Muğla is one of the oldest cities of the region of Caria, and in the old records the name of the town centre appears as Mobolia. Around 3400 BC a people settled here under a leader named Kar. The region came under Dorian rule around 1000 BC, joined the Pergamene-Roman union after 228 BC, and became a Roman province in 133 BC.
It passed to the Turks in 1284, taken by Menteşe Bey, one of the march lords, and from that date the region began to be called Menteşe.
Ottoman rule came in stages. Bayezid I annexed the region in 1391; in 1402 it fell to Timur, who gave it back to the Menteşe principality, and under Murad II it became part of the Ottoman empire again. In 1811 the sancaks of Saruhan, İzmir and Menteşe were taken from Kütahya and attached to the province of Aydın.
