Dede Aghac

DEDE AGHAC. now Alexandropolis, town on the Aegean coast of Thrace, founded in 1871, after the construction of the branch railway from the main Rumeli line. Being an outlet for the products of the hinterland it prospered rapidly, so that in 1300/1883 it supplanted Dimetoka as the centre of a sandiak (mutasarriflik) of the wildyet of Edirne.

In 1894 the sandj_ak of Dede Agha£ comprised the kadds of Dede Aghac, Enez (Inos) and Sofrulu; the kadd of Dede Aghac comprised three ndhiyes, Feredjik, Meghri and Semadrek, and 41 villages. This was the position until the region was lost as a result of the Balkan War of 1912-3. Two mosques were built in the town, one in the Muslih al-DIn quarter in 1877, the other, in the Arab style, in the Hamidiyye quarter in 1890, in the court-yard of which the mutasarrif Trabzonlu Hiiseyn Rushdi Pasha is buried. In 1894 there were some 1500 houses in Dede Aghac". In the village of Fere-ilidjalari there were foundations of Ghazi Ewrenos Beg [q.v.~\ and of (Kodja) Dawud Pasha [q.v.].

Bibliography: Edirne Sdlndmesi for 1310 and 1317; CAH Djewad, Memdlik-i 'Othmdniyyenin ta^rlkh we dioghrdfyd lughdtl, i, Istanbul 1313; Badi Ahmed, Riydd-i Belde-i Edirne, iii (Bayezid Library, Istanbul). (M. TAYYIB GOKBILGIN)