Beke, 43 kilometres from the centre of Amasya, is a village at the western end of the central district, close to the border with Çorum. Its name lives on both sides of the provincial boundary: in the Mecitözü district of Çorum a spa dated to the Roman and Byzantine periods is known today as the "Beke Kaplıcası". The village itself is recorded in the register of 1530 as belonging to the nahiye of Geldiklan of Amasya, and a Roman milestone reported in an early publication as having been seen here shows that the old road from Amasya to Ankara passed near the village.

At the Western Edge of Geldiklan

In the published index of the 1530 accounting register, the entry "Beke k., Geldiklan-âbâd n." refers to page 361 of the register; no other village of this name appears in the index for the liva of Amasya. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar describes Geldiklan as a nahiye covering the western parts of Amasya with Ortaköy as its centre, but he does not mention Beke separately. The nahiye also seems to have extended beyond the present provincial boundary: the name Bebük, listed in the same index among the villages of Geldiklan, appears in David French's milestone corpus as the former name of Boğazkaya, a village in the Mecitözü district of Çorum. That the two Bebüks are the same place is not proven by any document; still, considering that Mecitözü belonged to Amasya until 1916, Beke's becoming a border village may be the result of a relatively recent administrative arrangement. Beke does not appear in Bekir Başalan's table of renamed settlements; the village has kept the name of the old records.

The Lost Milestone

In French's study of the Roman roads, the road heading west from Amasya passes Bulduklu, Aydoğdu, Boğa and Bağlıca, then Çavuş and Beke, reaching Boğazkaya and Figani. The stone at Beke is known only from a report. The third volume of Studia Pontica, which published the ancient inscriptions of the Pontic region, records under number 446a a milestone "in the same village". The information rests on a copy made by Proestakis, dragoman of the vilayet of Sivas, and passed on to Grégoire through Mordtmann; neither the dimensions nor the text of the stone were published. French went to the village on 23 July 1983 but could not find the stone. Its present whereabouts are unknown.

The Beke Spa

The spa that shares the village's name is recorded in the inventory of cultural assets as a spa of the Roman and Byzantine cultures in the Mecitözü district of Çorum. Çorum's official tourism description of Mecitözü likewise notes that the "Beke (Figani)" spas serve domestic tourism. Figani is the Mecitözü village that follows Beke in French's list and where three milestones were found. Thus, on the two sides of the provincial border, the line of the old road and the hot springs meet in an area known by the same name. When the land on which the spa stands passed from Amasya to Çorum, or whether the building has any historical tie to the village of Beke, is not explained in the sources examined.

The Village and Its Population

According to official village data archived in 2016, Beke's primary school and health post were closed; children were bussed to school. The village had a postal agency and a drinking water network, but no sewage system. The population shrank fastest in the 1980s and 1990s: the village had 543 inhabitants in the 1985 census, 361 in 1990 and 208 in 2000. The address-based series shows 156 people in 2007; the figure rose to 183 in 2008 and 2011 and then slowly declined. In 2025 the village has 129 inhabitants, 59 men and 70 women, less than a quarter of its population forty years ago.

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