Located southwest of the city and the kaza Bursa, the administrative center of the kaza, the town Kirmasti lies on both banks of the Edrenos Čay (Rhyndacus), now called the Mustafa Kemal Paşa Çay. The origin of the name, often wrongly written Kirmāsli̊, which points to a Greek Κερμαστὴ (Kermasti) or Κρεμαστὴ (Kremasti), is uncertain, nor is it known what ancient town was here. Perhaps the Kremastis in the Troas mentioned in Xenophon (Hist, iv, 8), is to be connected with it.[1]
The name Kirmasti is an anagram of the original Greek toponym Kremasti (Κρεμαστή) and is first mentioned in an inscription of the Lala Şahin Pasha Mosque in 1348 and in 1911 it was elevated to the official name of the town. In republican times the name was changed to Mustafakemalpaşa in 1928.
Inhabited by Greeks until 1921, Kremasti’s history goes back to ancient times. In 300 A.D. it became a Christian bishopric until 1336, when it was occupied by the Ottomans.
“The densely populated kaza of Kirmasti had only one modest Armenian colony with around 1,000 members, all of whom lived in the seat of the kaza.”[2]
Like the Armenian population of the rest of the Sancak of Bursa, the Armenians of this kaza were deported in August 1915. When the Hellenic forces took Kremasti in 1920, the Christian, predominantly Greek population perceived this as liberation. An Armenian served as governor of the Kremasti county, while 2,000 Armenian and Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects served as auxiliaries in and for the Hellenic forces, including Armenian female paramilitaries.[3]