It was followed by the ancient Greek city of Cius, which Philip V of Macedon granted to Prusias I, the King of Bithynia, in 202 BC. King Prusias rebuilt the city with the advice of general Hannibal of Carthage, who took refuge with Prusias after losing the war with the Roman Republic and renamed it Prusa.
After 128 years of Bithynian rule, Nicomedes IV, the last King of Bithynia, bequeathed the entire kingdom to the Roman Empire in 74 BC.
An early Roman Treasure was found in the vicinity of Bursa in the early 20th century. Composed of a woman’s silver toilet articles, it is now in the British Museum.
Under Byzantine rule, the town became a garrison city in 562 AD, where imperial guards were stationed there. Already by the mid-6th century, Bursa was known as a famous silk textile manufacturing centre.
Bursa became the first major capital city of the early Ottoman Empire following its capture from the Byzantines in 1326.
As a result, the city witnessed a considerable amount of urban growth such as the building of hospitals, caravanserais and madrasas throughout the 14th century, with the first official Ottoman mint established in the city.
After conquering Edirne (Adrianople) in East Thrace, the Ottomans turned it into the new capital city in 1363, but Bursa retained its spiritual and commercial importance in the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I built the Bayezid Külliyesi in Bursa between 1390 and 1395[8] and the Ulu Cami (Grand Mosque) between 1396 and 1400.
After Bayezid was defeated in the Battle of Ankara by the forces Timur in 1402, the latter’s grandson, Muhammad Sultan Mirza, had the city pillaged and burned.
Despite this, Bursa remained as the most important administrative and commercial centre in the empire until Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453.
