According to the inscription which was written both in Ottoman and Hebrew, the bazaar was built in 1890 with the permission of Abdulhamid II, made by Ilya Halyo, one of the prominent Jewish merchants of Çanakkale settled in the newly founded Canakkale in the 17th century. Toward the end of the 18th century there were approximately 50 Jewish families there. In the 19th century the Jewish population of Canakkale increased from about 550 Jews to 1,805 in 1894. In addition, in 1894 there were 926 foreign Jews, yabanciyan, in Canakkale. As the community tripled in size, the number of synagogues rose from one to three at the end of the 19th century, The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic opened a new era for the Jews of Canakkale. In 1934 anti-Jewish incidents took place in the area and as a result a considerable number of Jews took refuge in Istanbul.After 1948 many of the Jews of Canakkale settled in Israel. According to estimates, not more than 300–400 Jews were left in the town in 1970. In 2005 about 10 Jews lived there and there was only one synagogue.