Amasya's bond with music shows itself in almost every layer of the city's long history. The Mevlevi ceremonies performed to the sound of the ney and kudüm in the dervish lodge founded in the Seljuk and Ilkhanid era, the poets and instrumentalists gathered at the courts of Ottoman princes, the treatises on music theory presented to those princes, the makams played to patients in the hospital, and finally the music lessons that began at the end of the nineteenth century in the house of an exiled ney player are all voices of the same city in different centuries. This tradition did not advance along an unbroken line; some of its periods can be illuminated by documents, while others are known only through a nisba, a dedication or a single sentence in a biographical anthology.

Two periods stand out in the city's musical history. The first is the fifteenth century, when Amasya, as a princely sanjak, had the air of a small capital. In these years Lâdikli Mehmed Çelebi, who grew up in the circle of Prince Bayezid, wrote two of the fundamental works of Ottoman music theory, while Prince Korkut, born in Amasya, was remembered as a musician who could play every instrument and was said to have invented a new one. The second period begins with the arrival of Giriftzen Âsım Bey in the city in the 1880s or the 1900s and leads to the Amasya Music Society, which continues today under the name of the Amasya Municipal Conservatory.

The Mevlevi Lodge and the Music of the Dervish Lodges

The oldest known institutional home of music in Amasya is the Mevlevi lodge (mevlevîhâne). According to the old documents used by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin in his Amasya Tarihi, the Mevlevis were present in the city before the lodge building existed: Sheikh Veliyyüddin Ahmed Dede in 1276, Alâeddin Ali Dede in 1284 and Sheikh Celâleddin Mehmed Dede in 1300 are recorded as Mevlevi sheikhs in Amasya. It is also known that a deputy named Muhammed Ali was sent to Amasya in the time of Sultan Veled. The lodge itself was built by Alâeddin Ali Pervâne Bey, who had its endowments arranged in 1314. In the Islamic court registers the building is recorded as "Mevlevîhâne-i merhum Alâeddin Pervâne". The contents of the endowment deed, lost in 1661, were later reconstructed by consulting the oral testimony of those who had seen it.

The Mevlevi ritual (âyin) is one of the weightiest and most carefully wrought forms of Ottoman music. The singers learned the âyin through oral transmission (meşk), the ney players were trained within the lodge, and the ceremony was directed jointly by the chief ney player and the chief kudüm player. The Amasya Mevlevi lodge represented this order in the city. In the late fourteenth century Sheikh Cemâleddin Ahmed Dede of the Nusretzâde family of Zile and after him Sheikh Mehmed Cûî Dede headed the lodge; Cûî Dede later left the city and in 1414 founded a separate Mevlevi lodge in his own village, which afterwards came to bear his name. During the bandit disturbances of 1602 the lodge in Amasya burned down. The former grand vizier Bayram Pasha, at the time he brought water to the city at his own expense, rebuilt the Mevlevi lodge together with a caravanserai. The date of this construction is given as 1637 in some sources and as 1047 (1638) in others.

The lodge stood on the bank of the Yeşilırmak near the Saraçhane Mosque, in the vicinity of the Hükümet Bridge. The last report of its existence dates from 1919: the meeting held to read to the public a circular sent by Mustafa Kemal from Havza took place here. One of its last sheikhs, Cemâleddin Efendi, had also served as mayor of Amasya, was a member of the delegation that invited Mustafa Kemal to the city from Havza, and was among the founders of the Amasya Society for the Defence of Rights. The building is thought to have been left without an owner after the closure of the dervish lodges in 1925 and demolished when today's Yavuz Selim Square was opened.

The Princely Sanjak and Court Music

From the late fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, Amasya was foremost among the sanjaks to which Ottoman princes were sent to learn the art of government. Twelve princes served in the city during this period. When a prince went out to his sanjak, he was accompanied not only by his lala (tutor-guardian) and the scribes of his council; a small court organisation was set up, and poets, scholars, calligraphers and musicians entered the prince's patronage. Ottoman court music took its first shape largely in these provincial courts, and when the princes ascended the throne they carried their own circles with them to Istanbul or Edirne. Amasya's place in the history of music cannot be separated from this system of patronage.

The first important link in this chain, as far as musical patronage is concerned, is Murad II. Born in Amasya in 1404, Murad was sent to the city on reaching the age of twelve as governor of the province of Rum, which comprised Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık, and remained there until he ascended the throne in 1421. His lala was Yörgüç Pasha. Murad's reign is the period in which the writing of Ottoman music theory began: Abdülkādir-i Merâgī dedicated his Makāsıdü'l-elhân to him, and in 1441 Hızır bin Abdullah, at his encouragement, wrote his Turkish Kitâbü'l-edvâr and presented it to the sultan. These works were not written in Amasya. Yet the fact that a ruler who showed such interest in music spent his youth at the court of Amasya may be counted among the starting points of the city's tradition of patronage.

Ahmedoğlu Şükrullah

Another name of the same period connected with Amasya is Şükrullah, whose nisba is given in the sources as "Amasyevî" and "Rûmî". His father was Şehâbeddin Ahmed and his grandfather Zeynüddin Zekî. By his own account he was born in 1388 and entered Ottoman service in 1409; after witnessing the turmoil of the Interregnum he passed into the learned profession in the time of Murad II. He served as judge of Bursa, was sent as envoy to Karamanoğlu İbrâhim Bey and to the Karakoyunlu ruler Cihan Şah, and with his Behcetü't-tevârîh, written in Persian, became the author of the first Persian prose work to deal with the Ottomans. The sources record that Şükrullah presented some treatises on music to Murad II, and a treatise on the theory of modes, consisting of a Turkish rendering of Safiyyüddin el-Urmevî's Kitâbü'l-edvâr, is associated with his name. Historians of music usually introduce this work as the Edvâr-ı Mûsikî of Ahmedoğlu Şükrullah, stating that it was translated by order of Murad II and that the translator added some topics to the text.

There is, however, a reservation. The historian Şükrullah gives no information about music in his own works, and it is not known with certainty whether the author of the treatise on modes and the author of the Behcetü't-tevârîh are the same person. Nihal Atsız suggested that the Enîsü'l-ârifîn, which Kâtib Çelebi mentions as a biographical work on scholars, may in fact have been a book on music; but this too remains a possibility. Şükrullah appears to have spent most of his life in Bursa and not to have lived long after 1464.

The Court of Prince Bayezid and Lâdikli Mehmed Çelebi

The most brilliant period in Amasya's musical history is the governorship of Bayezid, the eldest son of Mehmed II (the Conqueror). Born in Dimetoka in 1448, Bayezid was sent to Amasya at the age of seven and stayed for some twenty-six years until he ascended the throne in 1481. Gathering scholars around him from his days as a prince, writing poetry under the pen name Adlî and highly skilled in calligraphy, Bayezid turned his court in Amasya into an assembly of learning and art. Sheikh Hamdullah, regarded as the patron master of calligraphers, became Bayezid's teacher at this court. The summer seat of the sanjak governors was the town of Lâdik, attached to Amasya, and Bayezid spent every summer there.

The most important figure of this court in the field of music is Lâdikli Mehmed Çelebi. His real name was Muhyiddin Mehmed, and as his nisba shows, he came from Lâdik, which at that time belonged to the sanjak of Amasya. His father's name appears in his works as Abdülhamid; beginning with Gustave Flügel's 1835 edition of the Keşfü'z-zunûn it was long wrongly given as Abdülmecid, an error corrected only in Şerefettin Yaltkaya's edition of 1941. The traditions that he was born in Latakia or in the Lâdik near Denizli, and the view that he was of Arab origin, are today considered incorrect. Mehmed Çelebi studied Arabic and Persian alongside the religious sciences in Lâdik, belonged to Prince Bayezid's circle during his governorship of Amasya, and when Bayezid ascended the throne went to Istanbul and taught as a madrasa professor.

Mehmed Çelebi wrote two works on music theory. Zeynü'l-elhân fî ilmi't-te'lîf ve'l-evzân was first written in Arabic in 1483, and a year later, rendered into Turkish under the same title, it was presented to Bayezid II. The er-Risâletü'l-fethiyye, written in Arabic, was likewise dedicated by its author to Bayezid, with the explanation that he had given it this name on the occasion of the sultan's conquests; its oldest known copy is dated 1485 and is in Aleppo. The work was edited by Hâşim Muhammed Receb in Kuwait in 1986, and a French translation made from the copy in the library of the Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis appeared in Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger's collection La musique arabe. Mehmed Çelebi adopts Safiyyüddin el-Urmevî's seventeen-note system and the modal scales recorded as ninety-one by Abdülkādir-i Merâgī. His discussion of minor and major thirds, which do not appear in earlier theorists, his grouping of rhythmic cycles by frequency of use, his treatment of twelve makams, twenty-four şubes, seven âvâzes and thirty terkîbs, and his use of the terms "ascending" and "descending" in describing the melodic progression of the makams made his works a reference for later studies. The Zübdetü'l-beyân, one of the first works on logic written in Turkish, is also his.

Little certain is known about Mehmed Çelebi's life. For the date of his death some scholars give only the years of Bayezid II's reign, while others give 1494-95. The view that he wrote his works in Amasya has not been confirmed either; the dates of the Zeynü'l-elhân suggest that he completed it after Bayezid's accession, most probably in Istanbul. Some studies of music history state that Mehmed Çelebi was born in Amasya and presented the Fethiyye to Murad II; but the work's own dedication and its dates are irreconcilable with this. In any case, Mehmed Çelebi's formative years were spent in the sanjak of Amasya, in the shadow of Bayezid's court.

Bayezid's interest in music continued after his accession. Mahmud Çelebi, the grandson of Abdülkādir-i Merâgī, dedicated to him his Makāsıdü'l-edvâr, written in Persian. A register of gifts covering the years 1503-1511 contains a long list of poets, artists, scholars and sheikhs to whom the sultan made donations. The core of this circle of patronage had been formed during the nearly thirty years he spent in Amasya.

Prince Korkut and Prince Ahmed

Korkut, one of Bayezid's sons, was born in Amasya in 1467 or 1469; although the sources contain no explicit record of the year of his birth, Amasya is generally accepted as his birthplace. Having spent his childhood at his father's court in Amasya, Korkut was sent to his grandfather Mehmed II in Istanbul in 1479 to be circumcised, served for about two weeks as regent in 1481 until his father arrived, and afterwards held the sanjaks of Manisa and Teke. Known for his devotion to learning, literature and poetry, the prince wrote his works in Arabic and used the pen name Harîmî in his poems. The musical side of Prince Korkut is recorded in the anthology of Kınalızâde Hasan Çelebi: it is said that he could play every kind of instrument, that he invented an instrument called "gıdâ-yı rûh" (in some sources "rûh-efzâ"), and that he asked his brother Ahmed for the famous kemençe master Zeynelâbidîn, who had come from Iran, and brought him to his side. Some studies of music history also describe him as a composer and write that he played a part in the training of many artists; no notation of any composition by Korkut, however, has come down to us.

The story of Zeynelâbidîn throws an indirect light on the musical life of the Amasya court. When Bayezid ascended the throne, he left as governor of Amasya his eldest son Ahmed, who had been born in the city. Like his father, Ahmed opened his court to poets and scholars; the Amasya poet Mihrî Hatun presented most of her kasides to him and attended his gatherings. That Korkut asked his brother for a celebrated kemençe player shows that this Iranian musician had for a time been in the service of Prince Ahmed. Ahmed's governorship of Amasya lasted from 1481 to 1513 and ended in the struggle for the throne. No detailed record survives of the musical gatherings at his court in those thirty years; what remains to us are brief notes of this kind in the biographical anthologies.

The princes who came to Amasya in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent were also men who occupied themselves with poetry and gathered men of letters and poets around them. Prince Mustafa, who governed the sanjak from 1541, or according to some sources from 1538, until 1553, wrote poetry under the pen name Muhlisî and protected poets; Prince Bayezid, appointed to Amasya in 1558, wrote verse under the pen name Şâhî. It may be supposed that music also had a place at the courts of these princes, but the sources give no details about their musical patronage. From the late sixteenth century onward, as princes came to be sent to sanjaks close to Istanbul, Amasya lost this status, and the centre of court music moved entirely to the capital.

Music Therapy in the Hospital

Amasya's best-known relationship with music is the treatment of the mentally ill with music and the sound of water in the city's hospital (darüşşifa). According to its inscription, the building was erected in 1308 in the time of the Ilkhanid ruler Öljeitü and his wife İlduz (Yıldız) Hatun, through their freedman Anber bin Abdullah; some sources give the date as 1309. According to tradition the hospital kept the kemânçe, rebab, tanbur, santur, kanun and ney, patients were made to listen to particular makams played mostly on instruments without words, and the sound of water falling from a height beneath the dome was considered part of the treatment. This practice rested on the idea, elaborated since al-Fārābī and Avicenna, that each makam leaves a different effect on the human soul. Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin served as chief physician in this hospital for fourteen years. The building is today the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery and contains a hall devoted to music therapy. The founding, architecture and healing tradition of the hospital are treated in detail in the article Amasya Dârüşşifâsı.

Giriftzen Âsım Bey

After the princely courts dispersed, music in Amasya lived on in the Mevlevi lodge, in the mosques and in private houses; but from these centuries no record of a known composer or institution survives. The city's musical life revived at the end of the nineteenth century by an unexpected route, through an exile sent from Istanbul. This exile was Âsım Bey, the finest girift player of his day.

Âsım Bey was born in 1851 in Yenişehr-i Fenâr, today's Larissa in Greece. His father was Ali Efendi of the Muhzırzâde (in some sources Muhzırbaşızâde) family. As a child he began to frequent the Mevlevi lodge of Yenişehir and to listen to the âyin. By his own account, at the age of fourteen he joined those who sang the âyin and the na't and began to take ney lessons from Hasan Dede, a pupil of Neyzen Yûsuf Pasha; at the end of the third month the sheikh gave him the ney improvisations in the ceremony, saying, "Leave the taksim to Âsım." He learned Persian and read the Masnavi with Nazif Efendi, the poet and sheikh of the Yenişehir lodge. At about seventeen he took up a post in the Ministry of Finance, worked in İzmir and Aydın, and while serving as a military accounts officer in İzmir became a lieutenant.

After returning to Istanbul he joined the fire brigade founded in the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz as a captain (1872). According to his own recollection he at first refused the post, saying "it is pump work", and accepted it only at the insistence of his superiors. He took part in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-1878 as a company commander. As he left for the war, his teacher Neyzen Sâlim Bey gave him a girift so that he could carry it easily; Âsım Bey occupied himself with this instrument during the years at the front and became a master girift player. The girift is a small, low-pitched kind of ney, and the epithet "Giriftzen" added to his name comes from this mastery. After the war he became commander of the Üsküdar fire brigade with the rank of major and formed friendships with masters such as Neyzen Yûsuf Pasha, Hacı Ârif Bey, Bolâhenk Nûri Bey, Tanbûrî Ali Efendi, Medenî Aziz Efendi and Zekâi Dede, learning from them. Together with Tanbûrî Cemil Bey he formed an ensemble to introduce Turkish music to Europe, but the tour never took place because both men fell ill.

Exile to Amasya

The event that tied Âsım Bey's life to Amasya was his close friendship with Field Marshal Fuad Pasha, a member of the Senate, whom he had met in musical gatherings. Denunciations of Fuad Pasha sent to Abdülhamid II led to the pasha's exile, and because of his closeness to the pasha Âsım Bey too was compelled to reside in Amasya. The date of the exile is given differently in the sources: the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam records the year 1900, while local sources in Amasya and the studies based on them give 1883 and say that Âsım Bey stayed in the city for about twenty-five years. What is certain is that with the proclamation of the Constitution in 1908 he returned to Istanbul and to his post in the fire brigade.

According to local accounts, once Âsım Bey had overcome the first shock of exile he formed friendships in Amasya with people he felt close to; at the farm where he lived temporarily he received some forty or fifty guests almost every day and held music practice. He met frequently with the city's musical families and trained many pupils. During these years his wife died; through his friends in Amasya he married Lütfiye Hanım. He is said to have had twenty-four children from his two marriages, seven of whom became musicians and stage artists. One of his sons, Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, trained as his father's pupil and would become known as a composer and teacher of music.

Having retired in Istanbul, Âsım Bey returned to settle in Amasya. He is reported to have explained this return by saying that the people of Amasya were warm-hearted and sincere and valued music and friendship. In the city, where he lived for more than twenty years in all, he took İsmail Safa Olcay, one of the pupils to whom he had taught the kanun and the rhythmic cycles, with him when he went to Istanbul, introduced him to the well-known musicians Vitali and Artaki Candan and arranged for him to take lessons from them. The composer İsmail Hakkı Nebiloğlu is also counted among his pupils.

His Compositions

Âsım Bey did not remain merely a performer; he took his place among the important composers of his time. The notation of forty-three of his instrumental and vocal works has come down to us. He is said to have composed his songs quickly and without difficulty. According to one story, when a princess listening to him from behind a lattice in her palace asked whether he could make a song on the spot, he wrote the lyric beginning "Serta kadem ey pembe ten", set it in the rast makam and sang it. His song in the uşşak makam, "Cânâ rakîbi handân edersin", is one that Mustafa Kemal heard and loved as a child in Salonica, and in later years had it sung by vocalists and instrumentalists at Çankaya and Yalova, joining in himself. Âsım Bey was also the author of one of the settings made for Mehmed Âkif's Independence March; this setting is among those no longer sung today.

On 24 September 1924, when President Mustafa Kemal and his wife Lâtife Hanım came to Amasya, Âsım Bey and his companions gave a concert at the Municipal Mansion where they were lodged. It is recorded that at this concert Mustafa Kemal sang "Cânâ rakîbi handân edersin" together with them. Âsım Bey fell ill in Istanbul, where he had gone on a visit, and died on 26 February 1929; he was buried in the Merkezefendi Cemetery. His name was later given to a street near Aksaray. Of the belongings he left in Amasya, his girift is in the Amasya Museum and his piano in the museum of Amasya High School; the fate of his other possessions is unknown.

The Amasya Music Society

Âsım Bey's work in Amasya resulted in the birth of the Amasya Music Society (Amasya Mûsikî Cemiyeti), regarded as one of the first music societies in Anatolia. The date of its founding is given differently in the sources. According to the common account, in 1916 Âsım Bey gathered an ensemble in his own house, which later took the name of a society. A concert programme dated 1913, held by the Amasya Municipal Conservatory, however, shows that the society gave a concert in that year, and studies based on this document accept that the group formed informally in 1908 and became institutionalised in 1913 through the consultations of Âsım Bey and Hulûsi Efendi. The society's centenary was also celebrated on the basis of this document, on 27 December 2013.

Âsım Bey was the honorary president of the society; one of its founders, the oud player Hulûsi Bey (Tiryaki), served as president. Among the instrumentalists were Nısfiye Dede Sâmi, Âmâ Mehmed, the oud player Tahsildar Mustafa Efendi, Karavâiz İsmail Efendi, Alişan Efendi and Nişan Efendi; among the singers were Çuhacıoğlu Terzi Sabri, Hâfız Memduh and Topuzubüyük Mustafa. The presence side by side in this group of Muslim and non-Muslim musicians, of Quran reciters and of tradesmen shows that the society was a broad circle of musical instruction that brought together the city's musical heritage. That photographs show hafızes, imams and muezzins among its members suggests that from its first years the society was also concerned with religious music. The fact that Zekâi Dede, one of the great names of religious music, was among Âsım Bey's teachers strengthens this connection.

After the proclamation of the Republic the society's activities declined, but according to local records Mustafa Kemal listened to the society's musicians every time he came to Amasya and rewarded them. The society was revived in 1954, closed after the 1980 coup, and reactivated in 1981 by Harun Yörgüç. In 1991, under mayor Ömer Kabakçı, the work was continued with Ruhat Yörgüç. In the 2000s concerts were given at home and abroad with figures such as Neyzen Osman Yıldız, Neyzen Osman Akbaş, the kanun player Muammer Palamut, the conductors İlhan Demirci and Mustafa Civa and Neyzen Hâfız Ahmet Bilen. The society's legacy lives on today as the Amasya Municipal Conservatory. According to reports at the time of the 2013 centenary, some two hundred students were trained each year in twenty branches at the conservatory, and the ensemble gave at least three concerts a week.

There is a notable coincidence in the conservatory's history. The hospital building, where makams are said to have been played to patients for centuries, was used for a time from 1999 as the Municipal Conservatory after its restoration between 1992 and 1997; in 2011 it was transferred to the municipality and turned into a museum. Thus for a while the city's two musical traditions met beneath the same dome.

Mosque Music and the Tradition of Quran Memorisation

One branch of Amasya's musical life lives on in its mosques. The forms of mosque music, such as the ezan, the salâ, the temcid, the münâcât, the mevlid and the ilahi, constitute a performance tradition that requires knowledge of both tajwid and makam, and in the city this knowledge has largely been transmitted together with the training of hafızes. The present-day centre of this tradition is the Büyükağa Madrasa. Properly called the Büyük Kapıağası Madrasa, the building was erected in 1488-89, in the reign of Bayezid II, by Hüseyin Ağa, chief of the palace gate, and was also known as the Medrese-i Hüseyniye. It functioned as a madrasa until 1940 and then fell into ruin; in 1981 it was repaired by the Directorate of Pious Foundations, handed over to the mufti's office and opened as a Quran course for memorisation.

After the 1980s, the attendance of hafızes trained at Büyükağa at the conservatory that continued the society created a bond of sympathy between the two institutions. Hâfız Hicâbi Gökyar, during his years of service at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, taught hafızes to recite the Quran according to seven makams without departing from tajwid; Hâfız Mustafa Keskiner gave music lessons to talented pupils at the Bakacak Quran Course. Neyzen Osman Yıldız, called "Amasya's second Giriftzen Âsım Bey", gave ney and music lessons from 1984 onward, first in his house in the Şamlar quarter and later to the hafızes at Büyükağa. The large and small ilahi groups formed at the madrasa sang for many years on the holy nights and at mevlid gatherings. In the mukabele recitations performed by hafızes in the mosques during Ramadan and in the Kelime-i Tevhid gatherings, a funeral ceremony peculiar to the Amasya region, both local ilahis and works of classical religious music are performed.

In recent times efforts have also been made to record this heritage. The composer Burhan Özbakır, who joined the society in 1954, prepared the book Amasya Türküleri, published in 1988 by the Amasya Municipality, and compiled the city's Ramadan ilahis. These compilations were published as an album by the municipality in 2012 in arrangements by Osman Akbaş and Fatih Koca. Ahmet Hakkı Turabi, for his part, gathered his work aimed at reviving the hospital's tradition of music therapy in the four-album series Şifânağme, which presents applications of different makams.

Chronology

1276: Sheikh Veliyyüddin Ahmed Dede recorded as Mevlevi sheikh in Amasya.

1308: Construction of the Amasya hospital according to its inscription (1309 in some sources).

1314: Endowments arranged for the Mevlevi lodge built by Alâeddin Ali Pervâne Bey.

1388: Birth of Şükrullah, whose nisba is Amasyevî.

1404: Birth of Murad II in Amasya.

1415-1421: Prince Murad's governorship in Amasya.

1441: Hızır bin Abdullah presents his Kitâbü'l-edvâr to Murad II.

1455-1481: Prince Bayezid's governorship of the sanjak of Amasya; Lâdikli Mehmed Çelebi in his circle.

1467 or 1469: Birth of Prince Korkut in Amasya.

1481-1513: Prince Ahmed's governorship of the sanjak of Amasya.

1483: Zeynü'l-elhân written in Arabic; its Turkish version is presented to Bayezid II a year later.

1485: Oldest known copy of er-Risâletü'l-fethiyye.

1488-89: Construction of the Büyükağa (Büyük Kapıağası) Madrasa.

1602: The Mevlevi lodge burns during the bandit disturbances.

1637-1638: Bayram Pasha rebuilds the Mevlevi lodge.

1851: Birth of Giriftzen Âsım Bey in Yenişehr-i Fenâr.

1883 or 1900: Âsım Bey exiled to Amasya (the date varies by source).

1908: With the proclamation of the Constitution, Âsım Bey returns to Istanbul; according to some studies, informal formation of the music group.

1913: Earliest known concert programme of the Amasya Music Society.

1916: The meetings begun in Âsım Bey's house become a society (common account).

1919: Meeting at the Mevlevi lodge at which the Havza circular is read to the public.

24 September 1924: Concert given for Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife Hanım at the Municipal Mansion.

26 February 1929: Death of Âsım Bey in Istanbul.

1954: Revival of the society.

1981: The society reactivated by Harun Yörgüç; the Büyükağa Madrasa opened as a course for Quran memorisation.

1999: The hospital building begins to be used as the Municipal Conservatory.

27 December 2013: Centenary celebration of the Amasya Music Society.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin, Amasya Tarihi, I-IV (simplified by Ali Yılmaz - Mehmet Akkuş), Ankara: Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, 1986.

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources