five times that which actually inhabits it. Agricultural products, raw sifk. opium, attar of rosos, and the dye of the madder root, known as Adrianople or Turkey rod, are among its principal exports, while silk and cotton manufacturers tind the weaving of carpets are carried on. The wine made from the vines on the fertile plains, of Thrace' round the city have the reputation of K-*ing «.i-j fhwafc in Turkey.—. "Soa^ Hvaxmnkm."-