Saray 6

Saray is a town and district of Tekirdağ Province at the European part of Turkey. The population of the town is 24,960 while in the district a total of 47,522 people live as of 2014. It covers an area of 612km2, and the elevation is 140m. The district has cold wet winters and hot dry summers. The district governor is Hüseyin ÖNER, and the mayor is Nazmi ÇOBAN (CHP).Saray is situated on the junction of state roads and. It is neighboured in the north by Vize, in the east by Çatalca, in the south by Kapaklı and in the west by Ergene.GeographySaray is 78km north of the province seat Tekirdağ. The land is mostly flat and watered by the River Ergene. At the top north-east corner the land begins to rise to the Strandzha (Yıldız Dağları) range of hills. 50% of the land is farmed, 50% forest and meadow, including the only stands of Austrian Pine (pinus nigra) in Thrace, a protected area.HistoryThrace has been settled for a long, long time and relics have been found in Saray from the stone-age and the copper-stone periods, but up until the Ottoman period there were only small villages here. Then when the Ottomans established their capital in nearby Edirne, the town began to grow.In the 18th century when the Crimean Khanate fell to the Russians, the Giray family of the ruling Khans, descendants of Genghis Khan himself, were settled here by the Ottoman sultans. Many members of the dynasty are buried at the yard of Ayas Pasha Mosque in Saray. It was successively part of sanjaks of Vize, Tekfurdağı and Kırkkilise and was a nahiyah of Vize township in Kırkkilise sanjak before 1922.