Μιχαλίτσι και Λοπάδι, δύο οικισμοί της Επαρχίας Νίκαιας Μικράς Ασίας

Abstract

Michalitsi was a small town in the middle of a vast plain sixty kilometres
to the west of Bursa. It has now been renamed Karacabey in honour of
Karaca Ahmet Pasha, who was Mehmet IPs vizier. According to data collected
from refugees from Michalitsi, the population consisted of approximately
3,500 Greeks, 8,000 Turks, 1,000 Armenians, and 50 Jews. The
townspeople were Turkish-speaking and involved in agriculture, sericulture,
stock-breeding, and commerce. Until 1908, relations between the
Greeks and the Turks were excellent, but this changed when Turkish refugees
from Thessaly and Bulgaria came to settle in the area.
Lopadi (Ulubat in Turkish) was one of the seventy-two villages in the
kaza of Michalitsi, and, like Michalitsi itself, was a very old settlement. It
was probably built shortly before 1097 by Emperor Alexius Comnenus, as a
bastion to protect Bursa against the attacks of the Seljuks. It had some fifteen
or twenty Greek families.
After the exchange of populations, the Greek inhabitants of these two
settlements went to live in various towns in Greece, including Drama, Serres,
and Thessaloniki.