General northern view of Mount Sipylus as seen from Manisa plain.
19th century Yeni Han
caravanserai built by Karaosmanoğlu family in Manisa
Manisa (Turkish pronunciation: [maˈnisa]) is a large city in Turkey's Aegean Region and the administrative seat of Manisa Province.
Modern Manisa is a booming center of industry and services, advantaged by its closeness to the international port city and the regional metropolitan center of İzmir and by its fertile hinterland rich in quantity and variety of agricultural production. In fact, İzmir's proximity also adds a particular dimension to all aspects of life's pace in Manisa in the form of a dense traffic of daily commuters between the two cities, separated as they are by a half-hour drive served by a fine six-lane highway nevertheless requiring attention at all times due to its curves and the rapid ascent (sea-level to more than 500 meters at Sabuncubeli Pass) across Mount Sipylus's mythic scenery.
The historic part of Manisa spreads out from a forested valley in the immediate slopes of Sipylus mountainside, along Çaybaşı Stream which flows next to Niobe's "Weeping Rock" ("Ağlayan Kaya"), an ancient bridge called the "Red Bridge" ("Kırmızı Köprü") as well as to several tombs-shrines in the Turkish style dating back to the Saruhan period (14th century). Under Ottoman rule in the centuries that followed, the city had already extended into the undulated terrain at the start of the plain. In the last couple of decades, Manisa's width more than tripled in size across its vast plain formed by the alluvial deposits of the River Gediz, a development in which the construction of new block apartments, industrial zones and of Celal Bayar University campus played a key role.
The city of Manisa is also widely visited, especially during March and September festivals, the former festival being the continuation of a five hundred year old "Mesir Paste Distribution" tradition, and also for the nearby Mount Spil national park. It is also a departure point for other visitor attractions of international acclaim which are located nearby within Manisa's depending region, such as Sardes and Alaşehir (ancient Philadelphia) inland. There is a Jewish community.[1]
Historically, the city was also called Magnesia, and more precisely as Magnesia ad Sipylum to distinguish from Magnesia on the Maeander at a relatively short distance to the south. Traditional view held that the name "Magnesia" derived from the tribe of Magnetes who would have immigrated here from Thessaly at the dawn of the region's recorded history, although a connection with native Anatolian languages has also been suggested of recent date, particularly on the basis of discoveries made in the Hittite archives treating the Luwian western Anatolia.
The name "Magnesia ad Sipylus" refers to Mount Sipylus (Mount Spil) that towers over the city and Magnesia became a city of importance starting with the Roman dominion, particularly after the 190 BC Battle of Magnesia. The names "Sipylus" or "Sipylum" in reference to a settlement here are also encountered in some sources, again in reference to the mountain and as abbreviated forms. Pliny the Elder, supported by other sources, mentions that formerly in the same place was a very celebrated city which was called "Tantalis" [2] or "the city of Tantalus" whose ruins were still visible around his time.[3] The name is rendered as Μαγνησία in ancient and modern Greek language.
Under Turkish rule, the name attached to the Beys of "Saruhan", who founded the Beylik which preceded the Ottomans in the region, has been officially used, along with the name Manisa, for the city and the region alternatively and this until the present period of the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Turkish form of the name "Manisa" (ماغنيسا) was usually as it is still used presently, but a spelling with a longer first syllable, transcribed to modern Turkish as "Mağnisa", was also occasionally encountered. During the first centuries of the Ottoman Empire, many of the sons of sultans received their education in Manisa and the city is still commonly known in Turkey as "the city of shahzades" (Şehzadeler şehri) in Turkey, a distinctive title it shares only with Amasya and Trabzon.
The English language root word "magnesia", from which the words "magnet" and "magnetism" and numerous other derivations were coined, as well as their equivalents in many other languages, derive from the city's name.
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.[4]
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.
Students in
Lydian-inspired costumes during
19 May celebrations in Manisa
The first millennium BC saw the emergence in the region of "Phrygians" and "Maeonians", the accounts concerning which are still blended with myths,[5] 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 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.
In Classical antiquity, the city was known as Magnesia ad Sipylum and played an important role in the history of the epoch by being the place where, in 190 BC, Antiochus the Great was defeated in the Battle of Magnesia by the Roman Empire. It became a city of importance under the Roman dominion and, though nearly destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, was restored by that emperor and flourished through the Roman empire.
Lost by the Byzantine Empire in 1076 to the Seljuk's in the aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert, the subsequent Crusader victory at the Battle of Dorylaeum (1097) allowed Manisa to be recovered by the Emperor Alexios I. It was an important regional centre through the Byzantine Empire, and during the 13th century interregnum of the Empire of Nicea. Magnesia housed the Imperial mint, the Imperial treasury, and served as the functional capital of the empire 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.
Great Mosque of Manisa built in 1374 during Saruhan period
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.
The city remained prosperous and developed steadily, especially as of the mid-15th century. As the central town of the Ottoman Empire's Saruhan sanjak, the city's development was enhanced particularly by its choice as 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 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.[8] 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.[9]
Scenes from 2010 Mesir Paste Festival (
Mesir Macunu Festivali).
Ayşe Hafsa Sultan and
Merkez Efendi (top left) are incarnated each year by an actress and actor of renown.
Between 1595–1836, the sanjak of Saruhan (Manisa) 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 İzmir (1841–1843, 1846–1864).
Manisa was one 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 İzmir 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.[10] Instead of being laid along the direct route eastwards from İzmir 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 theFranco–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.
Manisa was occupied by the Greek Army on May 26, 1919 during the Turkish War of Independence and recaptured by the Turkish Army on September 8, 1922. According to a number of sources, the retreating Greek army carried out a scorched-earth policy while fleeing from Anatolia during the final phase of the war.[12] Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross wrote, "Already most of the towns in its (Greek army) path were in ruins. Out of the eighteen thousand buildings in the historic holy city of Manisa, only five hundred remained."[13]
Manisa became the centre of Saruhan Province in 1923 under the new Turkish Republic. The province's name was changed to Manisa as the city itself in 1927.
Manisa has a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers lasting a long time and winters being short and cool. Summers in Manisa are hotter than the coast with its western neighbour İzmir lying on the Aegean Sea and winters being colder due to its inland location.
| Climate data for Manisa |
| Month |
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Year |
| Record high °C (°F) |
24.0
(75.2) |
26.4
(79.5) |
31.6
(88.9) |
32.7
(90.9) |
39.1
(102.4) |
42.0
(107.6) |
45.5
(113.9) |
43.7
(110.7) |
41.7
(107.1) |
37.3
(99.1) |
29.9
(85.8) |
25.9
(78.6) |
45.5
(113.9) |
| Average high °C (°F) |
10.7
(51.3) |
12.2
(54.0) |
16.2
(61.2) |
21.2
(70.2) |
27.2
(81.0) |
32.5
(90.5) |
35.2
(95.4) |
35.0
(95.0) |
30.6
(87.1) |
24.2
(75.6) |
16.9
(62.4) |
11.9
(53.4) |
22.82
(73.07) |
| Average low °C (°F) |
3.0
(37.4) |
3.6
(38.5) |
5.5
(41.9) |
9.3
(48.7) |
13.7
(56.7) |
18.3
(64.9) |
21.2
(70.2) |
21.0
(69.8) |
16.6
(61.9) |
12.4
(54.3) |
7.3
(45.1) |
4.7
(40.5) |
11.38
(52.49) |
| Record low °C (°F) |
−7
(19.4) |
−8.9
(16.0) |
−5.1
(22.8) |
−2
(28.4) |
4.0
(39.2) |
7.6
(45.7) |
13.4
(56.1) |
12.2
(54.0) |
8.4
(47.1) |
2.3
(36.1) |
−3.4
(25.9) |
−6
(21.2) |
−8.9
(16.0) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) |
110.7
(4.358) |
98.4
(3.874) |
79.9
(3.146) |
56.1
(2.209) |
32.3
(1.272) |
15.5
(0.61) |
9.5
(0.374) |
7.9
(0.311) |
22.0
(0.866) |
50.5
(1.988) |
97.0
(3.819) |
129.5
(5.098) |
709.3
(27.925) |
| Avg. rainy days |
11.2 |
10.8 |
9.2 |
9.3 |
6.4 |
3.2 |
2.1 |
1.5 |
3.3 |
6.1 |
9.4 |
12.9 |
85.4 |
| Mean monthly sunshine hours |
89.9 |
106.4 |
170.5 |
201.0 |
275.9 |
327.0 |
356.5 |
334.8 |
279.0 |
201.5 |
123.0 |
74.4 |
2,539.9 |
| Source: Devlet Meteoroloji İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü [14] |
Example of civil architecture -1930s- in Manisa.
The 16th century Sultan Mosque was built for Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent's mother. In her honor, Mesir Festival (featuring the "Mesir Paste" (Turkish: Mesir Macunu), a spiced paste in the form of candy, and claimed to restore health, youth and potency, also known in recent years as the "Turkish Viagra") is held every year in March, in the grounds of this mosque, and is an occasion for public gathering as well as attendance by personalities of fame and prominence at national scale.
The mosque is part of a large külliye -a religious complex- among whose buildings the hospital "darüşşifa" is particularly notable. Specialized in mental diseases, the medical center was in activity until the beginning of the 20th century when new buildings were built within the same compound. That Turkey's only two institutions specialized on mental health were until recently located in İstanbul district of Bakırköy and in Manisa gave way in Turkey's public lore to gentle innuendos on the challenging spirit of the natives - Manisalı.
One such likeable eccentric of the 20th century was Ahmet Bedevi, the Tarzan of Manisa or "Manisa Tarzanı", a figure who became a symbol for the city by contributing to raising consciousness for protection of the environment across Turkey and a reference especially since the 1960s when an importation reforestation effort covering thousands of hectares was made in and around Manisa.[15]
The Muradiye Mosque of the 16th century was built by the great architect Mimar Sinan (and completed by Sedefkar Mehmed Agha), and the Murad Bey Medresse now houses the Archaeological Museum of Manisa.
Manisa celebrates the Vintage Festival every September, when the fruits of the vineyards are celebrated. The vineyards surround the city and provide dry fruit for export from İzmir, and grapes for wine making.
Nr. of persons
employed by enterprise |
Nr. of enterprises
in the employment segment |
Total employed
by enterprise segment |
| Manisa Province |
694 total |
44.449 total |
| 0-9 |
235 |
1.530 |
| 10-19 |
137 |
1.867 |
| 20-49 |
186 |
6.319 |
| 50-249 |
99 |
9.958 |
| 249 and more |
37 |
24.775 |
Manisa and some of its depending district centers have succeeded in solidly clinching an industrial production base in recent decades, in this supported both initially and continuously by the century-old wide-scale agricultural processing and related activities (production of flour and olive oil, basic textiles, leather goods, agricultural tools and instruments, cotton ginning).
According to the figures published by the Governorship, 694 companies in Manisa Province out of the province's total number of companies of 5.502 for 2007 are certified industrial enterprises and these employ a total of 44.449 people. Within the 694, Manisa center is in the lead with 238 enterprises engaged in industrial production, with the depending centers of Turgutlu (125 industrial enterprises), Akhisar (100), Salihli (78) closely contending, and Saruhanlı (33), Alaşehir (30), Kula (28), Demirci (20) and Soma (17) following.[16]
Among leading industrial activities Manisa companies are engaged in are production of foodstuffs (196 companies), building materials (114), metal goods (85), as well as textile industry and clothing industry (46) and cotton ginning (43). The highest numbers of workforce are concentrated in electronics/electrical appliances, foodstuffs and construction industries.
The choice of Manisa as production base in the eighties by the Turkish consumer electronics and white goods giant Vestel was an important boost for the present-day level of sophistication. Today Manisa's economic activities are far from being confined to a sole company. Manisa registered roughly 200m US dollars in FDI in 2004 and well-known businesses such as Italian white goods company Indesit, German electrical goods company Bosch, UK packaging company Rexam and Imperial Tobacco of the UK have invested in Manisa.
In 2004/2005 Manisa was chosen among 200 contestants as the Most Cost-Effective European city by the FDi magazine's yearly round of votes to determine European Cities and Regions of the Future, its extremely low office and industrial rents and competitive labor costs having been particularly noted.[17] Again for 2006/2007, Manisa was named among 89 European cities as the winner for the category for the Best Economic Potential in Europe, as runner-up for the categories Southern-Europe's City of the Future (winner for Turkey) and the Most Cost-Effective European city.[18]
The city also has a football team, Manisaspor, which plays in the Turkish Premier Super League under the home colors of red and white and away colors of black and white. Manisaspor's home ground is the Manisa 19 Mayis Stadi.
Bust in Manisa park of the Ottoman sultan
Mehmed II who administered the city in two periods in the 1440s.
Bust in Manisa park of the Ottoman imperial consort and mother
Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, builder and the initiator of the city's Mesir Festival in Manisa.
Manisa is twinned with:
Preparation of Manisa
Kebab, a local specialty.
Statue in Manisa park Ahmet Bedevi, alias
Tarzan of Manisa, a pioneering environmentalist in Turkey and a symbol for the city.
- ^ Avotaynu: the international review of Jewish genealogy, Volume 14, G. Mokotoff, 1998, p. 40.
- ^ George Perrot (2007) (in French, English). History of Art In Phrygia, Lydia, Caria And Lycia. Marton Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-4067-0883-7.
- ^ James George Frazer (1900–1913–1965). Pausanias, and other Greek sketches, later retitled Pausanias's Description of Greece ISBN 1-4286-4922-0, ISBN 978-1-4286-4922-4. Kessinger Publishing Company.
- ^ K. Lambrianides (1992). "Preliminary survey and core sampling on the Aegean coast of Turkey". Anatolian Studies. British Institute at Ankara. pp. 75–78. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0066-1546(1992)42%3C75%3APSACSO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
- ^ While some sources claim that "Meonian" was an earlier name for a "Lydian", another theory holds that Meonians may have preceded Lydians in the region and would have continued their existence as a substratum within the Lydian society, neighboring theirs especially in the mountainous region to the south. While most of what the Lydians could tell about themselves is lost and historians have to rely on secondary sources, a village locally still called "Menye" (officially Gökçeören) exists between the district centers of Kula and Salihli. Ancient traces rich in quantity are visible to the naked eye around the village and preliminary surface explorations have only recently started.
- ^ C.P.Jones (1994). "A Geographical Setting for the Baucis and Philemon Legend (Ovid Metamorphoses 8.611-724)". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Department of the Classics, Harvard University. pp. 203–223+I-IV. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0073-0688(1994)96%3C203%3AAGSFTB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
- ^ George Akropolites, "The History" (Ruth Macrides, ed), Oxford, University Press, 2007, p. 171.
- ^ Karen Barkey (1994). Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoman route to state centralization p. 243 Appendix I: The Study Area ISBN 0-8014-8419-7. Cornell University Press.
- ^ Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, Bruce Alan Masters (1999). The Ottoman City Between East and West: Aleppo, İzmir, and Istanbul; section "İzmir:From village to colonial port city" p. 91 ISBN 0-521-64304-X. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ A short line built in Dobruja (now in Romania) was started and finished earlier, and İzmir-Aydın railway was started earlier in 1856 but finished a year after Smyrna Cassaba Railway in 1867.
- ^ Ed. Ralf Roth - Günter Dinhobl (2008). Across the Borders: Financing the World's Railways in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, p. 188, ISBN 978-0-7546-6029-3. Ashgate Publishing.
- ^ Sydney Nettleton Fisher, The Middle East: a history, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, p. 386
- ^ (Kinross 1960, p. 318)
- ^ http://www.dmi.gov.tr/veridegerlendirme/il-ve-ilceler-istatistik.aspx?m=MANISA
- ^ George Maxim Anossov Hanfmann - Jane C. Waldba (1975). A survey of Sardis and the major monuments outside the city walls, p. 171, 978-0674857513. Harvard University Press.
- ^ The counts given exclude Soma's lignite mines (10 million tonnes produced in 2007) and thermal power plant (7 bn kW/hour electricity production in 2007).
- ^ "Most cost effective: Manisa, Turkey". FDi magazine. 2004-10-20. http://www.fdimagazine.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/900/Most_cost_effective:_Manisa,_Turkey.html.
- ^ Charles Piggott. "European Cities of the Future 2006/07". FDi magazine. http://www.fdimagazine.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/1543. Retrieved 2007-10-24. Manisa was closely seconded in the ranking by Konya, Bursa, Sivas, Gaziantep, Denizli and Eskişehir.
- ^ "Official portal of City of Skopje - Skopje Sister Cities". © 2006–2009 City of Skopje. http://www.skopje.gov.mk/EN/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=69. Retrieved 2009-07-14.
![Turgutlu is a town and district of Manisa Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. According to the 2000 census, population of the district is 121,020 of which 93,727 live in the town of Turgutlu.[1][2] The district covers an area of 473 km2 (183 sq mi),[3] and the town lies at an elevation of 68 m (223 ft).](http://web.archive.org./web/20121025072607/http://cdn3.wn.com/pd/c1/0f/3728b302c591d6e21b9af2993b5c_medium.jpg "Turgutlu is a town and district of Manisa Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. According to the 2000 census, population of the district is 121,020 of which 93,727 live in the town of Turgutlu.[1][2] The district covers an area of 473 km2 (183 sq mi),[3] and the town lies at an elevation of 68 m (223 ft).")
![[icon]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121025072607/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}
