Büyükkızılca is a village of the Merkez (central) district of Amasya, lying on the Tokat-Amasya highway 22 kilometres from the city centre. Today it is known above all for two things: its greenhouses, almost all of them built on level ground, where curly lettuce is grown in winter and tomatoes and cucumbers in summer; and the İstasyon Mosque, built in 1956-1958 by a master builder from Zile together with the villagers and registered as a protected monument for its wooden corbelled ceiling. The village is one of the most populous in the central district, with 739 registered residents in 2025. In the population compilations it appears simply as "Kızılca", and since other villages in the district bear the same name, every older record has to be read with the question of which Kızılca is meant.

The Name and the Other Kızılcas

In her study of Amasya place names formed from colour words, Asena Yalnız includes Büyük Kızılca and analyses it as an adjectival compound of "büyük" (large) and "kızılca", meaning "reddish, tending to red"; kızılca itself is derived from kızıl (red) with the noun-forming suffix -ca. No document shows which soil or rock colour the name refers to. In Bekir Başalan's article tabulating name changes across the province, Büyükkızılca appears among the hundred villages of the central district but not in the table of changed names. That same table, however, contains two neighbouring names: the former name of Küçük Kızılca is given as Kızılcağisağir, and that of Eski Kızılca as Kızılcaatik. In other words, alongside settlements once distinguished as "little Kızılca" and "old Kızılca", the district also had a village called plain Kızılca.

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi helps to trace this distinction. Yasar describes Küçük Kızılca, also called Geyikli or Geygelli, as a village "in the vicinity of the village of Kızılca, situated to the south of Amasya"; elsewhere he notes that Geygelli was the former name of Küçük Kızılca, and he lists "Kızılca-i Sağîr" among the places where the descendants of Şâdgeldi Pasha had dervish lodges, madrasas and baths. These records point to a cluster of villages standing side by side south of Amasya, the largest of which was simply called Kızılca. The position of present-day Büyükkızılca, on the Tokat road south of the city, fits this picture; yet Yasar never states by name which of today's villages he means by "the village of Kızılca", and the existence of Eski Kızılca makes any identification harder still.

Kızılca in Ottoman Records

According to the Karaman and Rum accounting register of 937 (1530), compiled in the reign of Süleyman I, a village named "Kızılca" was recorded in the Geldiklan(-âbâd) sub-district of the kaza of Amasya; it appears on page 358 of the register. The village of Boğa is entered on the same page. Yasar, for his part, relates that the endowment deeds of the villages of Kızılca, Boğa, Gerne and İltekin place them within the "Sîmre Nâhiyesi" of Amasya, that this sub-district became the Geldiklan sub-district in the early Ottoman period, and that its centre was the small town of İltekin. In this respect the two sources complement each other: Kızılca was one of the villages of the old Geldiklan sub-district in the immediate surroundings of Amasya. Even so, whether the single "Kızılca" entry in the 1530 index refers to present-day Büyükkızılca or to Eski Kızılca cannot be confirmed from the documents; the index gives no household or tax figures, only the name and the page.

The name Kızılca also appears in the nisba of several men raised in Amasya's scholarly and Sufi circles. According to Yasar, Bahşî Halife, who taught around the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, was the son of Ya'kûb bin Ahmed "from the village known as Kızılca near Amasya"; the nisba "el-Ahmerî" that he used in his signature likewise means "of Kızılca". Yasar deduces from this signature that the unnamed birthplace mentioned in Mecdî Mehmed Efendi's translation of the Şakâyık was the village of Kızılca, two hours from Amasya. Dâvûd Halife, a pupil of Bahşî Halife, was, again according to Yasar, the son of Şâh Budak "from the village of Kızılca near Amasya", and died around 947 (1540-41) while serving as the pulpit preacher of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque. Which Kızılca these two scholars came from is not clear. The two-hour distance Yasar gives seems short for Büyükkızılca, which today lies 22 kilometres away by road, so counting them as men of this village must remain an assumption.

The İstasyon Mosque

The village's registered monument is the İstasyon Mosque, the subject of a detailed study by Neslihan Korkmaz. Construction began on 1 March 1956 and the building was completed on 30 September 1958; both dates are written on the east and west edges of the first tier of the corbelled ceiling over the prayer hall. The builder was Mehmed Çavdar of Zile. He wrote his name on the ceiling in Arabic script, and in the mosque register of the provincial mufti's office he is recorded as Mehmet Çavdaroğlu. According to elderly villagers whom Korkmaz interviewed in 2014, the master brought a journeyman with him, and the wooden pieces of the ceiling were carved, shaped and coloured with plant dyes prepared in a mobile workshop set up near the mosque. The villagers also took part in the work through collective labour.

The building stands on a rectangular plot aligned north-south and is covered by a hipped roof with broad eaves. Its reinforced-concrete walls are whitewashed inside and out; on the exterior, the window frames and the lower part of the walls are painted red. At the centre of the prayer hall, which measures about 9.88 by 10.85 metres, rises a three-tiered nested wooden corbelled ceiling whose beams meet at angles. Along the edges of the first tier, written in white on a black ground, are the Basmala, the names of God and Muhammad, the names of the four caliphs and of Hasan and Husayn, the builder's name and the construction dates. At the centre of the top tier, a five-stepped boss with a grooved surface, framed by an octagon filled with rosette and hatayi motifs, forms the most richly decorated part of the ceiling. The minbar, the preaching chair and the turquoise-painted entrance door are also decorated in wood; the inscriptions in medallions on the walls of the prayer hall are thought to have been added somewhat after construction.

The mosque has changed over time. In 1995 the late-comers' portico on the north side was turned into an enclosed space, and a second minaret of cut stone was added to the north of the old brick one. The villagers had asked for the ageing first minaret to be demolished, but because the building was registered the request was refused and only the new minaret was permitted. Korkmaz notes that the mosque was registered in 2011 and is sound and in use for worship; she regards it as one of the last examples of the traditional corbelled-ceiling technique carried into the Republican period. The study does not explain where the name "İstasyon" comes from.

Greenhouse Farming

The best documentation of Büyükkızılca's livelihood is a field study of protected cultivation in the village by Ozan Zambi and colleagues at Ordu University. In the 2013-2014 growing season a fifty-question survey was put to one hundred randomly chosen growers. Most of the growers had primary-school education, and eighty per cent had been working greenhouses for more than ten years. Most of the greenhouses stood on the growers' own land, and their construction had mostly been financed with support from the Agricultural Credit Cooperative. Labour came from the family and from seasonal workers; there were no permanent employees.

All the greenhouses stood on level ground and were covered with polyethylene, and almost all were unheated; the commonest size was between 2,500 and 5,000 square metres. All irrigation was by drip, and most soil preparation was done with tractors. The crop pattern changed with the seasons: curly lettuce in autumn and winter, tomatoes and cucumbers in spring and summer. About half the produce was sold on site to middlemen, and some was sent to the wholesale market. Seventy-one per cent of the growers said that greenhouse farming made them money. The researchers concluded that Büyükkızılca compared well with other greenhouse areas of the Black Sea region, but that its growers needed training in modern techniques.

Population

In the address-based population records, Büyükkızılca is listed under the name "Kızılca". In 2007 the village had 863 residents; after reaching its peak of 909 in 2011, the population began a slow decline. From 849 in 2020 it fell a little each year over the following five years, reaching 739 in 2025, when 385 men and 354 women were registered. Küçükkızılca and Eskikızılca in the same district have separate population series, which should not be confused with these figures.

Chronology

1530: A village named "Kızılca" in the Geldiklan sub-district is entered in the accounting register; whether it is the present village is uncertain.

1 March 1956: Construction of the İstasyon Mosque begins.

30 September 1958: The mosque is completed.

1995: The late-comers' portico is enclosed and a second minaret is added.

2011: The İstasyon Mosque is registered as a monument; the village population peaks at 909.

2013-2014: A survey of one hundred greenhouse growers is carried out in the village.

2025: The population is recorded as 739.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Neslihan Korkmaz, "Amasya Merkez Büyük Kızılca Köyü İstasyon Cami", Karadeniz Araştırmaları, XVII/67, 2020, pp. 693-713. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/2259586
  • Ozan Zambi, Atnan Uğur, Ercan Ekbiç, Çiğdem Kocamanoğlu, Meltem Sezer, "Amasya İli Büyükkızılca Köyünde Örtüaltı Tarımı", Bahçe, 45 (Özel Sayı 1: VII. Ulusal Bahçe Bitkileri Kongresi Bildirileri, vol. II), 2016, pp. 409-413. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/5335347
  • Asena Yalnız, "Amasya İli ve İlçelerinin Renk Adlarıyla Oluşan Yer Adlarının Gramatikal ve Bölgesel İncelemesi", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 12, 2022, pp. 133-159 (pp. 140-142). amasya.bel.tr
  • Bekir Başalan, "Amasya İlinde İsimleri Değiştirilen Yerleşim Yeri Adları Üzerine Bir İnceleme", Folklor Akademi Dergisi, 7(3), 2024, pp. 1382-1391 (Table 1, pp. 1385-1386). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4249891

Other sources

Online sources