The Anatolian Seljuk state built a solid administrative structure to govern, under a central order, the cities it had conquered or inherited from the Danishmendids. One of the most important links in that structure was the governor who ruled a city in the sultan's name. Amasya, with a castle commanding the roads that joined Samsun to inner Anatolia through the Yeşilırmak valley, with fertile land and a large population, was among the cities whose government was entrusted to the most reliable and distinguished statesmen. Called "Dâr al-izz", the abode of glory and honour, in medieval sources, the city was counted among the large and developed towns of thirteenth-century Seljuk Anatolia. In the Seljuk age the fortunes of Amasya were shaped to a great extent by the competence of the emirs who governed it.

The names of these governors are known today mostly through the buildings they left behind. The madrasa and tomb of Halîfet Gazi, the mosque of Hacı Nureddin Tuğrak, the Burmalı Minare Mosque of Necmeddin Ferruh and the Gökmedrese of Seyfeddin Torumtay introduce the city's Seljuk administrators through inscriptions carved in stone. When the information given by these inscriptions, by the endowment deeds and by contemporary historians such as Ibn Bibi and Aksarayî is combined with the compilations of Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, who wrote the history of Amasya at the beginning of the twentieth century, a fairly detailed portrait emerges of the statesmen who governed Amasya for roughly a century and a half.

The Governor in the Seljuk Provincial Administration

In the Seljuk provincial administration, cities were usually entrusted to rulers bearing the titles of malik, emir or subaşı. The title malik was used for governorships given to the sultan's sons and members of the dynasty. Emir and subaşı, on the other hand, denoted statesmen appointed by the sultan from outside the dynasty. These men were invested with both military and civil powers and represented the sultan's authority in the city. In frontier and passage towns such as Amasya, the governor at the same time took on the roles of castle commander, keeper of public order and pioneer of building works. This many-sided responsibility demanded personal ability from the men appointed as much as loyalty to the state.

The Office of Subaşı

In Old Turkish the word "sü" means army, and subaşı originally meant commander of the army. Among the Anatolian Seljuks the subaşıs ranked among the select officials of the state; after the conquest of a city they were charged with both its administration and its defence. The appointment was made by a menşur, a written patent granted by the sultan. According to the sources, the distinguishing qualities of a good subaşı were to be just, to respect customary law, and to bear the pen and the sword, learning and wisdom together. Sanjak subaşıs were appointed to sanjaks, land subaşıs to districts and village subaşıs to villages, and each of them was assigned an iqta (iktâ) for his livelihood. When a campaign was proclaimed, the subaşıs joined the army with the forces under their command. The rulers of Amasya in the Seljuk period appear in the sources sometimes as governor, sometimes as subaşı and sometimes as emir; these titles describe the same office from different sides.

The Iqta and the Governor's Revenue

The governor's power rested largely on the iqta system. The sultan left the tax revenue of state lands to his emirs in return for military service; these grants were entered in the registers of the divan, and the patents were renewed each time a new sultan came to the throne. According to a patent quoted by Ibn Bibi, the holder of an iqta could not alter the taxes, rights and obligations of the peasants living on the land, and could not demand from the farmer "so much as a bird's wing" more. Amasya was sometimes granted directly as the iqta of an emir and sometimes left to the administration of a governor appointed in the sultan's name. It is recorded that in his last years Amasya was the iqta of Seyfeddin Torumtay, and a large part of the revenues that sustained the buildings he raised in the city came from this arrangement.

The Qadi, the Dizdar and the City's Other Officials

The governor was not alone in the city. The qadi, who heard cases under Islamic law, the dizdar (castle warden), who was responsible for guarding the fortress, and the officials who dealt with the collection of taxes formed the other pillars of administration. In Amasya the office of qadi often carried a weight in the city's political life no less than that of the governor. Evhadeddin Mahmud el-Kimârî, the uncle of Hacı Nureddin Tuğrak, served for a time as qadi of Amasya and then went to Konya. Fahreddin Ali, who was raised to the judgeship after the Babaî Revolt, would be a member of the delegation that set out to make peace with the Mongols after the defeat at Köse Dağ. The post of dizdar was also a step towards high office: before rising to the governorship, Seyfeddin Torumtay was commander of the castle of Amasya.

From the Danishmendids to the Seljuks

Turkish rule in Amasya began after Manzikert with the conquests of the Danishmendid Gümüştegin Ahmed Gazi; it is recorded that İltekin Gazi, one of Ahmed Gazi's commanders, took the city from Byzantium in 1075. In 1101 the combined forces of the Seljuk sultan Kılıç Arslan I and Ahmed Gazi inflicted a heavy defeat on a large Crusader army advancing eastward on the plain between Merzifon and Amasya. The oldest Turkish building in the city is the mosque that the Danishmendid Melik Gazi had built just east of the castle, on the site of today's Şamlar Mosque. Under the Seljuk sultan Mesud I, Amasya was for a time under the administration of a bey named Tuğrul, and after Mesud's death in 1155 it was left, together with Sivas, to his son-in-law, the Danishmendid Yağıbasan.

Kılıç Arslan II pursued with determination his policy of annexing the Danishmendid lands. To halt this expansion, the Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos sent Kılıç Arslan's brother Şâhinşah, together with Michael Gabras, against Amasya, but Şâhinşah was ambushed near Eskişehir and Byzantium's wish to take Amasya came to nothing. The Danishmendids' rule of about a century came to an end when Kılıç Arslan II captured Amasya in 1175, and the city thus passed directly under Seljuk administration.

Amasya in the Age of the Maliks

In his old age Kılıç Arslan II divided his realm among his sons. The date of this partition is given in the sources as between 1184-85 and 1185-86, and the number of sons appears as eleven in some sources and twelve in others. In this division Amasya fell to the share of Nizâmeddin Argunşah. While Kılıç Arslan sat in Konya as suzerain ruler, the maliks struck coins in their own names in the provinces they held, had their own names read in the Friday sermon after the sultan's, and could even conclude treaties with Byzantium. Ibn Bibi writes that these maliks were in no way dependent on their father and were empowered to do everything in their own lands. This arrangement made Amasya, for a short time, the centre of an almost independent principality.

The struggle for the throne that broke out among the brothers also ended Argunşah's rule in Amasya. His brother Rükneddin Süleyman Şah, malik of Tokat, seized the Seljuk throne in 1196 and shortly afterwards took Amasya from Argunşah as well. The city thus became, like many other districts, a province directly subject to the sultan, and from then on it was governed by emirs appointed by the sultan instead of members of the dynasty. The period from this date to the Babaî Revolt is remembered in the sources as Amasya's prosperous days in political, economic and cultural terms.

Mübârizüddin Halîfet Gazi

One of the best known of Amasya's Seljuk governors is Mübârizüddin Halîfet Gazi, popularly called Hilfet Gazi. A Danishmendid emir, Halîfet Gazi entered the service of the Seljuks after the principality came to an end. Izzeddin Kaykaus I, who conquered Sinop in 1215, charged him with guarding the Black Sea coast; his leading role in the defence of the region began with this post. He was appointed to the governorship of Amasya under Alâeddin Kayqubad I, in 619 (1222). Some sources link his administration of Amasya to the reign of Izzeddin Kaykaus I and state that he served in the city between 1222 and 1228. He later took part in Alâeddin Kayqubad's campaign against the Mengücekids, was made governor of Erzurum after the victory, and fell as a martyr in 1232 during the campaign against the Georgians, being buried in his tomb in Amasya.

The madrasa inscription, which after falling to the ground was taken to the garden of the Orphanage, where Uzunçarşılı read it, states that the building was erected in 606 (1209-10) by "the emir, the warrior for the faith, the ghazi Mübârizüddin Halîfet Alp bin Suli". His endowment deed of 622 (1225) has also survived. Read together, the inscription and the deed show that his father's name was Suli or Tuli and his grandfather's Türkânşah; among the witnesses of the deed is his uncle İbrahim b. Tuli b. Türkânşah. The Dânişmendnâme, however, makes him the son of Artuhi and names his mother as Efrumiye Banu, daughter of Şettat, lord of Harşena. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, without citing any source, connects him to the Koyunlu tribe and gives his father's name as Güdül Bey. Uzunçarşılı and Refet Yinanç have pointed out that these accounts cannot be reconciled with the inscription and the deed.

Halîfet Gazi's name is also linked with learning. A medical book was translated from Persian into Turkish in his name: Hekim Bereket's Lübâbü'n-nühab, whose Persian original bears the title Tuhfe-i Mübârizî. According to the endowment deed, the branches and principles of jurisprudence were taught in the madrasa; whether the positive sciences were taught is unclear. The first teacher of the madrasa is recorded as a scholar named Kadı Burhâneddin. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin writes that Fahreddin Ali, who would later become qadi of Amasya, was one of the famous teachers training students in Halîfet Gazi's time, and that the governor, as a sign of the value he placed on learning, had a madrasa built for these scholars in the Güdül quarter in 622 (1225-26). Archival records show that teaching was still carried on in the madrasa at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The relationship between the madrasa and the tomb has long occupied scholars. According to the Dânişmendnâme the building was converted from a church into a madrasa, and Albert Gabriel shares this view. Metin Sözen thinks the arched section may be the façade of an earlier Byzantine building. Inside the tomb adjoining the madrasa on the east, with its square base, octagonal body and pyramidal cone, stands a Roman marble sarcophagus decorated with the figure of a sleeping woman. Some scholars argue that the tomb is contemporary with the madrasa or older than it; Doğan Kuban proposes to date it to the middle of the twelfth century, and Gabriel and Oktay Aslanapa to 540 (1145-46). After the earthquake of 1647 the madrasa was repaired in timber by the teacher Hasan Efendi, and in 1888 the mufti of Amasya, Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi, had the building thoroughly restored.

Amasya under Alâeddin Kayqubad

Alâeddin Kayqubad I regarded Amasya as one of the administrative centres of his state. He is known to have had the city rebuilt after an earthquake and, when the Mongol danger appeared, to have had the walls of Amasya repaired and strengthened like those of the other great Seljuk cities. When the Mongols became a threat, the sultan wished to draw on the experience of the Khwarazmian commanders who had fought them. Erzincan, Amasya, Lârende and Niğde were granted as iqtas to these commanders, who had entered Seljuk service after the Battle of Yassıçimen. In 1231-32 Amasya was assigned to the Khwarazmian Bereket Khan. Considered together with the records stating that the city was also governed by a Seljuk governor in the same years, this grant shows that the holder of the iqta and the governor of the city could be different persons.

Hacı Nureddin Tuğrak, Master of the Hunt

The governor of Amasya in this period was Hacı Nureddin Tuğrak. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, Tuğrak, son of Sadreddin Suli Bey bin İbrahim Bey, chief of the Kimârlu clan, and younger brother of the well-known emir Mübârizeddin Behram Bey, became governor of Amasya in 627 (1229-30) and remained in office for five years. It is recorded that in 629 (1231-32), when the Mongols advanced as far as Sivas, he went to its aid with the forces of Amasya. The four-line Arabic inscription of the building he had raised in the Mehmed Paşa quarter on the bank of the Yeşilırmak states that he was the emîr-i şikâr, the master of the hunt, of Alâeddin Kayqubad, and that he had the building erected in 631 (1233-34). The inscription calls the building a mosque. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, the building lost its function as a mosque in the fifteenth century, when Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Paşa built a large mosque close by, and it was converted into a madrasa. The madrasa, which ought to have been called Tuğrakiye after its founder, came to be known in popular speech as Doğrakiye or Duğrakiye.

Tuğrak died in 632 (1234-35) and was buried in the tomb beside his madrasa. In this building, popularly called the İnekler Türbesi ("Tomb of the Cows") but originally the İnanç Türbesi, his son Şemseddin İnanç and his grandson İzzeddin Balaban are said to lie as well. The appointment of a Seljuk master of the hunt to the governorship of Amasya suggests that the city also mattered to the sultans as a hunting ground; Mahmut Demir notes that the activities of two different masters of the hunt are found in no other Seljuk city. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin also writes that Tuğrak Bey was a disciple of Baba İlyas-ı Horasânî, yet did not permit Baba İshak's activities in Amasya; this information shows the local background of the revolt that would break out a few years later. The madrasa was ruined when the Yeşilırmak flooded in 1891, was repaired by its last teacher, Canikli Mehmed Efendi, but eventually disappeared altogether.

The Babaî Revolt and the Subaşı Armağanşah

After the death of Alâeddin Kayqubad in 1237, poor government of the country led to severe social upheavals in the Seljuk state. The greatest of these was the Babaî Revolt, one of whose centres was Amasya. The movement began under the leadership of Baba İlyas-ı Horasânî, who had founded a dervish lodge in the village of Çat near Amasya, while its actual operations were directed by Baba İshak, who set out from the village of Kefersud. Moving from Kefersud, Kâhta and Adıyaman, the rebels defeated the Seljuk army that met them at Sivas and then seized the districts of Amasya and Tokat. Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II withdrew as a precaution to Kubadabad and charged Hacı Mübârizüddin Armağanşah, whom he had appointed subaşı of Amasya, with suppressing the revolt.

Armağanşah reached the city ahead of the rebels, restored order, and had the leader of the movement seized and hanged from a tower of the castle of Amasya (1240). In most sources the man executed is Baba İlyas; some studies, however, state that the man executed in the castle was Baba İshak. According to the view based on the research of Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Baba İlyas was captured and executed in the castle of Amasya, while Baba İshak was routed and killed by the Seljuk army as he marched on Konya with his followers. The revolt could be put down only with great difficulty and by recalling the eastern army held at Erzurum against the Mongols. This difficulty showed the Mongols in Azerbaijan that the state was not as strong as it seemed from outside.

Those who defended Amasya during the revolt were not only the sultan's soldiers. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, Fahreddin Ali b. Muhammed el-Buhârî, one of the city's scholars, tried to warn and calm the people against the Babaîs and stood at the head of the units defending the city. After the revolt was suppressed, Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II came to Amasya and appointed him qadi of Amasya in 638 (1240-41).

Vizier, Qadi and Peace after Köse Dağ

In the summer of 1243 the Seljuk army was defeated at Köse Dağ, northeast of Sivas, by the Mongols under Baiju Noyan. According to Ibn Bibi the battle took place on 11 Muharram 641 (1 July 1243), and according to his contemporary Ibn al-Adim on 13 Muharram. On the night of the rout the sultan withdrew to Tokat and the vizier Mühezzebüddin Ali to Amasya. Hearing of the massacre the Mongols had carried out in Kayseri, the vizier summoned Fahreddin Ali, the qadi of Amasya, and the two statesmen resolved to try the road of peace. The delegation, which the qadi also joined, set out with valuable gifts, met the Mongols at Erzurum and was directed to Mughan to negotiate with Baiju Noyan.

Under the treaty signed at Mughan the Seljuks were to give the Mongols every year 3,600,000 dirhams, 10,000 sheep, 1000 cattle and 1000 camels. Since it was thought that the treaty also had to be guaranteed by a Mongol khan, a new embassy was sent to Batu Khan. Fahreddin Ali, a member of this embassy, thus travelled as far as the Dasht-i Qipchaq. As tokens of vassalage Batu Khan sent the sultan an arrow, a bow, a sword and a cap. With this rout the strongest state in Anatolia sank to the status of a vassal, and the ever-growing tax burden impoverished both the state and the people. After Köse Dağ, Amasya too was taken by the Mongols and for a time was governed by Mongol governors.

The Governorship under Mongol Tutelage

After Köse Dağ, Amasya became one of the places the Mongols frequented. The Mongol clans that settled in Anatolia settled mostly in Central Anatolia, where Amasya also lay; among those who settled around Amasya the Cagunçar clans, known as the clans of the left wing, stand out. The Mongols seized summer pastures, drove out landholders and damaged villages on various pretexts. When Seyfeddin Haydar, governor of Amasya at this time, took the side of the landholders, the Mongols complained of him to Baiju Noyan, and Haydar had to leave the city for his new post at Elbistan. In 1256, after defeating the Seljuk forces at the Battle of Sultan Hanı, Baiju Noyan carried out a campaign of intimidation against the supporters of Izzeddin Kaykaus II in Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Kayseri, Maraş and Malatya.

Seyfeddin Torumtay

Seyfeddin Torumtay, who succeeded Haydar, stands out as a governor who both ruled Amasya and endowed it with splendid buildings. He had entered the palace under Alâeddin Kayqubad, became dizdar of the castle of Amasya towards the end of the reign of Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II, served for a time as emir of Malatya, and was then appointed governor of Amasya. The beginning of his governorship is given as 1243 in some sources and 1249 in others; for its end, 1277, when Abaqa Khan occupied the Seljuk cities, and 1280, the year of his death, are given. Finding on his arrival a city whose order had collapsed, Torumtay set up an administration that looked first of all to the people, and in the face of growing Mongol pressure became one of the chief guarantees of the state's existence.

His governorship fell in the very middle of the struggle for the Seljuk throne between Izzeddin Kaykaus II and Rükneddin Kılıç Arslan IV. Amasya nominally belonged to Kaykaus but was in fact in the hands of Torumtay, who also bore the title of beylerbey; on one occasion when Kaykaus was in the city with his officers of state, he gave the nearby village of İl-Arslan to the interpreter Emir Esededdin Ali b. Yağıbasan for three hundred gold pieces. In 1258 Hülegü Khan divided the Seljuk realm in two and left the land east of the Kızılırmak, where Amasya lay, to Kılıç Arslan IV. Şah Melik Bey, whom the vizier Muînüddin Süleyman Pervâne had appointed subaşı of Simre, withdrew to the fortress of Gedegra near Amasya and rebelled, and at the end of a siege was handed over to the Mongols. That Zukay, steward of Alıncak Noyan, demanded tax even for newborn children in Amasya and sold the children of families who could not pay to Egyptian slave traders is among the bitter memories recorded by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin.

Torumtay's most dangerous days came during the Hatîroğlu revolt of 1276. His son Sinâneddin Musa, counted among the anti-Mongol emirs, had been sent to Damascus to seek help from the Mamluk sultan Baybars. When the revolt was put down, Torumtay, brought to judgement before Abaqa Khan, said that he had joined the revolt under compulsion and threat of death; he saved his life by undertaking to pay 400,000 dirhams and 200 horses and to maintain 1000 Mongol soldiers through the winter. In 1277, while he was in Kayseri, Mâh Âlem, chief of the Güdürlü tribe, attacked Amasya and killed his deputy İzzeddin Gül Bey; Torumtay defeated Mâh Âlem at Bozok and regained control of the city. The Gökmedrese, which he sustained with his endowment deed of 665 (1266-67), and his tomb dated 677 (1278-79) are the chief works he left the city. His death is dated 1278 in some sources and 1280 in others. After his death the governorship of Amasya was given to his grandson Nâsıreddin Mehmed Bey, the son of Sinâneddin Musa.

Necmeddin Ferruh and the Burmalı Minare Mosque

The inscription over the door of the Burmalı Minare Mosque, one of the emblematic buildings of Amasya, states that the building was erected and endowed in the reign of Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II, son of Kayqubad, in 640 (1242-43), by the master of the hunt Ferruh and his brother Yusuf the treasurer. Some writers, taking the word "amere" in the inscription in the sense of repair, thought that Ferruh had merely restored the mosque, but Semavi Eyice points out that this word was used for any newly built work. In some sources Necmeddin Ferruh is called a vizier and the mosque is said to have been built in 1242. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin states that he saw his name in an old document in the form "el-emîrü'l-kebîr Necmeddin Buruk" and argues that the name Ferruh is an Arabicised form of the Turkish word "buruk".

Ferruh's later life is a good example of how a Seljuk emir who rose in Amasya made his career. According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, in 655 (1257-58) he was Torumtay's steward and governed the city as deputy governor in his absence. As master of the horse (emîr-i âhur) to Rükneddin Kılıç Arslan IV, he helped the sultan escape from the battlefield after the defeat suffered near Tokat against his elder brother Izzeddin Kaykaus II. He then served as governor of Canik and became governor of Amasya at the end of 681 (1282-83). When Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II came to the throne, he rose to the vizierate with the title "sâhib". It is related that he died in Amasya in 690 (1291) and was buried in the tomb adjoining the mosque. In later periods the tomb came to be called the Cumudar Türbesi because a Mongol commander named Cumudar was also buried there; the basis of this information, which Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin gives with the words "according to the records", is unknown. Ferruh's son-in-law İzzeddin Mehmed Pervâne Bey drew up an endowment deed for the mosque in 699 (1299-1300).

The Last Years of Seljuk Rule

After coming to the throne in 1282, the Ilkhanid ruler Ahmad Tegüder divided the Seljuk realm administratively in two. The western part centred on Konya was given to Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw III, and the province of Dânişmendiye, centred on Amasya, to Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II. Amasya thus once again became the administrative centre of a region, but these years were hard for the city. In 1286-87 the shortage of food grew so severe that the meat of cats, mice and dogs was sold, and in 1289-90 a great flood struck. In the financial arrangements Ghazan Khan made after 1296, the district of Amasya and Samsun was left in the charge of the deputy Kemâleddin Tiflisî. Tiflisî entered the city with an ostentatious procession, sent orders of heavy taxation and confiscation to the provinces and even collected the taxes of the following years in advance; the farmers were forced to abandon their homes and migrate.

After coming to the throne a second time in 1302, Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II gave Amasya, together with Gedegra and Sinop, to his son Tâceddin Altunbaş, known as "Gazi Çelebi". When Mesud died in Kayseri in 1308, his body was taken to Amasya, which was under his son's administration; in the city there is a tomb claimed to be his. After the end of the Seljuk dynasty Amasya was governed by Ilkhanid governors and then by the emirs of the Eretnid state. This period, which continued with the emirate of Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa and his son Fahreddin Ahmed, closed with the city's incorporation into the Ottoman lands in the 1390s.

The Governors' Twofold Duty: Sword and Building

The Seljuk governors were obliged to defend the city against outside threats. The castle of Amasya on its steep rocks and its hidden water passages were the strongest supports of this defence. The castle, which controlled the Samsun-Tokat road, played an active role in Seljuk times. That the subaşı had the leader of the Babaî Revolt executed on a tower of the castle, that the vizier took refuge in the city on the night of Köse Dağ, and that Torumtay was dizdar of the castle before becoming governor, clearly show the castle's place in the city's administration. Alâeddin Kayqubad's repair of the walls against the Mongol danger was the product of the same concern.

Yet the governors' duty was not confined to the sword. They also mobilised the wealth and influence they had acquired for the prosperity of the city. The madrasa of Halîfet Gazi (1209-10), the mosque of Nureddin Tuğrak (1233-34), the mosque of Ferruh and his brother Yusuf (1242-43) and Torumtay's Gökmedrese (at the latest 1266-67) are documented examples of this building activity. The Gökmedrese, named so in its endowment deed, was used in its day as both madrasa and mosque. With its entrance framed on both sides by cylindrical corner towers and its thick, inward-looking walls of cut stone, it bears all the characteristic features of Seljuk architecture; its wooden door leaves in the kündekâri technique are now in the Amasya Museum. Mosques, madrasas, tombs and bridges rose as tangible signs of these governors' piety and charity. Considering that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there were nine mosques, ten madrasas and fifteen baths in Amasya, it becomes clear that the foundations of this accumulation were laid in the time of the Seljuk governors.

The Waqf Institution and Administration

Behind the lasting traces the Seljuk governors left in the city lay a strong tradition of pious endowment (waqf). To keep a madrasa or mosque he had built standing, the governor would endow it with shops, gardens and lands that brought it income. These endowments secured, along with the upkeep of the building, the livelihood of the teachers, imams and students who served there. Halîfet Gazi's endowment deed of 622 (1225) is a document that also specifies which subjects were to be taught in the madrasa. Torumtay's endowment deed of 665 (1266-67), since the mosque's inscription has been lost, is the only reliable basis for dating the Gökmedrese.

The waqf established a legal order that outlived its founder. The trusteeship of the Burmalı Minare Mosque passed in time to the Müeyyedzâde family; when the mosque was damaged in the earthquake of 999 (1590-91) and burned in 1011 (1602-03), it was revived by the trustee Müeyyedzâde Pîrî Çelebi. The Halîfet Gazi Madrasa was repaired in the nineteenth century on the initiative of the mufti Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi. In this way a governor's pious work became an institution that went on living for centuries after him. That Amasya's Seljuk buildings have survived to the present day is largely the work of this deep-rooted waqf system.

Balancing the Centre and the Province

The governors of Amasya had to remain loyal to the sultan on the one hand and win the hearts of the local people and the city's notables on the other. In the period of Mongol tutelage a third party, the noyans and their tax collectors, was added to this balance. The removal of Seyfeddin Haydar from the city for protecting the landholders, and Torumtay's success in coming to terms with the Mongols so as both to look after the people and to keep his office, show two different outcomes of this delicate balance. Just, generous and capable governors were remembered with respect in the people's memory; oppressive tax officials such as Kemâleddin Tiflisî, on the other hand, left behind such hatred that when he left the city not even a guide could be found to show him the way.

Some governors became, after their deaths, something like spiritual protectors through the stories that grew up around their tombs. The name of Halîfet Gazi, who fell as a martyr fighting the Georgians and was brought back to Amasya for burial, lived on in popular speech together with the epithet "gazi". The İnanç Türbesi, where the family of Tuğrak Bey lies, came in time, under the influence of superstition, to be called the İnekler Türbesi. That the tombs of Halîfet Gazi and Torumtay are still visited today shows how strong this bond is.

A Tradition Reaching into the Ottoman Period

The governors who ruled Amasya in the Seljuk period left the city more than an administrative order; they also gave it a tradition of learning, culture and building. Many scholars and artists were raised in Amasya in Seljuk times; the rise of Fahreddin Ali, who taught in Halîfet Gazi's time, to the judgeship of the city shows the link between the learned circle the governors patronised and the administration of the city. The periods when the maliks struck coins in their own names in Amasya and when Ahmad Tegüder left the province of Dânişmendiye, centred on Amasya, to Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II had long since shown how well suited the city was to be the seat of a member of the dynasty.

The path they opened prepared the institutional foundations of Amasya, which would shine in the Ottoman age as a princes' sanjak. The dispatch to Amasya, beginning with Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), of princes such as Murad II, Mehmed II (the Conqueror) and Bayezid II as sanjak governors rested on the order of government that the Seljuk maliks and governors had established here. The madrasas of Ottoman Amasya rose beside the Seljuk endowments, and buildings such as Halîfet Gazi and Burmalı Minare were kept alive by Ottoman trustees. This legacy, which the Seljuk governors inscribed in stone, in endowments and in the people's memory, forms the first layer of the labour that turned Amasya from a frontier fortress into a city of civilisation.

Chronology

1075: The Danishmendid İltekin Gazi is recorded as taking Amasya from Byzantium.

1101: Kılıç Arslan I and the Danishmendid Ahmed Gazi defeat the Crusader army between Merzifon and Amasya.

1175: Kılıç Arslan II takes Amasya; Danishmendid rule comes to an end.

1184-86: Kılıç Arslan II divides his realm among his sons; Amasya is given to Nizâmeddin Argunşah.

After 1196: Rükneddin Süleyman Şah takes Amasya from Argunşah.

606 (1209-10): Date of the inscription of the Halîfet Gazi Madrasa.

619 (1222): Halîfet Gazi is appointed governor of Amasya.

622 (1225): Endowment deed of the Halîfet Gazi Madrasa.

627 (1229-30): Hacı Nureddin Tuğrak becomes governor of Amasya.

1231-32: Amasya is granted as an iqta to the Khwarazmian Bereket Khan.

1232: Halîfet Gazi falls as a martyr on the Georgian campaign.

631 (1233-34): Date of the inscription of Tuğrak's mosque; his death in 632 (1234-35).

1240: The Babaî Revolt; the subaşı Mübârizüddin Armağanşah has the leader of the revolt executed in the castle of Amasya.

638 (1240-41): Fahreddin Ali is appointed qadi of Amasya.

640 (1242-43): Date of the inscription of the Burmalı Minare Mosque.

1 July 1243: Battle of Köse Dağ; the vizier Mühezzebüddin Ali withdraws to Amasya.

1243 / 1249: Dates given for the beginning of Seyfeddin Torumtay's governorship.

1258: Hülegü Khan divides the Seljuk realm; Amasya falls to Kılıç Arslan IV's share.

665 (1266-67): Torumtay's endowment deed for the Gökmedrese.

1276-1277: The Hatîroğlu revolt and Mâh Âlem's raid on Amasya.

677 (1278-79): Date of the inscription of the Torumtay Türbesi.

1282: The province of Dânişmendiye, centred on Amasya, is given to Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II.

681 (1282-83): Necmeddin Ferruh's governorship of Amasya.

690 (1291): Ferruh is said to have died in Amasya.

1302: Amasya is given to Tâceddin Altunbaş.

1308: Death of Ghiyath al-Din Mesud II and the transfer of his body to Amasya.

Bibliography

Primary sources

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Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources