Bağlıca is a village 24 kilometres from the centre of Amasya, lying within the lands of the old nahiye of Geldiklan to the west of the city. A Roman milestone standing beside the village mosque records in Latin that the road ran from Amasya "to the frontier of the Galatians", tying the village to a route nearly nineteen centuries old. The same place was also the final stop of a rebellion that troubled the sanjak of Amasya for a long time at the end of the seventeenth century. Records stretching from the 1530 register to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi count Bağlıca among the villages of this western district.

The Name

In Bekir Başalan's table of renamed settlements in Amasya, the former name of Bağlıca is given as Kılçak. Every older record, however, uses the present name. The published index of the 1530 accounting register lists a village called "Bağluca" in the nahiye of Geldiklan-âbâd, on page 359 of the register; a second village of the same name in the index belongs to the northern nahiye of Argoma (p. 384), which Hüsâmeddîn identifies with Suluova. Hüsâmeddîn himself, writing of seventeenth-century events, speaks of "the village of Bağlıca in the nahiye of Geldiklan". Başalan's table does not explain when, or through what official act, the name Kılçak was used. Hüsâmeddîn's chronicle mentions a certain "Kılçaklı Ömer Ağa" who was dismissed from the trusteeship of a pious foundation; whether the epithet has anything to do with the village cannot be told from the text.

The Roman Road and Its Milestones

In the Roman period Bağlıca lay on the stretch running west from Amasya of the road that led from Satala through Niksar and Amasya towards Ankara. In David French's corpus of the Roman milestones of Anatolia, stones are recorded along this route at the villages of Bulduklu, Aydoğdu, Boğa, Bağlıca and Beke; Bağlıca is the only one of them represented by two separate stones. French saw the first stone beside the mosque in 1984 and 1986, taking a squeeze and photographs. It is a limestone cylinder, broken at the top, its shaft tapering slightly upwards, and it stands 1.45 metres high.

According to French's reading, the original inscription most probably dates from the reign of Hadrian, AD 128/129, and states that the road was measured "from Amasia to the frontier of the Galatians"; the stone's own mile figure is partly lost and French restores it as twenty. A nearly identical stone found at Güngörmez in Çorum gives the distance from Amasya to the Galatian frontier as forty-two miles. French notes that the phrase "to the frontier of the Galatians" appears on these two stones of the same road and suggests it may have been chosen in a somewhat derogatory tone. The stone was later turned upside down and inscribed again: the second text belongs to the joint reign of Diocletian and Maximian (293-305), the third to 306-307, when Galerius and Severus were Augusti. In this last inscription earlier imperial names were cut away and new ones carved in their place, and fragments of the old letters can still be read.

French saw the second stone in the summer of 1986 at the house of Mehmet Bülbül in the village. It had been brought from his orchard at the southern edge of the village, below and east of Bekçi Tepe, in a spot the villagers call Eski Bağ, "the old vineyard". The inscription bears the name of Gordian III and, according to French, probably dates from AD 238. Both stones are now in the Amasya Museum. The name Eski Bağ shares its root with the name of the village, though no written explanation connects the village name to vineyards.

In the Nahiye of Geldiklan

According to Hüsâmeddîn, Geldiklan was a nahiye covering the western parts of Amasya with Ortaköy as its centre, and it took its name from Baygeldi, one of the Afshar beys settled here at the beginning of the Danishmendid period. People from Bağlıca are also mentioned within this frame. The biographical volumes of his work record that Hasan Efendi, known as "Bağlıcalı Hâfız", was the son of Mehmed from the village of Bağlıca in the nahiye of Geldiklan. Hasan Efendi memorised the Qur'an at the madrasa of Sultan Bâyezîd in Amasya, completed his studies in the circle of Kadızâde Hâce Mehmed İlmî Efendi and taught for many years. After serving as professor at several madrasas he retired in 1059 (1649) from the Halfet Gâzi madrasa and died in the course of 1065 (1654-55). Hüsâmeddîn describes him as a learned teacher and jurist.

The Raid of 1689

The name Bağlıca enters the history of Amasya most strikingly in 1100 (1688-89). After the revolt of Yeğen Osman Paşa, also known as Bayburdluoğlu, had been suppressed, orders were issued against his relatives and partisans in Amasya. In Hüsâmeddîn's account the Paşa's sons Hasan and Hüseyin Paşa, Ahmed Paşa and Hüseyin Paşa's steward Veli Paşazâde Mahmud Bey had withdrawn to the nahiye of Geldiklan together with their maternal uncles, the Boyacızâde family. The mütesellim of Amasya, Rahtuvan Mehmed Ağa, left a deputy in the city, marched to Geldiklan with the forces of the local notables, surrounded the district on every side and searched it. The fugitives were finally surprised at the Bağlıca Çiftliği, the farm where they had been hiding, and were captured and executed.

The biographical volumes repeat the same event in slightly different words: some entries say they were "caught around the village of Bağlıca", others that they were "caught at the farm of Bağlıca in Receb of the year 1100"; in one place Hüsâmeddîn calls the episode "the clash at Bağlıca". Receb 1100 corresponds to the spring of 1689. Because the source moves between "farm" and "village", it remains unclear whether the raid took place in the village itself or at a farm attached to it. No other settlement of this name is known in Geldiklan, so the event can be connected with present-day Bağlıca, but no document shows where the farm stood.

A Folk Song

A kırık hava entitled "Evleri Görünüyor" ("Their houses come into view"), registered as number 4595 in the Turkish Folk Music repertoire of TRT, gives its region as Amasya and its village as Bağlıca. The tune was collected from Mehmet Kemeroğlu by the Ankara State Conservatory and transcribed by Altan Demirel. Set in the çargâh scale and a 9/8 metre, the song treats separation and longing, with lines such as "their houses stand by the road, their sash sits at the waist". Since there is no other village of this name in Amasya, the recording belongs to this village.

Population

According to the censuses, Bağlıca had 621 inhabitants in 1985, 609 in 1990 and 540 in 2000. In 2007, when the address-based registration system began, the village appeared with 463 people and rose a year later to 520, the highest figure of the series; it then lost a few people almost every year, falling to 371 in 2022. The 402 recorded in 2023 proved a brief rise. In 2025 the village had 362 inhabitants, 174 men and 188 women. Although the population has fallen by roughly forty per cent in forty years, Bağlıca has emptied more slowly than western neighbours such as Boğaköy, which lost more than half of its people over the same period, or Beke, which lost three quarters.

Chronology

128/129 (probably): A milestone set up under Hadrian records the road from Amasya to the Galatian frontier.

238 (probably): A second milestone in the name of Gordian III.

293-307: The first stone is re-inscribed under Diocletian and again in 306-307.

1530: Registered as the village of Bağluca in the nahiye of Geldiklan-âbâd.

1654-55: Death of Bağlıcalı Hâfız Hasan Efendi.

Spring 1689: The sons and partisans of Yeğen Osman Paşa are captured at the Bağlıca farm and executed.

1984-1986: David French examines the two milestones in the village.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • David H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor, Vol. 3: Milestones, Fasc. 3.3: Cappadocia, BIAA Electronic Monograph 3, London: British Institute at Ankara, 2012, pp. 15, 49-51. https://doi.org/10.18866/BIAA/e-03
  • David H. French, Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor, Vol. 3: Milestones, Fasc. 3.9: An Album of Maps, BIAA Electronic Monograph 9, London: British Institute at Ankara, 2016, p. 28. https://doi.org/10.18866/BIAA/e-09
  • Bekir Başalan, "Amasya İlinde İsimleri Değiştirilen Yerleşim Yeri Adları Üzerine Bir İnceleme", DergiPark, p. 1385. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4249891

Other sources

Online sources