The Turks' Sacred City.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 27, 1913:
Desire to Keep Adrianople Caused Rupture of Peace Negotiations.
    It is doubtful if even the loss of Constantinople would be regarded by the Turks as a greater disaster than the loss of Adrianople.
    There are several reasons of the peculiar veneration in which they hold the city. It was their first capitol in Europe, captured a century before the fall of Byzantium. Once it was among the most splendid of Ottoman cities — a place of Arabian Nights gorgeousness — and to this day it contains forty mosques, some of them among the best examples of Oriental art and architecture in the Near East.
    But the principal reason for the Turks' tenacity in holding Adrianople, tenacity which was practically the only cause of the failure of the peace negotiations in London in December and January, is that the city contains Mohammedan shrines that are the most venerated in all Turkey. The Mosque of the Sultan, Selim II. is one of the finest Mohammedan buildings in existence, and other buildings in Adrianople are regarded as equally sacred.
    Even now, it is not improbable that, out of deference to the Turks' religious susceptibilities, the Bulgarians will permit a sort of extra-territorial government of the portion of the city that contains the shrines. They offered this to Turkey more than once in the course of the abortive peace negotiations, and they may regard a renewal of the offer as a politic means of preventing racial and religious difficulties that would be likely to develop in Adrianople if the Mohammedan population there became irritated.
    The Siege of Adrianople has lasted five and one-half months, the first gun having been fired at the fortress by a Bulgarian field battery October 5 last. The investment of the city was completed by Gen. Ivanoff toward the end of October. It must be remembered, however, that warlike operations were suspended during the armistice, from Dec. 3 to Feb. 3, so that the fortress has actually been under fire for between three and four months. Adrianople is one of the most ancient cities of Europe. A Thracian town of unknown antiquity, it was rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian, who gave it his name. A great victory was won there by the Goths in 378, and another by the Huns two centuries later. It was captured from the Byzantines by Amurath (Mu-rad) I. in 1361. In the last century the Russians twice occupied it — in 1829, when they forced Turkey to grant independence to Greece, and in the course of the war of 1878.