Gümüşhacıköy is the westernmost district of Amasya, set in the middle of the broad plain between the Taşan and İnegöl mountains. It borders Merzifon to the east, Hamamözü to the south, Osmancık to the west and Vezirköprü to the north. Its name comes from the union of two separate settlements; Ottoman documents call the district "Gümüş ma'a Hacıköy", that is, Hacıköy together with Gümüş.
Gümüş is the old town built at the head of the silver mine on the eastern slope of İnegöl Dağı, and the mine is known to have been worked in the third millennium BC. A mint operated here in the Seljuk period, and Kılıç Arslan IV had coins struck at Gümüş in 1263; Ibn Battuta, passing through in 1332, calls the place "Madinat Gümüş". Hacıköy takes its name from Hacı Ahmed Çelebi, superintendent of the mine, who lived there from 1490-1491; the settlement's older name, Artukabad, survives as the name of a neighbourhood. Under the Ottomans the Haliliye Madrasa of Halil Pasha, a former intendant of the mine, and the Mosque of Yörgüç Pasha were built at Gümüş. Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, to whom the mine was granted as a benefice, built a bedesten, mosque, bathhouse and caravanserai at Hacıköy and endowed them in 1660-1661; with these buildings Hacıköy became a market town, and at the end of the nineteenth century it became the seat of the kaza. Hamamözü was separated from the district in 1990.
Mining is no longer an active trade. The economy rests on sugar beet, wheat, barley, pulses, tobacco and fruit, on livestock, and on flour and rope mills; roasted chickpeas and the festive keşkek baked in wood-fired ovens are among the district's best-known traditions. According to TÜİK figures for 2025, the district has 12 neighbourhoods and 44 villages. Six of the neighbourhoods are in the district centre and six in Gümüş, whose municipality was abolished in 2009.
