The administrative status of a city shows how the state saw it: as a capital, a frontier base, or an ordinary district from which taxes were collected. Amasya played nearly all of these roles in turn. This fortress city, squeezed into the valley of the Yeşilırmak, was first the seat of a kingdom, then an important station of provincial administration under Rome and Byzantium. In the Ottoman period it was known both as the centre of the Rum beylerbeylik and as a sanjak in which the sons of sultans were trained; later it became the seat of a livâ (a sanjak-level district), and finally, under the Republic, the centre of a province.

In the introduction to his Amasya Tarihi, Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin gathers this up-and-down course into a single sentence. According to him, the sanjak in his own day consisted of seven districts and was attached to the vilayet of Sivas; in earlier ages, however, the city had been first a seat of sovereignty and the centre of a province containing ten sanjaks, and then the seat of a livâ ruling eighteen districts, and although it had undergone many changes in political division it had kept its old renown. Each link in this summary corresponds to a transition that the sources date differently. The dates do not always agree, and the disagreements are noted where they arise.

From the Kingdom of Pontus to the Byzantine Theme

The oldest known name of the city is Amaseia; it is not known with certainty when or by whom it was founded. It is thought to have existed before the age of Alexander the Great and its history is believed to reach back to the Hittite period. Amaseia served at times as the capital of the kings of Pontus in the Hellenistic period, and the rock-cut tombs of those kings still stand beneath the citadel. The city was incorporated into the Roman state in 63 BC and, as the birthplace of the geographer Strabo, kept its importance in the Roman age. In the third century AD it became a bishopric. Hüsâmeddin writes that the influence of the bishop known in Christian sources as Saint Asterius made the city a religious centre as well.

In the administrative order of the late Roman period Amaseia's share becomes more pronounced. The vicarius of the Diocese of Pontus, established in 314 after the reforms of Diocletian, resided at Amaseia, and the diocese was subordinate to the Praetorian prefecture of the East. Military command against the Sasanian threat on the Armenian frontier lay with a separate officer, the dux Ponti et Armeniae. Justinian I abolished the diocese in 535 and made its vicar governor of Galatia I; when the results proved unsatisfactory he re-established it in 548, and it lasted until it was replaced by the theme system in the second half of the seventh century.

Under the theme system Amaseia became the centre of the Armeniakon (Armeniac) theme. Founded in north-eastern Anatolia in the middle of the seventh century, this unit was a province that combined military and civil administration and was headed by a stratēgos. In the ninth century it is recorded as fielding about nine thousand men and as containing seventeen fortresses. Its size and its position on the north-eastern frontier against the Muslims had made this governorship one of the most important posts of the empire. The city changed hands once in the theme period: in 712 the Arabs took Amaseia, and a few years later Byzantine forces under Leo III (717-741) recovered it. The theme itself broke up around 1073 as a result of the Seljuk advance. Thus, over more than a thousand years from Pontus to Byzantium, Amasya had remained at the head of an administrative unit of provincial rank, as the centre of a kingdom, of a diocese and of a theme.

The Danishmendids, the Seljuks and Mongol Rule

There is no certain information on when Amasya was conquered by the Turks. It is known that in the late eleventh century the city was under the rule of the Danishmendids; the popular account attributes the conquest to Melik Ahmed Danishmend Gazi and to the year 1075. Danishmendid rule lasted until the annexation of the dynasty's lands by the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan Kılıcarslan II (1155-1192). In the Seljuk period the city was known by the title "Dârü'l-izz" (abode of glory). In the division made among his sons toward the end of Kılıcarslan II's reign, Amasya fell to Nizâmeddin Argun Shah, but Argun Shah's brother Rükneddin Süleyman, the lord of Tokat, seized it by force. Amasya thus became a direct object of the internal partitions of the Seljuk house.

The thirteenth century was a period in which central authority weakened. The Babaî revolt, which began under the leadership of Baba İshak, reached Amasya as well, and Baba İlyas was captured and executed on the bastions of Amasya Castle. After the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243 the Mongols took the city and Amasya began to be governed by Mongol governors. For a time it came under the rule of Tâceddin Altınbaş, son of the last Seljuk Sultan Gıyâseddin Mesud II. Hüsâmeddin discusses separately Altınbaş's enthronement as a Seljuk sultan at Amasya; this ruler's endowment deeds are used as documents showing that he came to the throne three times.

According to Hüsâmeddin, Anatolia had been divided into three great provinces under the Ilkhanid Sultan Öljeitü. The seat of the province of Anatolia was Amasya, and it comprised the livâs of Amasya, Tokat, Canik, Çorum, Karahisar-ı Şarkî, Kırşehir, Kayseri and Yozgat. The province of Rûm was centred on Sivas, and the province of Âmid gathered at Diyarbekir. Öljeitü gave the province of Anatolia to Şemseddin Ahmed Bey and the province of Rûm to Alâeddin Savcı Bey, and appointed Şemseddin Muhammed el-Halâtî, of the scholars of Amasya, as chief judge of Anatolia. Around 710 (1310-1311), with the death of Savcı Bey, the two provinces were united in the hands of a single governor. Hüsâmeddin also notes that the name "Rûm" had long designated the Sivas region, that the province of Rûm meant the vilayet of Sivas; this detail matters for understanding why the seat of the Ottoman Rum beylerbeylik would eventually shift to Sivas. We could not confirm this provincial division from another source; the only basis is the documents that Hüsâmeddin reports.

In the second half of the fourteenth century the city remained under the rule of Eretna, who reigned at Sivas, and of his successors. Emir Hacı Şadgeldi, who defeated Eretnaoğlu Ali Bey, took the city, and Amasya became the scene of the political struggles between his ally Melik Ahmed and Kadı Burhâneddin. Hüsâmeddin refers to Şadgeldi as the ruler of Amasya and relates that some notables of Sivas, tired of Kadı Burhâneddin's oppression, secretly sent appeals to Şadgeldi. On Şadgeldi's death his son Ahmed, with the support of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (Yıldırım), defended the city against Kadı Burhâneddin.

The Transition to Ottoman Rule

Although Bayezid I was defeated by Kadı Burhâneddin at one point, in the struggle he resumed he finally annexed Amasya to the Ottoman lands. This event is related in TDV under the year 1398, and it is recorded that the administration of the city was left to Bayezid's son Çelebi Mehmed. When Bayezid was taken prisoner by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Çelebi Mehmed withdrew to Amasya with his forces and used it as a base of operations against his brothers İsa and Süleyman. During Timur's Anatolian campaign the city was besieged for seven months. When in 1402 Timur appointed Kara Devletşah as emir of Amasya, the townspeople did not recognise the appointment and would not admit him; Kara Devletşah encamped in the nearby village of Hakala and tried to rule the remaining parts of the city from there, and was finally killed in a battle with Çelebi Mehmed.

The date of Amasya's entry into Ottoman rule differs among the sources. Hüsâmeddin begins the age in which Amasya was regarded as Ottoman territory with the Hijri year 788 (1386-1387) and opens this first period with Prince Yıldırım Bayezid. Selim Özcan's study also gives 1386: during Murad I's campaign against the principalities in Anatolia, Osmancık, Gümüş and Amasya declared that they accepted Ottoman sovereignty, whereupon his son Bayezid was sent to the region and came to Amasya and attached the principality to the Ottoman state. The same author also notes that the view that Bayezid was the first sanjak governor arose from the acceptance of Ottoman suzerainty against Kadı Burhâneddin by Amasya's Emir Ahmed and Çandarlı Süleyman Bey between 1384 and 1388. TDV, on the other hand, places the definitive attachment in 1398. No explicit document reconciles the two dates; the interpretation that the relationship of 1386 was a provisional declaration of allegiance and that of 1398 an actual annexation seems reasonable, but the sources do not say so openly.

The Centre of the Rum Beylerbeylik

When Çelebi Mehmed became sultan in 1413 at the end of the Interregnum, he had for years made Amasya his base. According to Özcan, Mehmed at this point appointed his lala (tutor-guardian) Yörgüç Pasha to the beylerbeylik of Amasya; and in response to the disturbances caused by the Kara Tatars and the beys of Kastamonu, Canik and Erzincan he also sent his son Murad, aged twelve, to Amasya as sanjak governor. TDV's entry on Yörgüç Pasha sequences events somewhat differently. In 1414 Çelebi Mehmed sent the twelve-year-old Prince Murad to Amasya with the governorship of the Rum province and assigned Yörgüç Pasha to him as lala. Yörgüç's appointment to the Rum beylerbeylik was made only after Murad's accession, in 826 (1423). Özcan too writes that after Murad's accession in 1421 Yörgüç was appointed to Amasya a second time as beylerbey; the local official account places Yörgüç's beylerbeylik between 1422 and 1435. Accounts that tie the founding of the beylerbeylik to 1413 therefore seem to rest on the first appointment, and the sources that give 1423 on the confirmed office.

At this time the Rum province comprised the regions of Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık. The local official account describes the province as a unit made up of the sanjaks of Sivas, Tokat, Çorum and Samsun and writes that Amasya was then called the "Province of Rumiyye." The Mongol and Turkmen population left over from the Ilkhanids lived as nomads and was hard to bring under a central administration. Local Turkmen families, too, acted at their own will. In the early years of his beylerbeylik Yörgüç Pasha subdued the bands of the Kızılkocaoğulları, who cut roads and came as far as the towns; in 1427 he had Hüsâmeddin Hasan Bey, the lord of Canik, seized and sent to Bursa, and so brought the Ordu and Çarşamba region under Ottoman administration; and when the soldiers of the Karakoyunlu İskender Mirza, who had settled at Tokat, plundered the region, he reported the matter to the sultan. Yörgüç Pasha, who secured safety in central Anatolia, was given the rank of vizier. He died in April-May 1442 and was buried in the tomb of the mosque he had built at Amasya; Özcan, however, states that he was sent to the wardenship of Edirne in 1435.

The beylerbeylik was an office separate from the prince's governorship of the sanjak, and it continued after Yörgüç. Hüsâmeddin records that in Hijri 848 (1444-1445) the beylerbey of Amasya was Şâhin Paşazâde Mehmed Pasha, and that in Muharram 857 (January-February 1453), when the beylerbey Hızır Pasha and the beys of Amasya were ordered to take part in the conquest of Istanbul, Eretnazâde Alâeddin Ali, the sanjak governor of Tokat, was appointed to the beylerbeylik; among these names there are men who came from the families of the region. The same author reports the following figures from old accounting registers: when Amasya was the centre of the province, the beylerbey's allocation was 530 thousand akçe, the treasury revenue was 557 thousand akçe, and the province contained nineteen ze'amets and four hundred and twenty-nine timars. The commander of the sipahis was called "kethüdâyeri" at Amasya, and the commander of the ze'amet holders "alaybeyi."

The Princes' Sanjak

From the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, Amasya stood at the head of the important centres to which princes of the Ottoman dynasty were sent to gain administrative experience. Princes were sent to these sanjaks with an experienced lala and ran a small-scale state there. The fact that Amasya was the seat of a sanjak close to the eastern frontier counted for much in its being thought suitable; it was thought that successes won on the frontier marches would be a great advantage on the road to the throne. Özcan lists as the characteristics required for a settlement to become a princes' sanjak that it lie in a border region, that it have served as capital of an old Anatolian principality, and that it be regarded as a centre of culture and trade. Amasya had all of these.

According to Özcan the number of princes who served as sanjak governors at Amasya was twelve, and the sanjak hosted princes for about 182 years. After Çelebi Mehmed, Murad II and Bayezid II served here as sanjak governors; TDV also mentions Mehmed the Conqueror as having been sanjak governor here, but Halil İnalcık treats that claim with suspicion and it is known that Mehmed was sent to Manisa in the spring of 1443. Murad II's sons Ahmed Çelebi (1435-1438) and Alâeddin (from 1440), Bayezid II's son Prince Ahmed, and Süleyman the Magnificent's sons Mustafa and Bayezid also served at Amasya. Bayezid II was appointed to the governorship at the age of seven in 1454 and held it until 1481; on leaving the sanjak he left in his place his eldest son Ahmed, who had been born here. In those years Lâdik, then a district attached to Amasya, was regarded as the summer seat of the sanjak governors.

The princes sent out to the sanjaks were called "Çelebi Sultan." That Yörgüç Pasha was both Murad's lala and the Rum beylerbey shows how closely the functions of princely governorship and beylerbeylik were intertwined at Amasya. The princes' regarding themselves as strong candidates for the throne also drew the city into the centre of politics. Amasya played an important role in the struggles for the throne among the sons of Bayezid II. During the Şahkulu revolt Prince Ahmed intervened against the rebels and was forced to withdraw, and when he left for Istanbul he left his eldest son Murad in the sanjak governorship of Amasya; Murad joined the Safavid caliphs, went to Shah Ismail and died in Iran.

The Transfer of the Centre to Sivas

The administrative centre of the province, that is the "pasha sanjak" where the beylerbey resided, was Amasya from the first half of the fifteenth century to the early sixteenth. Özcan writes that this lasted until 1520, and that when the pasha sanjak of the Rum Eyalet then became Sivas, Amasya was made dependent on Sivas. Another publication states that the provincial centre was Sivas from 1526. Hüsâmeddin places the transfer earlier, in Jumada al-awwal of Hijri 924 (May-June 1518), and gives the reason: the concentration of the supporters of Prince Murad and of celali bands around Sivas, Darende and Arapgir gave Sivas importance, and for that reason the centre of the Rumiyye province was moved to Sivas. The beylerbey of Amasya, Şâdî Pasha, became beylerbey of Sivas, and Amasya became a livâ centre. The three dates side by side suggest that the move may have been spread over several years; the documents do not show this openly.

Hüsâmeddin also writes of the financial consequences of this change. Uzun Rüstem Bey, son of Keyvân Ağa, the slave of Atabeyzâde Hızır Pasha of Amasya, was appointed sanjak governor of Amasya and assigned an annual salary of 450 thousand akçe. When it became a livâ centre only a small reduction was seen in salary, and the treasury revenue and the number of ze'amets and timars remained the same. Even as a livâ centre Amasya was counted as the first sanjak of the province. The status had fallen, but the financial and military weight of the city was not wiped out at a stroke. In the years when the princes were present, the prince who was sanjak governor and the beylerbey at the provincial centre had been in the same city; after this transfer the beylerbey governed from Sivas and the sanjak governor from Amasya.

The Death of Mustafa and the End of the Princes' Sanjak

It is related that about twenty years later Amasya once again gained a special status. According to Özcan, in 1538 Prince Mustafa, the eldest son of Süleyman the Magnificent, then governor of Manisa, was appointed sanjak governor of Amasya, and with this appointment the city left its administrative dependence on Sivas and became an independent eyalet. With the killing of Prince Mustafa in 1553, Amasya returned to the position of a sanjak attached to the Rum eyalet. TDV's entry on Prince Mustafa places the appointment at a different date: Mustafa was removed, through Hürrem Sultan's intervention, from Manisa, which was close to the capital, and sent to Amasya on 16 June 1541. The status of independent eyalet appears only in Özcan's publication, and we could not confirm it in another source.

Hüsâmeddin writes that immediately after Mustafa's death the sanjak of Amasya was again attached to the vilayet of Sivas and that Mehmed Çelebi of Merzifon, a defter emini (registrar), was appointed to its governorship. The rivalry among the surviving sons of Süleyman once more brought Amasya onto the stage. Süleyman moved Prince Selim from Manisa to Konya and Bayezid from Kütahya to Amasya; Bayezid, upset at being removed from a sanjak near Istanbul, resisted for a long time and finally in 1558 became sanjak governor of Amasya. According to TDV, Bayezid interpreted this transfer as meaning that Selim had been chosen heir in his place, rebelled, and when defeated fled to Iran. The local official account writes that after Bayezid's flight to Iran in 1559 Amasya was removed from the princes' sanjaks and no prince was appointed there again. Özcan, for his part, states that the sanjak lost its character as a princes' sanjak after the governorship of Murad III.

Whichever date the break is counted from, the result is the same. After the killing of Prince Mustafa the sanjaks nearer Istanbul gained in importance while Amasya remained far from the capital. From the middle of the sixteenth century Manisa came to the fore as the only princes' sanjak, and Amasya began to be governed by sanjak governors appointed from the centre. The title "city of princes" remained, but the administrative order on which it rested had come to an end. Hüsâmeddin thinks that the princes' residing in the seat of sovereignty and the decision to attach Amasya to the vilayet of Sivas weakened the city's former honour and reduced its number of quarters and its population; according to him, in the princes' age the city had some seventy quarters and a population of about sixty thousand. TDV's estimate based on the survey of 1525 is fifty-five quarters and about eight thousand inhabitants. The figures were calculated by different methods and cannot be compared directly.

Sanjak, Mütesellim and Notables

When it entered Ottoman administration the city had become the centre of a sanjak of the same name. The sanjak of Amasya was an important administrative unit of the Rum eyalet, together with Tokat and Sivas above all. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it consisted of the districts of Lâdik and Merzifon with Amasya as the central district, and the central district had six nahiyes and 321 villages. In 1576-1577 the number of districts in the sanjak rose to seven with the addition of Gümüş, Gedegra, Zeytun and Simre-i Lâdik. Evliya Çelebi speaks of nine districts in the middle of the seventeenth century; in documents dated 1076 (1665) eleven, and in documents dated 1082 (1671) ten districts are seen. According to Evliya, in the seventeenth century the Rum eyalet consisted of ten sanjaks: Sivas, Divriği, Çorum, Keskin, Bozok, Amasya, Tokat, Zile, Canik and Arapgir.

Hüsâmeddin divides Amasya's administration in the Ottoman age into five periods. The first period extends from 1386-1387 to 1512-1513 and is the age of the princes and the beylerbeys. The second lasts ninety-three years, from 1512 to Hijri 1011 (1602-1603); Hüsâmeddin stresses as a notable feature of this period the frequent change of administrators and the growth of disorder in Anatolia. Between the second and third periods there is a time of disorder lasting six years that he calls the "Tarih-i Fetret" (History of the Interregnum); in it the administration of Amasya passed at times to the Ottoman state and at times to the rebels. In 1603 the followers of Kara Yazıcı Abdülhalim, who had himself served as sanjak governor of Amasya, burned the city, and the notables and gentry had to take refuge with their wealth in the royal tombs. Evliya Çelebi also writes that against the attacks of the celali brigands the wealthy of the city stored their valuables in the citadel.

The third period lasts eighty-two years, from Rajab of Hijri 1017 (1608) to the end of Rajab 1099 (1688); the fourth runs from 1688 to 1804, that is for a hundred and twenty years. For these periods Hüsâmeddin treats separately the governors, the mutasarrıfs, the mîrlivâs, the mütesellims and the notables. The sanjak of Amasya was often granted, with rank, to pashas holding other posts. In Muharram 1107 (1695) the sanjak was given first to Mehmed Pasha, a former mutasarrıf of Canik, and at the end of the month to Bektaş Bey, the lord of Alacahisar and warden of Yanova in the eyalet of Temeşvar, with the rank of mîrimîran; a year later it was given to Mahmud Pasha, the warden of Chios. On the day Mehmed Pasha was ordered to the wardenship of Sofia, the Amasya kethüdâyeri Bağdatlızâde Mehmed Ağa became the mütesellim of Amasya. Beside the mutasarrıf, this kethüdâyeri and mütesellim, together with a chief notable (baş a'yân) chosen from among the leading men of the city, are named together in the lists. The fourth period ends, according to Hüsâmeddin, in 1804 with Süleyman Bey, the muhassıl of Amasya.

The Tanzimat and the Vilayet of Sivas

In the first half of the nineteenth century the sanjak extended over a wide territory. According to the census of Hijri 1254 (1838-1839) that Hüsâmeddin reports, the sanjak of Amasya consisted of the districts of Amasya, Erba'a, Havza, Zünnûn, Zeytûn, Zile, Osmancık, Gelgirâs, Köprü, Gümüş, Lâdik, Mecidözü and Merzifon; that is, thirteen districts. The order of castle wardenship had also lasted until this age. Hüsâmeddin writes that the administration and ze'amets of the castle's dizdars and aghas continued until 1255.

With the Provincial Regulation (Teşkil-i Vilâyet Nizamnâmesi) of 1864 the Rum Eyalet was abolished and the Vilayet of Sivas was established in its place; some sources tie this foundation to 1867. The units attached to the vilayet were the sanjaks of Sivas, Amasya and Karahisar-ı Şarkî; from 1880 the sanjak of Tokat was added, and the sanjak of Canik was briefly attached to Sivas in 1867-1869. Hüsâmeddin writes that Ziyâ Paşa, as mutasarrıf of Amasya in Hijri 1281 (1864-1865), had the Sarây Gate of the city wall demolished, had the old cannon in the castle removed and a new one put in its place, and that, according to a biography, the municipal office was established in his time.

In the late nineteenth century the sanjak of Amasya, attached to the vilayet of Sivas, had eight districts: Amasya centre, Merzifon, Vezirköprü, Osmancık, Gümüşhacıköy, Lâdik, Havza and Mecidözü. In a list dated 1909 Osmancık does not appear and the sanjak consists of seven districts. The situation is described in the introduction Hüsâmeddin wrote around 1912 as follows: the sanjak is bounded on the east and south by the sanjak of Tokat, on the north by Canik and on the west by Çorum; it consists of the districts of Amasya, Hacıköyü, Havza, Köprü, Lâdik, Mecidözü and Merzifon, and is attached to the vilayet of Sivas. The population of the sanjak is some two hundred and eighty thousand. The district of Amasya has sixty-eight thousand, and the town of Amasya at its centre some thirty-seven thousand; the town consists of fifty-three quarters and eight thousand households. TDV, for its part, gives for the nineteenth century a city population between twenty-five and thirty thousand and some thirty-six quarters.

The Provincial Centre under the Republic

In the years of the Turkish War of Independence Amasya entered the country's political agenda again. Mustafa Kemal began work here to organise resistance to the occupation, and on 21-22 June 1919 the Amasya Circular, which set out the first programme of the War of Independence, was issued. At this time the city was still the seat of a sanjak attached to the Vilayet of Sivas. After the proclamation of the Republic the Ottoman administrative division was reorganised and Amasya became a province (il) on 20 April 1924. Together with the districts around it, it became a provincial centre.

The new province did not take in all the districts of the old sanjak. Havza, Lâdik and Vezirköprü today lie within Samsun, and Mecitözü and Osmancık within Çorum. Former districts such as Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy remained attached to Amasya as ilçes (districts). In the 1985 census on which TDV relies, the province was divided, besides the central district, into six districts, Göynücek, Gümüşhacıköy, Hamamözü, Merzifon, Suluova and Taşova, and sixteen bucaks; there were 360 villages within its borders, and 358,289 people lived on its area of 5,520 square kilometres. Today too the province consists of seven districts including the centre.

The population of the city itself in the early years of the Republic is far below the figure Hüsâmeddin gave around 1912: from 12,481 in the census of 1927 it rose to 14,470 in 1950, to 36,646 in 1970 and to 53,431 in 1985. The Balkan and First World Wars and the years of the War of Independence lie in between; in addition, the two figures may have been calculated by different methods. The railway built in 1930 connected Amasya with Samsun, and the sugar factory established in 1954 stimulated sugar beet production across the province.

Chronology

63 BC: Amaseia was incorporated into the Roman state.

314: The Diocese of Pontus was established; the vicarius resided at Amaseia (abolished in 535, re-established in 548).

712: The Arabs took the city; a few years later Byzantine forces under Leo III recovered it.

around 1073: The Armeniakon theme broke up with the Seljuk advance.

late 11th century: Amasya was under Danishmendid rule (in the popular account the conquest is dated 1075).

1243: The era of Mongol governors began after the Battle of Kösedağ.

1386: First attachment to the Ottomans (Hüsâmeddin and Özcan); definitive annexation 1398 according to TDV.

1398: Bayezid I annexed Amasya to the Ottoman lands; its administration was left to Çelebi Mehmed.

1402: After the Battle of Ankara Çelebi Mehmed made Amasya his base; Kara Devletşah's attempt to rule as emir in Timur's name failed.

1413-1414: Çelebi Mehmed's accession as sultan; Yörgüç Pasha was first given a post in the administration of Amasya, and Prince Murad was sent to Amasya as sanjak governor.

1423: Yörgüç Pasha became Rum beylerbey (TDV; 1422 in other sources).

1453 (Muharram 857): The beylerbey of Amasya, Hızır Pasha, was ordered to the Istanbul campaign and Eretnazâde Alâeddin Ali was appointed in his place.

1454-1481: Bayezid II was sanjak governor of Amasya.

1518-1526: The seat of the Rum eyalet moved from Amasya to Sivas (1518 in Hüsâmeddin, 1520 in Özcan, 1526 in some listings).

1541: Prince Mustafa was sent from Manisa to Amasya (1538 in Özcan).

1553: Prince Mustafa was killed; Amasya became again a sanjak attached to Sivas.

1558-1559: Prince Bayezid became sanjak governor of Amasya and then fled to Iran.

1603: The followers of Kara Yazıcı Abdülhalim burned Amasya.

1838-1839: The sanjak consisted of thirteen districts.

1864: The Provincial Regulation; the Vilayet of Sivas in place of the Rum Eyalet (1867 in some sources).

1864-1865 (1281): Ziyâ Paşa was mutasarrıf of Amasya.

1919: The Amasya Circular was issued.

20 April 1924: Amasya became a province.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources