In the Anatolian folk calendar the year turns on two great thresholds. The first, crossed at the end of March, announces the loosening of winter and the stirring of the soil; the second, in early May, declares that summer has officially begun. These two thresholds are Nowruz and Hıdırellez. In Amasya both are observed with outings to the countryside and shared meals. Written folklore collections specific to Amasya are limited, so the general history of the festivals and the common Anatolian practices are kept apart from the concrete records that exist for Amasya itself. Some of the local records come from folklore collections, some from Hüseyin Hüsameddin's History of Amasya and the memoirs of Osman Fevzi Olcay, and some from news reports of the festivities held in the city in recent years.

The Origins of Nowruz

Nowruz, which means "new day" in Persian, is celebrated on 21 March across a wide geography stretching from Central Asia to the Middle East and the Balkans. Astronomically, the date marks the equality of day and night and the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. Where and when the celebration began is not known with certainty, but the earliest references appear in Iranian sources. Scenes in reliefs from the Achaemenid period (559-330 BC) are thought most likely to depict the annual gifts presented to the king. Older societies also held new-year rites tied to spring and the harvest. The Akitu festivals of ancient Babylon fell in the first twelve days of April, the Hebrews marked the first days of certain months as a new year, and the Sumerians held a harvest festival.

In the Iranian tradition, some accounts link Nowruz to the legendary ruler Jamshid. According to Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the festival commemorates Jamshid's ascent to the heavens in a divine chariot drawn by demons. Another tradition holds that Zoroaster reorganized the long-standing fire festival as Nowruz. In pre-Islamic Iran the festival had both a national and a religious character. It was seen as the day on which the evils, ill omens and scarcity of the old year came to an end and a new joy and abundance began. Alongside fire, rites concerning water and plants were also part of the festival. Customs tied to the number seven, such as sowing seven kinds of seed in seven pots, survive today in the seven kinds of grain on the Nowruz table.

The Turks have celebrated Nowruz since the Middle Ages as the awakening of nature and the start of farming work. Researchers report that the Huns, the Göktürks and the Uyghurs held spring festivals, and that pictures showing Nowruz celebrations among the Uyghurs have survived. In Turkish calendars, and in the Jalali calendar attributed to the title of Sultan Malikshah, the new year falls on 21 March. Among the Seljuks Nowruz was an official holiday. In the Ottoman period poets wrote odes called nevruziye, the chief physicians presented the palace with a Nowruz paste made from spices, and the chief astrologer offered the new calendar each year to the sultan, the grand vizier and the notables of state. Nowruz was a festival on which statesmen and intellectuals congratulated one another. Its official character weakened over time while the people kept the celebration going. It regained official status in the Turkic republics from the 1980s and in Turkey after 1995.

With the spread of Islam the festival acquired a new layer of meaning. The view that Nowruz was approved directly by the Prophet is not considered correct; the celebration is thought most likely to have entered the Islamic tradition after the conquest of Iran. In Shia and Bektashi tradition, events such as the birth of Ali and his marriage to Fatima are tied to this day. In popular belief the creation of Adam, Noah's landing on dry ground after the flood and Joseph's rescue from the well are also attributed to Nowruz. Some Islamic scholars, on the other hand, opposed the celebration, regarding it as an extension of fire-worshipping tradition. Among Anatolian Alevis, Nowruz is one of the greatest festivals of the year; in this belief the day is a time for visiting friends, reconciling those who have fallen out, starting the morning with fresh water and distributing lokma. These practices were recorded for Tunceli and are not an Amasya collection, but they are worth knowing for the religious face of the festival in Anatolia.

Nowruz Customs

In the Turkic world, customs connected with Nowruz are grouped under about ten headings: going out to the countryside, entertainment and games; preparing food; cleaning and renewing clothes; exchanging gifts, visiting relatives and mutual aid; lighting fires and jumping over them; belief in Hızır; visits, prayer and sacrifice; and wishes for abundance, health and good fortune. Farming tasks such as preparing fields, repairing irrigation channels and planting saplings were also timed for these days. Jumping over a fire is an old practice carried out to be cleansed of sins and to improve one's fortune. In some regions wheat and lentils are sprouted before Nowruz, and the green shoots are used in arranging the table.

In Anatolia the first face of the festival that comes to mind is the trip to the countryside. In Bolu people go to picnic spots in groups. In Kırklareli the day is known as "Mart Dokuzu" (the ninth of March), and the outing is not abandoned however cool the weather. The name comes from the calendar: Nowruz, the day the sun enters Aries, falls on 21 March in the Gregorian calendar but on 9 March in the old Rumi calendar, and this "Ninth of March" is the day the Anatolian countryside longed for at the end of its long winters. In Sivas places such as Harman Çayırı and Çat are preferred, and in the villages of Divriği a ceremony called "Yel önü" is held to hasten the melting of the snow. In Yozgat the outing is called "sahraya çıkma" (going out to the open country). In Edirne the celebration takes place around a tomb or in a wooded area and is called "Sultan Nevruz Eğlencesi." In Erzurum, because of the altitude, the weather is still cold at Nowruz, so the picnic custom is not as popular as it is at Hıdırellez.

Regional variety is great. In Alacahan, in the Kangal district of Sivas, children take their food in mid-March and go out to gather Nowruz flowers. In Tunceli a ceremony is held in the fields on the day ploughing begins, a bread called "niyaz," kneaded with butter and baked, is distributed, and a piece of the dough is smeared on the foreheads and horns of the yoked animals. In Kars the night joining 19 March to 20 March is called "Yeddi Levin," and a mixture of at least seven kinds of dried fruit and nuts is set on the table. The Toros Turkmens around Silifke and the Tahtacı Turkmens near İzmir move up to the highland pastures on this day; the saying "after the ninth of March the mountains receive guests" expresses this.

Hüsameddin's Old Turkish Calendar and the Spring Festivals

The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin, describing the people of the sanjak in the second volume of his History of Amasya, devotes a long section to the old Turkish names of days, weeks and months. In the system he describes, the year consists of twelve months of thirty days each and five additional days at the end of the year, which he calls "Bagam." The new year first began on the sixth of March and was later corrected to the first. He lists the months as Barit, Abrul, Bayuz, Başal, Tamûz, Berkit, Oylal, İpaç, Tibar, Tigir, Ogat and Uşum. Barit is March; Abrul, which in his words is also called "Abril," is April; and Bayuz corresponds to May.

Two records in this section bear directly on the spring festivals. According to Hüsameddin, the ninth day of the month of Barit was known as "Uşlan" and counted as a festival. On Uşlan Day the khagan invited all the khans of the realm and feasted them and his whole army, and the viziers, emirs and the wealthy likewise laid tables for their retinues, relatives and friends. The author maintains that the Iranians took this ancient custom from the Turanians and called it "Nowruz," and he derives the word "Uşlan" from the verb "uşmak," meaning to run together and gather in one place. The second record concerns the month of Bayuz: from its twelfth day a three-day festival was held, called "Bayka" or "Mayga."

This information needs to be read with caution. Hüsameddin is known to have written a separate work titled "Türk Takvimi" (The Turkish Calendar), but it was never published. The encyclopedia entry on him notes that he mostly did not cite his sources and in some matters ventured into excessive etymological comparisons, which has raised doubts about the scholarly value of what he wrote. The agreement of these month names and of festival names such as Uşlan and Bayka with old Turkic texts could not be verified, and the claim that Nowruz was taken from the Turanians is the author's own interpretation. One detail is nonetheless striking: the "ninth of March" on which Uşlan falls is exactly the day that coincides with Nowruz in the Rumi calendar and is known in Anatolia as "Mart Dokuzu." It is possible that Hüsameddin built this date from the Nowruz day of the Rumi calendar; this is an inference. Likewise, the "abrul" in the Amasya expression "abrul beşi," mentioned below, is the same word Hüsameddin gives as the name of April.

Nowruz in Amasya

In Amasya, as in many parts of Anatolia, outings to the countryside are made on Nowruz day. The places favoured for these excursions are listed as Pirler Park, Kırklar Mountain, the area around the Şirvanlılar Tomb, Kurtboğan, Çakallar and the Castle. The information rests on Abdülhaluk M. Çay's book Türk Ergenekon Bayramı Nevrûz, published in Ankara in 1991, from which it passed into later collections on Nowruz; no detailed field study of how these picnic places are used today is known.

The Picnic Places

Most of the names on the list point to rest and pilgrimage grounds the city has used for centuries. Kırklar Mountain, rising north of the castle, is recorded according to Hüsameddin as "Cebel-i Erba'în" (the Mountain of the Forty) in old documents dated 682 (1283-84). A tradition widespread among the people explains the name: when Danishmend Gazi besieged the castle, forty warriors fixed candles to the horns of the sheep they had gathered on this mountain and drove the flock down towards the castle in the dark in battle order, and the defenders, thinking a great relief force had arrived, opened the gate. The name Pirler comes from the circle of Pîr Abdurrahman Hüsâmî Çelebi, whom Hüsameddin mentions as "known as Aşağı Pirler"; the author also refers to the place as one of the city's old cemeteries. Kurtboğan is the name of the Kurtboğan Tomb on the Ok Meydanı, standing today near the railway station. Hüsameddin gives records showing that vineyards around Kurtboğan were endowed as waqfs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which shows that the area lay within the city's belt of vineyards and gardens.

Going out of town to vineyards and gardens in spring and summer is a deep-rooted habit in Amasya quite apart from Nowruz. In his Amasya Hâtıraları, Osman Fevzi Olcay describes Şeyhcui as "the picnic ground of Amasya most famous for its finest grapes and cherries." In season the people moved to their pavilions there, neighbours invited one another to sit beneath the cherry trees, and the saz was played and songs were sung; the cherry season went on like this for a month, and when the heat set in some of the residents returned to town, while most stayed until grape time. Every morning milk and yoghurt were brought to the pavilions from the nearby village. Olcay also records with sorrow that the trees of the Soğukpınar Vineyards in Upper Savadiye, which he counted among Amasya's most beautiful picnic grounds before the First World War, were cut down to the last one during the war years to burn the lime needed for repairing the palace at Saraydüzü. He writes that the area of the present station, the Karaağaç Meydanı that also includes Kurtboğan, turned into a picnic ground close to the city after the railway was built. Olcay does not tie these outings by name to Nowruz or Hıdırellez; yet the overlap between the places visited at Nowruz and this belt of vineyards and picnic grounds suggests that the festival outing lived within the city's settled habit of going to the mesire.

The Nowruz Table

The Nowruz table in Amasya has also been described. According to the record taken from Metin Özarslan's study of Nowruz dishes in Anatolia, olive-oil stuffed vine leaves, stuffed dishes made with broad beans, piyaz, Amasya çörek, eggs dyed with herbs and boiled potatoes are listed among the main foods of the day. In other parts of Anatolia too, those going out to the countryside take dyed eggs, börek, çörek and lokma. Housewives begin preparing the food days in advance, and part of it is distributed to neighbours, children and the poor. Cracking eggs against one another is also an old Nowruz custom; the cracked egg is handed to the other side. Dyeing the eggs with herbs rather than onion skins is one of the details of the Amasya record.

Official Celebrations

Once Nowruz acquired official status after 1995, celebrations attended by the governorship, the municipality and the university began to be held in Amasya as well. The celebration of 21 March 2015 was held not in the open but in the Saraydüzü Barracks building because of bad weather; the programme opened with a moment of silence and the Independence March, poems were read and folk dances were performed. On 21 March 2018 the programme opened with Azerbaijani folk dances at the Amasya University Congress and Culture Centre, a Nowruz fire was lit in the school grounds and an iron-forging ceremony was held. Sack races, carrying an egg in the mouth and tug of war were organized among the students. Iron forging is a re-enactment linked to the story of the exodus from Ergenekon and is part of Nowruz ceremonies in the Turkic world; in that year's speeches, too, Nowruz was invoked together with this story.

No separate collection on the religious face of Nowruz in Amasya has been found. A recent folklore thesis notes that the districts of Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy are where the Alevi-Bektashi communities of the province live most densely. Given that Nowruz counts among the greatest festivals of the year for Anatolian Alevis, it may be supposed that in these villages the festival is also marked with cem gatherings and visits; this, however, is an inference, and no written record from the area has been found.

The Origins of Hıdırellez

Hıdırellez is the combined form of the names Hızır and İlyas as pronounced by the people. It is a folk festival whose roots lie in the summer festivals of pre-Islamic Central Asia, the Middle East and Anatolia, and which took on a religious content around the figure of Hızır, or of Hızır together with İlyas. Among the western Turks, from Anatolia and the Balkans to Crimea, Iraq and Syria, it is celebrated on 6 May by the Gregorian calendar in use today, which corresponds to 23 April by the old Julian calendar. In Turkey it is called "hıdırellez," in Crimea and Dobruja "hıdırlez," and in Macedonia "edirlez." According to popular belief Hızır and İlyas, who have attained the secret of immortality and help those in distress, one on land and the other at sea, meet once a year on this day. In practice İlyas's personality has largely been erased, and all the ceremonies of the festival are associated with Hızır. A folk tradition has also been recorded holding that the name comes from two lovers called "Hıdır" and "Ellez" who were reunited on this day.

The date arose from a reckoning of the seasons. In the Ottoman world 6 May (23 April) was regarded as the start of summer. In the old calendar the year was divided in two: the 186 days from 23 April to 26 October, called the "Hızır days" (Rûz-ı Hızır), made up the summer season, and the remaining 179 days, called the "Kasım days" (Rûz-ı Kasım), made up the winter season. In Gregorian terms the Hızır days run from 6 May to 8 November, and Hıdırellez is the first day of this period. Archive documents show that even state business was planned according to the two periods between the Hızır and Kasım days. The same date also coincides with the day on which Saint George (Green George) was celebrated in Eastern Christianity. Over time the cults of Saint George and of Hızır-İlyas merged, and the festival became a shared summer celebration kept by both Muslims and Christians. Researchers look for the roots of the festival in cultures before Islam and Christianity: the rites of Tammuz, the dying and rising nature god of Mesopotamia, of Telipinu, the vegetation god of the Hittites, and of Haurvatat and Ameretat, the protectors of water and plants in the Avesta, are counted as links in this chain.

In the Ottoman state it was debated whether the celebration was religiously objectionable. Şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi ruled that merely amusing oneself, eating and drinking was not objectionable provided one did not believe in the sanctity of the day. D'Ohsson writes that Hıdırellez ceremonies were very widespread in the Ottoman world and had become an indispensable tradition. Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname is regarded as the richest source of folklore material on Hıdırellez.

Hıdırellez Customs

Hıdırellez customs generally symbolize abundance and fertility, with water and greenery to the fore, and the celebrations take place at picnic places with trees, sometimes with a tomb nearby. The ceremonies begin on 5 May with cleaning and preparing food and drink. The practices fall into four groups: those seeking healing and health, those seeking luck and abundance, those seeking property, rank and wealth, and those aimed at opening up one's fortune and chances of marriage. Boiling wildflowers on Hıdırellez day and drinking the water brings healing, and because light is believed to rain on all waters that night, entering the water is thought to protect against illness. Since Hızır is believed to walk the earth that night, bringing abundance to whatever he touches, the mouths of food and drink containers at home are left open and locked places are opened. Cleanliness is also observed carefully, because Hızır is thought not to visit an unclean house. Wishes are written on paper and placed at the foot of rose trees or left in water.

One such practice is to make a miniature of the thing one wants, from stones or some other material, beneath a rose tree. According to the belief, Hızır calls there and grants the wish. In one account, Hızır, İlyas and Iskandar Dhu'l-Qarnayn set out together to look for the water of immortality; in the land of darkness Hızır and İlyas found the source of the water and drank it, but did not tell Iskandar. In popular belief the two meet every year on 6 May in a place rich in greenery, usually beneath a rose branch.

Because the celebrations are held communally, near some towns and cities there are green picnic areas called "hıdırlık." The festival's influence also reached place names, and almost everywhere in the Turkic world there are mosques, dervish lodges, tombs, cemeteries, hills, picnic grounds and villages bearing the names "Hızır-İlyas," "Hıdırellez" or "Hıdırlık." In earlier times these gatherings also gave young men and women of marriageable age the chance to see one another; in this respect Hıdırellez was a means of social communication. The festival is reflected in literature as well. Classical poets, when they spoke of "early spring," generally meant the days of Hıdırellez, and the mânis that young girls sing while making their wishes form an important part of anonymous folk literature. In Şeyhoğlu Sadreddin Mustafa's Hurşidname, Hurşid has a tomb built over the grave of the lover who died for him and names it Hıdrellez.

Hıdırellez in Amasya

No comprehensive collection of Hıdırellez customs specific to Amasya has been found; knowledge of the festival can mostly be read through general Anatolian practice. Even so, a few records show that the festival has left its mark on the province. Alaattin Uca's comprehensive study of Hıdırellez in Turkish society counts Amasya among the provinces where festivals are held on 6 May. Among the examples of Hıdırellez reflected in place names, the same study mentions Hızırlık Hill in Merzifon, a Hızır-İlyas Mosque in Amasya, and, on the authority of the 1967 Amasya Provincial Yearbook, the village of Hıdırlar attached to Hamamözü. Hıdırlar still exists today as a small village in the district of Hamamözü. Which building the mosque known in Amasya by the name Hızır-İlyas corresponds to today could not be determined; no record under this name was found in Hüsameddin's work. Nor has any detailed collection been found showing that Hıdırellez gatherings were held on Hızırlık Hill in Merzifon; the name itself suggests that the hill may once have served as a festival ground, but this is an inference.

Local collections contain other records that mark the passage of the season. "Abrul beşi" (5 April) and "mayıs yedisi" (the seventh of May) are known among the people as the counted cold days. It is said that on the seventh of May the weather makes itself felt with the words "winter says, I am still here, I have not gone," and that, so as not to be fooled by sunny weather, one should "keep the yellow of the straw and the dryness of the wood for these days." It is also recorded that rain falling on the seventh of May is collected in a vessel and used to ferment yoghurt. The day known among the people as "Yedi Mayıs" or "Mayıs Yedisi" is named after the Rumi calendar and falls on 20 May in the Gregorian calendar; this is why in some regions, such as Giresun, Hıdırellez is celebrated on 20 May. It may be supposed that the "mayıs yedisi" cold in Amasya likewise points to this Rumi date, some two weeks after Hıdırellez; since the record does not state the calendar, this is an inference. The expectation of a cold spell even after the festival has passed expresses the same experience as the proverb heard elsewhere in Anatolia, "Hıdırellez is the gate of summer, its blizzard lasts seven days."

In Eraslan, a town in Suluova, when people go up to the highland pastures a long mat is laid on the road and set alight, and all the animals are made to pass over the fire. This custom can be read as a local trace of the tradition of purification by fire common around Nowruz and Hıdırellez, but the sources do not tie it directly to these festivals.

Today the festival is also marked by institutional celebrations. In 2026 a Hıdırellez festival was held in the garden of the Faculty of Education of Amasya University, organized by the Amasya Governorship, the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism and Amasya University. After a moment of silence and the Independence March, the officials and students wrote their wishes on paper and pinned them to a board, traditional games such as tug of war, sack race and egg-and-spoon were played, folk dances were danced, students placed in the competitions received their certificates, and the event ended with a concert. The governor described the festivity as celebrating the coming of spring together, and the university rector spoke of the day as the day on which Hızır and İlyas meet, a festival of abundance and fertility stretching from the Balkans to Asia. Pinning the wishes to a board instead of a rose branch is the old custom adapted to a communal celebration within the city.

The Outing and the Shared Table

What the two festivals have in common is that they take people out of the narrow streets of the town to the countryside, beside water and greenery. The outing becomes a gathering where neighbours, relatives and a whole neighbourhood come together, children play, and elders tell the young about the coming of spring. Food is prepared in advance and shared on the road and at the picnic ground. In Amasya the places this outing goes to are, like the vineyard pavilions and picnic grounds Olcay describes, already part of the city's spring and summer routine. Recent studies of Hıdırellez point out that with urbanization the celebrations have declined in rural areas and some people have begun to forget the festival. That the governorship, the university and the culture directorate keep these festivals on the agenda in Amasya matters in this respect.

The difference between Nowruz and Hıdırellez lies in the calendar. Nowruz is a new-year festival tied to the turning point of the solar year, the spring equinox. Hıdırellez is the day of a very old reckoning that divides the year into summer and winter, based on the disappearance and reappearance of the Pleiades in the sky. The Pleiades become invisible during the time span in which the sun enters the Pleiades on the night of 5-6 May, and cannot be seen after sunset until 7-8 November; hence 8 November was counted as the true beginning of winter and 6 May as the true beginning of summer. The coexistence of two calendars, the Gregorian and the Rumi, has also left its trace in popular speech: Nowruz is called "21 March" in one place and "Mart Dokuzu" in another, while the cold expected after Hıdırellez bears the name "mayıs yedisi."

Chronology

559-330 BC: The Achaemenid period, when scenes of annual gift-giving in reliefs are associated with Nowruz.

682 (1283-84): According to Hüsameddin, the date of old documents in which Kırklar Mountain, one of the Nowruz outing places, appears as "Cebel-i Erba'în."

1914-1918: According to Olcay, the felling of the trees of the Soğukpınar Vineyards in Upper Savadiye and the ruin of the picnic ground.

1967: The Amasya Provincial Yearbook recording the village of Hıdırlar attached to Hamamözü.

1991: Publication of Abdülhaluk M. Çay's Nowruz book listing the outing places in Amasya.

1995: Nowruz begins to regain official status in Turkey.

21 March 2015: The official Nowruz celebration in Amasya is held in the Saraydüzü Barracks building because of bad weather.

21 March 2018: Celebration at Amasya University with a Nowruz fire and an iron-forging ceremony.

May 2026: Hıdırellez festival in the garden of the Faculty of Education of Amasya University.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, p. 97 (Kırklar Mountain); vol. 2, pp. 222-223 (old Turkish month names, the Uşlan and Bayka festivals); vol. 6, p. 38 and vol. 9, p. 153 (endowment of the vineyards around Kurtboğan); vol. 9, p. 55 and vol. 11, p. 459 (Aşağı Pirler); vol. 11, p. 383 (Kurtboğan Tomb). E-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/1-4/files/basic-html/page223.html
  • Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları: Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim ile Amasya, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications (sections on the Yukarı Savadiye, Yukarı Meydan and Şeyhcui quarters). amasya.bel.tr

Academic studies

  • Alaattin Uca, "Türk Toplumunda Nevruz I", Atatürk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi, no. 32, Erzurum 2007, pp. 137-170.
  • Alaattin Uca, "Türk Toplumunda Hıdırellez - I", Atatürk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi, no. 34, Erzurum 2007, pp. 113-138.
  • Rümeysa Derdiyok - Fatıma Eyibinici, "Hıdırellez Geleneği", International Journal of Humanities and Education, vol. 10, no. 23, pp. 363-376.
  • "Merzifon ve Gümüşhacıköy (Amasya) Zakirlik Geleneği", master's thesis, Balıkesir University Institute of Social Sciences, 2024 (abstract).

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism Culture Portal, "Nevruz ve Hıdırellez" (Tunceli Culture Atlas entry).

Other sources

  • Şinasi Gündüz, "Nevruz", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 33, İstanbul 2007, pp. 60-61. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, "Hıdrellez", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İstanbul 1998. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Turgut Akpınar, "Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 18, İstanbul 1998, pp. 551-552.
  • Abdülhaluk Mehmet Çay, Türk Ergenekon Bayramı Nevrûz, Ankara 1991, p. 131 (as cited by Uca).
  • "Amasya'da Yöresel Kültür ve Âdetler" (turkeyoutdoor.org), a collection on Amasya local folk culture.
  • Anadolu Agency report, "Nevruz kutlamaları", sondakika.com, 21 March 2015.
  • Anadolu Agency report, "Nevruz Bayramı kutlanıyor", haber7.com, 21 March 2018. haber7.com
  • Anadolu Agency, "Amasya'da Hıdırellez Şenliği düzenlendi", 7 May 2026.
  • "Hıdırlar, Hamamözü", Wikipedia (English), village entry.

Online sources