Today Gediksaray is a village of some four hundred people in the district of Göynücek, yet for centuries it was known as Varay, a town that gave its name to a kaza and later a nahiye south of Amasya. The village lies 12 kilometres from the district centre of Göynücek and 34 kilometres from Amasya. It was here that the Mongol lord Ece Sultan withdrew in the early fourteenth century and built a mosque, a dervish lodge and a public kitchen, and it was in this town that Zünnûn Halife, who briefly seized Amasya at the start of the sixteenth century, was born. In the Republican period Gediksaray was the centre of a bucak; it set up a municipality in 1972 and returned to village status with the local elections of 2014, because its population had fallen below two thousand. The large mound just to its north carries the history of the settlement back to the Bronze Age.

The Name

The old name of the settlement is Varay. In Bekir Başalan's study of the places in Amasya whose names were changed, this name is written against Gediksaray as one of nine such settlements in Göynücek. In nineteenth-century Ottoman registers and yearbooks the name usually appears as Veray, and Sabit Genç's archival studies use this spelling. No reliable explanation of the meaning or origin of the name has been found. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar mentions "Varay Hâtun" as the name of the daughter of the Mongol emir Kongurtay, but he draws no connection between this personal name and the place name, so it would be unwise to derive an origin from the resemblance.

In the index of the 1530 accounting register of Karaman and Rûm, Varay is recorded on page 357 of the register as a village belonging to the nahiye of Geldiklan-âbâd in the sanjak of Amasya. Since the villages of Şerefdâr (Şerefder, today's Ayvalıpınar) and Efkeri (today's İkizyaka), both now within Göynücek, belong to the same nahiye, the identification is secure. This entry shows Varay only as a village; its rise to the seat of a kaza and a nahiye belongs to later periods.

The Mongol Lords and Ece Sultan

The fullest account of Varay's importance in the Middle Ages is Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi. According to Yasar, Kongurtay, of the Mongol dynasty, came to Amasya early in AH 676 (1277) and settled "in the vicinity of the present town of Varay"; he supposes that Kongurtay owned a large estate here. He bases this guess on two facts: Acaytu, the son of Kongurtay's daughter Varay Hâtun, held an endowment at Varay, and in front of Varay, on the riverbank, there was a village called Kongur Alanı in the old records and Konur Alanı in his own day. Yasar presents this inference openly as a conjecture.

Acaytu Noyin, known among the Turks as Ece Sultan, was the son of Cumudâr Noyin, who lies buried in the tomb in front of the Pervâne Bey Mosque in Amasya. According to Yasar, in AH 719 (1319), when Sultan Altunbaş fled, he withdrew to his estate at Varay, built a mosque, a dervish lodge and a public kitchen there, and lived independently, holding the districts of Zile, Mecidözü and Turhal under his own rule. He endowed his property to these charitable foundations and died around AH 731 (1330-31). The lodge and the mosque survived into Yasar's own time. Yasar writes that he went to Varay in 1318 (around 1900-1901) and found the lodge and mosque, ruined and restored several times over, once again in need of repair. The later administration of the endowment can be followed in the same account: in AH 1099 (1688) Osman Ağa, the kethüdayeri of Amasya, became trustee of the endowment by claiming descent from Ece Sultan through the female line; when he was dismissed in AH 1109 (1697-98), the trusteeship and the headship of the lodge passed to Hasan Efendi of Varay, and after his death in AH 1139 (1726-27) to his sons Hâfız Hüseyin and İbrahim Efendi.

In the same period Varay was also home to local Turkmen lords. Yasar relates that the Şerefeddin İnaçoğulları, that is, the Şerefoğulları, lived in the nahiye of Varay, and that their seat, the village of Şerefler, was in his day mistakenly called "Şerefder". Bânukşâh, who governed Amasya, came from this family, and his descendants lived in the kaza of Varay for some two hundred years. Bânukşâh's son Esen Bey owned an estate in the kaza of Varay and was sent there when he lost the governorship of Amasya to Şâdî Bey. Elsewhere Yasar says that the kaza of Varay was under Esen Bey's administration, that Esen Bey lived in the village of Şerefder-Şerefler, and that the Mongol lord Acaytu Bay lived in the town of Varay, the seat of the kaza. Tâceddîn İbrahim Bey Kara, son of Artuk bin Boğa and one of the Turks of the nahiye of Varay, first won renown in the Varay and Turhal area and then became emir of Varay.

Zünnûn Halife and the Celali Years

The events that carried Varay's name into the Ottoman chronicles are the Kızılbaş uprisings of the early sixteenth century. Zünnûn Baba was the son of Câfarlu Halil Bey bin Kubad Bey, a holder of a zeamet who lived in the town of Varay, and in his own chronicle, the Zünnûn-nâme, he wrote that he descended from Ecaytu Noyan, who had a dervish lodge and a public kitchen at Varay, and that he was therefore called "Ece Sultanoğlu". When his father died in the Mamluk war of AH 893 (1488), he took over his zeamet, attached himself to Prince Ahmed, governor of Amasya, and became bey of the kaza of Varay. Murat Alandağlı's 2025 study of Zünnunabad likewise records that Zünnûn was born in the town of Varay. Attaching himself to Celal Baba, one of Shah Ismail's deputies, Zünnûn became a Kızılbaş and began to be called "Zünnûn Halife".

According to Yasar, in the years when Şahkulu was shaking Anatolia, Zünnûn gained enough power to dominate the kazas of Varay, Mecidözü and Turhal, and on 15 Muharram AH 918 (April 1512) he took Amasya. After Selim I came to the throne he withdrew by way of Varay towards the Iranian frontier; he rose again in the reign of Süleyman and was captured and executed in AH 933 (1527). His son-in-law and deputy, Hubyâr Baba, was also from Varay. After the execution the rebels gathered again under Zünnûn's son Halil Bey, came by way of Turhal and settled in the Varay area; Abdullah Bey, the bey of Amasya, pursued them through the nahiye of Varay and was killed in the fighting at Artukâbâd. Varay long remained a district associated with the pursuit of brigands; Yasar records many times that in events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the governors chased bandits "in the Varay area".

A Kaza and Nahiye Seat in the Ottoman Period

Varay's administrative position changed many times over the centuries. Yasar lists Varay, together with Taşâbâd, Lâdik, Havza, Merzifon, Mecidözü, Turhal and Geldiklan, among the kazas attached to Amasya in the period when it was a province, and elsewhere he calls it "the town of Varay, south of Amasya, formerly the seat of a kaza". Biographies show that in the seventeenth century a separate judge was appointed to Varay: Bilal Efendi of Osmancık became kadı of Varay in AH 1059 (1649). In Yasar's own day, the kaza of Mecidözü had been formed by the union of three old kazas known as Mecidözü, Danunözü and Varay, and Varay was one of its seven nahiyes, covering the eastern part of the kaza.

According to the list Sabit Genç gives from the 1831 census, the kaza of Veray then comprised the villages of Veray, Karakaya, Elik Tekkesi, Şerefder, Kozluca, Doğan, Kızoğlu, Karaşar, Aştabul, Orta, Pamuklu, Kârbansaray, İncesu, Çay Sofular, Kelek Kerbansaray, Terzi, Baş Ermeni, Tekke, Karacaviran, Şeyhler, Candar and Deli Hasan. Many of these names survive today as villages of Göynücek. As Genç reports, the census of 1840-41 recorded 1,383 males in 487 households in the seat of the kaza. From the temettuat (income) registers of 1844-45, the settled villages of the kaza of Veray have been calculated to hold an average of 15.23 dönüms of sown land and 1.063 dönüms of vineyard per household, with 5.7 head of cattle and 14.5 head of sheep and goats. Compared with the semi-nomadic Gökçeli community that wintered in the same area, the villagers of Varay clearly relied more on farming.

After the Tanzimat, Varay remained a nahiye of the kaza of Mecidözü. In the 1871 volume of the Sivas provincial yearbook the kaza of Mecidözü consists of the units Nefs-i Mecidözü, Gelingiras and Veray. Sabit Genç cites Ottoman archival documents showing that in 1898 a group of immigrants from Livane was settled in the nahiye of Veray of the kaza of Mecidözü. The official history of the district notes that present-day Göynücek too was attached in the nineteenth century to Mecitözü, and thus to the sanjak of Amasya, through the nahiye of Varay. A name from the last phase of the nahiye also appears in Yasar: Mehmed Tâhir Bey of Amasya died in AH 1321 (1903-04) after leaving his post as director of the nahiye of Varay.

People from Varay

In Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's biographical volumes, many scholars and officials are called "Varaylı", of Varay. One of them, Hasan Efendi, was the son of Hüseyin bin İbrahim; after studying in Amasya he was a public lecturer when, in AH 1099, he was appointed head of the Ece Sultan lodge at Varay and trustee of its endowment, and he fought off the claim of the cavalryman Osman Ağa, who counted himself among the founder's descendants. Hacı Ahmed Efendi of Varay was, in Yasar's words, the son of Ali "from the town of Varay, south of Amasya, formerly the seat of a kaza"; he studied in Amasya under Bahşîzâde Fâzıl Yahya and the mufti of Amasya, Tâceddîn Efendi, and taught at the Hatuniye Mosque. Haseki İsmail Ağa is also counted as a man of Varay; Yasar introduces him as the son of Ali Kethüda from the village of Şeyhler near the town of Varay in the kaza of Zünnunâbâd. The same work states that the Shaykh al-Islam Kara Halil Efendi of Amasya also came from the nahiye of Varay.

Mounds and Archaeological Finds

The mound just north of Gediksaray holds one of the oldest traces of settlement in Göynücek. The official history of the district cites the Gediksaray mound as an example of the Bronze Age settlements dating to 3000-2500 BC. Gediksaray Höyüğü, recorded by Şevket Dönmez in his surface surveys of 1997-1999, lies one kilometre north of the village; with a height of about 15 metres and dimensions of 350 by 150 metres, Dönmez counts it, like Oluz Höyük, among the largest mounds of the Central Black Sea Region. The road to Gediksaray has cut the mound in two. Dönmez's examination showed that it contains settlements of the Early Bronze Age II-III, the Late Bronze Age, the Middle and Late Iron Ages, and the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Of the pottery collected on the mound, two pieces have been dated to the Middle and four to the Late Iron Age. The plain pieces include a pot with an everted rim, a second pot with an outturned rim and a thick-lipped krater with a rounded body; Dönmez cites parallels from Alişar Höyük and Büyükkale at Boğazköy. Among the painted pieces is a krater rim carrying an angular brown motif on the body, while two pot bodies are decorated with dark brown parallel horizontal lines, paralleled at Akalan, Alaca Höyük, Kerkenes Dağ, Çadır Höyük and Yalıncak. In Mehmet Özsait's prehistoric surveys of 1987 and 1989, a broad settlement called Cinlitepe was found at the western end of a ridge three kilometres north-west of the bucak of Gediksaray; the pottery on its surface was reported to indicate a strong Early Bronze Age settlement as well as settlements of the second millennium BC and the Roman period.

Gediksaray as a Small Town

In the Republican period Gediksaray was the seat of a bucak in the district of Göynücek. A Council of Ministers decision published in the Official Gazette of 14 March 1972, following a ruling of the Third Chamber of the Council of State dated 16 February 1972, approved the establishment of a municipality "in the village of Gediksaray, the seat of the bucak of Gediksaray"; the decision is dated 29 February 1972. The population of the small town was 2,528 in 1985 and 2,637 in 1990, falling to 2,110 in 2000, 1,029 in 2007 and 798 in 2012. Law no. 6360 of 2012 turned into villages, with effect from the next local elections, the municipalities whose population stood below two thousand according to the 2011 address-based results, and the list annexed to the law includes Gediksaray along with Damlaçimen, also in Göynücek in the province of Amasya. The municipality thus ceased to exist with the local elections of 2014. Today the village has a family health centre attached to the district's community health centre.

Population

Gediksaray's population series as a village begins in 2013 with 790 people. In the following years the figure moved up and down, rising to 676 in 2018 and falling to 569 in 2020 and 445 in 2024. In the 2025 results the village has 398 inhabitants, 198 men and 200 women. The population has therefore halved in twelve years; compared with the 2,637 people of the small town in 1990, today's Gediksaray is roughly a seventh of the size of the old town.

Chronology

AH 676 (1277): According to Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, the Mongol emir Kongurtay comes to Amasya and settles near Varay.

AH 719 (1319): Acaytu Noyin (Ece Sultan) withdraws to his estate at Varay and builds a mosque, a dervish lodge and a public kitchen.

1512: Zünnûn Halife of Varay takes Amasya.

1527: Zünnûn Halife is captured and executed.

1530: Varay is entered in the accounting register as a village of the nahiye of Geldiklan-âbâd.

AH 1099 (1688): Hasan Efendi of Varay becomes head of the Ece Sultan lodge and trustee of its endowment.

1831: In the census twenty-two villages belong to the kaza of Veray.

1898: A group of immigrants from Livane is settled in the nahiye of Veray of the kaza of Mecidözü.

29 February 1972: A municipality is established in the bucak seat of Gediksaray.

1997-1999: Şevket Dönmez conducts a surface survey on Gediksaray Höyüğü.

2014: Under Law no. 6360 the municipality is abolished and Gediksaray becomes a village again.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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Other sources

Online sources