77. The funeral of a Muslim

While the Greek Christians outside Bursa were making noise and preparing for the siege, the Turkish Muslims trapped inside Bursa were mourning one funeral after another, with weeping and prayers incessantly.

The city of Bursa, the old capital of Ottoman Turkey, sits on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, backed by Mount Olympus at an altitude of 2,300 meters (not the one that hosts the Olympics in mainland Greece, but another mountain of the same name in Asia Minor), and even Constantinople, 113 kilometers away, can clearly see its snow-capped summit. At the height of the Roman Empire, the city was already the capital of the province of Bithynia and a place of notoriety. On the outskirts of Bursa, the watered slopes of the city are rich in olives and other fruit trees, and the coastal plains at the foot of Mount Olympus are fertile and have been cultivated by the Greeks since ancient times with wheat, oats and other crops.

In addition, due to the largest mulberry forest in the Eastern Roman Empire in the nearby mountains, Bursa was also the most famous silk production center in the medieval West, where the silkworm seeds and silk reeling jishu, which were spread to Europe by monks during the Northern and Southern Dynasties of China, were arranged by the Eastern Roman Emperor at that time, thus breaking the Arab monopoly on the source of silk. It's a pity that after the silkworm babies in the East migrated to Europe, they were somewhat unadaptable, so that the quality of Bursa's silk was always unable to go up, and it could never replace Chinese goods, which also made the Silk Road never interrupted.

Although the city was not very famous in later generations, it was a rich and prosperous place in the medieval West. More than a hundred years ago. The first Sultan of Ottoman Turkey did not hesitate to devote all his forces to the Eastern Roman Empire for ten years of repeated battles outside Bursa, and finally relied on his stubborn will. He captured the most prosperous city in Asia Minor and established the foundation of the great empire that would follow.

However, in 1453, the city of Bursa fell into hell without psychological preparation.

- First, Sultan Mehmed II gathered a besieging army of 140,000 soldiers and killed them all in the outskirts of Constantinople, and then the new capital Adrianople was turned into purgatory. The descendants of the Ottoman royal family of Zuihou became extinct.

As a result, the loyal subjects who lived in the old capital of the Ottoman Turkish Empire suddenly found themselves dead.

Facing the sudden arrival of chaotic and chaotic times. There were also terrible miracles of the pagan gods, and the Turkish magnates living in the city of Bursa were completely stunned for a while. But before they could react, all kinds of deadly plagues broke out in Asia Minor, further enveloping the land with death.

It's different from Nicaea City, which is completely out of control. The Turkish magnates who stayed in the city of Bursa. Strict quarantine measures were immediately imposed on the city, brutally burning the sick in their houses, and expelling Orthodox Christians suspected of collaborating with the enemy to prevent riots in the city.

In short, until the arrival of the Eastern Roman Empire army, the situation in the city of Bursa was relatively calm, although several cartloads of corpses were pulled out every day, but at least the basic social order had not collapsed. The Governor of Bursa was opening the Sultan's treasury without authorization. After recruiting an army, there was even a desire to "set up a separate center". Proclaimed regent and circulated proclamations demanding that other cities obey the orders of the city of Bursa......

However, as the Eastern Roman Empire approached with the banner of the double-headed eagle, the Turkish Muslims and Greek converts who had been scattered in the surrounding countryside all flocked to the city of Bursa, hoping to be sheltered by the defenders and the city walls, and soon the city became crowded and destroyed, and by the way destroyed all the efforts of the city to fight the plague - the so-called great plague was followed by a great plague, and this military disaster was also a great disaster.

Tens of thousands of war refugees were crammed miserably into the narrow alleys, with food, clothing, and lodging all in question. Sanitation is completely unhygienic, and some poor people can swallow almost anything when they are hungry, including bugs, cats, dogs, and mice......

It was only natural that an unprecedented plague broke out in Bursa.

-- Men, women, old people, and young children are all trembling in the midst of a terrible disease, not knowing when death will come.

In their infinite despair and fear, they could only weep and pray to Allah and ask the true God to intervene to remove the calamity.

Unfortunately, Allah seems powerless against such a high level of "undead calamity".

The Turkish governor who had been left behind in the city of Bursa, a Turkic nobleman of noble blood, and a strong bull-like warrior on the battlefield, had fallen ill ten days earlier, and immediately became swollen and bruised and emaciated at a rate visible to the naked eye, and by the time he died, he was almost left with a pair of bones.

Just as the double-headed eagle banner of the Eastern Roman Empire appeared outside the city walls for the first time, the governor of the city also swallowed a zuihou.

As a result, the Turks trapped in this plague city became even more panicked and chaotic for a while.

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"O Allah! Forgive us people: the living and the dead, the present and the absent, the young and the adult, the man and the woman.

O Allah! Whoever you let live among us, let him live in Islam: whoever you let die, let him die in faith.

O Allah! Don't deprive us of his reward, and don't make us shiyan after him! ”

At this moment, the Turks trapped in the city of Bursa are holding a solemn funeral.

Accompanied by a lengthy Muslim funeral eulogy, the dead governor of Bursa was carried to a pyre, sprinkled with dried flowers and spices, and reduced to ashes in the raging flames - cremation was also a last resort to prevent the spread of the plague and purify the corpses.

For many desperate Muslims, this was not only the funeral of the governor, but also of the city of Bursa and the Ottoman Empire.

The dead are gone, but the living still have to worry about the future.

While the body of the governor was burning in the flames, a group of leading figures in Bursa—the imams, wealthy merchants, nobles, and officials—gathered in the secret chamber of a mosque to discuss the current desperate situation with sad faces. (To be continued.) )