A city's fortunes are often decided by its geography. Because Amasya lay on the great trade routes that crossed northern Anatolia, it grew prosperous on the wealth of the goods that passed through it as well as on what its own soil and looms produced. This narrow city, squeezed into the valley of the Yeşilırmak, stood at the junction of roads that linked the silk of Iran in the east to Bursa in the west, and the produce of inner Anatolia to Samsun on the Black Sea coast. Its inns, its bedesten and its bazaars came alive with the comings and goings of caravans carrying the wares of distant lands, and the taxes, rents and trade that this traffic brought formed the backbone of the city's economic life.

In the Ottoman period the silk road running between Bursa and Tabriz was one of the most lucrative trade routes in the empire. Along its Anatolian stretch, Erzurum, Erzincan, Tokat and Amasya were joined to one another like the links of a chain. Amasya's place in that chain came from its being at once a caravan halt, a silk market and the starting point of the roads that descended to the Black Sea. To understand the city's commercial life, one must look first at how these routes came into being, and then at the goods the caravans carried, the taxes, the inns and the security of the road.

The Background of Anatolia's Caravan Routes

Amasya's life as a road city did not begin with the Ottomans. In antiquity it lay on the trade route that started at Tarsus in the south and reached Samsun by way of Kayseri and Zile. As a consequence of this position its citadel became, under the Seljuks, an important military post commanding the road between Samsun and Tokat. After Anatolia came under Seljuk rule, it became from the late twelfth century onward one of the centres of international trade. The Seljuk sultans, who shaped their economic policies and their conquests around the trade routes, built caravanserais everywhere from the main roads to the secondary tracks. In these pious endowments (waqf) travellers were treated as the founder's guests for three days and were charged nothing.

In the Seljuk period the point where the two great international routes crossing Anatolia met was Tokat. One was the east-west road that came by sea from Europe to Antalya and continued through Konya, Aksaray, Kayseri, Sivas, Tokat, Erzincan and Erzurum to Iran and Turkestan. The other ran from Iraq northward and, after passing through Tokat, linked Anatolia to the Crimea through the ports of Samsun and Sinop. Since Amasya lay on the stretch of this second road between Tokat and Samsun, it was a natural part of the Seljuk trading network. The fact that some eleven inns and caravanserais were built in and around Tokat alone during this period shows how busy the region was.

In the late thirteenth century the political rivalry between the Ilkhanids and the Golden Horde brought the trade route linking Caffa, Trabzon and Tabriz to the fore. Under Ahmed Tegüder, the first Muslim Ilkhanid ruler, Tabriz had become one of the most important commercial centres of the age. Indian spices, Chinese porcelain and silks, furs from the Dasht-i Kipchak, and the silk of Mazandaran, Gilan and Shirvan were distributed from this city to Europe and the Islamic lands by Turkish, Iranian, Italian, Russian and English merchants. Genoa's opening of a consulate in Tabriz in 1304 is one sign of the city's weight in international trade. In Ilkhanid times caravans reached Konya and Istanbul by way of Sultaniyya, Erzurum, Erzincan and Sivas.

The Bursa-Tabriz Route and Amasya's Place on It

After the foundation of the Ottoman state, the shorter route through Erzurum, Erzincan, Tokat, Amasya and Bursa came to be preferred over this older road. According to Halil İnalcık, the Trabzon-Istanbul sea route, once used much more often, fell almost entirely out of use as a result. Iranian merchants could now meet their European counterparts directly and easily in Bursa. Orhan Bey's grant of privileges to the Genoese and his construction of a bezzazistan (cloth market) in Bursa made the city the great market at the western end of this trade. In time the Ottomans pursued a policy aimed at turning Bursa into a centre of silk manufacture, taking control of the silk road and even gaining mastery over the producing regions of Iran. The direction of Ottoman conquest under Bayezid I, northward towards Amasya, Tokat and Erzincan, likewise followed the axis of the silk routes.

Some studies describe this road, which ran the length of northern Anatolia, as the most important route of east-west trade in the country. Coming from the direction of Istanbul and Bursa, it ran through Bolu to Amasya, Tokat and Sivas, joined the other branches at Erzurum and reached Tabriz, the great commercial city of Iran. Amasya thus lay squarely on the trade axis that carried Iran's silk and spices to the West and the West's manufactured goods to the East. With this position the city stood out as a junction, a resting place and a centre for the transfer of goods. The silk that came from Iran was gathered in Mazandaran, Gilan and Shirvan, the regions south of the Caspian Sea. It was sold first at markets in Sultaniyya and later in Tabriz, and from there set out towards the two great distribution centres of Erzurum and Aleppo. The branch heading for Erzurum reached Amasya after passing through Erzincan and Tokat.

The Road of the Great Caravans

The caravans that used this route were no small companies. According to Halil İnalcık, many caravans reached Bursa every year, each made up of three to four hundred animals and carrying on average some two hundred loads of silk. One load weighed about 154 kilograms. The horses and camels the caravans needed were mostly supplied by Turkmen tribes. These figures become clearer when set against the transport capacity of the age. A horse or mule could carry at most 150 kilograms, while a camel could bear a load of around 250 kilograms. The distance a caravan covered in a day varied between 30 and 40 kilometres. Since wheeled carts struggled on snowy and muddy roads, pack animals were preferred for long-distance trade.

A caravan setting out from Bursa reached Amasya by way of Bolu and Kastamonu or of Ankara and Çorum, and from there crossed Tokat, Erzincan and Erzurum to arrive at Tabriz. On this journey of many weeks every halting place was a vital breathing space for the caravan. Amasya, as one of these stations, lodged the merchants in its inns, rested the animals in its stables and saw part of the goods change hands in its bazaar. Most of the merchants who came with the caravans are called "Acem" (Persian) in the Bursa court registers, though some of them are known to have been of Azeri or Armenian origin. The registers distinguish between merchants permanently resident in the city and those who travelled with the caravans, calling the former mukim and the latter seffar. Representatives of both kinds were found among the caravans passing through Amasya, and at times some of the merchants stayed behind to complete their business in the city.

Silk, the Mizan and the Bazaar of Amasya

The Ottoman state drew a large income from the silk trade. Caravans arriving in Bursa were obliged to unload their goods at the bezzazistan. There the silk was placed on the official scale known as the mizan and taxed, its owner was given a certificate stating the amount of silk and of tax paid, and the details were also entered in the mizan register. Only after the tax had been paid could the silk be freely bought and sold through brokers. This system was not confined to Bursa. When Mehmed II (the Conqueror) introduced a new mizan at Tokat, the Iranian merchants were displeased, and in 1472 the forces of the Akkoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan entered Tokat and plundered the city. The episode shows how sensitive a matter the tax stations along the road could be.

Amasya too was part of this network of taxes and markets. In the sixteenth century, lying on the Azerbaijan-Bursa road, the city was an important market for the silks coming from Iran. According to a finance register in the Ottoman archives, the silk officially brought into the city and weighed over ten months in 1554-1555 amounted to 10,632 lodra, or roughly 15 tonnes. This record shows that the silk-weighing tax known as mizan-ı harir operated in Amasya as well, and that the city took a direct share of this trade. In the same century Amasya had a dyehouse, a candle workshop and a mint. Silk weaving was widely practised in the city. Law-code records from the early Ottoman period likewise list Amasya, together with Aydın and Tokat, among the centres where silk was produced.

As İnalcık points out, the Ottoman silk industry developed in the places through which the caravans bringing goods from Iran passed. Erzincan, Tokat, Amasya and Bursa on one side, and Mardin, Maraş and Aleppo on the other, formed the two main lines of this industry. The most developed of these cities was beyond dispute Bursa, but Amasya's looms had also become a centre of production fed by the raw material the road brought. In time Amasya came to be counted, together with Alaşehir, Alaiye and the Morea, among the important silk-producing centres. The silks woven in and around Bursa were in turn sold in markets such as Aleppo, Damascus, Diyarbekir, Tokat, Amasya and Istanbul. The road thus worked in both directions, with raw silk arriving from the east and finished cloth returning from the west.

A few figures suffice to give a general idea of the volume of this trade. It has been calculated that at the end of the sixteenth century Iran's annual silk production averaged 22,000 loads, of which 3,000 were sent to Anatolia. The silk trade contributed some 70,000 gold pieces a year to the Ottoman treasury, and in exchange for silk Iranian merchants bought fabrics such as kemha and velvet woven in Bursa. Prices were extremely sensitive to the regularity of the caravans. If caravans were delayed or war broke out, prices would rise at once. Silk that had cost 60-65 akçe in the first half of the sixteenth century rose to 135-150 akçe because of the war with Iran in 1581. Road cities such as Amasya were among the first to feel these fluctuations.

The Bedesten, the Inns and the Bazaar

The spaces of trade were woven into the fabric of the city. In Ottoman usage a caravanserai meant a pious foundation built on the roads between cities for the lodging and safety of travellers, while a han (inn) meant a building within a city where lodging and trade were carried on together. Inns often took their names from the goods produced or sold in them. In the Ottoman period caravanserais had moved away from the fortress-like appearance of the Seljuk examples and settled into the commercial quarters of cities and within mosque complexes (külliye). Amasya's inns, too, were gathered in the city's bazaar district, in the area close to the bank of the Yeşilırmak.

The centre of the city's commercial life was the bedesten. According to its inscription it was built in 1483 by Hüseyin Ağa, whom the sources place in the retinue of Bayezid II, and it was intended to increase the revenues of the endowment of this benefactor, who left many charitable works in Amasya and its surroundings. Built on a rectangular plan with six domes and four doors, the building was an example of the medium-sized bedestens of its time and was connected on its eastern side to the arasta (market street). The bedesten was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1668. In the nineteenth century its dome was removed and the building covered with a roof, and when this roof in turn collapsed it stood open for a long time. Restored in 1971 by the General Directorate of Foundations, the bedesten has preserved little of its original state beyond its main walls and its inscription dated 1483.

Evliya Çelebi, who visited Amasya in the seventeenth century, writes that the city had some 1,060 shops and that its bazaars were busy and prosperous. This number suggests a lively market fed both by the caravan trade and by local production. The same traveller also records that the wealthy of the city kept their valuables in the citadel against the raids of the Celali rebels. The detail shows how anxious a city enriched by trade was about the safety of that wealth. The relationship Amasya established between its bazaar and its citadel was the common lot of road cities.

The commercial buildings of the neighbouring cities along the route help to show the network of which Amasya was part. In Tokat, according to the sources of the period, there were twenty-one bazaars, a bedesten and twenty-six inns. Among them the Taşhan, built between 1626 and 1632, still stands today as one of the largest urban inns in Anatolia. In Merzifon, to the west of Amasya on the road linking Istanbul and Ankara to the port of Samsun, the mosque complex built between 1666 and 1679 by the grand vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha included a Taşhan and a bedesten. Amasya and the towns around it functioned like complementary stations on the caravan road.

Wars, Embargoes and the Changing Course of the Road

The fate of the Bursa-Tabriz road was tightly bound to Ottoman-Iranian relations. In 1502 Shah Ismail made Tabriz the capital of the Safavid state. The spread of Safavid influence in Anatolia and the revolts that broke out around Tokat and Amasya heightened the tension between the two states. Among those who tried to suppress the revolt of Nur Ali Halife, which began around Tokat and Niksar in 1512, was Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed), then sanjak governor in Amasya. After taking Tabriz in 1514, Selim I (Selim the Grim) stayed in the city for a week and had some of its notables, craftsmen and scholars moved with their families to Istanbul.

Selim I tried to weaken the shah economically by placing an embargo on Iranian goods. When merchants got round this obstacle by turning to Aleppo and Iskenderun instead of Bursa, the sultan resorted to harsher measures and ordered the confiscation of all caravans carrying Iranian goods. Iranian goods in Bursa were seized after their quantity and ownership had been recorded, and the buying and selling of Iranian silk was banned. The silk trade declined markedly in this period, and road cities such as Amasya took their share of the contraction. When Süleyman the Magnificent came to the throne he lifted the bans and returned the confiscated goods to their owners, although the prohibition on importing Iranian silk remained in force for some time longer. The trade recovered its former vigour in the last years of Süleyman's reign.

Although the Ottomans entered Tabriz in 1534 and 1548, they were unable to hold the city for long. The longest period of Ottoman rule in Tabriz came during the Ottoman-Safavid struggle of 1578-1590. In these years the Ottomans repaired bazaars damaged in the fighting and, under the administrative arrangement of 1593, organized the city as the centre of a province. Records kept during the second period of Ottoman rule in the eighteenth century show the scale of Tabriz's trade clearly. The city's customs revenue, 566,666 akçe in 1593, had risen to 4,560,000 akçe by 1728, and in the same year 1,200,000 akçe was obtained from silk alone. The Ottomans had also established in Tabriz a guild wardenship for silk sellers and a brokerage for the silk scale.

From the end of the sixteenth century the direction of the silk trade gradually shifted. Between 1578 and 1618 Foça and Izmir emerged as new silk markets favoured by Iranian and European merchants who wished to escape the taxes in Bursa. In response the Ottoman government doubled the mizan duty on silk that bypassed Bursa and applied customs to all goods crossing its territory. Towards the end of the Ottoman-Safavid war of 1615-1618, Izmir had begun to rival Aleppo, where English merchants bought their silk. In the second half of the seventeenth century Izmir became a developed silk market, and in the 1670s about 3,000 of the roughly 22,000 loads of silk produced in Iran reached this port. In the eighteenth century the busiest silk road was the route between Erzurum, Tokat and Izmir. This shift reduced Amasya's share of east-west trade, but the eastern branch reaching as far as Tokat and the roads descending to the Black Sea allowed the city to keep its commercial importance.

A Gateway to the Black Sea

Amasya's importance in trade was not limited to the east-west axis. Goods arriving from Tabriz through Erzincan, Sivas and Tokat could pass through Amasya and reach Black Sea ports such as Samsun and Sinop. The city thus served as a transfer point between the land route and the sea route. Part of the silk coming from Iran descended to the Black Sea by this route, was loaded onto ships and from there made its way to distant markets. The sea link running from Samsun to Sinop and the Crimea had, since the Seljuk period, been a line connecting Anatolia to the markets of the north. In this way Amasya held a position from which it could feel the pulse of both inner Anatolia and maritime trade.

The importance of this north-south connection continued in the Ottoman period. In the eighteenth century, copper mined at Ergani was refined at the smelting works in Tokat, after which part of it was sent overland to the landing at Samsun and from there by ship to Istanbul. Cotton goods woven in the Tokat region were exported to the Crimea, southern Russia and the northern Caucasus. Every load carried between Tokat and Samsun had to pass near Amasya, and often through it. The fact that the city's citadel had commanded the Samsun-Tokat road since the Seljuk age arose from the commercial as well as military importance of this line.

The Security of the Road: Citadel, Derbent and Brigands

Caravan trade depended on keeping the roads open and safe. A graded notion of security prevailed in the Ottoman transport system. At the first level, caravans and couriers saw to their own safety. At the second came the caravanserais and inns in which travellers took refuge, and at the third the derbents (guarded passes) established at important passes completed the security of the road. The people living around the derbents were held responsible for the upkeep and safety of the road in return for exemption from the avarız taxes. In keeping with a transport system based on a daily march of 30-40 kilometres, facilities such as caravanserais, derbents and post stations were generally set up at intervals of no more than twelve hours' travel, and state authority made itself felt through the fortresses at these points.

The citadel of Amasya was part of this system. In the early sixteenth century a dizdar (castle warden), a kethüda (steward) and fifty-seven guards served in the citadel. Inside it stood mud-brick houses in which the castle staff lived. Every morning and evening trumpets and drums sounded from the citadel towards the city. From the eighteenth century onward the citadel lost its importance and began to fall into ruin, yet the question of road security did not disappear from the agenda in that century.

The Islamic court registers of Amasya show concretely the harm done by highway brigands to the caravan trade and to travellers. According to the records compiled by Ümit Ekin, orders sent from the capital warned that brigand activity would increase with the coming of spring and "the leafing of the trees". A decree sent to Amasya in October 1737 reported that brigands who had appeared in the districts of the province of Sivas were blocking roads, killing people and leaving the population in distress, and Süleyman Bey, one of the chief gatekeepers of the imperial court, was appointed commissioner to look into the necessary measures. An order issued about six months later reveals that commissioners travelling from Turhal to Amasya were attacked on the way at a village called Vadi. Another decree, dated September 1737, ordered that those who had deserted their posts as soldiers and taken to brigandage be imprisoned and confined to fortresses.

This insecurity was not peculiar to the Amasya region. The caravan roads that began in Iran, ended at Izmir and crossed Anatolia from end to end were the main field of brigand activity. Sarıbeyoğlu Mustafa, who rebelled in western Anatolia between 1736 and 1739, repeatedly robbed the caravans coming to Izmir by way of Tokat, and according to the reports of foreign merchants trade came to a complete halt. The revolt was suppressed only on 30 April 1739. These attacks on caravans that had passed through Tokat directly affected the merchants of Amasya and Tokat at the eastern end of the road. When road security broke down, merchants were forced to turn to longer and more expensive routes, and this was reflected in the price of goods and in the income of the road cities.

What the Passing Trade Brought

Lying on a trade route brought a city news, ideas and different cultures in addition to customs and lodging revenues. In the bazaar of Amasya merchants from different lands met, and the customs and goods of distant countries mingled with the life of the city. The languages spoken, the goods sold and the stories told in the courtyards of the inns turned Amasya from an inward-looking provincial town into a crossroads open to the world. The political weight the city carried as a princely sanjak in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and this commercial vitality nourished each other. The councils of the princes, the consumption of the court circle and the construction of endowed buildings made it easier for the goods arriving by road to find buyers in the city.

The caravan road carried more than goods and money to Amasya. Silk weaving, dyeing and the crafts connected with them developed as the raw material brought by the road was processed in the city. The existence of a dyehouse and a candle workshop in Amasya shows that the infrastructure needed to dye and finish silk and cotton fabrics had been established in the city. These crafts formed a store of skill that kept the city's economy on its feet even in periods when long-distance trade weakened.

Amasya's Trade in the Nineteenth Century

By the nineteenth century the Bursa-Tabriz caravan road had largely lost its former importance, but Amasya's commercial life did not die out. The city's weaving tradition continued, and V. Cuinet wrote at the end of the nineteenth century that there were nearly 2,500 weavers in Amasya. In 1863 Amasya was among the pilot regions chosen for trials of cotton seed brought from Egypt. In view of the city's growing commercial activity and its relative closeness to the coast, a fair was established in 1864, opening every year on 15 December and lasting until the end of the month. In this period grain growing and fruit farming also held an important place in the city's economy.

Ziya Pasha, who served as governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya in the mid-1860s, built government offices, schools, clock towers and a prison in the city centre and the districts, as well as a bedesten and shops, and had new streets opened in the town centre. These works are remembered locally as the "Amasya reform". In 1865, following complaints raised against him, Ziya Pasha was transferred to the governorship of Canik. Some sources also state that the dome of the old bedesten was removed during the works of this period. The commercial buildings of the caravan age had thus begun to be transformed to meet the city's new needs.

In the twentieth century the factor that determined the direction of transport was the railway. The line built in 1930 connected Amasya to Samsun, its natural port. Present-day Amasya likewise lies at a point crossed by the roads linking inner Anatolia to the port of Samsun. The city's role as intermediary between the Black Sea and inner Anatolia continued even when trains and lorries took the place of caravans. Merzifon's position on the highway linking Istanbul and Ankara to Samsun also shows that the region has kept this old pattern of roads.

The Legacy of the Roads

Amasya's place on the Ottoman trade routes became one of the most important sources of the city's economic and cultural development. Although the old roads the caravans followed have largely changed today, traces of the vitality they brought to the city survive in the walls of the bedesten, in the street names of the bazaar district and in the records of silk weaving. That the street on which the Burmalı Minare Mosque stands still bears the name Taşhan Sokağı (Stone Inn Street) is a small but telling example of how deeply the buildings of trade were inscribed in the city's memory. A city also grows on the wealth that passes through it, and Amasya is one of the clearest examples of this in Anatolia.

The tracks the camels once followed have long since returned to the earth, and most of the caravanserais have collapsed or taken on other uses. Even so, the culture of trade, the habit of doing business with different peoples and the outward-looking face those roads brought to the city left a lasting mark on Amasya's character. Being a road city gave Amasya, along with wealth, a habit of understanding and welcoming other cultures. Once a link on the Anatolian stretch of the silk road from Bursa to Tabriz, the city still serves today as a passage between inner Anatolia and the Black Sea.

Chronology

1304: Genoa opens a consulate in Tabriz.

1472: Displeased with the mizan introduced at Tokat by Mehmed II, the forces of Uzun Hasan plunder Tokat.

1483: The Amasya Bedesten is built by Hüseyin Ağa.

1502: Shah Ismail makes Tabriz the Safavid capital.

1514: Selim I enters Tabriz; an embargo on Iranian goods and the confiscation of caravans follow.

1554-1555: Silk officially weighed in Amasya over ten months reaches 10,632 lodra (about 15 tonnes).

1578-1590: The longest period of Ottoman rule in Tabriz.

1581: The price of silk rises to 135-150 akçe because of the war with Iran.

1615-1618: Ottoman-Safavid war; towards its end Izmir begins to rival Aleppo in the silk trade.

1626-1632: The Taşhan in Tokat is built.

1666-1679: Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha builds his mosque complex in Merzifon, including a Taşhan and a bedesten.

1668: An earthquake severely damages the Amasya Bedesten.

1728: Tabriz customs revenue reaches 4,560,000 akçe and silk revenue 1,200,000 akçe.

1736-1739: Revolt of Sarıbeyoğlu Mustafa; caravans travelling to Izmir by way of Tokat are robbed.

1737: Decrees concerning brigandage and road security are sent to Amasya.

1863: Amasya is included among the pilot regions for trials of Egyptian cotton seed.

1864: A fair opening every year on 15 December is established in Amasya.

1865: Ziya Pasha is transferred from Amasya to the governorship of Canik.

1930: The railway connects Amasya to Samsun.

1971: The Amasya Bedesten is restored by the General Directorate of Foundations.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

  • "Taşhan", Culture Portal (Kültür Portalı), Tokat sights.

Other sources

  • "Amasya Bedesteni", Turkish Wikipedia (supplementary source).

Online sources