Çayköy is one of the seventeen villages of the Hamamözü district of Amasya Province. With a population of just over a hundred it is a small place today, but in the last quarter of the nineteenth century it was the administrative centre of its area: the yearbooks (salname) of the province of Sivas record a nahiye (sub-district) named "Çay" in the kaza of Maden-i Sim, later called Gümüşhacıköy, and when Hamamözü, now the district town, was founded in 1887 it was attached to this nahiye. In the municipality's list of muhtars and in its announcements the name is written as two words, "Çay Köyü"; the population results use the single word Çayköy. Çayköy does not appear in the tables of Bekir Başalan, who compiled the renamings of settlements across the province, so the village has not undergone an official change of name in the Republican period. According to the 2025 results, 112 people are registered in the village.

The Nahiye of Çay

Drawing on the yearbooks, Sabit Genç sets out the administrative structure of the sanjak of Amasya between 1880 and 1915 and lists the nahiyes of the kaza of Maden-i Sim year by year. In 1881 the kaza had a single nahiye, Hacıköy. In the yearbooks of 1884-1889 the number rises to five, with Çay at the head of the list; the other four are İmirler, Eslemez, Kanlıca and Ahyarı. The kaza was renamed Gümüşhacıköy in 1894, and in the State Yearbook (Devlet Salnamesi) of 1903 its nahiyes had been reduced to two: Saraycık and Çay. In the record for 1912 Çay no longer appears; the nahiyes are Saraycık, Hamamözü and Gümüş Madeni, and in 1915 Maden-i Sim, Saraycık and Hamamözü. Çay thus kept its place through most of the successive administrative arrangements for nearly thirty years, giving way to Hamamözü at some point between 1903 and 1912. For 1892 Genç gives a total of six nahiyes, but only three names (Kanlıcataş, Emirler, Salur) can be read in the footnote, so Çay's position in that year remains uncertain.

The yearbooks record the nahiye simply as "Çay"; what shows that its centre was present-day Çayköy is Hamamözü's own account of its founding. According to the district's history, Hamamözü was a farm belonging to İbrahim and Kâmil Beys, notables of the town of Gümüş, until 1887, when sixty households who had come from the Caucasus bought the land and settled there, founding it as a village; at that time it was attached to "the nahiye of Çayköy", and in 1910 it became a nahiye centre itself. In the district's official account this change is explained by growing migration from the surrounding villages to Hamamözü and by the new village's turning into a centre of attraction. The yearbook lists and this local account complement each other, showing the same transition from two different directions. Kanlıca, which Genç's list names alongside Çay in the same years, also lies within the borders of present-day Hamamözü: Başalan lists Kağnıcı among the renamed places of the district and gives its former name as Kanlıca.

Martyrs' Graves and Recent Years

The written traces of the village's present come from the announcements of the district administration. In July 2024 the 15 July commemoration programme in Hamamözü opened with a visit to the martyrs' graves in Çay Köyü and to the families of the fallen, and religious officials recited the Qur'an and offered prayers at the graves. The announcement does not say whose graves these are or what period they go back to; the report on the following year's programme speaks only of martyrs' graves "in the villages". On 14 July 2026, on the occasion of the month of Muharram, an aşure (Noah's pudding) gathering was held in the village, attended by Mayor Cihan Demir and District Governor Ertuğrul Arslan. Çay is also one of the three villages to which provincial health teams brought a mobile health service from the integrated hospital in Hamamözü; the others are Mağara Obruğu and Omarca. According to the municipality's list, the village's muhtar (headman) is Hasan Toptaş. Its houses are gathered in a single cluster; when the four villages of Hamamözü with scattered settlement are listed separately, Çay is not mentioned among them.

Population

In Çayköy, where 183 people were registered in 2007, the decline proceeded slowly and steadily for a long time. After 2021 there is a brief recovery, with the figure climbing to 141 in 2023; it then falls from 138 in 2024 to 112 in 2025. Over eighteen years the village has lost close to two-fifths of its population. In every year of the series women outnumber men; in 2025, 62 women and 50 men were registered.

  • 2007-2011: 183, 179, 171, 173, 166
  • 2012-2016: 162, 155, 145, 134, 127
  • 2017-2021: 129, 126, 119, 118, 114
  • 2022-2025: 124, 141, 138, 112

Chronology

1884-1889: In the yearbooks of the province of Sivas, Çay is one of the five nahiyes of the kaza of Maden-i Sim.

1887: The village of Hamamözü is founded and attached to the nahiye of Çayköy.

1894: The kaza of Maden-i Sim is renamed Gümüşhacıköy.

1903: In the State Yearbook the two nahiyes of the kaza are Saraycık and Çay.

1910: Hamamözü becomes a nahiye centre.

1912: The nahiye of Çay no longer appears in the records; Hamamözü has taken its place.

15 July 2024: The district's commemoration programme begins with a visit to the martyrs' graves in Çay Köyü.

14 July 2026: An aşure gathering is held in the village for the month of Muharram.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources