İbecik, 58 kilometres from Amasya, is among the villages of the central district farthest from the city, and according to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar it takes its name from a Turkish emir who served as guardian of Amasya in the late thirteenth century. Yasar writes that this emir's farm was known in his own day as "a village called İbecük". No other written record of the past of the village, where 254 people live today, could be found.

Emîr Sinâneddîn İbecik Bey

In Yasar's biographical volumes İbecik Bey, with the title Emîr Sinâneddîn, is introduced as a slave (kul) of Emîr Seyfeddîn Torumtay, beylerbeyi of Amasya. In Yasar's chronicle Torumtay is the Seljuk emir who, while warden of the Amasya citadel, was appointed emir of Malatya in 644 (1246). Raised under his master's patronage, İbecik rose among the emirs, then passed into the service of Torumtay's grandson Emîr Nâsıreddîn Mehmed Bey and, during his rule, became candar, that is, guardian, of Amasya. He died after the year 700 (1300-01). Yasar's only sentence on the village comes at the end of the biography: "His farm too is known today as a village called İbecük." The word "too" recalls that on the same pages Yasar relates how the farms of other emirs also became villages; İbecik is one link in that series.

The village name appears as İbecük in Yasar and as İbecik in today's official lists. İbecik is absent from Bekir Başalan's table of villages in the central district renamed during the Republican period; the difference between the two forms is purely one of spelling. No endowment deed, inscription or archival record supporting Yasar's information was found in the sources consulted.

In the Old Registers

In the index prepared for the accounts register of 937 (1530), from the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, the name İbecik occurs only once, for an arable field (mezraa) in the Argavun nahiye, and refers to page 900 of the register. Since the Amasya liva occupies pages 349 to 389 of the register, this entry belongs to another sanjak and has no connection with the village. No village called İbecik or İbecük appears among the nahiyes of the kaza of Amasya. Whether the village was recorded under another name in 1530 is also unknown.

The Village in 2012

In the official village record for 2012, İbecik's distance from the provincial centre is given as 58 kilometres. The village had a health post building and a primary school, but neither was in service; pupils travelled to another school by the bussed-education scheme. The village, which had a mains water network and sewerage, also had a PTT agency. The single photograph attached to the record shows the village seen through fruit orchards.

Population

In the 1985 and 1990 censuses İbecik had a population of between 670 and 680. The figure fell to 598 in 2000 and dropped to 368 by 2011. In the address-based records 406 people appear in 2007 and 464 in 2008; the decline slowed after 2014, and for about ten years the village's population stayed between 270 and 290. In 2025, 254 people are registered in the village, 125 men and 129 women.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources