Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Vol. 35 No. 1 (2011) 45–69 © 2011 Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham DOI: 10.1179/030701311X12906801091593 Prousa/Bursa, a city within the city: chorography, conversion and choreography 1 Suna Çağaptay Bahçes ¸ehir University, Istanbul Narratives on the birth of the Ottoman city of Bursa, the first capital of the Ottomans, known to the Byzantines as Prousa, highlight its early Ottoman identity. Although Bursa represents one of the richest legacies of early Ottoman architecture, the city’s urban fabric has suffered from several fires and earthquakes that resulted in heavy restorations and remodellings. The first aim of this paper is to discuss the textual and visual evidence for the built environment in the early fourteenth century and, second, to offer commentary on the Ottoman attitude toward Byzantine architecture in an effort to unearth the Byzan- tine substrata of Ottoman Bursa. In the service of the latter goal, this article debunks the Ottoman-centric views. With the aid of drawings of Bursa’s upper city that predate the 1855 earthquake we may begin to visualize a city far less uniform in character, in which the Byzantine legacy both endured and informed the construction and urban design practices of the ascendant Ottomans. Whatever the changes, disasters or neglect, whatever progressive or felicitous stages it [Bursa] might have gone through, it has always preserved the spirit of its formative age, it conserves with us through it and breathes its poetry. 2 —Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Five Cities 1 This paper is derived from a chapter of the author’s PhD dissertation, Visualizing the Cultural Transition in Bithynia: Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign 2007). Previ- ous incarnations of the paper were presented at several conferences, including its first draft, at Encounters with Islam: The Medieval Experience (April 4–5, 2003). I thank Robert Ousterhout and Dede F. Ruggles as well as Scott Redford, for their comments on the earlier versions. Research for this paper was made possible by grants from the Dan David Foundation at Tel Aviv University, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Barakat Foundation at the University of Oxford, the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University, Dumbarton Oaks, the Turkish Cultural Foundation and finally a travel grant from the Swedish consulate in Istanbul. I am grateful to Mr. Ingmar Karlsson, the Swedish consul general in Istanbul, and Karin Ådahl, director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. Thanks to Lars Karlsson and Jesper Blid who made my stay and research in Uppsala comfortable and joyous. Last but not least, I am sincerely grateful for the perceptive critiques of the two anonymous BMGS reviewers. 2 Translation is by İffet Orbay, Bursa (Cambridge, MA 1983) 35.