Gümüşhacıköy is the westernmost district of Amasya Province. It lies some seventy kilometres from the provincial centre, west of Merzifon, on a plain crossed by the roads between Samsun and Istanbul. The historic core of the district seat gathers around the Hacıyahya and Saray quarters, where the bedesten (covered market) rises beside the Köprülü Mehmed Pasha Mosque and the bazaar developed around it. The complex dates to 1660 and is the clearest evidence that the district was once a marketplace where mining, farming and caravan trade met. The mosque's own architecture and endowment are the subject of a separate article, as is the history of the silver mines. This article describes the founding of the bedesten and the bazaar around it, the structure, the changes it has undergone, and the commercial life that went on inside.

Hacıköy, Gümüş and the Name Gümüşhacıköy

The settlement now known under a single name consisted for much of its history of two separate centres. One was the town of Gümüş, about five kilometres southwest of today's district seat, known for its deposits of silver-bearing lead. The other was Hacıköy on the plain. In Ottoman records the administrative unit appears for a long time as "Gümüş" or "Maden-i Sim". The name Gümüşhacıköy first appears in the state yearbooks as a kaza (district) in the volume for 1302 (1885). The Sivas provincial yearbooks, however, continued to call the district Maden-i Sim in the same years, and the name Gümüşhacıköy enters them only in the volume for 1321 (1903). The manner of administration changed along with the naming. The first kaymakam (district governor) was appointed on 5 October 1875; until then the district had been governed by mine directors and the stewards of the Maden-i Hümayun (Imperial Mines).

There is no single definitive explanation for the origin of the name Hacıköy. According to the common account, the area was taken by Artuk Bey in the eleventh century; the settlement that Sadreddin Artık developed in the late fourteenth century was known as Artıkova and Artıkabat; and because his grandson Hacı Ahmed Çelebi lived there for a long time as overseer of the silver deposits, it was first called Hacı Nazır Village and then Hacıköy. The same account says that the silver mine was at one time granted to Köprülü Mehmed Pasha as a has arpalık (a prebendal revenue grant), and that the settlement was for a while known by that name as well. At the end of the nineteenth century Mecitözü was also called Hacıköy, so a distinguishing prefix became necessary and the district took the name Gümüşhacıköy. Part of these explanations rests on local historical writing and cannot be treated as documentary evidence. That the name arose from the union of Gümüş and Hacıköy, on the other hand, agrees with the yearbook records.

From Mine to Market

The working of the silver-bearing lead and arsenical copper deposits in the surrounding area reaches far back. Intensive mining activity is traced at the locations of Karlık Tepe, Kale Tepe and Çadır Düzü around the town of Gümüş. Old gallery entrances were widened again from time to time and reused, leaving heaps of slag behind. According to the account in the Danişmendnâme, when Danişmend Gazi came to this region, two batman of silver from the mines went to the treasury every day. This report is legendary in character. It is recorded that a mint producing coins operated near the mine in the Seljuk period, that this mint opened in 1248, and that its building was converted into a mosque in 1866. There is also a view that the mints Gümüş and Gümüşpazar, named on some Seljuk coins, may be Gümüşhacıköy.

In the Ottoman period the mine was run directly by the state under the emanet system. Under this method a maden emini (mine steward) appointed by the state managed the works for a fixed fee, and expenses were met from the money handed over to him as working capital. Gümüşhacıköy is counted, together with the Keban-Ergani and Bolkardağ mines, among the large enterprises to which this system was applied. The most important gold and silver producing areas in Anatolia were Gümüşhane and Gümüşhacıköy in Amasya. The tax registers also show the growth of the town around the mine. The settlement, counted at sixteen quarters and 631 households in 1520, reached nineteen quarters and 1154 households in 1576. Over that period the urban population rose from 1013 to 1986, and the total including villages from 3589 to 6602. These figures reflect the taxable population and therefore fall short of the real numbers. Even so, half a century of growth plainly shows that the mine drew work and trade to its surroundings.

The town's connection with trade is older than Ottoman rule. When Ibn Battuta called at Gümüş in the fourteenth century, he found the settlement famous for its mines, large and crowded, wrote that merchants came there from Iraq and Damascus, and stayed three nights at the Ahi Mecdüddin Lodge. It is also noted that in the years when Armağan Çelebi became mine steward, in 1356, the settlement was known as "Gümüş Pazarı" (Silver Market). The mine's product was processed in the town and turned into coin and goods, and the merchants who set out from it brought back cloth, grain and livestock in return. Once it is considered that the bedesten was later set on this ground, it becomes easier to see why such a building was founded in this district.

A Town on the Road

Gümüşhacıköy lies between the roads connecting Anatolia with Istanbul and those descending to the Black Sea coast. Travellers' notes compiled in the district governorate's records convey how this passage looked in the seventeenth century. The French merchant and traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, passing in 1632, describes Hacıköy as a fairly large town with two caravanserais. Boullaye le Gouz writes in 1647 that he reached Hacıköy after a nine-hour walk from Osmancık, that the old ruins showed the place had once been a large settlement, and that the town had two mosques. In the same year Evliya Çelebi also passed along this road and described Hacıköy as "a place well worth developing, of which there is none like it". He says that after staying three days in the Gümüş district he set out for Dankaza. Evliya Çelebi also passed through this region in 1648, 1650 and 1656.

These records show that caravanserais and mosques already existed in the town before Köprülü Mehmed Pasha became grand vizier in 1656. Evliya Çelebi's remark gives the impression of a place suited to development but still awaiting it. The bedesten and the complex were added to this ground. In the following century the Italian traveller Domenico Sestini, passing in 1781, records that he left on his right a large village settled on a broad plain, and that wheat and barley were being grown there. He gives the distance from Osmancık to Hacıköy as eight hours and from Hacıköy to Merzifon as six.

Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and the Complex

Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who had the bedesten built, was one of the most decisive statesmen in seventeenth-century Ottoman history. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, he was born in the village of Rudnik in the Berat sanjak of Albania, was taken through the devshirme and trained in the Enderun, and was then sent out to the provinces. Because he married Ayşe Hanım in the town of Köprü (Vezirköprü), which belonged to Amasya, he came to be known as Köprülü. He served as treasurer to Hüsrev Pasha, and after Hüsrev's death was for a short time sanjak governor of Amasya; later he held posts such as sanjak governor of Çorum, governor of Trabzon and beylerbey of Karaman. This long provincial service gave him close knowledge of the Amasya region. In local cultural records his birthplace is given as the town of Köprü. The information in the encyclopaedia entry has been followed here.

When he was appointed grand vizier on 15 September 1656, Köprülü was an old man. He accepted the seal only on conditions, including that appointments not be interfered with and that the reports he submitted be carried out, and these conditions were adopted under oath by Sultan Mehmed IV and Valide Turhan Sultan. During a tenure of a little over five years he recovered Bozcaada and Limni, went on campaign against Transylvania, suppressed the revolt of Abaza Hasan Pasha, and carried out an inspection of Celali rebels and firearms in Anatolia. Contemporary historians sharply criticised him for the massacre during that inspection. Naima, by contrast, regards him as a great statesman who rescued the state from the difficulty into which it had fallen. Köprülü died in Edirne on 31 October 1661 and was buried in the complex he had built at Çemberlitaş in Istanbul. The period carried on under his son Fazıl Ahmed Pasha and his son-in-law Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha is what historians call the Köprülü Era.

The encyclopaedia lists Köprülü Mehmed Pasha's charitable works separately. He had hans, mosques, small mosques, schools and fountains built in Yanova, Rudnik, Turhal, Vezirköprü, Lefke, Cisrişugūr, Gümüşhacıköy, Taraklı and Arad, and endowed the revenues of estate villages in Limni, Yanova, Köprü, Osmancık, Merzifon, Akhisar and Bilecik to supply them with income. This list shows that the complex in Gümüşhacıköy was one link in a broad scheme of building and endowment spread across the geography where the grand vizier had served for many years. Hans, bazaars and mosques met needs for worship and lodging, and they also produced the endowment's income.

The records of the culture and tourism authorities state that the complex originally consisted of a mosque, a caravanserai and a bedesten. The bedesten stood right beside the mosque and was conceived as its economic support. In the district the year 1660 is given as the date of construction for both mosque and bedesten. The caravanserai part has been destroyed over time, while the bedesten has survived after major repairs. The district governorate's records likewise describe the building as the complex of the mosque that Köprülü Mehmed Pasha had built in his own name.

What a Bedesten Is and What It Did in an Ottoman Town

The word bedesten is said to derive from bezzâzistan or bezistan; bezzâz means a cloth seller in Arabic. Ahmed Vefik Pasha defines the bedesten as "the place where cloth is sold, the market where fine fabrics are sold". In bedestens, above all jewellery and precious stones were sold, along with weapons, ornamented horse trappings and valuable textiles. The entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi reminds readers that today the bazaar, han, caravanserai, arasta and bedesten are confused with one another, although each had a separate function. A çarşı (bazaar) is one or several streets lined with shops on both sides. An arasta is a row of shops built to provide income for an endowed building and to draw the congregation to it. A han or caravanserai is essentially a lodging place on a road.

The bedesten is the core building that rises with its masonry mass in the middle of these facilities. In a town where wooden shops could burn in fires, valuable goods, the merchants' strongboxes and ledgers, and the documents of the craft guilds were kept inside the thick walls of the bedesten. The entry describes it as a kind of inner fortress. The commercial district took shape around the bedesten, and hans and arastas were added around it. The same entry notes that bedesten construction was common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whereas in the seventeenth century only isolated and modest examples were built. Seen in this framework, the Gümüşhacıköy Bedesten is a late example. The bedesten that Köprülü's son Fazıl Ahmed Pasha had built in Vezirköprü also appears in the TDV list, as a single-pier, four-domed building and one of the smallest of its type.

The plan of the Gümüşhacıköy Bedesten differs from that of the Amasya Bedesten, which the same encyclopaedia entry dates to 1483. The Amasya building has four piers and nine domes, whereas in Gümüşhacıköy the essential element is a row of vaulted shops lined up on either side of a long passage. For this reason the building has at times been called by all three names, bazaar, arasta and bedesten. In local accounts the building is tied to Halil İnalcık's statement that "as a rule a city with a bedesten is an international trade centre", and it is said that over the centuries the district was a place where thousands of merchants from India, Iran and Europe met, lodged and traded. This broad geographical claim is repeated in the sources without documentation. The judgement that the bedesten was founded to provide safe, high-volume trade on the commercial route between Anatolia and Rumelia, however, is consistent with the building's location.

Architecture of the Bedesten

The bedesten has a long rectangular plan running east to west. In the records of the culture and tourism authorities, the main space is described as an arasta made up of a corridor about eighty metres long and three and a half metres wide, stretching between the west and east gates, with shops lined up along both sides. The gates opening in four directions are built of red and white cut stone and covered with wide, deep pointed arches. Of these gates only the north gate has kept its original state. The inner faces of the portal gates have niches with pointed arches. The arch work, in which red and white stone alternate, adds colour to the building and, although partly renewed in restorations, counts among the distinctive sights of the district.

The shops on either side of the corridor are covered with barrel vaults. The upper parts of the shops have pointed arches, and the spaces between the arches are divided by buttresses. The sources also note that the roof over the passage between them is partly open, so describing the building as an entirely covered bazaar is not always accurate. The walls are of cut stone. In the upper part, deep mouldings that run along the facade and around the buttresses rise to eaves level and give the interior a sense of movement. Some of the columns on the facades are partly load-bearing. The row of barrel-vaulted shops, the pointed arches dividing the facades and the buttresses give the building the measured, functional language of Ottoman provincial architecture. There is little ornament on the surface; the weight lies in proportion and stone craftsmanship.

A row of vaulted, stone-walled shops is also suited to the climate. Inside it stays cool in the heat of summer and sheltered from the wind in winter. The district lies at more than 800 metres above sea level, in a climate of hot, dry summers and cold, rainy winters, and this feature would have helped the bazaar remain in use throughout the year. This interpretation is drawn from the architecture of the building. No such rationale appears in period documents.

The Clock Tower

Above the east gate of the bedesten, facing Ekin Pazarı square, rises a clock tower. The first version of the tower, built of cut stone and circular in form, is reported to have been built during the general repair of 1900 by Ali Rıza Bey, son of Yanyalı Mustafa Pasha. This tower collapsed in time and a new one was built in its place later. The sources differ on the date. In the records of the culture and tourism authorities and on the district governorate's page the date is given as 1900. Another account says the tower was built in 1898 and demolished and rebuilt in 1948. The district governorate's text also contains a caution based on Ali Karaca's study of Ahmed Şakir Pasha. On 4 September 1899, when Ahmed Şakir Pasha stopped at Gümüşhacıköy during his inspection of Anatolia, the town already had a clock tower. If this record is correct, the date 1900 would not be the first construction of the tower but a year of repair or renewal.

Clock towers became widespread in the Ottoman provinces in the second half of the nineteenth century and set the rhythm of the town's time. The one in Gümüşhacıköy, added to the gate of the bedesten, increased the visibility of the commercial building and let tradesmen and travellers read time by a common measure. The tower standing today is not the original, yet it remains a familiar element of the bazaar's skyline.

Tradesmen and Goods in the Bazaar

No detailed inventory of the goods sold in the bazaar is known. Records of production in the surrounding area nonetheless give an idea. Studies of the sixteenth-century Amasya sanjak show that textiles such as Amasya kirbas, Merzifon kirbas tents, Ladik prayer rugs, Amasya kutni, Amasya red boğası and Gümüş boğası were counted among the goods in demand for their quality. Boğası is a coarse cloth woven in plain weave from thick hand-spun cotton yarn, of medium quality and mostly white. Its dyed varieties were known by names such as nar neftisi, cengârî, samanı, cevizi and darçınî, and it was used for caftan and turban linings, shirts, cushions and bundle cloths. The name Gümüş boğası shows that the area took part in this market with its own weaving.

The temettuat (wealth survey) registers of 1844 show the agricultural and craft structure of the district in detail. There were 525 dönüm of vineyards in the kaza, and viticulture was the most profitable activity. All 78 dönüm of hemp fields lay in the Saray quarter and the village of Çetmi. Vegetables were grown in the Saray, Hacıyahya and Artukabad quarters. In the quarters craftsmen such as tailors, barbers and rope makers worked, while in the villages livelihood rested on farming. The total tax the kaza had to pay that year was 46,775 kuruş. Hemp and rope making held a place in the district's economy in later centuries as well. Hemp was grown in the area's fields until the 1970s and used for making kirman and rope, and it has been said that Gümüşhacıköy's fibre-hemp seed was of such high quality that Italian buyers came to the district for it.

In the nineteenth century the commercial records concerning the district become more varied. In 1857, among the merchants who shipped tobacco from Samsun to Istanbul, there was a tobacco merchant from Gümüşhacıköy called Arakin. In 1866 the lead extracted at the mine is recorded as having been carried to Samsun harbour by oxcart. In 1889 an English merchant bought all of the 80,000 okka, about 102 tonnes, of chickpeas in Hacıköy. The French financier Vitale Cuinet wrote that chickpea prices then rose rapidly in the surrounding area, that the main difficulty of Hacıköy's producers and merchants was being unable to carry their produce to other markets quickly, and that a railway absolutely had to pass through the place. Cuinet's observation shows that at a time when the caravan routes had begun to lose their old importance, the district lagged behind in transport.

Within this picture a document of 1868 is striking. It reports that in the Gümüş district there was no regular bazaar or market, that mine workers and the people had to go to the markets of other places to meet their needs, and that it was therefore decided to set up a new market every week on Wednesdays. Because the document concerns the town of Gümüş, where the mine stood, it is not directly connected with the bedesten bazaar in Hacıköy. It nonetheless suggests that the two centres had different functions. The mining town was the centre of production and labour, while Hacıköy, with its bedesten, was the place for trade. It is also reported, citing Ottoman archive records, that the construction of the Ekin Pazarı was completed in 1919 and officially opened. The east gate of the bedesten faces the square that bears the same name today.

The Republican Period and Today

In the Republican period the district's economic weight shifted from mining and caravan trade to agriculture. Sugar beet, wheat, barley, pulses, tobacco, onions, sunflowers and hemp are the main field crops. There is a rope factory that processes hemp, as well as flour mills, and chickpea roasting (leblebicilik) continues as a traditional occupation. The population of the town centre is given as 14,620 and that of the whole district as 25,235 in the latest census. In this change the bedesten lost its role as a centre of caravan trade but has remained in use as a bazaar. The shops are open today and the building is part of the daily life of the tradesmen.

The building has been renewed over time. The caravanserai part has disappeared, most of the gates have been changed by repairs, and the clock tower has been rebuilt. Even so, the general plan, the arch system and the row of vaulted shops survive. Read together with the Köprülü Mehmed Pasha Mosque, the bedesten shows how the arrangement of mosque, bazaar and lodging buildings that a grand vizier left to his home region in the mid-seventeenth century worked. The part of this arrangement that still stands forms the historic core of the district today.

Chronology

1248: The mint at the town of Gümüş is reported to have been opened in the Seljuk period.

1356: Armağan Çelebi becomes mine steward of Gümüş; in these years the settlement is called "Gümüş Pazarı".

1413-1415: The Hacı Halil Pasha (Haliliye) Madrasa is built at Gümüş.

1520 and 1576: According to the tax registers the settlement grows from 631 to 1154 households.

1632-1647: Tavernier, Boullaye le Gouz and Evliya Çelebi pass through Hacıköy.

1656: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha becomes grand vizier.

1660: The Köprülü Mehmed Pasha Mosque and its complex are built, together with the bedesten and caravanserai.

1661: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha dies in Edirne.

1844: The temettuat registers record the socio-economic condition of the kaza.

1868: A Wednesday weekly market is established in the Gümüş district.

1885: The name Gümüşhacıköy first appears in the state yearbook as a kaza.

1899-1900: A clock tower already stands in the town; the general repair of the bedesten and the clock tower are attributed to Ali Rıza Bey in 1900.

1919: The construction of Ekin Pazarı is completed and it is officially opened.

Sources

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, entries "Gümüşhacıköy Bedesten" and "Köprülü Mehmet Paşa Camii". gumushacikoy.gov.tr
  • Türkiye Kültür Portalı, entry "Gümüşhacıköy Bedesteni ve Saat Kulesi". kulturportali.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Gümüşhacıköy District Governorate, "Gümüşhacıköy Tarihi" page (compilation of yearbook, tax register, temettuat, traveller and guild records).
  • TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry "Köprülü Mehmed Paşa" (vol. 26, 2002, pp. 258-260). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry "Bedesten". islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Vikipedi, entry "Gümüşhacıköy" (auxiliary source, for the origin of the name and the clock tower's date). tr.wikipedia.org

Online sources