Karaibrahim, south of Amasya and 57 kilometres from the provincial centre, is among the villages of the Central District farthest from the city; in the village record archived in 2016 its school still appears to be in use. The village's name occurs in the muhasebe register of 1530, in the form "Kara-İbrâhîm", among the villages of the southern Yavaş sub-district. At the end of 2025, 243 people lived in the village.

The Name and Its First Record

Karaibrahim does not appear among the renamed settlements in Bekir Başalan's table. Asena Yalnız explains the name as a compound of the adjective "kara" (black) and the personal name İbrahim; on this explanation, the village bears the name of someone known as Kara İbrahim. Who this person was, or when he lived, is not known.

The index of the muhasebe register of 937 (1530), published by the State Archives, links a village called "Kara-İbrâhîm" in the Yavaş sub-district to page 375 of the register; there is no second village of this name in the liva of Amasya in the index. Hüsâmeddîn Yasar explains Yavaş as the oldest name of the southern sub-district covering the surroundings of present-day Ezinepazar. The uniqueness of the entry and the agreement of the sub-district with the present location make it a strong possibility that the village in the index is today's Karaibrahim; since the index gives no location, however, the identification has not been confirmed by a document.

The village does not appear among the Ezinepazar temettuat registers of 1845. None of the twenty-seven registers examined by Tayfun Soydal bears the name Karaibrahim; whether this is because the village was recorded together with another settlement that year or because a separate register has not survived is unknown. The presence of a head of household with the byname "Kara İbrahimoğlu" in the village of İlyas in the same registers is only a similarity of names, and no link with the village can be shown.

Around Ezinepazar

Karaibrahim is still mentioned together with the villages of the old southern sub-district. In the list of the bill submitted to Parliament in 2008 to make Ezinepazar a district, the village is among the twenty-five villages to be attached to the new district. In March 2025, in a short speech in the General Assembly of Parliament, the Amasya deputy Reşat Karagöz, listing the villages whose roads he said had been in poor condition for years, named Karaibrahim at the head of the list, before Yağcıabdal, Kayrak and Bayat.

The Village Record

In the official record listing the infrastructure of villages, archived in 2016, Karaibrahim's distance from the provincial centre is given as 57 kilometres. In the record, Karaibrahim's primary school is marked as "present" and "in use", and there is no bussed education; in the same database the school buildings of other southern villages such as Karataş and Karaali appear to be out of use. The village has no health post or health centre; there is a drinking water network and a sewerage system, and postal service is provided through an agency. No record has been found on the school's situation in later years.

Population

The population of the village, where 560 people lived at the 1985 census, fell to 480 in 1990 and 414 in 2000. In the address-based registration system the figure of 399 in 2007 dropped a little each year for seven years, falling to 263 in 2014. After that the series slowed markedly; for twelve years it stayed between 240 and 263. At the end of 2025, 243 people were registered in the village, 129 men and 114 women. Despite its distance from the city, the village has largely held on to its population over the last ten years.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Tayfun Soydal, Temettuât Defterlerine Göre Ezinepazar Nahiyesi'nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Yapısı, master's thesis, Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 6, 75. https://acikbilim.yok.gov.tr/handle/20.500.12812/37199
  • Bekir Başalan, "Amasya İlinde İsimleri Değiştirilen Yerleşim Yeri Adları Üzerine Bir İnceleme", Folklor Akademi Dergisi, 7(3), 2024, pp. 1382-1391 (pp. 1385-1386). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4249891
  • Asena Yalnız, "Amasya İli ve İlçelerinin Renk Adlarıyla Oluşan Yer Adlarının Gramatikal ve Bölgesel İncelemesi", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (ASOBİD), 12, 2022, pp. 133-159 (pp. 141, 152). amasya.bel.tr

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources