a city in northwestern Turkey; administrative center of Bursa Vilayet. Population, 212,500 (1965). Located in the foothills of the Ulu Dag ridge. Highway junction. There is trade in silk, merino wool, and cereals. Industry includes silk, wool, woodworking, fruit and vegetable canning, and building materials. There are mineral springs in the vicinity.
Bursa was founded in the early second century B.C. by the King of Bithynia, Prusias II, under the name Prusa. It became part of the Roman Empire and later of Byzantium. In 1326, after a ten-year seige, it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and became the first capital of the Ottoman state. It retained its importance as one of the main cities of Turkey after the capital was transferred to Edirne (1365, by other data 1402) and later Istanbul (1453).
The present-day regular layout of the city took shape during the second half of the 19th century, coming to include the old center of Bursa with its stone two-story houses and its parks, gardens, and architectural monuments—the mosques of Orhan (1304-1417), Ulu Cami (the Great Mosque, 1396-1400), Murad II (1424-27), Yesşil Cami (the Green Mosque, 1424), the Yesşil Türbe mausoleum (1420-21), and a military hospital (1394).
originally a dormitory for impoverished university students in the Middle Ages. One of the first in southwestern Rus’ was the bursa of the Kievo-Mogila Academy. Later, “bursa” came to mean “dormitories of religious seminaries and other schools where the students were supported by the state”; hence, bursak, meaning “a seminary student supported by the state.” The harsh regime, corporal punishment, and rough ways that characterized bursas in Russia in the early part of the 19th century were described by N. G. Pomialovskii in his Bursa Sketches.