On the northeastern edge of the Suluova plain, at the foot of the slopes facing the northern gorge of Amasya, lies Yolpınar, today a quiet village of a little over two hundred people, which appears in older records under the name Hakala. In the first centuries of Ottoman rule this small settlement was the centre of Amasya's northern districts, the home of a Turkmen ruling family, one of the early stations of the Rifa'i order in Anatolia, and the seat of a madrasa counted among the great colleges of Amasya. Long before the present town of Suluova rose in the middle of the plain, the administrative, religious and intellectual life of the surrounding country was largely gathered here.

Much of what we know about Hakala's past rests on the Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) of Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yaşar. Combing through pious endowment deeds, old registers and gravestones one by one, Hüsameddin recorded the village's beys, professors and sheikhs across several volumes. When his information is set beside the brief notes in present-day official descriptions, it becomes clearer why Yolpınar is regarded as the true historical core of the plain. Some dates, however, vary from source to source, and these differences are noted below where they arise.

Location and Name

Yolpınar lies about 16 kilometres from the provincial centre of Amasya and 12 kilometres from the district town of Suluova, at an altitude of 538 metres. Hüsameddin describes the village as a settlement built on level ground, with rising slopes to the east and north, and writes that its general appearance showed it had once been a rather important and prosperous town. Its position at the mouth of the road to Amasya, on a dry and somewhat raised margin before the ground falls away into the marshy flats of the plain, made it in early times a far more favourable place to live than the middle of the plain.

The village's name appears as Hakala in records dating from 1344; in records of 1926 it is written Hagala or Kavala. In his notes on the place names of Amasya, Hüsameddin derives the name Hakala from Alkaevli (Alkaivli), the name of one of the Oghuz tribes, which he believes became Halkalı over time and was then corrupted into Hakala. This etymology is the author's own interpretation and is not supported by any other source. The present name, Yolpınar, was given during the place-name changes of the Republican period.

From Argoma to Hakala: A District Centre

The old name of the plain is Arguma or Argoma, and in the Seljuk, beylik and early Ottoman periods the wide region north of Amasya was known as a district (nahiye) under that name. According to Hüsameddin, although the district was long known as Arguma-Suluova, after the year 745 (1344-45) Hakala grew and prospered, became the centre of the district and let its own name overtake that of Arguma. This date agrees with the appearance of the village name in the records of 1344. In Hüsameddin's own day, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the districts of the kaza of Amasya were listed as Ezinepazar, Akdağ, Hakala and Geldiklan; the district of Hakala covered the northern parts of Amasya, and its centre was the village called Hakala or Hakla.

Ottoman tax registers show the picture from a different angle. In the land and tax register (tahrir) of 1520, as cited in local studies, Hakala is recorded as a small town attached to the district of Akdağ. Değirmenderesi, counted as the centre of the town, had 119 households, and villages such as Ağaçviran (present-day Akören), Derebaşalan, Soku, Sofular, Tavra, Kozalan and Seyfe were listed around it. In the same years the other villages of the plain belonged to the district of Argoma, and most of their revenues flowed to pious endowments in Amasya. Among the endowments drawing income from the district of Argoma, a "Hakala Madrasa Endowment" is also named. That Hakala appears in this period sometimes as the centre of Akdağ and sometimes as that of Argoma shows that boundaries and names changed several times over the centuries.

In the provincial yearbooks (salname) of the nineteenth century Hakala again appears among the districts of the kaza of Amasya. In the 1881 list cited by Sabit Genç in his study of the administrative structure of the sanjak of Amasya, the districts of the kaza of Amasya are Ezinepazarı, Akdağ, Hakala, Geldiklan and Havza. In the 1903 list the name Alevi appears in place of Hakala; in 1912 the two names are listed side by side once more. Behind this change lies the growth of the village of Alevi in the middle of the plain. With the 1903 amendment of the provincial regulation of 1871, Alevi, until then a village attached to the district of Hakala, became a district in its own right and, growing together with neighbouring villages such as Öyük, formed the nucleus of present-day Suluova. The centre of the plain thus shifted from the old settlement on its edge to the middle of the flatland, and Hakala in time declined into an ordinary village.

The Âbâdoğulları and the Beys of Hakala

Those who made Hakala into a town were the Turkmen ruling family that Hüsameddin calls the Âbâdoğulları. The first known elder of the family, Emir Sârimeddin Âbâd Bey, was the son of Süli Bey, one of the Turkmen beys. On his father's death he became head of the tribe, attached himself to the Seljuk Sultan Mesud II, became emir of the district of Argoma, and died after 710 (1310-11). Hüsameddin considers the word "âbâd" to be pure Turkish and writes that it means prosperous, cheerful and abundant. Âbâd Bey's son Bedreddin Süli Bey was emir of the district of Suluova in his father's lifetime, and his influence reached as far as the kazas of Gelgiras, Gümüş and Merzifon; he is recorded as the bey who most stubbornly resisted the Tatar Zugay Bey, and as having died around 731 (1330-31).

After Süli Bey his brother Mübârizeddin Sevindik Bey became emir of Hakala, Arguma and the surrounding country; submitting first to Yakub Shah and then to Kutlu Shah, he held his position and died in 752 (1351). Hüsameddin relates that Sevindik Bey lived in the village of Hakala, which faces Suluova in front of the northern gorge of Amasya, that he made himself known to all the Turkmens, and that through his efforts Hakala became a charming little town. The sons of Sevindik Bey's grandson Tur Ali Bey, el-Hâc Mehmed Bey and Mahmud Bey, form the best-known generation of the family. In later times the family produced beys and governors-general (beylerbey) such as Kasım Bey, Abdullah Pasha and Mirza Bey, and gave rise to a separate branch known as the "Silahdar Oğulları". From this branch came viziers and beys such as Musa Pasha, Büyük Cafer Pasha, Topal Yusuf Pasha and Ahmed Pasha, while the "Topal Paşaoğulları", known in Amasya as the Topaloğulları, rose among the leaders of the Janissaries. In Hüsameddin's words, the "Hacı Bey lineage" is the glory of this district.

The influence of the Hakala beys in Amasya lasted a long time. After the earthquake of 1079 (1668-69), Amasya Castle was repaired through the agency of Hoca Ahmed Paşazade Ali Bey and Silahdarzade Yusuf Ağa of Hakala. During the governorship of Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed) in Amasya, in 905 (1499-1500), Abdullah Beyzade Kasım Pasha of the Âbâdoğulları was appointed the prince's vizier and lala (tutor-guardian) in place of Tâceddin Pasha. As Hüsameddin relates, Kasım Pasha was among the statesmen displeased with the prince's attachment to the Persian notables who surrounded him and to Persian literature. In the seventeenth century, names such as Şatır Ali Ağa of Hakala, deputy governor (mütesellim) of Amasya, and his sons, Hakalacı Mustafa Bey and Uzun Sefer Ağa of Hakala show that the weight of the family and the village in the administration of the city endured.

The Kara Devletşah Affair

Hakala's name comes to the fore in one of the most turbulent periods of Ottoman history, at the beginning of the Interregnum. After Bayezid I (Yıldırım) lost the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and was taken prisoner, Timur appointed Bahtiyaroğlu Kara Devletşah governor of Amasya. When the notables of Amasya refused to let him into the city, Kara Devletşah, according to Hüsameddin, came with some twelve thousand horsemen to the northern gorge of Amasya, descended on the village of Hakala, occupied Suluova and began to rule the surrounding country from there. Amasya at this point had in effect two governors: Yakut Pasha held the city and the castle, while Kara Devletşah controlled the country outside and around it. The people of Amasya had seized and closed the passes, and the emirs of Lâdik, Mecidözü and Köprü also stood with the city against Kara Devletşah.

Kara Devletşah reported the situation to Timur and obtained a decree addressed to the notables of Amasya, but in the petition they sent to Timur the people of Amasya wrote that they would accept even a common slave as governor, yet would not submit to the tyrant Kara Devletşah. According to local tradition Timur then sent his son Kara Mehmed Sultan and his tutor Nûreddin Abdülcebbar el-Mu'tezilî to Amasya; in the examination that followed, Gümüşlüzade Pir Şücaeddin İlyas Çelebi answered all ten questions put to him without fault and saved the city from plunder, and in 1402 Kara Mehmed Sultan appointed Şemseddin Şadgeldi Bey governor. Even after the delegation left, Kara Devletşah did not withdraw from Hakala and continued his oppression and plunder. Nor was there any force able to drive him out.

The notables of Amasya then sent word to Prince Mehmed Çelebi in Bolu asking for help. Hüsameddin tells the story in detail through the role played by the beys of Hakala. When the prince reached Osmancık with some five hundred horsemen, the qadi (judge) of Gümüş, Hacı Halil Efendi, met him and took him to the town of Gümüş, and corresponded secretly with the bey of Hakala, Âbâdoğlu Hacı Mehmed Bey, as they watched for the right moment. İsfendiyar Bey, the emir of Kastamonu, meanwhile was trying to win over both the emir of Osmancık and Kara Devletşah, who was living at Hakala, in order to keep the prince away from Amasya. Hacı Mehmed Bey's brother was at Hakala and he himself at Merzifon; in one place Hüsameddin names this brother as Abdullah Bey, in another as Mahmud Bey. While the beys of Hakala had Kara Devletşah and his men drunk at a banquet they had prepared, Mehmed Çelebi's forces broke into the camp in a sudden raid. Kara Devletşah was killed and his troops, numbering some eight thousand according to Hüsameddin, were scattered.

The people of Amasya received the prince before Hakala. At the banquet given in front of the gorge of Amasya, the mufti of Amasya, Gümüşlüzade Abdurrahman Çelebi, conveyed to the prince the conditions agreed upon in the city's council. As Hüsameddin quotes from İdris-i Bitlisî, the notables of Amasya asked the prince to renounce his drinking parties, and Mehmed Çelebi got down from his horse, performed his ablutions, prayed two cycles of prayer and repented before the mufti and the notables, and only then entered Amasya. The event is dated to 805 (1402-03). For this service Hacı Mehmed Bey won the prince's trust and became a sanjak governor (mirliva); he took part in all of Mehmed Çelebi's campaigns and died around 824 (1421). Hüsameddin also records him as the brother-in-law of Bayezid Pasha of Amasya. The raid on Kara Devletşah is related in detail in local sources, but particulars such as the numbers of horsemen and the banquet scene have not been individually confirmed by other contemporary sources.

Seyyid Necmeddin Yahya er-Rufâî and the Hakala Zaviye

The spiritual life of Hakala was shaped by the settlement in the village of Seyyid Necmeddin Yahya er-Rufâî, one of the early sheikhs of the Rifa'i order in Anatolia. Seyyid Yahya was the son of Seyyid Şemseddin Ahmed-i Kebîr er-Rufâî, known by the epithet "sâhibü'l-hâl" and buried at Lâdik. Relying on the family's genealogies, Hüsameddin writes that Ahmed-i Kebîr died in 759 (1358) at the age of seventy-two, and records that Ibn Battuta visited him at Lâdik in 731. Among Ahmed-i Kebîr's sons were Alâeddin Ali, Muhyiddin Mehmed, Sadreddin Kasım, İzzeddin Hasan and Necmeddin Yahya. According to the tradition told in Yolpınar, Necmeddin Yahya's lineage reaches the Prophet in the nineteenth generation through Husayn.

Seyyid Yahya's arrival in Hakala is told in two different ways. Hüsameddin writes that he came to the town of Hakala at the invitation of the Âbâdoğulları and settled in the zaviye (dervish lodge) built for him. According to the account told at the tomb today, his father Ahmed-i Kebîr wished teaching and spiritual guidance to begin at Hakala, and Seyyid Yahya came to the village at the invitation of İhtiyareddin Boğa Sevinç Bey, one of his father's dervishes. Hüsameddin introduces İhtiyareddin Sevinç Bey, known as Kızoğlu, as the lord of the kaza of Lâdik and notes that Ahmed-i Kebîr was held in great respect in his time. The two accounts do not exclude each other; it may be supposed that Seyyid Yahya settled in Hakala with the support both of the Turkmen beys of the area and of his father's circle.

On the Dates of Foundation and Death

The sources give two separate sets of dates for the founding of the zaviye. The official description of the district states that the Hakala Zaviye was built in 1348 and that its endowments were arranged in 1355; local studies likewise note that Seyyid Yahya had a zaviye built at Hakala in the middle of the fourteenth century. Hüsameddin, however, in the section describing the district of Hakala, writes that Seyyid Yahya had a large zaviye built in 764 (1362-63) and arranged its endowments in 771 (1369-70). The tradition told at the tomb says the endowment deed was drawn up in 1369, which agrees with Hüsameddin's date of 771. The same tradition relates that ten shops, two mills and five hundred dönüms of farmland were assigned to the zaviye by the deed; no published text of an endowment deed confirming this detail exists.

The date of death also differs between sources. In the volume where he narrates the events of Amasya year by year, Hüsameddin writes that Seyyid Yahya died at Hakala in 771 and was buried in a cell of the zaviye he had built. In his biographical volumes, however, he gives the date of death as 773 (1371-72), adding that the sarcophagus still stood in place and bore the date of death carved upon it. Information recently compiled about the tomb states that the wooden sarcophagus carries the inscription "Hüvelbâkî, Kutbü'l-ârifîn es-Seyyid Necmeddin Yahya er-Rufâî, sene 761", that is, the date 761 (1359-60), and that the sarcophagus is now preserved in the Amasya Museum. According to the same information, a fourteenth-century gravestone on the south wall of the tomb records that this is the resting place of Necmeddin Yahya, "the pearl of the Rifa'i sea". Whether the date on the sarcophagus is 761, 771 or 773 cannot be settled without a published reading of the piece.

The Sheikh's Successors and the Later Life of the Zaviye

After Seyyid Yahya's death the zaviye remained for a long time in the hands of his descendants. Hüsameddin names his son Seyyid Haşim Çelebi as sheikh of the Rifa'i zaviye at Hakala. Haşim Çelebi's son Zeynelâbidin Çelebi studied the religious and literary sciences with the scholars of Amasya during his father's lifetime and worked to teach them at Hakala; on his father's death he became sheikh of his grandfather's zaviye and administrator (mütevelli) of its endowment and won great renown. In the reign of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), on the death of his cousin Seyyid Hüsameddin er-Rufâî, he settled in Amasya and revived the Hüsamiyye zaviye there; when he died in 826 (1422-23) he was buried at Hakala beside his grandfather's tomb. Later Seyyid Salih Çelebi, of the Rifa'i family's Ahmedsaray branch near Lâdik, also came and settled at Hakala, and one of his descendants, Seyyid Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi, became one of the well-known scholars of sixteenth-century Amasya.

The zaviye did not remain merely a place where dervishes lodged. Hüsameddin relates that Hakala was furnished with two madrasas, two primary schools and a Rifa'i zaviye, that the lodge had a public kitchen (imaret) and a guesthouse, and that because its endowments were well ordered the village took on the appearance of a prosperous town. In his view the village of Hakala remained, until about the year 1100 (1688-89), a refuge for scholars, students, dervishes and the poor of the surrounding country. The tradition told at the tomb likewise says that the zaviye was active without interruption for 297 years, that more than three hundred scholars were trained there, and that the Recepzade and Şabanzade branches descended from Seyyid Yahya's grandsons opened more than thirty dervish lodges in the Balkans; these figures have not been confirmed by documents. Rükneddin Mehmed Çelebi, a man of Rifa'i descent who fled the Aqqoyunlu court at the end of the fifteenth century and took refuge in Amasya, lived in the Seyyid Yahya zaviye while serving as professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa, a fine example of how the lodge and the madrasa complemented each other in the same village.

The Sufi life of Hakala was not confined to the Rifa'is. According to Hüsameddin, the Halveti Sadullah Çelebi, who had studied in Amasya under scholars such as Pir İlyas and Mevlânâ Hüsameddin Hasan Hoyî, went to Hakala after Pir İlyas's death, served there as imam and died in 824 (1421); he is the person referred to in the sources as "Mevlânâ Sadullah el-Hakalî". The Halveti sheikh Pir Zekeriyya, who lies beside the Saraçhane Mosque in Amasya, also endowed in 874 (1469-70) two farms in the district of Hakala, inherited from his father Şeyh Paşa, so that the Qur'an would be recited at his tomb.

The Tomb and the Tales Told Among the People

Seyyid Yahya's tomb (türbe) stands today to the west of Yolpınar village; the official description of the district also places the zaviye to the southwest of the village. Hüsameddin writes that the tomb of Seyyid Yahya er-Rufâî was very famous and regarded as a place of pilgrimage for Muslims. The tomb is still visited today for reasons such as making a wish; the villagers come to pray here on important days such as sending off young men to military service and weddings.

Many legends attached to Seyyid Yahya are told in the village. According to local tradition the sheikh was a locksmith by trade. In years of drought, the story goes, the villagers were digging to bring water from Akdağ to the village when they came up against a great rock that they could not break for days; when Seyyid Yahya struck it with his staff, saying the basmala, the rock split and the water reached the village. This water, one of the village's main sources, is still called the "Şeyh Yahya Suyu" (Sheikh Yahya's Water). Another tale says that when a Mongol troop that had entered Amasya approached the village, their horses stood rooted to the ground, and the commander, warned in a dream, withdrew; the hill has since been called the "Moğol Dönmez Tepesi" (Hill the Mongols Did Not Pass). The "Bereket Kazanı" (Cauldron of Plenty), with which he is said to have fed seven hundred people from a handful of wheat in a time of famine and which is said to have been hung in the tomb after his death, is among these legends too. These stories speak less of historical events than of the mark the sheikh left on the village's memory, and they should be read as such.

The Kasım Bey Madrasa

The most important building still standing in Yolpınar today is the Kasım Bey Madrasa. Its founder, Kasım Bey, was a descendant of Âbâdoğlu Hacı Mehmed Bey, who had served Mehmed Çelebi in the Kara Devletşah affair. According to the entry in Hüsameddin's biographical volumes, Hacı Mehmed Bey's sons were İsa and Hamza Beys, and Kasım Bey was the son of İsa Bey; the same entry states that Hacı Mehmed Bey's zaviye, the mosque of his daughter Ayşe Hatun and the madrasa of his grandson Kasım Bey stood at Hakala. Of Kasım Bey's sons, Rüstem Bey attached himself to Prince Bayezid while serving as governor in Amasya, took part in the wars against Uzun Hasan and died after 890 (1485); his son Ali Bey is recorded as having a mosque at Hakala as well. İlyas Bey, son of Kasım Bey's other son Abdullah Bey, served Prince Ahmed as emîr-i pâygâh, that is, master of ceremonies.

Date of Construction

The sources give the date of the madrasa's construction with a difference of a few years. In the section describing the district of Hakala, Hüsameddin writes that Kasım Bey had a madrasa and a bathhouse built in 867 (1462-63). In the volume where he lists events year by year, however, he enters the following under 873 (1468-69): Hacı Beyzade Kasım Bey, one of the great beys, completed this year the masonry madrasa he had begun in Hakala, his native village, and endowed his properties for its upkeep. The entry in the cultural inventory states that Kasım Bey had a large madrasa and bathhouse built in 868 (1463-64); the municipality's description also gives the date 1464. Read together, these accounts suggest that the building was begun in the early 1460s and completed in 1468-69, when its endowment was also arranged. The madrasa has no inscription, and its endowment deed is not known to have survived.

Architecture and Present Condition

Hüsameddin describes the madrasa as a building standing alone on a high spot on the eastern side of the village, built of solid masonry, with spacious cells and a large lecture hall, and says that its ruin in his own day filled the visitor with deep sorrow. The official description of the district repeats the same account: a masonry madrasa on raised ground to the east of the village, with a large lecture hall and spacious cells. According to the description in the cultural inventory, the building is rectangular in plan, running north to south beside a stream, and measures 7.80 by 10.70 metres. There are three rooms on each side of the stream; to the south of the stream is a large square chamber with a wide round opening, covered by a dome carried on Turkish triangles. This domed chamber appears to have been the lecture hall of the madrasa.

The madrasa is registered as a first-degree monument. The inventory entry shows its load-bearing structure and exterior as relatively sound, its roofing and damp condition as fair, and its decorative elements as poor. The building has no water, electricity or heating. Its recommended use is, again, as a madrasa. Information on the building is also said to appear in the Amasya section of the journal Vakıf Abideler Dergisi.

A Madrasa of the Erbain Rank

According to Hüsameddin, the Kasım Bey Madrasa was exceptionally famous among the madrasas of Amasya and was counted at the "erbaîn" rank in the ordering of colleges. In the Ottoman madrasa system these colleges, whose professors were paid forty akçe a day, stood at the upper level of provincial madrasas; the district's description also says that the madrasa was named among the first forty madrasas of Amasya. That a village madrasa should have reached this rank shows that Hakala was an inseparable part of Amasya's scholarly world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hüsameddin also places this rise in a wider frame. In his view, from 926 (1519-20) to 1041 (1631-32) only two new madrasas could be added to those in Amasya, yet among the professors the city produced, names such as Molla Muhyiddin of Hakala won great fame in teaching.

The professors of the madrasa had from early times lived in the village of Hakala and taught there. Hüsameddin writes that the "usul-i veraset", which began in 1004 (1595-96) and allowed professorships to pass from father to son, put an end to this settled custom. From then on, scholars of Amasya appointed as professors began to live and teach in Amasya, and the madrasa, left in every respect idle in the hands of heirs, fell into ruin. The last of the professors who lived and taught at Hakala was Şeyh Mahmud Efendi. When he was dismissed in 1099 (1687-88), Fazlızade Mustafa Efendi succeeded to the professorship, but in 1102 (1690-91) he was dismissed for not going to Hakala, and Mahmud Efendi returned to the post for a second time. The professorship then changed hands among Mustafa Efendi, his son Ahmed Efendi, Fazlızade el-Hâc Ahmed Efendi and his son Seyyid el-Hâc Mustafa Efendi, and in the nineteenth century it remained in the same way in the hands of families in Amasya.

Scholars Who Taught at the Madrasa

Hüsameddin's biographical volumes name many scholars who served as professors at the Kasım Bey Madrasa. One of the earliest was Hüseyin Çelebi, son of Abdullah of the village of Hakala, known as "Mevlânâ Hakâlî". Having studied in Amasya and become a public lecturer, Hüseyin Çelebi was appointed professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa in Hakala, taught for years in Amasya and Hakala, preached in the village's Ayşe Hatun Mosque and died around 898 (1492-93). Rükneddin Mehmed Çelebi, son of Abdullah Seyyid Han of Lâdik, one of the viziers of the Aqqoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, was born in Tabriz, fled to Amasya when Shah Ismail seized Iran, and found favour with Prince Ahmed. Appointed professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa, Rükneddin Çelebi lived and taught in the Seyyid Yahya zaviye at Hakala and died after 923 (1517).

The preacher Zeynelâbidin Ali Çelebi, after studying under the Amasya scholar Abdî-i Amasî, served as professor at the Fîruz Ağa Madrasa in Havza and as mufti of Havza; in 926 (1519-20) he became professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa and lived at Hakala, and in 931 he became qadi of Merzifon. Seyyid Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi of Hakala, who taught at the madrasa in the mid-sixteenth century, was one of the well-known scholars of Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that in 950 (1543) he moved to the Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa in Amasya, that he was among the scholars whose company Prince Mustafa most enjoyed, that he served as deputy head of the descendants of the Prophet (nakîbüleşraf), and that he died in 963 (1555-56). Many Amasya scholars, such as Seyrekzade Mehmed Efendi, received their first lessons from him, and some also received from him authorisation as Halveti deputies.

Professors continued to be appointed to the madrasa in the seventeenth century. Kara Hafız İbrahim Efendi of Havza became professor at the Fîruz Ağa Madrasa in Havza in 1071 and at the Kasım Bey Madrasa in Hakala in 1075 (1664-65). Hacı İmam İbrahim Efendi of Ziyare, Ahmed Efendi of Gelgiras and another professor also known as a calligrapher are counted among the teachers of the same madrasa. The record that one professor retired in 1018 (1609-10) holding the Kasım Bey Madrasa suggests that by this period the madrasa was being distributed more as a title and source of income. Another scholar who rose from the post of imam at the Küpceğiz Mosque served as professor at the Fîruz Ağa Madrasa in Havza and the Kasım Bey Madrasa in Hakala before moving in 1078 (1667-68) to the Büyük Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa in Amasya. In these examples the madrasa at Hakala appears as a step on the way up to the great madrasas of Amasya.

Hakala's Other Buildings

The Kasım Bey Madrasa was not the only charitable foundation in the village. In Hüsameddin's account, Ayşe Hatun, daughter of Hacı Mehmed Bey, built a mosque in the village; Hacı Beyzade Mirza Bey had a mosque or small mosque (mescit) built in 935 (1528-29); and Hacı Beyzade Muhyiddin Bey, son of Mirza Bey's sister, built a second madrasa and another bathhouse in 947 (1540-41) and arranged their endowments. The site of the inn (han) that Muhyiddin Bey endowed to this madrasa is the empty plot on the west side of the Kumacık Bathhouse in Amasya. Elsewhere Hüsameddin writes that in 990 (1582) Mirza Beyzade Mehmed Bey built a fine inn on the road west of the Kocacık Bathhouse in Amasya and endowed it to the upkeep of the madrasa he had built at Hakala. His brother Mustafa Bey built a mosque and a primary school in 985 (1577-78) in the village of Kuşçular, which belonged to the district of Hakala. In Hüsameddin's day even the ruins of this mosque showed that it had once been very skilfully and solidly built.

The Muhyiddin Bey Madrasa also long remained an institution to which professors were appointed. Hüsameddin mentions professors appointed to it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; one of them became professor of the "Muhyiddin Çelebi Madrasa" at Hakala in 1243 (1827-28). No trace of this madrasa is visible on the site today. The official description of the district notes that the Hacı Bey Zade Muhyiddin Efendi Madrasa is understood to have stood in the village and that great scholars are said to have been trained there.

The second important building still standing in the village is the historic bathhouse (hamam). According to the description in the cultural inventory, the bathhouse measures 14.70 by 16.20 metres externally, and its changing hall has completely collapsed. The warm room is entered through a round-arched passage and is covered by three star vaults; of the spaces beside it, one has a star vault and the other a barrel vault. The hot room consists of three iwans and two private bathing cells arranged around an oval-domed central space; one of the cells is covered by a ribbed dome, the other by a plain dome, and behind the hot room lies a barrel-vaulted water tank. The entry recalls that Kasım Bey built a bathhouse in 868 (1463-64) and Muhyiddin Mehmed Çelebi another in 947 (1540-41), but states that it cannot be said with certainty which of them this is. Since its architectural style points to the fifteenth century, it is quite possibly Kasım Bey's bathhouse. The building stood abandoned for a long time and was used as a hayloft.

Hüsameddin also draws particular attention to the gravestones in the Hakala cemetery. He writes that the village's gentlemen, beys and ağas were known as generous and just people, and that the elegance and fine inscriptions of their gravestones made them worthy of admiration within the cemetery. Made for the wealthy families of what was once a small town, these stones are among the most tangible traces of Hakala's prosperity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Notable People of the Hakala District

Hüsameddin writes that many great statesmen and beys came from the district of Hakala, and in listing them he names, alongside the Âbâdoğulları and the Silahdar Oğulları, the scholars raised in the village. Seyyid Muhyiddin Efendi, among the famous learned men of the village of Hakala, and Seyyid Mehmed Efendi, among its judges, head this list. The scholar el-Hâc Bayram Efendi of the district's village of Alevi and Süleyman Pasha, known as Hacı Eyvad Pasha, of the village of Fîruz are also counted in the same place. Hüsameddin further maintains that al-Malik al-Mansur Husam al-Din Lajin (Hüsameddin Laçin), Mamluk sultan from 1296 to 1299, came from the village of Hacı Bayram in this district, and that his farm beside it became a village called "Laçin karyesi". This claim is not confirmed by other sources and should be considered among the author's interpretations based on local tradition.

Traces of Earlier Settlement

Little is known of Hakala's past before the Turkmen beys. Local sources state that the history of the village reaches back to the Chalcolithic Age and the Hittite period. The mounds in and around Yolpınar suggest that this dry and sheltered spot on the edge of the plain has been inhabited since very early times. Research in the Suluova area is reported to have found traces from the Early Bronze Age and the period of the Assyrian Trading Colonies. Since no systematic excavation has been carried out at Yolpınar itself, however, these finds cannot be directly linked to the settlement within the village's bounds.

Yolpınar Today

Yolpınar today is a village of the Suluova district, administered by a headman (muhtar) and a council of elders. Its population, 361 in 1985 and 369 in 1990, fell to 351 in 2000, 278 in 2007 and 215 in 2022. The village lives from farming; in the district's agricultural descriptions Yolpınar is counted among the villages where fruit growing is expanding rapidly and where apples, peaches and cherries are grown commercially. There is also an agricultural irrigation cooperative in the village.

The domed lecture hall of the Kasım Bey Madrasa, the star-vaulted bathhouse and the tomb of Seyyid Yahya to the west are the buildings that still show today that the village was once a district centre and a town of learning. The madrasa that Hüsameddin described as a "ruin" a century ago has managed to survive, and the tomb of Seyyid Yahya has remained a place of pilgrimage for the villagers. In looking at the history of modern Suluova, rising in the middle of the plain, it is worth remembering that for centuries its ties with Amasya ran through Hakala.

Chronology

After 710 (1310-11): Sârimeddin Âbâd Bey of Hakala, emir of the district of Argoma, dies.

Around 731 (1330-31): Bedreddin Süli Bey, son of Âbâd Bey and emir of the district of Suluova, dies.

1344: The village's name appears in records as Hakala; according to Hüsameddin, after 745 (1344-45) Hakala replaces Arguma as district centre.

1348: According to the official description of the district, Seyyid Necmeddin Yahya er-Rufâî has the Hakala Zaviye built; its endowments are said to have been arranged in 1355.

752 (1351): Mübârizeddin Sevindik Bey, emir of Hakala and Arguma, dies.

764 (1362-63): The year in which, according to Hüsameddin, Seyyid Yahya had a large zaviye built at Hakala.

771 (1369-70): According to Hüsameddin, the endowments of the zaviye are arranged; in his volume of events the same author writes that Seyyid Yahya died in this year.

773 (1371-72): The year given in Hüsameddin's biographical volumes as the date of Seyyid Yahya's death.

805 (1402-03): Kara Devletşah, appointed governor of Amasya by Timur, is killed in his camp at Hakala in a raid by Prince Mehmed Çelebi.

824 (1421): Âbâdoğlu Hacı Mehmed Bey, bey of Hakala, and the Halveti Mevlânâ Sadullah el-Hakalî die.

826 (1422-23): Zeynelâbidin Çelebi, grandson of Seyyid Yahya and sheikh of the zaviye, dies and is buried at Hakala beside his grandfather's tomb.

867-868 (1462-64): Hacı Beyzade Kasım Bey begins the construction of the madrasa and the bathhouse.

873 (1468-69): The Kasım Bey Madrasa is completed and its endowment arranged.

874 (1469-70): The Halveti sheikh Pir Zekeriyya endows two farms in the district of Hakala to his tomb.

Around 898 (1492-93): Hüseyin Çelebi, Mevlânâ Hakâlî, professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa, dies.

905 (1499-1500): Kasım Pasha of the Âbâdoğulları becomes vizier and lala of Prince Ahmed.

1520: The tax register records the town of Hakala with 119 households at its centre, Değirmenderesi.

926 (1519-20): The preacher Zeynelâbidin Ali Çelebi becomes professor at the Kasım Bey Madrasa.

935 (1528-29): Mirza Bey has a small mosque built at Hakala.

947 (1540-41): Hacı Beyzade Muhyiddin Bey builds a second madrasa and a bathhouse in the village.

963 (1555-56): Seyyid Muhyiddin Mehmed Efendi of Hakala dies.

985 (1577-78): Mustafa Bey builds a mosque and primary school in the village of Kuşçular in the district of Hakala.

1004 (1595-96): The usul-i veraset begins; in time the madrasa's professors come to live in Amasya instead of Hakala.

1102 (1690-91): Fazlızade Mustafa Efendi is dismissed from the professorship of the Kasım Bey Madrasa for not going to Hakala.

1881: Hakala is listed among the districts of the kaza of Amasya.

1903: The village of Alevi, attached to the district of Hakala, becomes a separate district; the centre of the plain shifts to present-day Suluova.

2022: The population of Yolpınar is 215.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yaşar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1 (the district of Hakala), vol. 3 (events of the years 771, 805 and 873) and the biographical volumes (Âbâd Bey, Hacı Mehmed Bey, Süli Bey, Sevindik Bey, Seyyid Ahmed-i Kebîr, Zeynelâbidin Çelebi, Rükneddin Mehmed Çelebi, Hüseyin Çelebi and other professors).

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources