The identity of a city lies as much in the daily habits of its people, in holiday mornings, table customs and neighborly ties, as in its monuments. In Amasya these habits form an order built up over centuries along both banks of the Yeşilırmak, at the foot of the rock cliffs and among houses with timber bay windows. The culture of the region bears the marks of its position between the Central Black Sea and Central Anatolia; clothing, folk dances and beliefs show clear similarities with neighboring provinces, yet each has an accent and a bearing of its own in Amasya. When the city's local historians recorded its holidays and seasonal festivities, they often dated an event as "the first day of the bayram", "the day of arife" or "after the tarawih prayer", which shows how far the calendar of the city ran by its religious and communal days.

The Word Bayram and the Old Calendar

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, author of the most comprehensive history of Amasya, touches on the word "bayram" in the sections of his work devoted to language and origins. In his view a happy day is called a "bayram", and the word derives from the verb "bayramak"; "bayrak", the flag, is an "instrument of felicity" from the same root. These explanations belong to Hüsâmeddîn's wide-ranging and highly personal etymological essays on the old Turkish language and calendar, and they do not match present-day research on the history of the language at every point. Even so, it is of interest that an Amasya scholar tried to tie words living in the city's everyday speech to an ancient calendar.

In the old Turkish calendar Hüsâmeddîn describes, the year began in March and the ninth day of that month was kept as a holiday called "Uşlan". On Uşlan day the khagan invited all the khans of the realm and his whole army to a feast, while viziers, lords and the wealthy feasted their retinues, relatives and friends. Hüsâmeddîn claims that the Iranians took this ancient custom from the Turanians and named it "Nevruz"; this is his own interpretation. "Abrul", which he counts as the second month, that is April, is a name people still remember: the saying used in Amasya for the fifth of April, "Kork abrulun beşinden, öküzü ayırır eşinden" (Fear the fifth of Abrul, it parts the ox from its yoke-mate), keeps the name alive. Hüsâmeddîn links Abrul to the verb "arbamak", which he glosses as "to cast spells"; historians of the language, however, explain the name as the folk form of Aprilis, the Latin name of April. He also writes that the three days beginning on the twelfth of May formed a holiday called "Bayka" in the old calendar.

Holidays in Amasya's History

In the written history of Amasya, holidays often appear as the backdrop to great events. By Hüsâmeddîn's reckoning, Prince Bayezid (the future Bayezid I, "Yıldırım") passed from Osmancık to Gümüş and from there to Amasya, entering the city most probably on the first day of Shawwal 788, that is, the first day of the Ramadan Bayram (1386), with a grand and splendid reception, and took up residence in the palace of Ahmed Bey, emir of Amasya. The emirate's entry under Ottoman protection thus coincides with a holiday morning, though Hüsâmeddîn himself marks the date as uncertain with the phrase "ağleb-i ihtimal", "in all likelihood".

Another holiday story is related from the Künhü'l-Ahbâr of Gelibolulu Mustafa Âlî. Drawing on accounts he gathered while serving as sanjak governor in Amasya, Âlî writes that the three sons of Murad II, the princes Ahmed, Alâeddin and Mehmed, visited Sheikh Abdurrahman Çelebi, son of Pir İlyas, together on a bayram day while they were in Amasya. The sheikh showed favor to Mehmed, the youngest of the princes, laid his cloak over his shoulders and gave him counsel. According to Âlî, Prince Ahmed died in 841 (1437), Alâeddin was strangled in his bed in 846 (1442-1443), and in that same year the road to the throne opened for Mehmed; he ends with "the sheikh's sign was understood". The story is a tale of saintly foresight, and its details cannot be confirmed by documents; yet it shows that the custom of calling on elders and sheikhs on a holiday was alive in fifteenth-century Amasya, at the level of the princes as well.

The holiday prayer and the holiday sermon also appear frequently in the city's Ottoman records. In the late seventeenth century Abdurrahman Efendi, preacher of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, harshly condemned in his Feast of Sacrifice sermon the oppression some seyyids inflicted on the people; because the seyyids took offense he was dismissed at once, and Hızır Efendizâde İbrahim Efendi, the Quran commentator, became the mosque's pulpit sheikh in his place. The same records note that certain muftis died "after the holiday prayer on the bayram day" or "on the morning of the first day of the Feast of Sacrifice". These small notes show that the holiday prayer was a moment when the whole city gathered in great mosques such as Sultan Bayezid, and how influential the preacher's pulpit was considered before such a crowd.

Holiday Mornings

In Amasya a bayram, a religious holiday, is lived less as a religious day than as a gathering in which social bonds are renewed. People rise early and go to the mosque for the holiday prayer; afterward they visit first the elders of the family, then relatives and neighbors. Children kissing the hands of their elders, and the elders giving pocket money and sweets in return, is a custom still carefully kept in the city. One of the holiday's chief functions is to end quarrels: neighbors who have not called on one another all year knock on doors in these days, and relatives who live far away are remembered by telephone or in person.

Preparations begin in the houses days beforehand. Cookies and sweets are baked, sherbets are made, and Turkish delight and nuts are set aside for guests. At the Feast of Sacrifice, the distribution of the meat of the slaughtered animal to neighbors, relatives and those in need is the most visible form of everyday solidarity. The local practice does not differ from the general Anatolian tradition, but thanks to the small scale of the neighborhoods and the closeness of the houses, holiday visits in the city turn a whole neighborhood into one family's sitting room.

In recent years a city-wide exchange of greetings has been added to these home visits. On a holiday Friday, after the noon prayer, the governor, the mayor, commanders, university administrators and townspeople gather in the square in front of Amasya Municipality; tea brewed in samovars and kavurma, fried meat, are served, and a mehter band plays marches. At the ceremony during the Feast of Sacrifice of 2012 the mayor said that this holiday greeting between officials and the public had been going on for about ten years; as the ceremony fell that year only a few days before Republic Day, the phrase "a double holiday" came to the fore in the speeches.

Arife, Sacrifice and Visiting

Arife, the day before the holiday, is in Amasya both a day of preparation and a day of remembering the dead. According to a field study carried out in Göynücek, cemeteries are visited on arife and on holidays, and also at Nevruz, at Hıdrellez and in the last days of the Muharram fast; water is poured over the graves and prayers are recited. In some villages a recess for lighting a fire or a candle is set into the head of the gravestone; the candle and fire lit after a death are lit again on holidays, on arife days and on Thursday evenings. The researcher notes finding half-burned candles and ashes in the cemeteries.

The city had a charitable custom of its own for arife. Describing the shops of the Selağzı quarter, Osman Fevzi Olcay writes that the income of a simit baker's shop there was tied to a pious purpose: every year on the arife of the Feast of Sacrifice, Karcı İmam Tevfik Efendi had flour halva made, the halva was wrapped in flatbread and carried in large laundry baskets to the Aşağı Pirler Tomb, and there, after hafızes had completed a recitation of the whole Quran and said a prayer, it was handed out. Olcay stresses that the custom was carried out "behemehal", without fail, on its fixed day each year; the shop's trust was administered by a man known as Kayyumzâde.

The link between tombs and holy graves and the holiday is even clearer in the countryside. Describing the grave of a scholar who lies on the hill between Kayabaşı and Karasenir, known as "Ser-Çoban Dede" (the Head Shepherd) because he withdrew from the oppression of the Mongol governor Kongurtay and lived by herding, Hüsâmeddîn writes that the people of the surrounding area gathered there on holidays, sacrificed animals, cooked food and shared it with everyone. The grave was at first open to the sky; in 1292 (around 1875) Mirliva Hasan Pasha of Karasenir, commander in the Hejaz, had a wooden tomb and a cell built over it. Cooking and sharing part of the holiday sacrifice at a holy grave is an old practice that turned the distribution of sacrificial meat into a village feast.

The Feast of Sacrifice holds a special meaning for engaged families too. By local custom, if a religious holiday falls during the engagement, the groom's side sends a sacrificial animal and various gifts to the bride's house. In the villages of Göynücek this animal is usually a decorated ram: the animal is dyed, apples are fixed to its horns, gold is pinned to its head, and it is sent to the bride's house in that state; the sacrifice is made on the bride's side. In the same district it has also been recorded that weddings are not held "between the two bayrams", that is, in the period between the Ramadan Bayram and the Feast of Sacrifice. Exchanging gifts continues at spring celebrations such as Hıdrellez; it keeps the bond between the two families alive and recalls the promise given on every special day.

Ramadan Evenings

Ramadan is the time when tables, mosques and neighborhood relations in the city take on a different order; the iftar cannon fired from the castle, the band that climbs to Harşena and the details of the iftar table are treated in a separate article. Local records show that the month that prepares the holiday was in the past also a season of invitations and visits. In Ramadan of 1076 (1666) the city steward Seyyid Ahmed Ağa was dismissed on the first day of Shawwal after word spread that he had gathered certain people at his house on the pretext of an iftar invitation and was stirring them up. In Ramadan of 1196 (1782), Hacı Halil Efendi, professor at the Bekir Pasha Madrasa and first imam of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, was shot dead by an unknown person while walking home from the tarawih prayer after being a guest at iftar in the mansion of the chief notable at Köprübaşı, and the killer was never found. These two incidents show that iftar invitations in the mansions of the notables could also turn into gatherings that touched on the government of the city.

In the villages, Ramadan is also lived through customs in which children take the lead. In the village of Alpaslan in Taşova, in the middle of Ramadan, the village children gather after iftar and go from house to house with their baskets; the villagers greet them with manis, short folk quatrains, and put something in the baskets. According to the villagers, fruit and nuts such as apples, pears and walnuts used to be put in the baskets, while today shop-bought goods are given as well. The people of the village say that this "sepet sallama" (basket swinging) custom has a history of more than a hundred and fifty years.

Hıdrellez, Nevruz and the Seasonal Calendar

For villager and townsman alike, the year runs more by the signs of the seasons than by the official calendar. Hıdrellez is a day that welcomes the coming of spring, coincides with the time the animals go up to the summer pastures, and is the day wishes are made; its practices in Amasya are treated in a separate article. In Göynücek the sixth of May is celebrated as the day Hızır and İlyas meet and in the belief that Ali was born on that day; at the Hıdrellez festival held in the village of İlyas in Amasya, devotional songs are sung, the semah is performed, animals are sacrificed and lokma, consecrated food, is handed out, and the festival ends with halay dances. At Nevruz a fire is lit and people jump over it; the people of the region believe that fire cleanses the year's impurity, and at the celebrations in the district center the folk dance troupe performs Amasya dances around the fire, while tug-of-war, egg-carrying and archery contests are held.

The people of the region also read the calendar through their own experience. Besides the saying about the fifth of April, on the seventh of May people think, "winter is saying, I am still here, I have not gone". To avoid being deceived by sunny days, they say "the yellow of the straw and the dry of the firewood must be kept for these days". The cuckoo, which begins to call in spring, is believed to announce that eighty days remain until the month of the sickle, that is, July. According to the tale, the cuckoo calls forty days in the bushes and forty days in the leaves, and disappears at harvest time. In the days when the crocuses bloom, the children of Akören village in Merzifon gather and go from house to house, then cook pilaf with the bulgur and butter they have collected and eat it together.

In the Alevi villages of the region, Muharram is a month of mourning and fasting. On the tenth day of the month aşure is cooked; wheat, broad beans, chickpeas, dried beans, dried figs, chestnuts, hazelnuts and raisins go into it, and as the cauldron is stirred whoever takes the ladle says "Destur ya İmam" (By your leave, O Imam), and those around answer "Ya Hüseyin". After the prayer of the spiritual guide, the cooked aşure is divided into bowls, sprinkled with sesame, walnuts, pomegranate seeds and cinnamon, and handed out. In the past no one shaved, wore new clothes, held a wedding or slaughtered an animal throughout Muharram; these rules are applied more loosely today, but the aşure tradition continues in full vigor.

The Excursion Season

In Amasya spring is more than a change of season; it is a time when part of the townspeople moves out to the vineyards. According to Hüsâmeddîn there were many excursion spots, mesires, for outings in the city, and the excursion season began in early spring and lasted until the end of May. The first of these was the vineyards of Şeyh Cûi, west of Harşena; the notables and well-to-do families of Amasya moved to these vineyards, whose old name was Kelkis, from the twentieth of April onward. Then came the vineyards of Ziyare, Kirazlıdere and Derbend. The mesires reserved for Fridays and for women were Şirvanlı, Saraydüzü, Çanaklar and Kaşık Pınarı; İplik Çözen, below the Köşk Rock, was also counted among the city's well-known outing places.

Osman Fevzi Olcay describes the Şeyh Cûi of the early twentieth century from his own memories. In season the townspeople moved into their pavilions there, neighbors invited one another to eat cherries under the cherry trees, and while saz was played and songs were sung on one side, the nightingales joined in the sound. The cherry season went on like this for about a month; when the heat began, some of the summer residents returned to the city, while most stayed in the vineyards until the grape harvest. Every morning milk and yogurt were brought from the village of Şeyh Cûi right up to the pavilions of the townspeople who had moved out to the vineyards. Olcay writes that quarters such as Savadiye and Yukarı Meydan had also once been favorite mesires where samovars were boiled and tea was brewed, and that these places changed with the coming of the railway.

Table, Craft and Plenty

In Amasya there is a direct relationship between the kitchen and the crafts. The local habit of drinking tea fostered the making of tin samovars, which came to be produced in various sizes. The samovar finds its place in manis and folk songs as well; the line "Semaverler kaynasın, gençler simsim oynasın" (Let the samovars boil, let the young dance the simsim) captures the place of the tea table between merriment and entertainment. The culture of orchards and gardens, the Amasya apple whose name is identified with the city, and the songs sung at harvest time are all part of a long relationship with the land. The apple appears in folk song too: the lines "Kilo kilo elmalar" (Apples by the kilo) and "Amasya'nın elması, hoştur yari sarması" (The apple of Amasya, sweet it is to embrace one's love) are its counterpart in folk literature.

The crafts of everyday life are not tied to the table alone. In the town of Yassıçal and the village of Sarıyar, carpet and kilim weaving has again become an activity contributing to the local economy. Around Merzifon, sheets, tablecloths and peştamal bath wraps are woven on whip looms, their patterns adorned with various motifs. Needle lace is widespread throughout the region; besides the edges of headscarves, it is used on collar flowers, handkerchiefs, scarves and purses. Woodwork covers musical instruments such as the saz, oud and kanun as well as farm tools and household goods. In the Gümüşhacıköy area, sacks, kilims, saddlebags, bags and ropes are made from kırnap cord spun from hemp or goat hair. Blacksmithing produces everyday tools ranging from axes and hatchets to adzes, trivets and knives. All these crafts were born of the needs of house and field and later became a source of livelihood geared to sale.

Neighborliness and Communal Work

The real bond that holds everyday life together in Amasya is neighborliness. People who gather to roll stuffed vine leaves before a wedding, to prepare the trousseau of a girl about to marry, or to share work at harvest time are part of an unwritten order of solidarity that everyone observes. The first to knock on the door of a house in mourning is a neighbor; it is the neighbor women who bring lohusa sherbet to a woman who has just given birth. The tradition of imece, communal work, and neighborliness is described in detail in a separate article; what matters here is that these relations carry everyday need and a social debt of the heart at the same time.

In the old neighborhoods of Amasya, neighborliness also brought together families of different faiths. Olcay remembers Arucuoğlu Karabit Usta, who lived directly opposite his family's house in the street where he spent his childhood, as a man "so precious that the debt of neighborliness can never be repaid". A genial, witty man counted as the master draughts player of the neighborhood, Karabit Usta lived wall to wall with a neighbor named Cennet ("Paradise") Hanım, and to his Turkish neighbors who teased him that "Christians will never see the face of Paradise" he would answer in jest that one kick at the wall between them would be enough, and that he would enter Paradise before them. Olcay also records that Karabit Usta was deported in 1915.

Neighborliness leaves its trace on language too. When slippers at the door end up toe to toe, it is taken as a sign that a guest is coming, and people say "the slippers are talking, a guest is on the way". If one of the slippers is turned upside down it is believed to bring bad luck and is put right at once. The footing of the first person to enter the house on the day after New Year's is judged lucky or unlucky depending on the events that follow. Beliefs of this kind show that the people of the region think of the house, the guest and fortune as bound to one another.

From Marriage to the Wedding

Marriage is the longest and most crowded ceremony of everyday life. In the region the age of marriage is around the twenties, monogamy is the norm, and there is a strong tendency to marry within a related or familiar family so that the inheritance is not divided. The process from the first approach between the families to the fetching of the bride, and the henna nights, are described in detail in a separate article; the refrain of Amasya's henna song, "Anam beni gelin mi eddin" (Mother, have you made me a bride), voices in the local dialect the sorrow of leaving the girl's home. In the villages of Göynücek, sugar and coffee are taken along when going to ask for a girl's hand; since coffee and sugar were once hard to find, the saying "a cup of coffee is remembered for forty years" carried a special meaning on these visits. At the engagement the rings are tied with a red ribbon, the dede, the community's spiritual elder, cuts the ribbon with a prayer, and the groom's side bears the costs of the engagement.

Sending Off Conscripts and the Cycle of Life

The other passages of the life cycle are also met with a shared celebration; circumcision feasts and practices surrounding birth are described in separate articles. For young men about to leave for military service, relatives, neighbors and acquaintances take turns inviting the young man to meals for weeks beforehand, giving him pocket money and gifts of clothing. On the day of departure all those close to him see him off with halay dances and prayers to the sound of drum and zurna. Dances that carry a sense of valor, such as Yelleme, are mostly performed at these send-offs.

Folk Dances, Songs and Festivals

Weddings, henna nights and send-offs for conscripts are the main settings in which folk dances are performed. Besides Yelleme, the Mahir Çavuş dance, said to be dedicated to the love that Mahir Çavuş, who lived in Göynücek, felt for a girl of his village, is still danced. In the Sim Sim dance the dancers circle around a fire, one hand behind the back and the other raised; in this dance, performed to drum and zurna, a second dancer enters with a shout and tries to drive out the dancer in the middle, and what matters is the speed and grace of the movements. Many dances are known in the region, among them the Circassian halay, the Köroğlu halay, the Merzifon karşılama, the Yelleme halay, Sallama, Tamzara, Sarıkız, Hoşbilezik and Candarma.

Folk songs are an inseparable part of these occasions as well. Songs such as "Yeşil Akar Amasya'nın Irmağı" (Green Flows the River of Amasya), "Amasya'nın Dağları" (The Mountains of Amasya), "Kilo Kilo Elmalar", "Irmaktan Geçemiyom" (I Cannot Cross the River), "Amasyalı Zileli" (From Amasya, From Zile) and "Çıktım Yaylaları Gezdim" (I Went Up and Roamed the Pastures) are melodies that tell of Amasya and are sung at weddings and evening gatherings. The mani tradition is alive too; quatrains such as "Çaydanlıkta çayım var, demlenecek neyim var" (There is tea in my kettle, what have I left to brew) or "Köprünün altı çiçek, sevenler ölmeyecek" (Flowers beneath the bridge, lovers shall not die) voice love, separation and the details of daily life in the local dialect. In the local speech, consonants at the beginning and end of words soften, so that "kız" becomes "gız" and "çok" becomes "çoh"; "Hışırım çıktı" means to be worn out, "Kafam fenikti" to feel dizzy, and "Hiç aşkım yok" to be out of sorts.

An early example of the city's tradition of festivities dates from the age of the princes. In 911 (1505) Prince Ahmed, sanjak governor of Amasya, held a circumcision feast for his sons with the permission of his father, Bayezid II. The lords of the surrounding region were invited to this feast, described in detail in İdris-i Bitlisî's Heşt Bihişt, and the city was decorated with illuminations. Turkish poets then in Amasya such as Çeşmî, Şermî, Figânî, Kâmî, Melîhî, Münîrî and Mihrî Hatun, along with Persian poets such as Basîrî, Penâhî and Kutbî, presented odes congratulating the feast and received rewards. Hüsâmeddîn writes that the oud of Baba Mehmed Çelebi, one of the city's renowned musicians, the tanbur of Sofioğlu Abdî Çavuş, the melodies of Hâce Kutbeddin Mahmud of the line of Merâgî, and the voice of Süleyman Dede made Amasya ring. Bitlisî also composed a spring ode for the feast. Hüsâmeddîn notes, in a critical tone, that while Prince Ahmed was occupied with feasts lasting for days, the threat of Shah Ismail was growing on the eastern frontier.

Madrasa life had its own celebration too. In 1176 (1763), when Hacı Ahmed Efendi, professor at the Mehmed Pasha Madrasa known as the "Emîr Müderris", finished teaching the Quran commentary of Beyzâvî, a splendid licensing feast, an icazet düğünü, was held for about a hundred of his students. Scholars and muftis from the surrounding area were invited; as the Sultan Bayezid Mosque proved too small for the crowd, the ceremony moved to the open-air prayer ground at Ok Meydanı.

Today festivities are held on fixed days of the year. The Flag Race and the Ziyaret Town Highland Festival in May, Merzifon Week in July, highland festivals around Gümüşhacıköy and Taşova, the Piribaba Culture and Art Festival and the Taşova Okra Festival in September, traditional karakucak wrestling in Hamamözü, and events commemorating the Amasya Protocol in October are all part of this calendar. The Ferhat and Şirin Festival and the International Atatürk Culture and Art Festival also have their place in the city's cultural life. The dates of these events may change each year according to the program published by the governor's office.

Dress and Adornment

The local costumes of Amasya resemble those of the neighboring provinces; their main pieces are the fez or çember headscarf, the melez göynek shirt, the vest, the şalvar trousers, the shawl sash, rawhide sandals and socks. For its originality, the traditional women's costume of Ilısu village in Göynücek has been regarded as the example that represents the region. This costume consists of some ten pieces: the melez göynek, the purple-striped tuman, the zıbın, the cepken jacket, the vest, the sash, the çarpana, the fez, the sequined yemeni headscarf, socks and sandals. The melez göynek, made of cotton or silk, is an undergarment reaching to the wrists and to knee level; its front and sides are embroidered with colored threads in floral or geometric designs, its collars are decorated with the "lamp" motif, and shiny white sequins are sewn over the embroidery. The cepken, cut from yellow cloth, is finished with black at the cuffs and red bands at the wrists. The vest is usually black, with red and yellow pieces appliquéd in the lamp motif, and on the right breast there is the "mirror pocket", where a mirror was once placed.

The tasseled sash, woven of red or burgundy wool, is folded into a triangle and tied tightly at the waist, and over it is tied the çarpana, decorated with beads and finished with a pompom. The tuman is woven on hand looms, white above the knee and purple or burgundy below, and decorated with pompoms. The fez is sewn from cotton fabric, a metal disc is set on its crown, it carries strings of beads hanging down to the forehead, gold or old coins are strung across the brow, and the sequined yemeni is draped over it. Among the jewelry worn are the beşibirlik gold coin, bracelets, rings, purses, silver belts, earrings and silver forehead pieces called cıngıl. The embroidered woolen socks and rawhide sandals once worn have not survived to the present day.

Weather, Luck and Wishes

One side of everyday life is the skill of reading nature and the beliefs bound up with it. If the clouds come down low it is thought that rain will fall, and people return home from vineyard and garden; if the clouds rise, the weather will clear. If the sheep graze close together without leaving the pasture, snow is near, and hens roosting in the meadow herald winter. It is believed that if poplar leaves fall from the bottom there will be much snow, and if from the top little; if pistachios, pine cones and quinces are plentiful, the winter will be harsh. While hail is falling, a trivet is thrown out of the house so that it will stop; during solar and lunar eclipses prayers are said, guns are fired into the air and tin cans are beaten to make noise.

The days of the week are part of the calendar of work and luck too. Hens are not set on eggs on Fridays and Tuesdays; it is believed that if they are set on a Friday the chicks will all be roosters, and if on a Tuesday the eggs will spoil. On Fridays, Saturdays and Tuesdays harvesting, sowing and planting are not begun, the house is not swept and laundry is not washed. Rain that falls on the seventh of May is collected in a vessel and used as starter so that yogurt will set well. The details of the rain prayer are treated in a separate article; practices such as buying a sacrificial animal on dry spring days, and children going from house to house with a frog, are part of this world of belief.

The culture of wishes is widespread as well. A person who wants a house calls down the chimney of a newly built, never-used house, "My God, give me a house too"; in another practice, money is collected from forty-one people who own houses and a teapot is bought, the Yasin chapter is recited forty-one times in the house, and tea brewed in this teapot is offered to guests. A child slow to ask for the toilet is taken to the "çiş evliyası" (the saint of wetting) at the time of the Friday sela call on three Fridays. The undershirt of a naughty child is spread over a saint's grave on Thursday and taken back on Friday morning to be put on the child. When looking into a wishing well, the light is blocked with a thick cloth; if light is seen in the darkness, the wish will come true. For wishes, Pir İlyas, Selamet Hatun and Hamdullah Dede are visited in turn. These practices show individuals linking their own troubles to the places the city holds sacred; some examples are peculiar to particular villages or neighborhoods.

Chronology

1386 (788): According to Hüsâmeddîn, Prince Bayezid entered Amasya with ceremony, most probably on the first day of the Ramadan Bayram.

Before 1437: According to the account in the Künhü'l-Ahbâr, the princes Ahmed, Alâeddin and Mehmed, sons of Murad II, visited Sheikh Abdurrahman Çelebi on a bayram day.

1505 (911): Prince Ahmed held a circumcision feast lasting several days in Amasya for his sons.

1666 (1076): City steward Seyyid Ahmed Ağa was dismissed at the beginning of Shawwal for gathering people in Ramadan on the pretext of an iftar invitation.

1763 (1176): A licensing feast was held at the Ok Meydanı prayer ground for about a hundred students of Hacı Ahmed Efendi, the "Emîr Müderris".

1782 (1196): Hacı Halil Efendi, first imam of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, was killed on the eighteenth evening of Ramadan while returning from tarawih after an iftar invitation.

Around 1875 (1292): A wooden tomb was built over the grave of Ser-Çoban Dede, where animals were sacrificed and food was shared on holidays.

2012: The holiday greeting between officials and the public held in front of the municipality at the Feast of Sacrifice was said to have been going on for about ten years.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, pp. 82, 101 (the Şeyh Cûi vineyards and Amasya's excursion spots); vol. 2, pp. 223-224 (the old Turkish calendar, Uşlan, Abrul, Bayka); vol. 2, p. 267 (the word "bayram"); vol. 3, p. 444 (Prince Bayezid's arrival in Amasya), pp. 486-487 (the circumcision feast of 1505); vol. 4, pp. 590, 605, 660, 671 (iftar invitations, holiday sermon, licensing feast, the incident of 1782), Amasya Municipality e-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/1-4/files/basic-html/page223.html
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 6, p. 80 (Ser-Çoban Dede and holiday sacrifices); vol. 11, p. 499 (the princes' holiday visit, from the Künhü'l-Ahbâr), Amasya Municipality e-book: https://amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/9-12/files/basic-html/page499.html
  • Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları (Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim), Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications (sections on the Şeyhcûi and Gümüşlü quarters, the Selağzı shops and neighbors) amasya.bel.tr

Academic studies

  • Biricik Taştan, "Amasya İli Göynücek İlçesi Türk Halk İnanış ve Uygulamaları", master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University Institute of Social Sciences, Samsun 2019: http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/126977.pdf

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya Culture Portal: Cultural Details, Marriage Customs, Henna Night (amasya.ktb.gov.tr)

Other sources

Online sources