İznik is a municipality and district of Bursa Province, Turkey. Its area is 753 km2, and its population is 44,236 (2022). The town is at the site of the ancient Greek city of Nicaea, from which the modern name derives. The town lies in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake İznik, with ranges of hills to the north and south. As the crow flies, the town is only 90 km southeast of Istanbul but by road it is 200 km around the Gulf of İzmit. It is 80 km by road from Bursa. İznik has been a district centre of the province of Bursa since 1930 but belonged to the district of Kocaeli between 1923 and 1927. It was a township of Yenişehir (connected to Bilecik before 1926) district between 1927 and 1930. Ancient Nicaea was ringed with walls that still survive to this day, despite having been pierced in places to accommodate roads. Inside the walls stands the Ayasofya Mosque where the Second Council of Nicaea was held in A.D. 787. The town is famous for the Iznik tiles and pottery.

Etymology

İznik derives from the Ancient Greek name of the city, Νίκαια Nikaia (Latinized as Nicaea), prefixed with εἰς eis, meaning 'to' or 'into'. The Ottoman Turkish spelling is ازنيق: İznîq. İznik appears as نيقية (Nîkıye) in Arabic sources, while Ibn Battuta, who visited the area, recorded it as يزنيك (Yiznîk).

History

In ancient times, this was the site of Nicaea, a Hellenistic city founded by Antigonus in 316 BC. In 1331, Orhan captured the city from the Byzantines and for a short period the town became the capital of the expanding Ottoman Emirate. The large church of Hagia Sophia in the centre of the town was converted into the Orhan Mosque and a medrese (theological school-Süleyman Paşa Medresesi) and hamam (bathhouse) were built nearby. In 1334 Orhan built another mosque and an imaret (soup kitchen) just outside the Yenisehir gate (Yenişeh Kapısı) on the south side of the town. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta stayed in Iznik at the end of 1331 soon after the capture of the town by Orhan. According to Ibn Battuta, the town was in ruins and only inhabited by a small number of people in the service of the sultan. Within the city walls were gardens and cultivated plots with each house surrounded by an orchard. The town produced fruit, walnuts, chestnuts and large sweet grapes. A census in 1520 recorded 379 Muslim and 23 Christian households while another one taken a century later in 1624 recorded 351 Muslim and 10 Christian households. Assuming five members for each household, these figures suggest that the population was around 2,000. Estimates made in the 18th and 19th centuries arrived at similar numbers. The town was poor and the population small even when ceramic production was at its peak during the second half of the 16th century. The Byzantine city is estimated to have had a population of 20,000–30,000 but in the Ottoman period the town was never prosperous and occupied only a small fraction of the walled area. It was, however, a centre for the production of highly decorated fritware vessels and what are known as İznik tiles during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1677 the English clergyman John Covel visited Iznik and found only a third of the town occupied. In 1745 the English traveller Richard Pococke reported that Iznik was no more than a village. A succession of visitors described the town in unflattering terms. For example in 1779, the Italian archaeologist Domenico Sestini wrote that Iznik was nothing but an abandoned town with no life, no noise and no movement. In 1797 James Dallaway described Iznik as "a wretched village of long lanes and mud walls...". The town was seriously damaged by the Greek Army in 1921 during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922); the population became refugees and many historical buildings and mosques were damaged or destroyed.

Pottery and tiles

Iznik's main period of importance came in the 16th century with the development of a pottery and tile making industry. Iznik ceramic tiles (Turkish: İznik Çini.) were used to decorate many of the mosques designed by Mimar Sinan in Istanbul. However, the ceramics industry declined in the 17th century and İznik was reduced to a minor agricultural settlement when it was bypassed by the railway in the 19th century.

Main sights

A number of monuments were erected by the early Ottomans in the period between the conquest in 1331 and 1402 when the town was sacked by Timur. Among those that have survived are: Several monuments survived into the 20th century but were destroyed during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). These include:

Composition

There are 46 neighbourhoods in İznik District:

Sport

The İznik Ultramarathon is a 130 km endurance running event that has taken place around Lake İznik every April since 2012. It is the country's longest single-stage athletics competition.

International relations

İznik is twinned with:

Sources