When Muharram, the first month of the Hijri calendar, arrives, a pleasant bustle begins in the kitchens of Amasya. Days in advance the wheat is set to soak, chickpeas and beans are picked over, and the stalls of the nut and dried-fruit sellers in the bazaar fill up with apricots, figs, raisins and hazelnuts. Once the cauldron is set on the fire, aşure, a dish that carries the memory of centuries, cooks slowly, and a few hours later bowls begin to travel from door to door. In this land aşure means far more than a sweet: it is a symbol of plenty, solidarity and sharing. Over the city's long history the month of Muharram has been lived both as a season of blessing and thanksgiving in the Sunni quarters and as the mourning for Karbala in the Alevi-Bektashi villages, and these two different feelings have met around the same cauldron.

The Month of Muharram and the Day of Ashura

Lexically, muharram means "that which is forbidden, prohibited" and at the same time "that which is sacred, revered". Before Islam the Arabs called this month "saferü'l-evvel" and counted it among the four sacred months in which fighting was forbidden. During the caliphate of Umar, in the year 17 (638), the Prophet's emigration from Mecca to Medina was adopted as the starting point of the official calendar, and Muharram became the first month of the Hijri year. In Ottoman documents the month was abbreviated with the single letter "mim". In palace custom Muharram also marked the beginning of the new year; the dignitaries of state came before the sultan to offer their new-year congratulations, received from him gifts known as "muharremiyye", and in turn distributed muharremiyye to those in their own service.

The tenth day of the month is called "Ashura" (âşûrâ). Some hold that the word derives from the root "ashr", connected with the number ten, while others claim a Hebrew origin; most scholars, however, accept that it is Arabic. According to a report transmitted by Aisha, Ashura was a day on which the Quraysh fasted in the pre-Islamic era, and the Prophet also observed this fast. After the emigration to Medina he continued it and instructed the Muslims to keep it as well, and when the Ramadan fast was made obligatory he left it to each believer to fast or not as they wished. The Prophet recommended that the ninth and eleventh days also be spent in fasting together with the tenth. In the Hanafi and Maliki schools fasting on the ninth and tenth, or on the tenth and eleventh of Muharram, is regarded as sunna; according to the Hanafis, fasting on the tenth day alone is disapproved (makruh).

The historian Eyüp Baş of the Faculty of Divinity at Ankara University offers a cautious interpretation of the origins of the Ashura fast. In his view, the Prophet's fasting on the same day as the Jews of Medina may also be read as a gesture meant to draw the communities of his new social setting together. In Jewish tradition Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the month of Tishri, is a day of atonement and purification; because the Jewish calendar is adjusted to the solar year this day always falls between September and October, while Ashura, bound to the lunar calendar, moves forward by some ten or eleven days each year.

Traditions Attached to the Day of Aşure

The story most often told among the people concerns Noah. According to it, when the flood subsided and the Ark came to rest on Mount Judi, the last provisions left on board were gathered together, and wheat, beans, chickpeas and whatever else remained were cooked in a single cauldron. This tale lends aşure a deep meaning. The meeting of the different ingredients left at hand in one pot, turning into a feast of plenty, has been seen as a tangible expression of unity and gratitude. That in many parts of Anatolia aşure is regarded as "the custom of the Prophet Noah" also stems from this belief.

Works of history, hadith and jurisprudence attach other events to this day as well. Among them are the acceptance of Adam's repentance, the deliverance of Moses and the Israelites from Pharaoh's oppression, Jonah's release from the belly of the fish, Joseph's rescue from the well, and the day on which Jacob's eyes regained their sight. Yusuf Şevki Yavuz, who wrote the article on Ashura in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, notes that these reports cannot be verified on scholarly grounds and that some of them are plainly mistaken. The emigration, for instance, is recorded in the sources under the date of 12 Rabi al-Awwal. The same article also observes that there is no sound report concerning practices such as bathing, applying kohl, dyeing with henna or cooking a dish of grains on Ashura. Eyüp Baş, too, believes that the attribution of so many momentous events to a single day should be explained by the historical outlook of the authors who recorded these traditions.

These debates have not changed the place the day holds in people's hearts. Whatever the historical accuracy of the traditions, aşure has for centuries been associated in Anatolia with the ideas of thanksgiving, deliverance and plenty, and it took its very name as a dish cooked and shared on the tenth of Muharram.

Karbala and the Two Faces of the Day

The event that gave Ashura an altogether different meaning was the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson Husayn, together with some seventy members of his family and companions, at the hands of Umayyad forces at Karbala on 10 Muharram 61 (10 October 680). From then on the day became a day of mourning for the Shia. The Umayyads, by contrast, encouraged the celebration of Ashura almost as a festival in order to make Karbala forgotten. Al-Biruni, who lived in the eleventh century, compares the two attitudes thus: the Umayyads would put on new clothes and adorn themselves on Ashura, apply kohl, give banquets and taste halva and sweets, whereas the Shia mourned Husayn, wept and visited his tomb at Karbala.

In 352 (963) the Buyid ruler Muizz al-Dawla proclaimed the first ten days of Muharram an official period of mourning for Husayn; in Baghdad the shops were closed, haircloth was hung in the streets and the people mourned dressed in black. In Turkish literature, too, the elegies on Karbala known as "muharremiyye" carried the voice of this grief. One of the earliest known examples of the genre is the poem in the Muhammediyye of Yazıcıoğlu Mehmed (d. 1451); in the sixteenth century Fuzuli's Hadîkatü's-suadâ became the principal text read during Muharram both in Sunni Sufi circles and among the Alevi-Bektashi communities.

Thus across the Ottoman lands Ashura lived on as a day of two different emotions. For the Sunni population it was an occasion of thanksgiving associated with Noah's deliverance and with plenty, while for the Alevi-Bektashi communities it was a time of mourning filled with grief for Husayn. In both traditions, however, the aşure cauldron remained the common symbol of the day.

Aşure in the Ottoman Empire: From Palace to Soup Kitchen

Among the Ottomans the palace led the aşure tradition. For the aşure to be cooked in the kitchens of Topkapı Palace, ingredients were issued from the Privy Pantry (Kilâr-ı Hâssa) and preparations began several days in advance. The aşure was cooked by cooks and pantry officers under the supervision of the chief confectioners (helvacıbaşı), and from the great cauldrons it was served first to the sultan and the harem, then to the dignitaries of state, to the public soup kitchens (imaret) and to the people, distributed over several days in special vessels called "aşure pitchers". According to the daybook kept by the private secretary, in 1735 two jugs of aşure flavoured with ambergris and musk, cooked in the palace, were taken to Mahmud I, who was then resting at Beylerbeyi Palace; one was served to the sultan and the other to his retinue.

Under Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) the people of Istanbul waited impatiently for the distribution of the aşure prepared in the kitchens of the Yıldız and Beşiktaş palaces. Aşure placed in palace pitchers and bowls was carried by tray-bearers to the mansions of high-ranking officials, and the next day, according to the custom called "the reply", the empty vessels were sent back to the palace filled with chocolate, sugared almonds and pistachios. For the distribution to the public, a "grainy" aşure was cooked with wheat, figs, raisins, dried apricots, chickpeas and broad beans, and on the eve of the tenth of Muharram fifty or sixty cauldrons were lined up on the Talimhane square at Yıldız. In the morning, once the imam of the imperial kitchen had prayed and the crowd had answered "amen", the gates were opened and queues formed before every cauldron. The "strained palace aşure" cooked in 1870 by Pertevniyal Sultan, mother of Sultan Abdülaziz, became famous as a refined variety prepared only with the creamy pulp of the wheat.

Beyond the palace, it was the pious endowments (waqf) that bore the real burden. Many endowment deeds contain the condition that "aşure be cooked in the month of Muharram and distributed to the people and the poor", and in keeping with this condition the Ministry of Pious Foundations had aşure cooked in the great soup kitchens. The daily fare of the imaret kitchens usually consisted of fodula bread, soup and pilaf, while aşure, zerde and zirbe stood out among the sweets; distributing aşure to the public on the tenth of Muharram was one of the well-known duties of the imarets. In the cities of Anatolia wealthy families and craft guilds also cooked aşure and distributed it ceremonially with water-bearers and prayer reciters, and in some regions a sacrifice was made after the distribution. Amasya, with its mosque complexes endowed with soup kitchens such as the Complex of Sultan Bayezid II, was part of this system. That those who organise aşure distributions in the courtyard of the Bayezid II Complex today speak of "keeping alive the historic imaret tradition" shows that this memory is still alive in the city.

The streets of Istanbul in Muharram also saw the goygoycus. This company, made up mostly of blind and disabled people who had come from Anatolia, would walk from quarter to quarter in groups of six behind a sighted guide, reciting elegies on Karbala and repeating at the end of every line the refrain "yâ hoy goy goy cânım". People gave them rice, wheat, beans and chickpeas as aşure provisions, and with the food they collected they had aşure cooked, which they both ate themselves and handed out. The goygoycus are believed to have appeared after 1826, and their begging in the streets was banned in 1908 with the Second Constitutional Era.

Customs of Cooking Aşure at Home

According to the notes Abdülaziz Bey wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, cooking aşure, even if only two bowls, between the tenth of Muharram and the end of the month was considered auspicious and a source of blessing. Wheat, rice, starch, chickpeas, beans, walnuts and almonds went into the aşure, and some also added dried figs, dried dates and seedless raisins. The wheat and the other ingredients were boiled separately, then combined and cooked again with sugar. When the aşure was done the household gathered around the cauldron, the suras Yasin and al-Mulk were recited, and the merit was dedicated to the souls of the departed of that house. When the tray covering the cauldron was lifted, everyone rubbed on their eyes the condensed steam known as "aşure sweat", believing it to bring good fortune. The first portion ladled onto a plate was not sent out of the house but kept at home to bring plenty.

The aşure was then poured into coloured pitchers and lidded bowls, sprinkled with pistachios, currants and, in season, pomegranate seeds, and sent to friends on trays covered with white cloths. Since returning a bowl unwashed was considered improper, the bowls were washed carefully before being returned. The first broad bean that came to one's mouth while eating aşure was taken out without being chewed, dried and placed in one's purse as a "bean of plenty"; a year later it was considered to have lost its virtue and was buried somewhere. In later times the aşure vessels themselves became an object of interest. As Muharram approached, glassware shops filled with every kind of aşure bowl and dish, and vessels given as gifts were remembered in the household by the name of the giver.

Some of these customs survive elsewhere in Anatolia as well. Considering the steam gathered under the cauldron lid as healing and rubbing it on the eyes is a practice known in Alevi-Bektashi circles too, and the rule that aşure must not stay in one's own house but must reach the neighbour and the needy is common to both traditions. In Amasya, too, the aşure that is prepared is distributed to neighbours, relatives and those in need. Giving one bowl and receiving another in return is the quiet but warm language of neighbourliness. The passage of bowls from door to door renews the bonds of the neighbourhood, and this chain of hospitality strengthens the sense of unity anew every year.

The Alevi-Bektashi Muharram Tradition in Amasya

Since the earliest phases of the Turkification and Islamisation of Anatolia, Amasya has been a region where both Sunni and Alevi-Bektashi communities lived in large numbers. From the eleventh century onwards the Amasya-Sivas-Tokat line became an area of settlement for nomadic Turkmen tribes, and tribes and clans such as the Rumlu, Ustacalu, Çepni, Afşar, Bayatlu and Beydili settled in the region. The village of Çetmi in the district of Gümüşhacıköy is one of the living traces of the Çepni presence in these lands. In the sixteenth-century registers of imperial decrees (mühimme), Amasya and its surroundings are listed among the places where the Qizilbash lived in large numbers. The historian Merve Karakulak counts love for Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt, devotion to the martyrs of Karbala and the Muharram mourning among the principal tenets of the Qizilbash communities.

In the Anatolian Alevi-Bektashi tradition the first ten or twelve days of Muharram are spent in fasting. During this time men do not shave, there is no entertainment, no weddings or engagements are held, and laments, elegies and sacred hymns (nefes) are recited; Fuzuli's Hadîkatü's-suadâ heads the texts read aloud on Muharram nights. In some places a "water fast" is kept, during which no water is drunk for the first ten days and the need for liquid is met only with juicy foods and tea. Although the mourning ends at noon on the tenth day, in many places the fast is continued until the twelfth. That aşure is cooked in the dervish lodges on the twelfth of Muharram is linked to the belief that Husayn's body was buried two days after his martyrdom.

In the Alevi-Bektashi tradition aşure is the food of mourning far more than of thanksgiving; it is cooked as a dedication to the souls of Husayn and those martyred with him. Out of reverence for the Twelve Imams the aşure must contain at least twelve ingredients, water and salt included; the number may be increased but never brought below twelve. That no meat is eaten during the mourning period, and that the aşure contains no animal products at all, is interpreted as an expression of revulsion at every form of killing in remembrance of Karbala. In the lodges the aşure is cooked in a cauldron regarded as sacred and called the "Kara Kazan" (Black Cauldron); taken down from its place with prayers on the tenth of Muharram, the cauldron is put back once the aşure has boiled. Every family contributes according to its means, and the ingredients are cooked separately and combined in the great cauldron at the final stage. The gathering of the ingredients from the households is as much a part of the ritual as the sharing of the cooked aşure.

In the Alevi-Bektashi memory of Amasya one of the places most closely associated with Muharram is the Tomb (türbe) of Hamdullah Efendi. Hamdullah Çelebi, whose real name was Mehmet Hamdi, was a Bektashi sheikh who in 1824 became head (postnişin) of the lodge of Hacı Bektaş Veli. After the abolition of the Janissary corps and the closure of the Bektashi lodges in 1826, he was exiled to Amasya in 1827 by a decree of Mahmud II. According to Alevi-Bektashi tradition he remained in Amasya until his death in 1836; Suraiya Faroqhi and Irène Mélikoff, however, write that he was pardoned in 1833, returned to Hacıbektaş and spent the rest of his life there. In his poems Hamdullah Çelebi used the pen name "Hamdullah" before coming to Amasya and "Hasretî" after his exile; his hymns of the miraçlama and tevhid types are still sung in cem ceremonies today.

The tomb in the Mehmet Paşa quarter is a square, single-domed building surrounded by a courtyard wall. Its date of construction is given differently in the sources; some report that a tomb was built over the grave in 1847, others that a plain grave was turned into a tomb in 1868. According to local lore Hamdullah Çelebi had said, "When I die, build my tomb; if you do not, a flood will sweep Amasya away", and when his words were ignored a great flood struck the city, after which the tomb was built. Inside the courtyard are sections such as a place for sacrificial animals, a hearth and a slaughtering place. The tomb is visited by both Alevis and Sunnis, and votive sacrifices are offered there. Today the cemevi and cultural centre bearing the name of Hamdullah Efendi hosts crowded aşure gatherings during Muharram.

The other sacred sites around the city are part of the same tradition. The tombs of Pîrî Baba in Merzifon, Baba İlyas in Amasya, Pîr Ali Bircivan in Gümüşhacıköy, and Ergona Baba and Fedai Baba in Yassıçal are places where visitors from the Alevi-Bektashi villages offer sacrifices, cook ritual food (lokma) and pray. During the days of mourning no weddings or festivities are held in these villages, and when the fast is over the aşure that is cooked is shared with neighbours near and far.

Aşure in the Homes of Amasya

In Amasya the preparations for aşure begin before Muharram arrives. The best-selling items at the city's nut and dried-fruit shops at this time are chickpeas, wheat, dried beans, apricots, raisins, figs and hazelnuts; families buy in large quantities both for their own homes and for their neighbours. The preparation starts the night before with the soaking of the wheat, chickpeas and beans. The next day the soaked grains are boiled separately, and the apricots and figs are cut into small pieces. In some homes orange peel and a cinnamon stick are dropped into the water for fragrance. The boiled grains are added to the simmering water, sugar is stirred in little by little, and when the mixture thickens the apricots, figs, almonds, hazelnuts and raisins go in; if it is too thin a little starch is added, and finally walnuts are stirred in before the pot is taken off the heat.

The aşure ladled into bowls is left to cool at room temperature and garnished with walnuts, hazelnuts, pomegranate seeds and cinnamon. The essentials of aşure are wheat, chickpeas, beans and dried apricots; beyond these the ingredients vary from house to house. Some families consider seven ingredients enough, some use ten because of the dish's name, while Alevi families cook it with twelve. The prayers recited over the cauldron, the setting aside of the first bowl and the order of distribution are kept up in most homes just as they were learned from the older generations.

The month of Muharram and the holy days within it are lived in Amasya with spiritual intensity. Besides aşure, neighbourliness and sharing also come to the fore on the holy nights (kandil); ritual sweets are handed out and prayers are said. As the day of aşure approaches, the elderly recall the sharing that went on from house to house in the villages and quarters, and the old Muharram days that passed in a festive mood. Just as different ingredients meet in the same pot, different families meet in these days at a common table of plenty, and for this reason aşure lives on as a cultural heritage of plenty and solidarity.

Aşure Distributions in Amasya Today

In recent years aşure in Amasya has moved beyond the home to the city's squares and historic buildings. At the Sultan Bayezid II Mosque the Provincial Mufti's Office holds mevlid programmes for Muharram and the Day of Aşure; in the prayers all martyrs are remembered, the martyrs of Karbala first among them, and at the end of the programme the congregation is offered aşure prepared by the Directorate of Pious Foundations. Four thousand bowls of aşure distributed by the Tokat Regional Directorate of Pious Foundations in the garden of the same mosque ran out in about two hours, and domestic and foreign tourists visiting the city joined the people of Amasya in the distribution. In another year the governor and other officials handed out aşure at stands set up in the mosque courtyard after the Friday prayer, and over the course of the day eight thousand people were served.

The offering of aşure has not remained the business of official institutions alone. Led by a village headman's office and supported by benefactors, aşure for some four thousand people was distributed in the same mosque courtyard, and the organisers said they had done so as a charity for a deceased relative and wished to make it a tradition. The Amasya Municipality and the Amasya branch of the Cem Foundation jointly offered aşure on the Şehzadeler promenade, and the aşure gathering organised by the Hamdullah Efendi Association for Culture and Remembrance at the Hamdullah Efendi Cemevi and Cultural Centre was attended by the governor, the mayor, members of parliament and many citizens. In this way the Sunni and Alevi traditions, in the same weeks of Muharram and in different corners of the same city, set tables that open onto one another.

In 2026 the Hijri new year and the month of Muharram began on Tuesday, 16 June, and the Day of Aşure, the tenth of the month, fell on Thursday, 25 June. Because the lunar calendar comes forward by about eleven days each year, aşure reaches the table in Amasya in some years as a warm sweet in the depths of winter and in others as a cool treat at the start of summer. Whatever the season, the soaking of the wheat overnight, the prayer said over the cauldron and the bowls travelling from door to door remain the same. A spoonful of aşure holds together the story of the years, regard for the neighbour and the taste of gratitude; and in Amasya the aşure cauldron lives on as a moment of gathering in which a community renews its virtue of sharing year after year.

Chronology

10 Muharram 61 (10 October 680): Husayn and his companions are martyred at Karbala; Ashura becomes a day of mourning for the Shia.

17 (638): Under Umar the Hijra is adopted as the start of the calendar; Muharram becomes the first month of the Hijri year.

352 (963): The Buyid ruler Muizz al-Dawla proclaims the first ten days of Muharram an official period of mourning in Baghdad.

1451: Death of Yazıcıoğlu Mehmed, who included one of the earliest Turkish poems on Karbala in his Muhammediyye.

16th century: The registers of imperial decrees list Amasya and its surroundings among the places with a dense Qizilbash population; Fuzuli writes the Hadîkatü's-suadâ.

1735: Aşure flavoured with ambergris and musk, cooked in the palace, is taken to Mahmud I at Beylerbeyi Palace.

1824: Hamdullah Çelebi becomes head of the lodge of Hacı Bektaş Veli.

1826: The Janissary corps is abolished and the Bektashi lodges are closed; the goygoycus are believed to have appeared in Istanbul after this date.

1827: Hamdullah Çelebi is exiled to Amasya by a decree of Mahmud II.

1833: According to Faroqhi and Mélikoff, Hamdullah Çelebi is pardoned and returns to Hacıbektaş.

1836: According to Alevi-Bektashi tradition, Hamdullah Çelebi dies in Amasya.

1847 / 1868: Dates given in the sources for the building of the Tomb of Hamdullah Efendi or the conversion of the grave into a tomb.

1870: The "strained palace aşure" cooked by Pertevniyal Sultan becomes famous.

1876-1909: Under Abdülhamid II aşure is distributed to the public by the cauldron on the Talimhane square at Yıldız.

1908: With the proclamation of the Second Constitutional Era, begging in the streets by the goygoycus is banned.

2026: The month of Muharram begins on 16 June; the Day of Aşure falls on 25 June.

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