The villages of Taşova are not ordinary settlements that happen to lie in the shadow of the district center. Long before the district itself was established in 1944, this stretch of the Yeşilırmak valley held settlements known as Sonusa, Taşabad and Zuday. Some entered Seljuk endowment deeds, some entered Ottoman tax registers, and some were founded in the nineteenth century beside the estate of a regional notable. Most of the villages now known as Akınoğlu, Alpaslan, Ballıdere, Belevi, Boraboy, Çaydibi, Destek, Esençay, Özbaraklı and Uluköy changed their names several times within a hundred years, became nahiye (subdistrict) centers or municipalities, and then returned to village status. The pages below set out the history of these settlements, the course of their names and the changes in their administrative structure. Boraboy Lake is the subject of a separate article; here only the history of the Boraboy settlement is covered. For the general history of the district, the article on Taşova may be consulted.

First Settlements Around Sonusa and Taşabad

Local historical research traces settlement in the district back to 5000 BC and notes traces of the Hittite, Phrygian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods in the region. The area around Sonisa and Taşabad is said to have been a developed region in Pontic and Roman times. The Roman-period fortress and settlement remains in the Özbaraklı area, and the terrain of Darma and Dereli, the villages that make up Ballıdere, also point to this early past. A Roman fortress has been mentioned around Boraboy as well, and the elders of the town have reported traces of old settlement at the Kızıltaşdibi locality to the northeast and church remains at the Güvere locality to the southeast. These data show that the region's first inhabitants were neither Turkish nor Muslim. Turks began to appear here in the period following the victory at Manzikert.

After the Danishmendids took Amasya and Niksar, Turkmen groups arriving from Khorasan and Khwarazm settled in the valley. According to local accounts, the tribes known as the Sonisa Yörüks reached the region at this time. That most village and camp names carry the name of a clan or tribe that arrived and settled later is a pattern seen across the whole Sivas and Tokat area, and it holds for the villages of Taşova too. The first written document of Turkish settlement, however, comes from the Seljuk age, in an endowment deed dated 1257.

The 1257 Endowment Deed and Old Place Names

The oldest detailed record concerning the Taşova area from the thirteenth century is the endowment deed (vakfiye) of Seyyid Nureddin Alpaslan, dated Ramadan 655 (September 1257). Seyyid Nureddin, a Rifai sheikh, had come from Khorasan and founded a dervish lodge (zaviye) and an endowment in the village called Zeytuva or Zitay. The deed, written in Arabic, states that this village was attached to the district of Sonisa. The document remained for a long time with Remzi Saçlı, a grandson of one of the former residents of Zuday, and in 1992 it was given to the Alpaslan Museum for a symbolic sum. The endowment is reported to have remained active from its foundation until 1901.

The deed is also valuable for place names because of one boundary description. The boundary of the village of Sepetlü is described as ending at the lands of Felanbil, the lands of the village of Boraboy, the lands of the village of Haddadi, and at Gökdere. In this way the names Sepetlü, Felanbil, Boraboy, Haddadi and Gökdere were entered in the record in 1257. Because the description mentions no villages of Gudere and Halamaz to the west of Sepetlü, local researchers conclude that these two villages may not yet have been founded at that date. Whether Gökdere was the stream that rose at the foot of Boraboy Lake, crossed Haddadi land and joined the Yeşilırmak, or a village of the same name, remains disputed. The same local reading holds that Boraboy's land then covered the whole western and southwestern direction.

Among the place names of the same period, the modern equivalents are as follows. The place called Zedvi, Zeytuva, Zitay, Zuday and Yolbaşı is today's Alpaslan. Haddadi, Gadadu and Çaydibi are names of one village. Suna, Sonihsa, Sonusa and Sonisa are today's Uluköy, and the ancient name of Sonusa is said to have been Annesi. Tekaloza is taken to correspond to İkizce and Gürsu, the Mermun River to the Destek Stream, and Felanbil Castle to Çalkaya, while Başubaraklu is taken to refer to the Baraklı villages around Özbaraklı. Because place names have changed in every age, researchers have sometimes read these identifications differently. The official renaming of places gained a legal basis in 1949 with Provincial Administration Law No. 5442, and a Name Change Specialist Board was formed in 1957.

Uluköy: From Sonusa to the District of Sonisa

The settlement with the greatest historical weight among the villages of Taşova is Uluköy. Recorded in Ottoman sources as Sonusa, Sonisa or Suna, it was for a long time the seat of a district (kaza). Local accounts say it was an important town in Pontic and Roman times, and mention a Seljuk-era bathhouse that was restored by the General Directorate of Foundations. The same account has Ibn Battuta stopping at Sonisa in 1333 and staying at a Rifai lodge, but since this information rests on local sources, it carries no certainty. That the Taceddinoğulları principality was founded with Niksar and Sonisa as its centers, and that its founders were descendants of Taceddin Rifai of Zuday, also appears in the same local account. Evliya Çelebi's description of Sonusa as a pleasant town with gardens, a mosque and a bathhouse is known through Halis Cinlioğlu's citation.

In the Ottoman period Sonisa was one of the leading settlements of the Erbaa lands between Amasya and Niksar. Taşabad (Taşova), Frenkhisar, Ziğdi (Karayaka), Erek, Bidevi (Esençay) and Eksel (Koçak) were the other settled places around it. According to the tax registers, some twenty villages were attached to the nahiye of Sonisa. It is reported that in 1455 the subaşı (local police and fief commander) of Sonisa was Seydi Vakkas and that the central mosque had nine staff, a number that rose to twenty in 1520 and to forty-five in 1574. The register of 1520 records six neighborhoods and that of 1574 seven. The importance of the district seat came from its position on a branch of the road running from Tabriz to Bursa. The tradition that Mehmed the Conqueror, on his return from Trabzon, halted at Sonisa and granted the sanjak of the Morea to Kızıl Ahmed there also rests on this road. In the middle of the nineteenth century Sonisa, together with Taşabad, Erek and Karayaka, formed the district of Erbaa, and in official records these four nahiyes were called Nevahi-i Erbaa.

The administrative course of the settlement in the Republic ran as follows: its nahiye status was abolished in 1944, a municipal organization was established in 1958, and in 1962 its name became Uluköy. In 2013 the municipality was closed because the population had fallen below two thousand, and the settlement became a village. A place that was once the seat of a district for the region was thus reduced, administratively, to the position of an ordinary village.

Alpaslan: From Zuday to a Village with a Museum

The present name of Alpaslan comes from Seyyid Nureddin Alpaslan. Its ancient name is recorded as Zito, and in Ottoman documents it appears as Zedvi and Zuday. The name Zuday appears in the records in 1926 and Yolbaşı in 1968, and local historical studies state that the village took the name Alpaslan in the early 1960s. The population register of 1831 shows that the name Zuday was still in use in the nineteenth century.

The recent history of the village is marked by two grave events. In the mobilization of 1914, 332 men from Zuday were conscripted, and the fate of 193 of them is unknown. This information was compiled from the records of the Erbaa Recruiting Office and set on the inscription panels in the museum garden. In the great earthquakes between 1939 and 1942 there was destruction and landslides, and the village was therefore moved about one kilometer south to a higher site with a gentler slope. The municipal organization was established in 1964 and closed in 2014 because of the population requirement.

The first collection of the Alpaslan Museum was assembled in 1964 from archaeological and ethnographic objects gathered in the area. The historic Ottoman bathhouse was arranged as a museum in 1991 and began serving in 1994 as the Alpaslan Municipal Museum. The endowment deed and genealogy said to belong to Seyyid Nureddin, and a wooden sarcophagus and tomb door dated to the Seljuk period, are the main pieces of the collection. A mound and necropolis area at the Ayınyakası (Çayırbaşı) locality was registered in 2014 as a first-degree archaeological site. The village's old names and the 1257 information rest largely on local historical studies, while the founding of the museum and the site decision are supported by official records.

Esençay, Destek, Akınoğlu and Çaydibi

In the late Ottoman period and the first years of the Republic, the district's three nahiyes outside the center were Destek, Bidevi and Tekke. Destek became a nahiye center in 1911, and its name also appears as Destek in the tax register no. 387 of 1530. A municipal organization was established in 1971. In 2007 the villages of Yayladibi (formerly Halamaz) and Kozluca were attached to it as neighborhoods, and in 2014, when the nahiye and municipal status was lifted, both became villages again.

The old name of Esençay is Bidevi, and it appears under that name in the record of 1574. It was given nahiye status in 1927, and before that date the nahiye center was the village of Karaağaç. It took the name Esençay in 1960 and a municipality was founded in 1967. Tekke became a nahiye in 1911 and also appears in the records as Pelitlitekke and Tekkeköy. Tekke and Yerkozlu (earlier recorded as Yerkızdı and Yerkızlı) were merged, and in 1972 a town municipality was founded under the name Akınoğlu. The name Akınoğlu already appears in the records in 1960. When the nahiye and municipal status was lifted in 2014, Akınoğlu became a village.

The old name of Çaydibi is Haddadi, and in the local pronunciation it is called Gadadu. According to the account, Bayezid II gave the village as property to Yakup Pasha, the beylerbey of the Rum Province. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Süleyman Pasha, the ayan of Canik and governor of Trabzon, endowed Haddadi in his own name as an estate. With the proclamation of the Tanzimat, practices of this kind were gradually resolved in favor of the villagers. After 1950 the village took the name Çaydibi, and a municipality was founded in 1971. The settlement, attached to Taşova as a neighborhood by a vote held in 2009, became a village again in 2013.

Belevi, Özbaraklı and Ballıdere

Belevi bore the name Belevi in 1926 and Dargıca in 1946, and before that it appears in sixteenth-century records as Beleni. The municipality founded in 1975 ended in 2013 because of the fall in population.

Özbaraklı came into being in 1995 through the merger of the villages of Yukarı Baraklı and Aşağı Baraklı, who had migrated from the Barak region of Gaziantep and been settled in the Taşabad area, and it formed a town organization. The municipality was closed in 2014 and the two neighborhoods returned to their former village identity. The Roman-period fortress and settlement remains in the area, together with the ruins of Alacakilise, are traces of an older past, and in the record of 1574 the settlement appears under the name Başu Baraklu.

Ballıdere was formed in 1999 through the merger of the villages of Darma and Dereli. Darma took the name Darma in 1926 and Ballıca in 1963, while Dereli has been recorded as Dereli since 1928. It is reported that in 1777 the people of the region abandoned the area because of natural disasters and famine. When the municipality founded after the merger closed in 2014, the two villages each returned to village status separately.

The History of the Boraboy Settlement

Three hypotheses are put forward about the name of Boraboy. The first is that, given the presence of a fortress from Roman times and the town's position sheltered from the wind, the name may derive from the wind god Borais (Boreas). The second is that the name of Bora Bey, the leader of the nomadic community, was kept alive. The third is that the name of the clan to which the first families, known to have come from Baghdad, belonged may have been Bora. According to the local account, the first settlers wintered in tents at the Bostan Deresi locality, two kilometers south of today's town. On a stormy day their animals bolted and took shelter in the valley protected from the wind, and the families, liking the place and finding the valley floor marshy, pitched their tents on the northern slope, in the Keltepe (Gültepe) neighborhood. The first to come to the present settlement were the families of the Deli Mehmets, the Mustafa Beys and the İmamoğulları. Later the Gölgeciler, Kışlacıklar, Demirciler, Musuloğulları and Karacalar joined them.

In the early years of the Republic Boraboy was attached to the Erbaa district of Tokat. When the village of Yemişenbükü became a district under the name Taşova, Boraboy entered the ranks of Taşova's villages. The law that attached Taşova to Amasya, Law No. 5996, is dated 24 December 1952. During the Turkification of names the village was renamed Gölbeyli, a date given as 1961 in some sources and 1964 in others. In the choice of that name the local joke that the men of the town liked to live like beys also played a part, as did the lake. When the population reached 2,583 in the 1970 census a municipality was founded, and the founding year of that municipality also diverges in the sources, as 1971 and 1975. In 1990 the town was divided in two along the Boraboy stream, with the north becoming the Bahçelievler neighborhood and the south the Yakakent neighborhood. In 1994 the town made efforts to take back the name Boraboy, the decision was taken on 30 March 1995, and it was published in the Official Gazette of 3 May 1995. The municipality closed in 2013 and the settlement became a village again.

Villages Founded in the Nineteenth Century

New villages also arose in the region over the past two centuries. The name Çılgıdır appears in the endowment deed of Süleyman Pasha's Haddadi Estate, and the village's name goes back to the old Çalkadir Estate. The villages of Mercimek, Gemibükü, Yemişenbükü, Sepetlioba, Arpaderesi and Meğellibükü are thought to have been founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Arpaderesi is said to go back to the old village of Balaklı. Sepetlioba was founded in the 1820s, and in the last thirty years its name was changed to Yeşilyurt by the vote of the villagers.

The source of the name of Mercimek, which settled on the land of the Haddadi hamlet, is uncertain. An old record contains the name "Mercimek Depesi", and the Saykal household enters the register following that entry. The founding lineages are the Daracılar and the Çolakoğulları, who first came to the Aşağı Oba locality and later moved to the present village site. Among those who came afterward are families from Iran, Baghdad, Haymana, Erzurum, Gümüşhane, Ankara and the Samsun area. The village's list of lineages shows how mixed in origin the settlement history of the region is.

From Nahiye to Village: A Summary of Administrative Change

The nahiye system, which had lasted since the Ottoman period, was abolished entirely in 2014. For Taşova this meant that Destek, Esençay and Tekke lost their status as bucak (subdistrict) centers. Town municipalities, for their part, were abolished in 2013 in settlements with populations under 2,000, and these places became villages. Uluköy, Alpaslan, Esençay, Çaydibi, Destek, Akınoğlu, Boraboy, Belevi, Özbaraklı and Ballıdere all passed through this process. Today the only municipal organization in Taşova is in the district center. The history of the villages lives on in the changes of their names, in endowment deeds, in tax registers and in museums.

Chronology

1257: Seyyid Nureddin Alpaslan founds a dervish lodge and an endowment in the village of Zeytuva (Zitay); the names Sepetlü, Boraboy and Haddadi appear in the deed.

1455: A subaşı, Seydi Vakkas, and a central mosque are recorded in Sonisa.

1520: The Sonisa register lists six neighborhoods.

1530: The name Destek appears in register no. 387.

1574: Bidevi, Başu Baraklu and Sepetli are recorded, and Sonisa has seven neighborhoods.

1777: The people leave the area around Darma and Dereli.

1914: 332 men from Zuday are conscripted.

1939-1942: After the earthquakes Zuday is moved about one kilometer south.

1944: Taşova becomes a district, and Sonusa loses its nahiye status.

1952: Taşova is attached to Amasya by Law No. 5996.

1964: A municipality is founded in Alpaslan, and the first collection of the Alpaslan Museum is assembled.

1995: The name Boraboy is restored to Gölbeyli.

2013-2014: Town municipalities with populations under 2,000 and the nahiye system are abolished.

Sources

Other sources

  • Enver Seyhan, "Taşova, Nahiye ve Kasabalar ile Köylerin Tarihçesi", Tasova.net, 2023. tasova.net
  • Boraboy Eğitim Kültür ve Dayanışma Derneği, "Boraboy Kasabası Tarihçesi", boraboy.org.tr. boraboy.org.tr
  • Erhan Gündüz, "İlk Çağlardan Günümüze Uzanan Bir Tarih (Alpaslan Köyü)", Tasova.net. tasova.net
  • "Uluköy Köyü (Sonusa) Tarihi", ulukoy.net. m.ulukoy.net
  • Sadi Bayram's article on the Seyyid Nureddin Alpaslan endowment deed and place names (as transmitted by Enver Seyhan).