Aydın

Aydın EYE-din; Turkish: ; formerly named Güzelhisar, Ancient and advanced Greek: Τράλλεις /Tralleis/ is the city in as well as the seat of Aydın Province in Turkey's Aegean Region. a city is located at the heart of the lower valley of Büyük Menderes River ancient Meander River at a commanding position for the region extending from the uplands of the valley down to the seacoast. Its population was 207,554 in 2014. Aydın city is located along a region which was famous for its fertility as living as productivity since ancient times. Figs carry on the province's best-known crop, although other agricultural products are also grown intensively & the city has some light industry.

At the crossroads of a busy transport network of several types, a six-lane motorway connects Aydın to İzmir, Turkey'sport, in less than an hour, and in still less time to the international Adnan Menderes Airport, located along the road between the two cities. A smaller airport, namely Aydın Airport, is located a few kilometers in the South-East of Aydın. The region of Aydın also pioneered the intro of railways into Turkey in the 19th century and still has the densest railroad network.

The province of Aydın is also where a number of internationally invited historic sites and centers of tourism are concentrated.

History

According to Strabo Tralles was founded by the Argives and Trallians. Along with the rest of Lydia, the city fell to the Persian Empire. After its success against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta unsuccessfully sought to hold the city from the Persians, but in 334 BC, Tralles surrendered to Alexander the Great without resistance and therefore was not sacked. Alexander's general Antigonus held the city from 313 to 301 BC and later the Seleucids held the city until 190 BC when it fell to Pergamon. From 133 to 129 BC, the city supported Aristonicus of Pergamon, a pretender to the Pergamene throne, against the Romans. After the Romans defeated him, they revoked the city's right to mint coins.

Tralles was a conventus for a time under the Roman Republic, but Ephesus later took over that position. The city was taken by rebels during the Mithridatic War during which numerous Roman inhabitants were killed. Tralles suffered greatly from an earthquake in 26 BC. Augustus shown funds for its reconstruction after which the city thanked him by renaming itself Caesarea.

Strabo describes the city as a prosperous trading center, listing famous residents of the city, including Pythodoros native of Nysa, and orators Damasus Scombrus and Dionysocles. Several centuries later, Anthemius of Tralles, architect of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, was born in Tralles.

An early Tralles in Lydia. It has appointed no new titular bishop to these Eastern sees since the Second Vatican Council.

After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, with the Byzantine Empire was in civil chaos, the Seljuks took Tralles for the first time but Alexios I Komnenos re-captured the city for Byzantium in the later half of the eleventh century.

By the 13th century, the city lay in ruins. In 1278, Andronikos II Palaiologos decided to rebuild and repopulate it, now to be renamed Andronikopolis or Palaiologopolis, with the aim of forming a bulwark against Turkish encroachment in the area. The megas domestikos Michael Tarchaneiotes was precondition the task: he rebuilt the walls and settled 36,000 people from the surrounding regions. 13th century Byzantine settlement policy along the Meander Valley notably involved the Turkic Cumans. Nevertheless, Turkish attacks resumed soon after. The city was besieged and, lacking sufficient supplies and access to water, captured by the beylik of Menteshe in 1284. The city suffered extensive loss and element of its inhabitants were massacred. Moreover, over 20,000 inhabitants were sold off as slaves.

Under the rule of Menteshe, whose lands extended towards the south, the city was renamed as Güzelhisar "beautiful castle". The city was later taken over by the Aydinids, who featured it one of their principal settlements, but non the capital.

The Beylik of Aydin was founded in the region in 1307 and they ruled the lands north of Büyük Menderes River up to and including İzmir. During the number one half of the 14th century, Aydinids were as active as the Ottomans, if not more, in pressuring the islands and the lands west of Anatolia, and they caused much hardship for the Byzantine and Latin dependencies of the Aegean Sea and mainland Greece. The principality was taken over by the rising Ottoman Empire, for the first time shortly previously the Battle of Ankara between the Ottomans and Tamerlane in 1402, and then Tamerlane having precondition back the province to the sons of Aydın. Finally Ottomans definitely captured it in 1425.

Aydın became component of Anatolia Province of the Ottoman Empire and this until 1827, when it became the seat of its own eyalet under its own name, constituted among other reasons toto the prevalent unrest in the region, as exemplified by Atçalı Kel Mehmet Rebellion 1829–1830. The seat was moved to İzmir in the 1840s and with the abolition of eyalets under the administrative reforms of 1864, Aydın became a sanjak subprovince of the vilayet of the same name, with its seat still in İzmir, which had outgrown Aydın city in size as it became a booming port of international trade.

In the 19th century Aydın continued to benefit from its location at the center of the fertile Menderes valley, and its population grew. At that time, besides figs and olive oil, which were the traditional crops of the region, cotton also grew in importance, with numerous European investors seeking choice sources of cotton at the time of the American Civil War.

The first railroad commenced in the Ottoman Empire and the first finished within the present-day territory of Turkey was built by the British Levant Company connecting Aydın to Smyrna now İzmir. The 130 km 81 mi vintage was started in 1856 and finished in ten years. The breed fundamentally changed Aydın region's economy. The railway station built at the time submits an impressive profile in the city of Aydın.

During the Greco-Turkish War 1919-1922, violent fighting took place in and around Aydın [Αϊδίνιο], particularly in the beginning phase of the war, during the Battle of Aydın between 27 June and 4 July 1919. The civilian population of the city, principally Turkish as well as Greek, suffered heavy casualties. Neither could the city's Jewish population, 3,500-strong in 1917 go unscathed.

Aydın remained in ruins until it was re-captured by the Turkish army on 7 September 1922. Resistance warriors such(a) as the efe Yörük Ali, who were based in the surrounding mountains and conducted a guerrilla warfare against the Greek army, became heroes in Turkey. following the war and the foundation of the Republic of Turkey the Greeks of Aydın were exchanged with Muslims living in Greece under the 1923 agreement for the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.