Late Middle Ages · Middle East · War

1361

Murad takes Adrianople from Byzantium

1361

The strategic Thracian city, sitting astride the road to Constantinople, fell to the Ottomans almost without a fight, its garrison depleted by plague and desertion. Murad would soon make it his European capital under the Turkish name Edirne. Byzantium was now nearly surrounded on land by an Anatolian-rooted power that had vaulted into Europe.