The Transformation of Late Byzantine Adrianople to Early Ottoman Edirne

This article examines the urban development of Edime during the transitional period from Byzantine to Ottoman rule, interpreting it as the result of social and economic changes in the young Ottoman state. We claim that it was in Edirne, during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, that the institutional and social development of the Ottoman state was explicitly expressed for the first time as a spatial phenomenon. This happened through the erection of various buildings and the formation of the city center and was part of the contemporary transition of the Ottoman state from beylik-style rule to a more imperial form. The architectural and urban developments in Edirne illustrate precisely the impact of this transformation.