Karshiaka

Karshiaka (from Turkish Karşıyaka, ‘the opposite bank’) is the name of a residential area but it is often used in everyday speech to denote the entire Northern District of Plovdiv. Situated around the Plovdiv Grand Hotel and the St Ivan Rilski Church, the neighbourhood has provisional borders: the Filipovo Railway Station to the north, the Sugar Factory (Zacharna fabrika) to the west, the International Fair grounds to the east and the Maritsa River to the south. It begins its existence in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there is quite an influx of Bulgarian population and this is when the ‘Bulgarian profile’ of the population shaped up. Up to the mid-twentieth century relatively well-off farmers produced vegetables there using the river to water their crops. Petty merchants and craftsmen, as well as ferrymen who provided transportation on the river lived in that area of town too.