ADRIANOPLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1083, 8 April 1913, Page 4

ADRIANOPLE.

A FORMIDABLE FORTRESS

THE CITY AND ITS HISTORY.

The triumph of the Bulgarians restores Christian dominion over Adrianople after the lapse of five and a-hall centuries. For nearly a hundred years after its capture by Murad 1., in 1361, the city was the capita] of the Sultans, until 1453, when, upon the fall of Constantinople, they transferred their residence to the Golden Horn.

From the, technical point of view Adrianople is a formidable fortress. Under Izzet Pasha’s scheme of the re-organisation of the Turkish army three years ago, a great effort was made to bring the existing works at Adrianople up to date. As early as 1908, when Nazim Pasha commanded the then Second Ordu, the trace of the permanent works was improved, and orders given for a powerful fortress armament. How much of this armament ever reached the Adrianople platforms is not known. The perimeter of a fortress is about 22 miles. There are said to be 20 main permanent works on the Adrianople side of the Maritza River, and five on the Karagatch front. As the perimeter of the fortress lies at the junction of the Maritza, Arda aud Tundja rivers, and as in winter these' rivers inundate nearly a third of the approach to the fortress, they form a natural obstacle to investment.

Apart from its military importance as a fortress, and as the head, quarters of the 2nd Army Corps, Adrianople, under Turkish rule, remarks a writer in the London Times, has had little either to distinguish or commend it. The city has long since fallen from the high estimate to which it had seemed destined when, some xSoo years ago, the heathen Uskudama of the Bessi was re-christened Hadrianppohs by its second founder. Even in those far-off days it enjoyed unenviable favour as the cockpit of the East. It was in the neighbourhood of Adrianople that in 323 Constantine the Great defeated his rival Licinius, and that five years later the Visigoths routed the Emperor Valens and destroyed the city. There, too, in 1205 Baldwin, the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, was defeated and made prisoner by the Bulgarian Czar Kaloyau, who afterwards put him to death. In 1361 the city was besieged and taken by Murad 1., and from 1365 until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the city remained the capital of the Sultans.

CAPITAL, OF THE SUI/i'ANS

The ruins of the Eski Serai, to the north of the city, are one of the few surviving memorials of this era. It was not until the 16th century that the great Mosque of Sultan Selim 11.. the glory of the city 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 of its kind in the Empire he announced his intention of putting the architect to death as soon as he had completed his task, so that he might not be tempted to build a rival to it elsewhere. The architect, a Bulgarian, Sinan by name, who likewise designated the Shahzadeh or Prince’s Mosque at Constantinople, heard of the Sultan’s resolution and determined to outwit his patron. When the last minaret of the mosque had been completed he fitted to his shoulders a pair of wings which he had made for the purpose, leaped out from the tower, and committed himself to the air, in the hope of escaping from the city. Unfortunately his movements were impeded by a carpenter’s tool which he had disposed in the fold of his garment, and he shared the fate of many of his 20th century imitators. The mosque itself, with its colonnade of marble and grauite monoliths, which are believed to be the remains of Roman buildings is crowned by a cupola in its dimensions almost equal to that of the Santa Sophia at Constantinople, and flanked by four slender, fluted minarets nearly 200 ft high. The cupola is supported by lour massive porphyry pillars, but the span of the dome is so vast that its expanse seems to be suspended in mid-air. The Utsh-Sherifli Djami, another quad-ruple-minaretted mosque, is used by the Turks as a depot for military stores. Yet another mosque, the Mosque of Murad IV., likewise with four minarets, the Bayazid Mosque at Yilderim, with a fine cupola, and the Muradieh, built by Murad 1., go back to the palmy flays of the city. The old palace of the Sultan also built by

Murad 1., iu.the 14th century, in which Charles XII., of Sweden, was confined for a time after the battle of Poltava in 1709, was blown up by the Turks themselves in 1878 before the entry of the Russians, who, when FieldMarshal Diebitch - Sabalkan - sky captured the city in 1829, had done nothing to provoke this breach of trust to posterity. In connection with the capture of the city by the Russians it may be recalled that the Treaty of Andrianople in 1829 represents an important landmark in the history of the Balkans, and it was there likewise that was signed the armistice which brought to a close the campaign of 1878. A TUMBLE-DOWN CITY.

The picturesque dignity which these historic buildings impart to the city when viewed at a distance is belied at close quarters by its mean streets and tumble-down wooden houses. The greater part of the Eastern quarter of the town was burned down in 1905, and had not been restored before the war broke out. Viewed from the railway station, the city lies to the north-east, when the great mosque rising in the background as its most prominent feature. Grouped about it are the Greek cathedral, the colonnaded bazaar of Ali Pasha, the palace of the local Governor, and other administrative purposes, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, various colleges, and a fire-tower. The central city expands into five suburbs that in turn blend into a series of scattered villages, interspersed with vast and irregular tracts of woodland, in which poplars, cypresses and plane trees predominate. Indeed, the whole of Adrianople has been likened to an immense overgrown village. The population, which is half Turkish and half Jewish, Greek, Bulgar and Armenian, numbers some 85,000, but the inhabited area is so extensive that it is at first difficult to credit this estimate. After the insurrection in 1903, moreover, several thousand Bulgars, especially from the rural districts, fled across the frontier. Muhodjirs were settled in the deserted villages. The city nevertheless remained the see of two Bulgarian Bishops, as well as of a Greek Archbishop. The situation of Adrianople, in the most favoured portion of the plain of Thrace, made it for many years the natural clearing house for the trade of the region., But the Russo-Turkish war and the disjunction of Eastern Roumelia isolated Adrianople and transferred to Philippolis at least twothirds of the foreign trade, which, as regards seaborne goods, is carried on through the poit of -Burgas. Agricultural products, raw silk, opium, attar of roses and the dye of the madder-root, known as Adrianople or Turkey red, are among the principal exports. Its wines, although they are made by the most primitive methods, are the best in Turkey. The weaving, carpet making and other manufacturing industries, are not what they used to be. The rivers, which are spanned by a dozen bridges one of them, the Michael’s Bridge, dates back to the days of the Greek emperors —are no longer uniformly navigable, except for shallow-draught barges. Adrianople, in point of population and mercantile standing, ranks after Salonika. Edirneh, as the Turks have called it, was the first capital of the Turkish dominion in the peninsula, and it was from this great camp that sprang and spread the might of the Osmanli. Adrianople has retained the impress of its history, and remained the most characteristically Turco - Tartar city in Europe. No destiny could be better calculated to make it lose this character than the re-union of the upper and lower portions of the Maritza Valley under Bulgarian dominion.

The Turkish ordae de bataiille was in such a hopeless state of contusion during the levered mobilisation that it is hard to say what force was actually in the for tress when it became invested. The garrison, over and above the fortress troops, consisted of three divisions of first-class redifs and two divisions of second-class redifs. This would total about 30,000 bayonets. There were, however, other troops within the perimeter. The Turkish Field Army was caught by the Bulgarians in the process of concentration. Certain units from Omar Yaver Pasha’s and Ahmed Abouk Pasha’s commands were known to he in the fortress.