For centuries justice in the Ottoman Empire was dispensed through sharia courts presided over by qadis. The line between law and administration was never sharp; a qadi both heard cases and carried out many regulatory and supervisory duties in his district. In the nineteenth century, as trade grew and relations with foreign merchants intensified, this single-judge, single-tier system struggled to keep up with new needs. After the Tanzimat, nizamiye courts, which heard cases outside sharia matters, were added alongside the sharia courts. Amasya, both a sanjak center and an old city of learning and administration, took its place within this two-layered judicial order. The city's judicial history shows the local course of a long institutional transformation that ran from the qadi's court to the unified judiciary of the Republic, and the people who lived through it, from court clerks to members of the court of first instance, can be traced by name in local sources.

The Qadi Tradition and the Sharia Court Registers

In Amasya the office of the qadi became one of the city's oldest and most enduring institutions as Ottoman administration took hold. A qadi was more than a presiding judge; he was regarded as a man of both law and administration. His rulings, the sales he recorded, inheritance divisions, pious endowment matters and social agreements were entered in the court ledgers, that is, the Islamic court registers (şer'iyye sicilleri). Today these ledgers are the richest archival material for reconstructing the daily life of a city, because they record far more than major events: neighborly relations, debts, marriages and divorces, and inventories of property all appear in them. Hüsameddin himself drew on these ledgers repeatedly while writing his History of Amasya, stating plainly, for instance, that he had extracted the centuries-long changes of ownership of the Çakallar vineyards "from the registers of the sharia court".

The total number of Amasya's sharia court registers is given as 95. The first 22 ledgers, covering the seventeenth century, were described one by one in a study published in 2023, which identified the qadis named in them who served in the city between 1034 and 1110 AH (1624-1699). In recent years part of the registers has been worked through in master's theses: separate transcription studies have been made of ledgers 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15 and 22, and Amasya in the second half of the seventeenth century has been the subject of a doctoral dissertation based on the registers. These studies show that the city's social and economic history has been written largely on the basis of the qadis' records.

The jurisdiction of the sharia courts narrowed over the centuries but never disappeared entirely. Family matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance and child custody were heard in the sharia courts until 1924. The founding of the nizamiye courts did not immediately sideline the qadi; the two branches of the judiciary worked side by side for a long time, and at times rubbed against each other.

The Amasya Court in the Eighteenth Century

How the Amasya court worked before the Tanzimat is shown in detail by registers 50 to 65, which cover the years 1750-1800. In these ledgers women frequently appear before the court as plaintiffs, defendants or witnesses. According to a record dated 3 July 1762, Ayşe of the Dere quarter obtained a divorce by mutual agreement (muhâlaa), leaving her maintenance and her deferred dower of five kuruş as a debt owed by her husband Veli, and came to the court fifteen days later to have it registered. On 17 January 1763 Meryem bint Ahmed of the Kamerüddin quarter claimed that her husband had beaten her with an axe five days earlier for no reason, divorced her with the triple formula ("talâk-ı selâse") and driven her from the house, while the husband maintained that the divorce had taken place with Meryem's consent. Some women came to court in person; others sent a proxy.

Property suits show well how women handled procedure. In 1782 Alime of the Hacı İlyas quarter, acting through her proxy, brought a case against Hatice bint Abdullah of the Kazgancı quarter. Hatice had sold her plot of land to Alime for fifty-seven kuruş twenty-seven years earlier, but told the court that she had made the sale under pressure from her husband. As there were no witnesses, the qadi offered Hatice the oath, and on her oath he annulled the sale. Alime then produced witnesses stating that the money had been received willingly; on the testimony and fatwas of the mufti of Amasya, el-Hac İsmail Efendi, and the mufti of Turhal, Abdülmecid Efendi, the plot was handed back to Alime. In the same year Ayşe bint Abdullah of the Yakutiye quarter asked for the annulment of the sale of a mulberry orchard her husband had sold four years earlier without her consent, but in the end she settled with the buyer for twenty kuruş and withdrew the suit. The thirty-year inheritance claim of Ayşe bint Recep of the Üçler quarter was likewise settled for five kuruş through the mediators known as "muslihun". Part of the disputes brought before the court were thus closed by the parties' settlement without ending in the qadi's ruling.

In reaching a decision the qadi also listened to the voice of the neighborhood. In a case dated 14 July 1762, Osman Beşe of the village of Medrese reported that Ali bin Mustafa had entered the house of his son İbrahim and tried to assault his daughter-in-law, while Ali sought to shift the blame by claiming that the woman had invited him. The qadi had the villagers asked about the young woman's character; when they vouched for her good conduct, it was decided that Ali be held in the district jail until he "reformed himself". When needed, the court also sent an official to the scene: in the autumn of 1768 the court clerk Ahmed Efendi bin İsmail Efendi was assigned to investigate an incident in the village of Hakala in which one woman was killed and two others wounded. Non-Muslims could apply to the same court; the suit brought by Vartoros of the Aşağı Suvadiye quarter, on the grounds that his wife Marta Hatun had been assaulted, is one example.

In serious crimes the local court was not the last instance. In the autumn of 1780 the charge that Seyyid Mustafa of the village of Halyas, in the district of Havza, had broken into the house of Hamamcı Osman at midnight, tried to assault his wife and stabbed to death Osman when he resisted, was heard in Sivas on an order sent from Istanbul, in the presence of representatives of Amasya's officials and men of religious law. When the witnesses jointly declared that such crimes were the accused's habit, Qadi Seyyid Mehmed Şakirzâde ruled on the basis of two fatwas that retaliation (kısas) was lawful and reported the matter to Istanbul. The case shows a provincial qadi passing a sentence as grave as death with the support of a mufti's fatwa and the approval of the center. Nor was it new for people of Amasya to carry their cases to Istanbul: in 1555 the Imperial Council had ordered that İbrahim, who had broken into a house and attacked a woman, be punished according to the law, and in 1678 it had ordered that Emine Hatun, who could not obtain the thirty akçe due to her from her father's endowment, be given her due.

The Road to the Nizamiye Courts

The emergence of the new courts cannot be traced to a single decision. From the beginning of the nineteenth century certain cases began to be referred to special councils according to their nature and the status of the parties. From 1800-1801 commercial disputes between Ottoman subjects and foreigners were, as an exception, allowed to be resolved in mixed commissions. A commercial council for merchants' cases was established on 1 January 1840. In the provinces, bodies set up in 1840 under the name of muhassıllık councils, renamed provincial councils (memleket meclisleri) in 1842 and eyalet and sanjak councils after 1849, also took on judicial duties. These councils heard ta'zir offenses regulated in the penal codes of 1840, 1851 and 1858, and decided certain sharia offenses according to sharia principles through the qadi. Over time they acquired the character of courts. The Supplement to the Commercial Code of 30 April 1860 and the regulations that followed brought the organization of the commercial courts into a set order.

In Amasya the city's notables took part in the councils of this transitional period. According to Hüsameddin, Eşref Ağa, son of Hacı Ali Ağa, the mütesellim (deputy governor) of Amasya, and known as Hacı Yusuf Ağazâde, became a member of the "council of lawsuits and administration" from 1263 (1846-47) onward, after making a fortune in tax farming. This date coincides with the period of the provincial councils that also took on judicial duties in the provinces; it appears that local notables entered both administrative and judicial affairs through these councils.

In the official sense, the first nucleus of the nizamiye courts was the investigative councils (meclis-i tahkik) established in Istanbul in 1854 to apply the post-Tanzimat penal codes. The real framework, however, was drawn by the Provincial Regulation (Vilâyât Nizamnâmesi) of 7 November 1864. Under it a council of lawsuits (deâvî meclisi) was to be set up in every district. Presided over by the district's sharia judge and composed of Muslim and non-Muslim members, the council would hear civil cases other than sharia cases, the internal private cases of non-Muslim communities, and matters to be heard by the criminal and commercial councils, as well as offenses at the level of misdemeanor and petty offense. A council of appeal was to be established in sanjak centers. Composed of three Muslim and three non-Muslim members, this council likewise met under the presidency of the sharia judge of the district concerned and reviewed on appeal the civil and criminal cases that the district councils could not hear or had decided. Since Amasya was a sanjak center, the workings of this system at both district and sanjak level were lived in the city. What is striking is that the presidency of the new councils still lay with the qadi; the nizamiye courts did not arise from a sudden break with sharia jurisdiction, but developed as a structure that separated from it step by step.

The Divan of Judicial Ordinances and the Tiered Courts

The need for a higher authority to review the decisions of the nizamiye courts was met in 1868 when the Supreme Council (Meclis-i Vâlâ) was split in two. One part became the Council of State (Şûrâ-yı Devlet), the other the Divan of Judicial Ordinances (Dîvân-ı Ahkâm-ı Adliyye), headed by Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. Legal need was not the only factor in the divan's creation. The Western powers' investigation in 1867 and their finding that the commercial and nizamiye courts were inadequate added pressure for a more thorough reform. Among the ulema there was a reaction against establishing new courts while the sharia courts still existed; to soften it, Cevdet Pasha summarized a treatise by Devvânî and read it at a gathering attended by the ulema. The treatise argued that establishing courts of grievances (mezâlim) was not contrary to Islamic law.

The internal regulation issued on 14 February 1870 divided the nizamiye courts into four groups: councils of lawsuits in the districts, councils of civil appeal in the sanjaks, appeal divans in provincial centers and the Divan of Judicial Ordinances in Istanbul. The councils of lawsuits functioned as courts of first instance, while the sanjak councils served both as first-instance and appellate bodies. The Regulation on the Nizamiye Courts of 11 January 1872 reinforced this hierarchy and provided for commercial courts in provincial, sanjak and district centers for commercial cases, and for council members to be elected by the people. The electoral procedure was set by an instruction dated 30 December 1875.

The Divan of Judicial Ordinances in Istanbul consisted of two courts. The Court of Cassation (Mahkeme-i Temyiz) was divided into civil and criminal chambers and reviewed the decisions of the nizamiye courts; the second court, as the largest nizamiye court in Istanbul, delivered final judgments. Each court had between five and ten members, two-thirds of them Muslim and one-third non-Muslim. Members could not be dismissed unless they resigned, were appointed to a higher post or were the subject of a court ruling. Over time the divan evolved into the Ministry of Justice (Adliye Nezâreti); in 1875 a separate president was appointed to the court of cassation, and from 1876 official documents began to refer to the Ministry of Justice. In 1917 a sharia chamber was added to the court of cassation to review on appeal the rulings of the sharia courts; until then this review had been carried out by the Council for the Examination of Sharia Matters (Meclis-i Tedkîkât-ı Şer'iyye) under the office of the şeyhülislam. However, a decree of 3 May 1920 placed the sharia courts once again under the şeyhülislam, and this chamber was abolished. The provincial qadi, that is, the judge who presided over the sharia court in a center such as Amasya, stood in the middle of all these changes: he was both the judge of his own court and the president of the new councils.

This structure acquired a general framework covering the whole empire with the Provisional Law on the Organization of the Nizamiye Courts of 18 June 1879. Under the law each district was to have a court of first instance (bidâyet mahkemesi), and commercial courts were to be established where the Ministry of Justice saw fit. In districts without a commercial court, the court of first instance would hear commercial cases, in which case temporary members elected by the district's reputable merchants would join the bench. The court of first instance of the district serving as a sanjak center would also review the appealable judgments of the other district courts of the sanjak. A court of appeal (istinaf) was established in provincial centers and a court of cassation in Istanbul. The same law also organized the office of public prosecutor; prosecutors were appointed by the sultan and worked directly under the Ministry of Justice. Each district court of first instance was to have an assistant prosecutor. In a sanjak center such as Amasya this system meant that the district court both heard local cases and reviewed on appeal the decisions of the surrounding districts. Since the sanjak of Amasya belonged to the province of Sivas, the next tier above was the court of appeal in Sivas.

Some details of practice also reveal the legal thinking of the period. In 1876 the procedure was adopted whereby the judgment records of the nizamiye courts were written in Turkish and, depending on the region, translated into Arabic, Greek, Bulgarian, Bosnian and Armenian and attached to the decision. Enforcement of judgments had at first been left to governors, sanjak governors and district governors; because of delays in execution, the 1879 law gave enforcement powers to the presidents of the courts and the offices attached to them. Councils of elders in villages and sub-districts were given authority to hear cases by way of conciliation; in 1907 the powers of sub-district councils were expanded, and in 1913 itinerant justices of the peace were introduced.

The Courts of First Instance and Commerce in Amasya

When the new courts were founded in Amasya is learned less from the general laws than from Hüsameddin's biographical entries. The entry on Hacı Eşref Ağa refers to "the court of first instance formed in 1295"; according to this, the city's court of first instance was established in 1878, shortly before the organizational law of 1879. Eşref Ağa died as a member of this court in Safer 1299 (1881-82). In the same year a separate commercial court was also opened in Amasya. Zanalızâde Emin Mehmed Efendi, after serving as a clerk at the court of Vidin, returned home in 1295 as president of "the commercial court opened in Amasya". He held the post for about eight years; when commercial matters were transferred to the civil court in 1303 (1885-86) he became chief clerk of the judiciary, a position he held for twenty-two years before retiring in 1325 (1907).

It appears that a separate body had already heard commercial cases earlier. The survey documents prepared at the beginning of 1864 for the new government house state that the building would include a commercial court section along with the land registry office and the pious endowments office; it was also reported that the same winter rocks breaking off the cliff behind the old government house had smashed the roof tiles and windows of the commercial court. The sources do not explain the relationship between the commercial court of the 1864 documents and the one Hüsameddin says was opened in 1295; it may be supposed that the latter was a court reconstituted ahead of the 1879 reorganization.

The staff of the new court offices came largely from the sharia court. Cılkızsızzâde Ahmed Kâmil Efendi, born in 1252 (1836-37) in the Fethiye quarter, became recording clerk at the sharia court in 1280 (1863-64), then chief clerk of the sharia court, moved into the new organization as chief clerk of the judiciary in 1296 (1878-79) and left this post in 1301 (1883-84). The appointment of Emin Mehmed Efendi as chief clerk after him shows that their terms followed one another. Apardızâde Abdüllatîf Efendi likewise began as a clerk at the sharia court, served for a time as "probationary member of the civil court" and then rose to membership of the court; he died in 1327 (1909). Hindîzâde Abdülmecîd Zühdî Efendi became a probationary member "at the formation of the civil court" and then a member, and Payaslızâde Abdülmecîd Nâilî Efendi, having learned sharia and civil procedure, advanced along the same path and died in 1318 (1900-01) while a member.

One of those who followed the founding of the court of first instance most closely was Eşref Ağa's son, Hacı Yusufzâde Ahmed Rıza Efendi. First a clerk of lawsuits, Ahmed Rıza Efendi became recording clerk when the court of first instance was formed, then a member and müstantık, that is, examining magistrate. He later served on the administrative council and as mayor, was appointed acting district governor of Köprü in 1320 (1902-03) while a member, and died in 1325. Some court members came from madrasa circles. Hacı Hâfız Mustafa Tevfîk Efendi of Köprü became a member of the court of first instance in 1316 (1898-99) through the favor of the sanjak governor Mehmed Kemal Bey, and when Kemal Bey left Amasya in Receb 1321 he withdrew from the court and returned to his teaching. Ahmed Nafiz Bey, one of the sons of Seyyid Hacı Mehmed Tahir Efendi, a member of the court of first instance, later became a deputy for Amasya. These names suggest the existence in Amasya of a small circle of notables and ulema moving between judicial, council and municipal posts.

The same system was set up in the districts of the sanjak. In Havza, Zeynelzâde Hasan Efendi, teacher at the Fîrûz Ağa madrasa, became a member of the court of first instance and examining magistrate "in the court organization" of the district, and moved to the office of mufti of Havza in 1303. Civânzâde Hasan Efendi of Köprü, on the other hand, was put on trial while a court member and examining magistrate for certain acts "contrary to judicial procedure", lost his reason after this episode and died in 1318. Amasya also produced professional jurists of the new system. Hacı Es'ad Ağazâde Hamdi Mehmed Bey, born around 1268 in the Eski Kethüdâ quarter, was among the first pupils of the city's rüşdiye school; after graduating from the School of Law (Mekteb-i Hukuk) in Istanbul he became a public prosecutor in 1294, served in several sanjaks, then became public prosecutor of the court of appeal of the province of Sivas in 1306 and of the province of the Mediterranean Islands in 1309.

There were also people around the court who never entered the official ranks. Doğlalızâde Emin Mehmed Efendi, known among the people as "Hım Hım Hoca", was a teacher born in 1275. By reading over and over the books of jurisprudence, the civil laws, the rules of procedure and the Mecelle, he made himself "a consummate advocate", and his house became a refuge for litigants. According to Hüsameddin, on Fridays the presidents of the courts came to consult him, and until the proclamation of the Constitution all the officials of the civil and sharia courts were wary of him. As the same source notes, this influence could at times also be put to the service of intrigue and mischief.

Jurisdictional Problems Between Sharia and Nizamiye Courts

The coexistence of two branches of the judiciary made disputes over duty and jurisdiction inevitable. Which law applied in which court was at times the subject of decisions by the highest bodies. A memorandum of the Council of State dated 1 February 1873 stated that regulations such as the Supplement to the Commercial Code had been made for the nizamiye courts and therefore could not be applied to disputes in the sharia courts. Articles 85 and 87 of the 1876 Constitution laid down that every case would be heard in the court to which it belonged, sharia cases in sharia courts and nizamiye cases in nizamiye courts. An imperial decree of 29 February 1888 drew the boundaries between the two courts in more detail; matters such as divorce, marriage, maintenance and child custody remained with the sharia courts. This effort at mutual demarcation also determined which door the people of provincial centers such as Amasya would knock on.

In Amasya the sharia court went on working with its own office after the nizamiye organization was set up. Osman Fevzi Olcay, describing the city's former residents, mentions separately Hafız Tevfik Efendi, once chief clerk of the sharia court, and Hafız Şakir Efendi of the Çevikçe quarter, retired chief clerk of the civil courts. That the chief clerks of the two institutions appear side by side in the memories of the same generation shows that the dual judicial order was an everyday reality in the city.

The Government House and the Old Courthouse in Amasya

The change in judicial organization was also reflected in the city's buildings. From the Tanzimat onward, the government houses built in the provinces were the building type required by the new administrative system. The government house in use in Amasya in 1848 was in poor condition, and its repair had been estimated at 38,000 kuruş. By the beginning of 1864 this building of timber and mudbrick had become too dilapidated to occupy, and since it had no masonry room, the papers and ledgers of the offices were kept in a stone house nearby. That harsh winter, when pieces of rock broke away from the mountain behind the building, it was evacuated; the offices and council rooms were moved to a large house on the opposite bank of the river rented for five hundred kuruş a month.

A new government house began to be built in its place in 1864. According to Hüsameddin, the sanjak governor Ziya Pasha bought from İzzet and Nuri Beys the site in the Helkis quarter that had been the house and garden of the grand admiral Hafız Ali Paşazâde Ahmed Mikdad Pasha, built there "a most excellent government house", with a general prison behind it at the foot of the mountain, and converted the pasha's selamlık into the municipal office and its upper floor into the telegraph office; in 1312 (1894-95) a police station was added east of the municipal garden. The work, estimated in the survey at just over 213,000 kuruş, was awarded at tender to Ali Efendi for 190,000 kuruş. Undertaken during the governorship of the poet Ziya Pasha, the building was completed in 1865 and remained in use for many years. Its construction can be followed in Ottoman archival documents; records relating to the building are concentrated in 1864-1866. On 19 December 1946, around 10:30, a fire that broke out on the ground floor rendered the building wholly unusable. In its place a larger and more spacious new government house reflecting the architecture of the period was built, and it entered service in 1949.

The memory of the Selağzı area facing the government house is also tied to the courts. Olcay describes the stretch around the Sinan Bath, where coffeehouses and shops lined up facing the government building, under the name "Court Market" (Mahkeme Çarşısı); there were a pharmacy, a tobacconist, grocers, a barber and a bookseller there. Olcay does not explain the origin of the name; that the market took it from its proximity to the government building, which also housed the court, is an inference.

Another building directly linked to the city's judicial history is the Old Courthouse (Eski Adliye Binası), on Ziya Paşa Boulevard next to the Saraçhane Mosque. In the cultural inventory the building is dated to the nineteenth century and described as a two-story, flat-roofed masonry structure. Designed in an Empire-Eclectic style under the influence of Westernization, it was used as a courthouse and has neither an inscription nor an endowment deed. Its boulevard facade was later renovated and its ground floor used as shops. The building was examined in a master's thesis prepared in 2013, together with the government house, the old municipal building, the clock tower and the Saraydüzü Barracks, among Amasya's late-period public buildings. It is one of the concrete traces of legal affairs becoming a public service that required spaces of its own, outside palace and mansion. Some studies mention a separate courthouse whose foundations were laid in 1913, which remained unfinished during the First World War and the War of Independence and was completed in 1923 under mayor Nafiz Bey; this building is said not to have survived. We have no firm documentation on its details or the date of its demolition.

The Republic and the Unification of the Judiciary

The end of the Ottoman state did not immediately abolish the nizamiye courts. In 1920 a law transferred the powers of the Court of Cassation to the Board of Cassation established provisionally in Sivas; this board had begun to function on 7 June 1920 as the court of cassation of the new Turkish state. In 1923 its seat moved to Eskişehir, and the provisions of the old law conflicting with this were repealed. The radical change came with the 1924 Law Amending Provisions on the Abolition of Sharia Courts and the Organization of Courts. This law abolished the sharia and appeal courts and also put an end to the existence of the nizamiye courts. In Amasya, as in other cities, the judicial function that qadis had performed for centuries passed to a single judicial organization made up of judges and prosecutors.

The ledgers kept by the qadis, however, did not disappear. The Islamic court registers are preserved in archives and remain basic reference material for researchers wishing to write the social, economic and legal history of Amasya. The content and diplomatic features of the ledgers kept in the post-Tanzimat period have also been studied separately. A study published in 2024 on the eighteenth-century ledgers examined women's divorce, inheritance and violence cases through these registers, and Merve Karakulak concluded that witness testimony and the opinion of neighborhood residents markedly affected the outcome of cases.

Amasya's present-day courthouse brings together in a single building a judicial organization that for a century and a half moved between the government house and separate court buildings. The Amasya Palace of Justice in the 55 Evler quarter opened on 4 May 2011; the heavy penal, criminal and civil courts of first instance, the magistrates' courts and the family, labor, cadastral and enforcement courts work in this building. In 2025 an administrative court was established in Amasya and began operating in the same building, and when Merzifon was designated a heavy penal court center, Gümüşhacıköy and Hamamözü were attached to its jurisdiction, while Taşova, Suluova and Göynücek were attached to the Amasya heavy penal court circuit.

Chronology

1555: The Imperial Council orders that İbrahim, who attacked a woman in Amasya, be punished according to the law.

1762-1782: Women's divorce, inheritance and property suits and records of settlement are entered in the Amasya sharia court registers.

1780: The case of the killing of Hamamcı Osman is heard in Sivas; Qadi Seyyid Mehmed Şakirzâde reports the sentence of retaliation to Istanbul.

1800-1801: Commercial cases between Ottoman subjects and foreigners are, as an exception, allowed to be heard in mixed commissions.

1 January 1840: A commercial council is established for merchants' cases.

1846-1847: Hacı Yusuf Ağazâde Eşref Ağa becomes a member of the council of lawsuits and administration in Amasya.

30 April 1860: The Supplement to the Commercial Code is issued.

1864: Amasya's old government house is evacuated because of the danger of falling rock; the survey documents provide for a commercial court section in the new building.

7 November 1864: The Provincial Regulation establishes councils of lawsuits in districts and councils of appeal in sanjak centers.

1864-1865: A new government house is built in Amasya during Ziya Pasha's governorship.

1868: The Supreme Council is split in two; the Divan of Judicial Ordinances and the Council of State are established.

14 February 1870: The internal regulation of the Divan of Judicial Ordinances divides the nizamiye courts into four groups.

11 January 1872: The Regulation on the Nizamiye Courts is issued.

1878: According to Hüsameddin, a court of first instance is formed in Amasya and a commercial court is opened.

18 June 1879: The Provisional Law on the Organization of the Nizamiye Courts comes into force.

1885-1886: Commercial cases in Amasya are transferred to the civil court.

1913-1923: According to some studies, a new courthouse is built in Amasya.

1924: The sharia courts are abolished and the nizamiye courts cease to exist.

19 December 1946: The old government house is destroyed by fire; its replacement opens in 1949.

4 May 2011: The Amasya Palace of Justice opens.

2025: An administrative court is established in Amasya; Merzifon becomes a heavy penal court center.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Mehmet Âkif Aydın, "Dîvân-ı Ahkâm-ı Adliyye", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4, p. 132 (Helkis quarter, government house).
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 6-8, pp. 227, 240-241, 338, 367-368, 551-552, 636 (entries on Vâyis Beyzâde, Hacı Yusufzâde Ahmed Rıza Efendi, Cılkızsızzâde Ahmed Kâmil Efendi, Hacı Yusuf Ağazâde Eşref Ağa, Zanalızâde and Doğlalızâde Emin Mehmed Efendi, Hacı Hâfız Efendi, Zeynelzâde and Civânzâde Hasan Efendi).
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 9-12, pp. 79-80, 582, 585-586 (entries on Hamdi Mehmed Bey, Apardızâde Abdüllatîf Efendi, Hindîzâde and Payaslızâde Abdülmecîd Efendi).
  • Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları: Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim ile Amasya, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, pp. 28, 42, 52-53.

Academic studies

  • Neşe İnak, "Amasya Tarihinin Kaynaklarından Şeriye Sicilleri (17. Yüzyıl)", Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi İnsan Bilimleri Dergisi, 4/2, 2023, pp. 183-202.
  • Merve Karakulak, "XVIII. Yüzyıl Amasya'sında Hukuk, Kadın ve Şiddet", Vakanüvis - Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, 9/1, 2024, pp. 332-361. dergipark.org.tr
  • Nurcan Yazıcı, "XIX. Yüzyıldan Günümüze Amasya'daki Hükümet Konağı Binaları", Sanat Dergisi, 18, 2011, pp. 91-105.
  • Emre Kolay, Amasya İl Merkezinde Geç Dönem Kamu Yapıları (1848-1947), master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University Institute of Social Sciences, 2013 (abstract).

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Kültür Portalı, cultural inventory record "Eski Adliye Binası - Amasya". kulturportali.gov.tr
  • Amasya Governorship, "Government House" page.

Other sources

  • M. Macit Kenanoğlu, "Nizâmiye Mahkemeleri", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 33, 2007, pp. 185-188.
  • Amasya Justice Commission, 2025 Annual Activity Report.

Online sources