Ada Kaleh - History

History

The Austrians built a Vauban-type fort there to defend it from the Ottoman Empire, and that fort would remain a bone of contention for the two empires. In 1699 the island came under Turkish control; but from 1716 to 1738 it was recaptured by the Austrians, and the Fortress of New Orsova was built by Nicolaus Doxat de Démoret, an Austrian colonel of Swiss origin. After a four-month siege in 1738 it was Turkish again, followed by the Austrians re-conquering it in 1789, but they had to return the island to the Turks with the Treaty of Sistova on August 4, 1791, which ended the Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791) (and, by extension, the Ottoman–Habsburg wars) between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Monarchy. Thereafter, the island lost its military importance.

In 1804, during the First Serbian Uprising, Serbian rebels, led by Milenko Stojković, caught and executed the "Dahias", the Janissary junta, who had fled Belgrade and taken refuge on the island.

Even though the Ottoman Turks lost the areas surrounding the island after the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) (and the Romanian War of Independence which was a part of the same conflict) the island was totally forgotten during the peace talks at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which allowed it to remain a de jure Turkish territory and the Ottoman Sultan's private possession until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 (de facto until the Hungarian Kingdom unilaterally declared its sovereignty on the island in 1913.)

Between 1878 and 1918 the areas surrounding the island were controlled by Austria-Hungary, but the island's inhabitants (officially citizens of the Ottoman Empire) enjoyed exemption from taxes and customs and were not subject to conscription. The islanders also had the right to vote during the Ottoman general elections of 1908 following the Young Turk Revolution.

On May 12, 1913, the island was occupied by the forces of the Hungarian Kingdom of Austria-Hungary. It thus became known as Újorsova in the Krassó-Szörény County. This was one of the last unilateral territorial expansions of Hungary before the outbreak of the First World War; the seizure was never officially recognized by the Ottoman government.

Romania unilaterally declared its sovereignty in 1919 and strengthened its claim with the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. On July 24, 1923, Turkey officially ceded Ada Kaleh to Romania with Articles 25 and 26 of the Treaty of Lausanne; by formally recognizing the related provisions in the Treaty of Trianon.

The island was visited by King Carol II of Romania in 1931, and by Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel of Turkey on September 13, 1967.

The population lived primarily on the cultivation of tobacco and fishery, and later on tourism. In its last years of existence, the island's population ranged between 600 and 1,000 inhabitants.

The Ada Kaleh Mosque, dating from 1903, was built on the site of an earlier Franciscan monastery. The carpet of the mosque, a gift from the Turkish Sultan Abdülhamid II, was relocated to the Constanţa Mosque in 1965.