Gümüşhacıköy owes its name to the silver extracted around İnegöl Dağı, the mountain that rises at the edge of the plain west of Amasya. In the archival records the district is long written as "Gümüş ma'a Hacıköy". The name comes from two settlements about two kilometres apart, the mining town of Gümüş and the neighbouring Hacıköy, which in time became a single administrative unit. Gümüş lies on the eastern foothills of İnegöl Dağı, where the workings are located. Hacıköy stands closer to the plain and gathered trade and housing. The span from the arsenical copper objects of the Bronze Age to the Ottoman mint and the last pits, which closed in the final years of the First World War, shows almost every phase of Anatolian mining in one place.

Origin of the Name

The town's name appears in different forms in the sources. Arab geographers and travellers called the place Kumus, Kumis or Fodda, and Ibn Battuta recorded the town in the early 1330s as "Medinetü Gümüş". The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin reports that some scholars Arabicised the name as Kumus and even wrote it as Fizza. The name Hacıköy, according to local historical tradition, belongs to a later period. In Hüsameddin's account the area was settled before the Islamic conquests by Kimri Turks and was called "Kemari"; after the building works of Sadreddin Artuk et-Türkmânî in 1378-1379 it came to be called "Cemâre". Hacı Ahmed Çelebi, a descendant of this line, settled in Hacıköy from 1490-1491 as the mine supervisor (nazır) of Gümüş. Because he developed the mine and treated the people well, the village was called "Hacı Nazır köyü" and later Hacıköy. This explanation rests on a single local historian and is not backed by documents, but it shows how closely the mine and the name of the settlement were intertwined.

The Bronze Age and Antiquity

Among the old mining centres of Anatolia, the name of Gümüşhacıköy comes up above all because of its slag. At the locations of Karlık Tepe, Kale Tepe and Çadır Düzü in the settlement of Gümüş, traces of intensive mining can be seen. The old gallery entrances were widened again and again and reused, and slag heaps and spoil, the waste of the mine, have built up around them. Surveys here collected ore fragments, pottery samples and timber for radiocarbon dating; the area was an important working in the Ottoman period, and it was noted that it also holds traces of prehistoric mining. The widely repeated statement that the pits have been worked since the third millennium BC rests on this.

In a geoarchaeological project that the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration carries out with the Bochum Mining Museum in Germany, the slag at Gümüş was analysed together with Professor Ünsal Yalçın. According to the analyses, the miners worked at high temperatures, built furnaces to retain the heat and added quartz to the ore. This shows that the slag heaps are records of a particular technical knowledge. Within the same project a Turkish slag inventory was begun, and research in the district has continued. In addition, the arsenic deposits near Gümüş and the arsenical copper deposits around Gümüşhacıköy were worked from time to time, and it has been suggested that the silver-bearing lead sources used at Gümüş since the beginning of the Iron Age were also worked in the Hittite period. This last view rests not on an established finding but on a research proposal.

As for the Early Bronze Age, copper in antiquity is said to have come from Merzifon and arsenic from around Gümüşhacıköy. Objects made of arsenical copper form one of the oldest important metal collections in Anatolia. A group of 115 pieces taken from the district and its surroundings, considered to belong to Early Bronze Age II and III, is preserved in the Haluk Perk Museum under the name "Gümüşhacıköy Collection". Besides objects produced by casting and forging, the collection includes religious symbols made by forging, crushing and casting from copper-based alloys and from silver. Exactly which pit these objects came from cannot be documented, but they are known to have been found in Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy.

Assessments of later periods need to be read with caution. One study argues that the mines of Amasya and Gümüşhacıköy made a significant contribution to the Urartian economy. Another writer says that the silver of the Amaseia region was known in early times as the "Artemis Mine", that the crescent is among the symbols of Artemis, and that its relation to the flag motif of the Pontic state needs to be investigated. Both still stand as open questions. In Roman times the area was known as "Diakopene", a town with an agricultural hinterland. From the Byzantine period, a door leaf from a monastery in Gümüş, decorated with vine branches and bunches of grapes, has reached the Amasya Museum.

The Danishmendids and the Seljuk Mint

After the arrival of the Turks, the history of the mine can be followed in more detail in written sources. The Danişmendnâme tells that after taking Çorum, Danishmend Gazi came to the place called Süleyman Ribatı, that is Gümüş; that at the order of two men named Nastor and Şattat the caves opened earlier had been closed so that the Turks would not find them; and that silver ore was extracted once the new Muslims showed these caves. According to the account, two batmans of silver, about 13.4 kilograms, were delivered each day from these caves to Danishmend Gazi's treasury. This legendary text, with its numerical details, should be read less as historical data than as evidence that the region was spoken of together with its mine. Even so, it is known that the Danishmendid armies passed through Gümüşhacıköy and reached Kastamonu by way of Vezirköprü, Durağan and Boyabat. The region is thought to have fallen to the Danishmendids around 1075 and then to have come within the borders of the Anatolian Seljuks.

The real rise of the town of Gümüş took place in the Seljuk age. Local records tell that the settlement developed through the efforts of the Seljuk emir Eminüddin Yunus el-Kumsî, nicknamed "Emir Gümüşlü", and that a mint was opened in 1248 to strike coins. The building was converted into a mosque in 1866 and opened to worship as the Darphane Mosque. It is reported that the mint held the tools of the trade: the anvil on which striking was done, the furnace that heated the flans, the scales that weighed them, tongs, the stamp of the upper die, a hammer and an engraver's chisel. Anatolian Seljuk coins used compositions such as the plain circle, the circle with a beaded border, the double circle, the star and the six-lobed rose, along with human and animal figures and vegetal and geometric motifs. These coins were generally produced by hammering and striking.

The mint can also be followed through the coins themselves. Which places the Seljuk mint names "Gümüş" and "Gümüşpazar" stand for has long been debated. In numismatic studies the weight of opinion is that the two are the same place and that it is Gümüşhacıköy in Amasya. The similarity of script and calligraphy between the coins struck at Amasya in 657 AH, at Gümüş in 657 and 660 AH and at Gümüşpazar in 659 AH, and even the identical spelling errors they contain, strengthen this view. These coins, which fall between 1259 and 1262, are treated in studies of the reign of Kılıç Arslan IV; another source also writes that Kılıç Arslan had "silver coins" struck at the Gümüş Mint in 1263. The small gap between the 1248 date given for the opening of the mint and the dates of the coins shows that the sources cannot agree on a single date of foundation.

The Mongol Period and the Principalities

After the weakening of the Seljuk state the mines remained in Ilkhanid hands. The geographer Ibn Fazlullah records around 1332 that the silver mines of Gümüş were being worked by the Mongols. Ibn Battuta, who passed through the town in the same years, describes Gümüş as a large, well-kept and populous settlement famous for its silver mines. The traveller went from Amasya to Sûnusâ and from there to Gümüş, and noted the presence of merchants from Iraq and Syria. He stayed three nights at the Ahi Mecdüddin Lodge in the town, where he met the deputy of the Eretna bey and received travelling money from him. This record shows that in the early fourteenth century Gümüş was more than a mine, a trading town linked to Syria and Iraq.

It is known that Armağan Çelebi became mine supervisor (emin) of Gümüş in 1356, and in these years the town was called "Gümüş Pazarı". The quarter where Çelebi lived took the name "Armağan" after him, and later, as mine workers and labourers settled there, it came to be called "Irgat". According to the sources, the region meanwhile remained within the sphere of the Candaroğulları, and from 1381 came under Kadı Burhaneddin, and the district became a theatre of the wars between this state and the Ottomans. When Kadı Burhaneddin was defeated and killed in 1398 in a battle with the Akkoyunlu Osman Bey, Yıldırım Bayezid added the region to Ottoman territory.

The Ottoman Transition and the Mine Supervisors

The Ottoman administration ran the mine by emanet from the first day. Under this system a mine supervisor appointed by the state managed the pit for a fixed fee, and all its expenses were met from money handed to him as working capital. This method was preferred at large mines such as Keban-Ergani, Bulgardağı and Gümüşhacıköy. In 1403-1404, in the reign of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed, Kutlubeyzâde Halil Bey of Amasya was appointed mine supervisor of Gümüş. In the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1452-1453, İskender Çelebi held the post. In the same century the town of Gümüş was a settlement of about three hundred households in three quarters: Câmi-i Kebir, Darphane, and Armağan, otherwise called Irgat.

The structure that has left a mark from this period is the Haliliye Madrasa. Begun by Hacı Halil Paşa in 1413, the madrasa was finished in 1415. A square-plan building with a closed courtyard, it has a domed courtyard, and the only comparable example in Turkey is the Lala Şahin Paşa Madrasa in Bursa. The building was restored by the General Directorate of Foundations in 2009. Beside this madrasa, Yörgüç Paşa had a mosque built in 1429-1430. A candlestick known to have come from the mosque, made by the brass-casting technique of the Anatolian Seljuk age and decorated with incising and relief, was recognised later while being examined for the display of a museum in Tokat. Parallels to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century palace kilims found in the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque are known only in a mosque in Kütahya and in museums in Munich and Washington.

Gümüş in the Ottoman Survey Registers

The tax survey registers of the sixteenth century give the growth of the town in numbers. In 1520 Gümüş consisted of 16 quarters, 631 households, 11 villages and one hamlet; the urban population was 1,013 and the total with the villages 3,589. By 1576 the number of quarters had risen to 19, households to 1,154 and hamlets to two, the urban population to 1,986 and the total with the villages to 6,602. These registers are not a census but a record of the taxable population, so women, children below puberty and exempt groups do not enter the figures. Gümüş is written as a district (kaza) of the sanjak in the form "Gümüş ma'a Kabakoz"; the name of the Kabakoz subdistrict was first known as Kızık because the Kızık tribe was settled there, and was later called Kabakoz or Kabaoğuz.

These pages also contain a calculation of the mine's output. If one accepts that raw silver extracted in the Ottoman lands was taxed at one tenth, the tax from the Gümüş mine in 1520 comes to 340,000 akçe and the output, ten times that, to 3,400,000 akçe. Since 400 akçe were cut from 100 dirhams of silver in those years, this amounts to 850,000 dirhams of silver a year, about 2.6 tonnes. The article in question gives the kilogram equivalent of this figure as 2,550,000, but given that a dirham is 3.086 grams this is a decimal error. In any case the calculation is not a full measure of either the tax or the output, only an approximate quantity derived from a sum of akçe in the registers. The 1576 register also lists the Kârım Divanı as a unit attached to the district of Gümüş; its revenues went to the endowment of the Hatuniye Imaret in Trabzon and to the Eretna Bey Madrasa in Kayseri, and only three divani shares of 8,100 akçe were assigned to the sipahis of Çorum.

Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and the Building of Hacıköy

The fortunes of Gümüş in the seventeenth century are tied to the name of a grand vizier. After Köprülü Mehmed Pasha became grand vizier in 1656, the Gümüş mine was given to him as a has arpalık, an income grant. Required to reside in Hacıköy, the pasha had a covered market (bedesten), a mosque and a bath built there and endowed them in 1660-1661. The date of the bedesten is given as 1660 in some sources and 1669 in others. The bedesten was built as the külliye of the mosque. Barrel-vaulted shops line both sides of a long rectangular courtyard, and the facades facing the courtyard are divided by high pointed arches and buttresses. Evliya Çelebi passed through the region after 1647 and again in 1650 and 1656, described Hacıköy as "a place that deserves to be developed greatly" and stayed three days in the district of Gümüş.

The interest of the Köprülü family does not end there. Köprülüzâde Abdülbaki Bey was appointed mine supervisor and guarantor of the Gümüş mine in 1756-1757; during his term he renewed the mosque and had new buildings built, the bath above all. For this reason, even in the first years of the nineteenth century the revenues set aside for the mine's expenses still include the "Köprülü endowments". The growth of Hacıköy is thus tied directly to the buildings that the mine supervisors left in the region. According to the same sources, Gümüş in the end became a subdistrict centre of eight quarters named Cemâre, Artukabad, Saray, Hacı Yahya, Ada Tepe, Beğlik Çayır, Ermeni Kilisesi and Çay.

The End of the Silver Age

After the second half of the sixteenth century, silver coming from the Americas spread to the Mediterranean and to the Ottoman lands. Because the Ottoman pits had high production costs, silver workings and mints were closed or lost importance for a long time. The need for charcoal at the mine was another burden. In Anatolia, until the first half of the nineteenth century, charcoal was still used in mining and smelting, and as the forests around the pits were used up, wood and charcoal that had once come from an hour away had to be hauled from distances of thirty and even a hundred hours. This general situation is not separately documented for Gümüş, but it gives the context for understanding the cost of the workings.

In the eighteenth century the mint ceased to be only a place that struck coins and became a treasury that ran certain tax farms. Around 1760 some tax farms whose revenues were rising fast were taken out of life-term farming (mâlikâne) and handed to the administration of the Mint on the state's behalf, and the Gümüşhacıköy mines came to be run by the Imperial Mint (Darphâne-i Âmire). The decree of 19 March 1775 is regarded as the date on which the Imperial Mines Trust (Maden-i Hümâyûn Emaneti) was founded. Important pits such as Gümüşhane, Bozkır, Bereketli and Gümüşhacıköy were known by this name. Within this framework mine supervisors were appointed directly by the mint, and no local official had the authority to interfere. Until 1830 the supervisors were mostly chosen from among viziers; in later years they were chosen from palace chamberlains and emirs and appointed on the proposal of the mint director.

A New Opening in the Early 1800s

From archival documents we learn that at the start of the nineteenth century the mine was "opened and reopened" (feth ve güşad). In 1797 a survey by two master miners in the district of Merzifon showed that the place was rich in ore and that working it required little expense, and Çaparzâde Süleyman Bey, who would later govern the sanjak of Amasya, came forward with a wish to run the pit. In a letter of 1800, Mahmud Tayyar Bey, the Canik tax collector and governor of the sanjak of Karahisar-ı Şarkî, speaks of a newly appearing "new imperial mine" in the district of Gümüş in the sanjak of Amasya. The people of Gümüş, Hacıköy and the Kabakoz subdistrict were made responsible for the work of this mine, and the village of Korköy attached to the Hatuniye endowment in Trabzon, the villages of Döğünci and Arabacı, and all the villages of the district of Zeytun were attached to the mine on terms of exemption ("serbestiyet"). In 1801, on the proposal of the Mint Director Ahmed Şakir, the administration was farmed out to a man named Ömer; it was reported that the ore was abundant, that new caves had been opened and that three new furnaces had been added. The next year the governorship of Amasya was also given to the mine supervisor, Silahdar Seyyid Ömer Ağa. The state thus tried to control the region from the centre by entrusting the sanjak as well to the person who ran the mine's tax farm.

The bringing of masters and labourers from Gümüşhane also belongs to this period. At the request of Çaparzâde Süleyman Bey it was decided that two foremen of the Gümüşhane masters, who were also employed at the Ergani and Keban mines, Kirkor and Yakut, would be sent with two teams of ten men each. Their task was to build the smelting and refining furnaces and to open the caves from which ore would be taken. The decree says that the income of the working would exceed its expense "gradually" (refte refte). In 1802 the tax-farm values of the places set aside for the pit's charcoal, timber and tile needs were listed in the documents. Among the figures are 17,750 kuruş for the Hacıköy tax farm, 3,151 and a half kuruş of interest for the Gümüş tax farm, and 3,000 kuruş for Korköy and Trabzon. In another document, for the district of Gümüş and Hacıköy a payment of 1,900 kuruş under the heads of goods, digging and gratuity, 88 kuruş for the governor of Amasya for digging only, and 1,518 kuruş for the Sivas governors for the 39 households of the village of Gümüş, under goods, billeting and extraordinary levies, making 2,526 kuruş in all, is recorded.

Canikli Tayyar Pasha's occupation in 1805 of Amasya and of Tokat and Zile, which were attached to the Çaparzâdes, led Süleyman Bey to side with the state and to be given the sanjak of Amasya in 1805 in return. Governing the mine and the sanjak together, Süleyman Bey ran the working well, protected the miners and encouraged production in the caves and the opening of new production areas. Because of the increase in the amount of silver sent to the Mint, the supervisorship stayed with him until 1810. The silver-bearing gold and lead mixture handed over to be processed at the Imperial Mint, the "sim-i mahlut", was 15,965 dirhams in 1806 and rose to 41,260 dirhams in 1809. From the beginning of 1810, problems whose causes are not fully known arose between Süleyman Bey and the people of Gümüşhacıköy, most of whom were miners. The Mint took the pit from him and gave it to İsmail Ağa, who had earlier served as supervisor of the Gümüşkan Imperial Mine in Ankara and was originally from the people of the Ergani mine. The appointment was made on condition that he open new caves, extract plentiful silver and lead and send them to the Mint, and protect the miners from oppression. Süleyman Bey's dismissal is thought to owe something to his struggle for power with the Caniklis in Central Anatolia.

Mine Supervisors and the Production System

The supervisors known between 1801 and 1821 are many. Silahdar Ömer is recorded in 1801, Mustafa in 1802, Velibeyzâde Seyyid Ahmed, one of the palace guards, in 1804, Cabbarzâde Süleyman in 1806, Osman in 1807, Ömer in 1808, Osman and Seyyid İsmail in 1809, Fazlızâde Seyyid Mehmed in 1811, Osman between 1815 and 1819 and Ali Ağa in 1821. Appointments were generally made for one year from the beginning of March. The chief weakness of the emanet system is that, even if an increase in output was stipulated, the supervisor was not liable for losses in production, so he had no need to make much effort for profit. When in 1811 Fazlızâde Mehmed Said refused to accept a debt of 6,500 kuruş taken over from his predecessor Osman, and an imperial order was issued for its collection, this was an ordinary example of that uncertainty. In 1821 the supervisors of Gümüşhacıköy are seen to have been given a mine gratuity of 21,900 kuruş in all, of which 7,500 kuruş was a service fee.

The appointment procedure is also set out in detail in the documents. The mint director informed the grand vizier by a memorandum, the grand vizier submitted it to the sultan by a summary, and if approved an imperial rescript was issued and the appointment took place by decree. The decree was addressed to the kadi of Amasya, the deputy judge of Gümüş and Hacıköy, and where necessary to the voyvoda and the local magnates. The supervisor was also charged with hearing disputes that arose within the mining area. In 1804 Velibeyzâde Seyyid Ahmed was told that the fortresses of the district of Gümüş and Hacıköy and of the Kabakoz subdistrict would be attached to the mine and administered under the rules of exemption (serbestiyet), that the region would be protected, and that the cases that arose would be heard by him.

In the Ottoman Empire mines were regarded as part of land ownership. A mine found on freehold land went one fifth to the state and the rest to the owner or the finder; a mine found on state land belonged directly to the state. Nearly all gold and silver mines and the greater part of copper and lead mines belonged to the state and were organised as tax farms. The Saxon laws, prepared on the German and Bohemian model in the reign of Bayezid II, entered the Ottoman pits with the Saxon miners who came here, and many mining terms passed into the law codes this way.

Those who worked in the pits were divided into groups such as miners, timbermen, charcoal burners, smiths and watchmen, and together were called the "madenciyan taifesi". Among the masters were the hutmans, kalcıs, prustads, şafars, lüpçüs, ifrazcıs, sahib-i ayars, repairers, locksmiths, blacksmiths and carpenters; among the workers were infantry, müsellems, yörüks, retired sipahi sons, diggers, waterwheel men and tunnellers separated from the peasantry, and slaves. The auxiliaries were the muleteers who carried wood, charcoal and ore, and the guards were sekbans, martaloses and tribal chiefs. Because miners were not counted as peasants, they were exempt from some customary taxes and from peasant dues, and in return they were forbidden to leave the pit. Only masters could leave for a set period by appointing a deputy. Apart from the poll tax, no distinction was made between Muslim and non-Muslim miners.

Modernisation and Foreign Engineers

The appointment of Edhem Bey as director of the Imperial Mines in 1842 is cited as an example of reform in the technical field. Edhem Bey, that is İbrahim Edhem Pasha, who would rise to the grand vizierate in later years and was the father of the painter Osman Hamdi Bey, is regarded as the first modern mining engineer of Turkey, trained in Paris. The German geographer and cartographer Heinrich Kiepert, who came to Anatolia, visited the Gümüşhacıköy mine and made drawings of the region. The German Ernest Weiss, who entered Ottoman service in July 1866, shortly after the 1861 Mining Regulation, is among the longest-serving and most stable of the foreign mining engineers. Weiss stayed on duty for thirty-three years until his death in 1899. He was succeeded by the Italian engineer Eduard Coulant, who had entered Ottoman service in 1883. Coulant worked a year in the Gümüşhacıköy mines, was charged with increasing production and improving the furnaces, and was honoured with the Mecidiye order in 1884 for his success. In these years the fine, bright silver worked at Gümüş was also noted to be in great demand from Poland.

In 1866 the transport of output was once again loaded on the people. It is recorded that the lead in the Gümüşhacıköy mine was carried by ox carts to the port of Samsun by the people of the district of Kavak. In 1868, on the ground that there was no regular market in the district of Gümüş and that miners and townspeople lost time going to the markets of other places to buy mine supplies and daily needs, it was decided to open a new market there every Wednesday. It is related that the Greeks who came between 1840 and 1860 to work at the mine had the Girls' Monastery built at Gümüş, that it was used as a place of worship and an outing spot, and that it fell into neglect when the Greeks left in 1925. The Maden Bath is stated to date from 1820.

The administrative status changed in the shadow of the mine as well. Until 1875 the district was run by mine directors and mine supervisors; the first district governor (kaymakam), appointed on 5 October 1875, was Halil Efendi. The unit that appears as "Maden-i Sim District" in earlier yearbooks began to be called the district of "Gümüşhacıköy" after the state yearbook of 1885. In the Sivas provincial yearbooks the name appears only in the yearbook of 1903, and the issues of 1302, 1304, 1306 and 1308 AH still write "Maden-i Sim". The coincidence of the mine's identity and the name shows that for centuries this district was known only by its pit.

The Silence of the Pits

By the end of the century the number of mines run by the state under emanet was only five. They include Ergani copper, Bolkardağı silver-bearing lead, Eskişehir meerschaum, the Mihalıççık clay mine attached to Ankara, and Gümüşhacıköy silver-bearing lead. The "Geological Note on the Gümüşhacıköy Mine" prepared by the engineer V. Kovenko was published in 1937. It is reported that the Gümüşhacıköy Mining Area was worked in Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman times and was closed in the last years of the First World War because no workable reserve remained in the upper zones. In 1988, through a partnership with Çinkur A.Ş., exploration for silver-bearing lead began on the historic site and continued without interruption for five years. Today there is no active mining operation in the district. The mark Gümüş has left is in the gallery mouths, the slag heaps, the Haliliye Madrasa, the Darphane Mosque and the Köprülü bedesten of Hacıköy.

Chronology

3rd millennium BC: Intensive mining is accepted to have begun at the locations of Karlık Tepe, Kale Tepe and Çadır Düzü in Gümüş.

Around 1075: The region passes to the Danishmendids.

1248: The opening of the Seljuk mint at Gümüş is recorded.

1259-1262: Seljuk coins with the mint names "Gümüş" and "Gümüşpazar" are struck.

1332: Ibn Fazlullah records that the mines are worked by the Mongols; Ibn Battuta visits Gümüş.

1356: Armağan Çelebi becomes mine supervisor of Gümüş.

1398: Yıldırım Bayezid adds Amasya and its surroundings to Ottoman territory.

1403-1404: Kutlubeyzâde Halil Bey is appointed mine supervisor.

1413-1415: The Haliliye Madrasa is built.

1429-1430: The Yörgüç Paşa Mosque is built.

1520 and 1576: In the survey registers the population of Gümüş rises from 3,589 to 6,602.

1656-1661: The grand vizierate of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha and the endowment of the bedesten, mosque and bath at Hacıköy.

1775: The Imperial Mines Trust is founded.

1797-1810: The pits are reopened under Çaparzâde Süleyman Bey; output of sim-i mahlut rises from 15,965 dirhams in 1806 to 41,260 in 1809.

1842: Edhem Bey is appointed director of the Imperial Mines.

1866: Ernest Weiss enters Ottoman service; the mint building is converted into a mosque.

1868: The Wednesday market is set up at Gümüş.

1875: The first district governor, Halil Efendi, takes office.

1883: Coulant is assigned to improve the pits.

1885: The state yearbook lists the district as "Gümüşhacıköy" for the first time.

Last years of the First World War: The pits close because no reserve remains in the upper zones.

1988-1993: Exploration for silver-bearing lead is carried out with Çinkur.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1.

Academic studies

  • Songül Keçeci Kurt - Gürkan Cevger, "XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Çeyreğinde Gümüşhacıköy Madenlerinin Durumu", Avrasya Sosyal ve Ekonomi Araştırmaları Dergisi (ASEAD), vol. 6, no. 10, 2019, pp. 220-238. gumushacikoy.gov.tr

Official sources

  • T.C. Gümüşhacıköy Kaymakamlığı, "Tarihçe" and "Gümüşhacıköy'ün Ünlü Tarihi", gumushacikoy.gov.tr. gumushacikoy.gov.tr
  • T.C. Gümüşhacıköy Kaymakamlığı, "Gümüşhacıköy Maden-i Hümayunu" (based on Tamer Kısa's research on Çaparzâde Süleyman Bey), gumushacikoy.gov.tr.

Other sources

  • Yılmaz İzmirlier, "IV. Kılıç Arslan Dönemi Darp Yerleriyle İlgili Bir Çalışma", Türk Nümismatik Derneği Bülteni, 2005.

Online sources