Turkey: Impressive Bursa

From Bergama, we started east. We had been on a somewhat faster pace because we we're aiming to leave Ankara on the morning of May 14th, election day, should there be unreset. Bypassing Istanbul this time, we opted to stop in Bursa, and we we're very glad that we did.









Bursa was the capital of the Ottoman before Istanbul, is on the UNESCO list for urban centers that were based on a complex of mosques, school (merdressas), baths (haman), commercial centers (khan), and kitchen for the poor (imareti), and tombs. While Bursa is certainly not Istanbul, it was impressive enough in its own right.

• The center of Bursa was one khan after another, one carsi (market, covered and uncovered) after another, bustling since the 14th century, when Europe was in the dark ages.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I was fascinated by the imaretis. One of them still functions as a soup kitchen today. I wonder why they are not more ubiquitous around the world.
  
  
• How much of these impressive monuments was funded by appropriations from the conquered territories, in the same way much of London, Paris, Madrid, etc. were built?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

It just dawned on me that this dizzying tour (excluding Mexico, of course) of ours has been a tour of parts of the Ottoman Empire. We had covered the Balkans in another tour.