Located to the west of the kaza Bursa and on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, the kaza bore the name of the town Mikhalitsa (also: Mikhalitsi – ‘Little Mikhail’; Tr: Mihalıç, today: Karacabey) since the 14th/15th centuries. The pre-Ottoman toponym is unknown. In the late 19th century Greek sources erroneously identified Mikhalitsa with the ancient city of Miletopolis (now M.Kemalpaşa-Melde).
While the Slavs who came to the region in the 7th century were Hellenized, those who came in the Ottoman period retained their original Slavic identity and took refuge in the Bulgarian Kingdom in 1914. The biggest Slavic village around was Koca Bunar.[1]
Raymond Kévorkian described Mihalitsa (Mihalıç) as a “small Greek town with 8,000 inhabitants”, among these 400 Armenians. “There were another five rural communities scattered throughout the area.”[2]
Like the Armenian population of the rest of the Sancak of Bursa, the Armenians of this kaza were deported in August 1915.