Throughout its history Amasya has been remembered as a city of saints as much as a city of kings and princes. The tombs (türbe), shrines and sacred stations scattered along both banks of the Yeşilırmak trace the spiritual map of this land; people go to them to pray, to make vows and to seek a cure for their troubles, and around each of them circulate legends handed down from one generation to the next. Local tradition speaks of nearly a hundred saints in the city, and an old saying among the people of Amasya runs as follows: the city has ninety-nine saints, and had it one more, it would have produced a prophet. Even this exaggeration is enough to show how Amasya sees itself. Kurtboğan, Pîr İlyas, Serçoban, İğneci Baba, Seydi Halife, Hacı Hızır Efendi, Âlimî Efendi, Hicâbî Baba, İsmail Siracüddin, Mîr Hamza Nigârî, Bahşî Halife, Halil Dede, Selâmet Hatun and Ergonaş Baba are the names that first come to mind in the city's memory. Some of these tombs, which draw visitors from every corner of Anatolia, are known among the people by their function as well; names such as "the jaundice saint" or "the saint of the jinn" show which door people knock on for which trouble.

This density has a historical background. Amasya was one of the first regions of Anatolia settled by the Turks, and under the Danishmendids, the Seljuks, the Ilkhanids, the Eretnid principality, Kadı Burhaneddin and finally, from 1393, the Ottomans, it received heavy migration both from Turkmen communities and from members of the ruling elite. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the city had nine mosques, ten madrasas, six public kitchens and four zawiyas. Amasya is regarded as the place where the Halvetiyye order first took root on Ottoman soil, and the dervish lodges and tombs spread through its streets are the traces in stone of this inheritance. Today some of these places belong to statesmen, some to scholars and sheikhs, and some to persons whose identity is unknown yet who have risen to the rank of saint in the hearts of the people. To understand the spiritual life of Amasya one must look at these historical figures and at the visiting customs that have grown up around them together.

Halifet Gazi: Commander, Governor and Shrine

One of Amasya's best-known spiritual figures is Halifet Gazi, who gave his name to a neighbourhood and to a tomb. The name, pronounced Hilfet Gazi among the people, is originally Halîfet Gazi. A Danishmendid emir, Halifet Gazi entered Seljuk service after the principality came to an end and was appointed commander of the Black Sea coastal defences by Kaykaus I (İzzeddin Keykâvus), who conquered Sinop in 1215. Under Kayqubad I (Alâeddin Keykubad) he was appointed governor of Amasya in 619 (1222), and after his success in Alâeddin Keykubad's campaign against the Mengujekids he became governor of Erzurum. He fell as a martyr in 1232 during a campaign against the Georgians, and his body was brought back to Amasya and buried in his tomb there. That a medical book was translated from Persian into Turkish in his name shows that he was more than a soldier and that a learned life revolved around him.

The complex, which today stands on Torumtay Street in the Şamlar (Şamice) neighbourhood, consists of a madrasa and an adjoining tomb. According to its inscription the madrasa was built in 606 (1209-10), and its founder's endowment deed (waqfiyya) dated 622 (1225) has also survived. After the earthquake of 1647 Müderris Hasan Efendi had the collapsed sections rebuilt in timber, and in 1888 the mufti of Amasya, Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi, had the whole building thoroughly repaired. According to the Danishmendname the building was converted from a church into a madrasa, and Albert Gabriel shares this view. The date of the tomb is a separate matter of debate: the prevailing opinion places it in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, some sources give the year 1225, while Doğan Kuban dates the building to the mid-twelfth century and Gabriel and Oktay Aslanapa to 540 (1145-46). Given its relationship to the madrasa, the tomb is thought to be at the latest contemporary with it, and perhaps even older.

The tomb, with its square base, octagonal body and pyramidal roof, has two storeys. The lower storey is now too ruined to be entered. In the middle of the upper storey stands a marble sarcophagus aligned east to west: decorated with cupids resting on garlands bound at the corners by rams' heads and with winged Medusas, and bearing on its lid the figure of a sleeping woman, this sarcophagus is in fact a Roman woman's sarcophagus. Tanju Cantay maintains that it contained an embalmed body. The interlace, zigzag, star and rumi ornament of the portal places the tomb among the finest examples of Seljuk stonework. Among the people Halifet Gazi is remembered both as a hero of the ghaza and as a spiritual protector of the city; the tomb of a Turkish ghazi lying in a Roman sarcophagus brings together in a single building the overlapping layers of Amasya's history.

Kurtboğan Sheikh Hamza and His Legend

Among the tombs of Amasya, the one whose name arouses the most curiosity is undoubtedly Kurtboğan, "the wolf-strangler." The man who lies at the site of today's railway station, formerly known as Ok Meydanı, is Pîr Şerefeddin Hamza Halvetî, one of the deputies (halife) of Pîr İlyas. He is known as the father of Akşemseddin, the teacher of Mehmed II (the Conqueror); Akşemseddin's real name was indeed Şemseddin Muhammed b. Hamza. Sheikh Hamza's lineage is traced through Şehâbeddin Sühreverdî, author of the Avârifü'l-maârif, back to the Caliph Abu Bakr. Different dates are given for his arrival in Anatolia: some accounts say he came from Damascus to the lands of Rûm in 1383 or 785 (1384) and settled in the Kavak district of the sanjak of Amasya, while the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam records that Akşemseddin came to Anatolia with his father at about the age of seven and settled in Kavak, and that this happened in 799 (1396-97). The legends also relate that when his miracles became known in Damascus he wished to go somewhere people did not know him, and that this is why he came to the lands of Rûm.

The Early Account of the Legend

The story of the epithet Kurtboğan appears in the Menâkıb-ı Akşemseddin, written in the sixteenth century by Akşemseddin's grandson Emir Hüseyin Enîsî. Enîsî tells it thus: on the night Sheikh Hamza died and was buried, a wolf of the kind they call hyena came, opened his grave and sought to devour his blessed body. Sheikh Hamza drew his hand out of the coffin, seized the wolf by the throat and killed it. The next morning, when people came to visit, they found them in this state. They took the wolf away and placed the sheikh's hand back in the coffin, but the hand came out again. A man of insight said that because it had touched the wolf the hand had to be washed; when they washed it and put it back, it remained inside. From that time on Sheikh Hamza was called Kurtboğan, and, in Enîsî's words, his grave became famous "in that land as the grave of Kurdboğan." The same legend is also related in the work of Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi. In popular versions the story grows somewhat: a wolf that had been plaguing the town in those years is said to have found fresh graves, dragged the dead from them and torn them apart, and Sheikh Hamza is said to have delivered the city from it by strangling it. In some tellings the washed hand was found in the morning drawn back beside the other, and in others the event is said to have repeated itself several times.

Some newer versions of the legend circulating today relate instead that, thanks to the saint's miraculous power, a child was rescued from a wolf that had attacked him. In connection with this version it is said that the tomb became a particular refuge for mothers whose children had fallen ill or who feared that harm might come to them, and that mothers came here to pray for their children's health and safety. This version does not occur in the old hagiographies, and no written basis for it has been found. In one local recollection a woman remembers that her mother brought her here as a child and that she was shown the hole in the tomb through which the sheikh had put out his hand to strangle the wolf.

The Tomb and the Debate over Dates

The Kurtboğan Tomb is one of the baldachin tombs of the early Ottoman period: an open structure covered by a lead-sheathed dome carried on brick arches that rise from four great stone piers, it is counted among the largest baldachin tombs in Anatolia. Right beside it stands the small mosque of alternating brick and stone courses that holds the grave of Atik Ali Pasha. The tomb, long neglected within the railway grounds, was the subject of a rescue excavation in 2012, and the original sarcophagus was reached about one metre beneath the concrete grave in the centre. The two gravestones found in the excavation are now kept in the Amasya Museum. The Arabic inscription on one of them, "ihdâ ve sittîn ve semânemie," shows that the stone is dated Muharram 861 (1457); the stone also bears a prayer meaning "may God illumine the graves of the two of them." The other stone carries a four-line Persian inscription. That both are footstones suggests they may belong to different graves. These stones can also be seen in Albert Gabriel's drawing of 1930.

For this reason the date of Sheikh Hamza's death differs in the sources. Some sources write that he died in 1415 as the closest disciple and first deputy of Pîr İlyas; others take as their basis the date 861 (1457) on the gravestone. The account that Akşemseddin was born in 1390 and was seven years old when his father died does not fit these dates either. As no conclusive document is available, the question remains open. Who had the tomb built in earlier centuries is also disputed; according to one account Atik Ali Pasha, founder of the Atik Ali Pasha Mosque in Istanbul, also had the Kurtboğan Tomb built, but no inscription confirming this exists.

Later Tales

The Kurtboğan legend has not remained confined to an old record; over the centuries it has multiplied with new links. According to a tale collected by the linguist and folklorist Mehmet Şükrü Akkaya, the station master once decided to remove the tomb and ordered workmen for the following day. That night Kurtboğan appeared in his dream, seized him by the throat and told him to repair the tomb, or else he would know what would befall him; the workmen who came the next day to demolish it repaired it instead. Akkaya's informant also calls Kurtboğan "Kızıl Paşa" in this tale; the name has probably been confused with Atik Ali Pasha. Another tale spread after the 1974 Cyprus operation: some soldiers who took part in it related that there had been among them a uniformed soldier whose identity they did not know, and that when asked who he was he replied, "Ask for me in Amasya as Kurtboğan and everyone will show you where I am"; after the war they came to Amasya and visited the tomb. Local tales also attribute the re-landscaping of the tomb in 2015 to a dream. Such memorates are valuable examples of how a saint's cult stays alive and how each generation adds its own experience to the old legend.

Pîr İlyas and the Halveti Lodges

The figure who truly left his mark on the spiritual life of Amasya is Pîr Şücâeddin İlyas, who was also Kurtboğan's sheikh. The Halvetiyye entered Anatolia through this sheikh of Amasya, one of the deputies of Sadreddîn-i Hiyâvî. Although some researchers have linked the order's arrival in Amasya to the years when Prince Bayezid was sanjak governor there, this view is not accepted; Halvetism came to the city with Pîr İlyas. According to the sources Pîr İlyas was in Shirvan between 1402 and 1406 and returned to Amasya in 1406 after the death of Timur. His return coincided with the time when the hardships of the Interregnum were most keenly felt in the city. A year later his relative Hâce Celal Çelebi built the Gümüşlüoğlu lodge and placed it at the service of the order, and the lodge's public kitchen opened its doors to many refugees. Pîr İlyas died in 833 (1429).

The quarter known today as Pirler takes its name from this circle. The tomb of Pîr Şücâeddin İlyas, also known as the Upper Pirler Tomb, stands in Pirler Park and was built in 1486 by Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Bey. In it lie Pîr İlyas together with his son-in-law Pîr Celâleddin Abdurrahman, his grandson Pîr Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi and members of the family. The nearby Çilehâne Lodge, that is, the Yâkub Pasha Lodge, was endowed to the Halvetiyye order in 815 (1412) by the Ankara beylerbey Pazarlıoğlu Yâkub Pasha, and its endowment deed was registered in February 1413 by the qadi of Amasya, Mevlânâ Rükneddin Mahmud. One of the rare dervish buildings to have survived from the early Ottoman period in its original form, the lodge has six windowless retreat cells (halvethane) and six dervish cells arranged on either side of the prayer hall. These dark cells, in which the Halvetis spent their long retreats, gave the place the name Çilehâne, "the house of the forty-day retreat." The wrought-iron door of the tomb, signed "amel-i Ramazan el-Kastamonî," is one of the rare examples of early Ottoman metalwork.

The headship of the lodge followed a line that the people of Amasya called the "silsiletü'z-zeheb," the golden chain: Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi, Pîr Şemseddin Mehmed Buhârî, Pîr Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi, Pîr Sun'ullah Halvetî of the Saddlers, Pîr Zekeriyyâ Halvetî, İğnecizâde Pîr Safiyyüddin Mahmud and those who followed them. The grave of each of these sheikhs was once a place of visitation in some corner of the city. Pîr Sun'ullah and Pîr Zekeriyyâ lie in the courtyard of the Saraçhane Mosque, and Habîb-i Karamânî and his deputy Seydi Halife in the courtyard of the Mehmed Pasha Mosque. Inside the Kuba Mosque in the Çakallar neighbourhood lies Kubalı Çelebizâde Sheikh Hüseyin Halvetî, pupil and son-in-law of Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi, son of Pîr İlyas. People still go to this tomb, known among them as Kuba Dede, in hope of healing, and visitors leave items such as vests, underwear, towels and brooms. One of these sheikhs, İğnecizâde Safiyyüddin Mahmud, lives on in popular tradition as İğneci Baba; his legend and that of Serçoban, held to be his brother, is the subject of a separate article.

Other Tombs in the City

Amasya's map of tombs stretches from the Seljuk period to the nineteenth century. The Torumtay Tomb, opposite the Gök Medrese, was built of cut stone in 1278 by the governor of Amasya, Seyfeddin Torumtay, on a rectangular plan and in two storeys; its south facade displays some of the finest Seljuk stonework. The Cumudar Tomb beside the Burmalı Minare Mosque was built in 1242 for Prince Cumudar, the Seljuk overseer of Anatolia, on an octagonal plan over a square base. The Şadgeldi Pasha Tomb and the tomb said to belong to Sultan Mesud are also among the city's relics of the Seljuk and principalities period. Among the later buildings, the Şirvanlı İsmail Tomb was built in 1870 by Şirvanlızâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha for his father.

Some of the tombs belong to statesmen and are visited mostly by those curious about history; others are shrines that live in the daily life of the people. The Kadılar station, Halkalı Evliya and Hicâbî Baba belong to this second group. The custom of passing the feet of late-walking children through the iron rings of the Halkalı Evliya Tomb, and the visiting customs of the Hicâbî Baba Tomb in the town of Ziyaret, are discussed in a separate article. Among women saints Selâmet Hatun holds a special place; some writers call her the second woman saint known in Anatolia after Rabi'a al-Adawiyya. Her tomb is today a small building hemmed in among apartment blocks. In most of Amasya's tombs fountains and graves stand together, the cenotaphs lie in the middle of the tomb, and tomb and prayer room are often intertwined; because these tombs in the middle of the city are easy to reach, visiting them has become part of everyday life.

Hamdullah Efendi and the Alevi-Bektashi Shrines

Amasya is among the leading provinces of Turkey for Alevi-Bektashi shrines as much as for Sunni ones. The Hamdullah Efendi Tomb in the city centre is the best known of them. Hamdullah Çelebi, whose real name was Mehmed Hamdi and who was the twenty-third head (postnişin) of the Hacı Bektaş Veli lodge, succeeded Feyzullah Çelebi in 1824; after the abolition of the Janissary corps and then the closure of the Bektashi lodges he was exiled to Amasya in 1827 by a decree of Mahmud II. According to Alevi-Bektashi tradition he lived here until his death in 1836 and held conversations among the people. Suraiya Faroqhi and Irène Mélikoff, however, write that he was pardoned in 1833, returned to Hacıbektaş and spent the rest of his life there. A gifted poet, Hamdullah Çelebi used the pen name "Hamdullah" before his exile and afterwards, out of longing for his homeland, "Hasret" (longing); his deyiş in the miraçlama and tevhid genres are still sung in cem ceremonies today.

According to a tale told among the people, Hamdullah Çelebi said, "When I die, build my tomb; if you do not, a flood will carry Amasya away." When the people and the governor paid no heed, a great flood struck the city after his death, and only then was the tomb built. According to another tale, during a Ramadan conversation he told his listeners, "I can tell you short things at such length that you will be astonished," and before those who did not believe him he expounded the basmala for three and a half days and still did not finish. The date of the tomb at the south-western end of Pirler Park differs in the sources: some give 1847, others say that a simple grave was turned into a tomb in 1868. The square, single-domed tomb is surrounded by a courtyard wall and has a place for slaughtering sacrificial animals and a hearth. Of the two wooden cenotaphs with green covers inside, the front one is said to belong to Hamdullah Çelebi and the other to his wife Güleser Hanım. The medallions in the dome bear the names of the Twelve Imams; that the names of the first three caliphs are also found there is, according to Muzaffer Doğanbaş, the result of later restorations. The tomb is visited by Sunnis as well as Alevis; prayers are said for every kind of wish and votive sacrifices are offered.

The Baba İlyas Tomb in the village of İlyas (formerly Çat), attached to central Amasya, belongs to the great Turkmen baba of the thirteenth century. Baba İlyas-ı Horasânî, a sheikh of the Wafa'i order, was killed during the Babai Revolt in 638 (1240) and his body was hung from the citadel of Amasya. His grave was later turned into a tomb by his youngest son Muhlis Pasha. On the cenotaph in a plain building lie deer antlers that appear to date from early times. Because his historical identity has been forgotten among the people and he is taken to be the same person as Hızır-İlyas, the tomb is also called the Hızır-İlyas Tomb; it also bears the name of the jaundice saint or jaundice shrine, and every year in the first week of May Hıdırellez festivities are held at the Sarılık site of the village. In the Ergonaş Baba Tomb in the town of Yassıçal (Yaylagöl) it is actually Ergonaş Baba's son Seyyid Mustafa who lies; as the tomb is believed to be good for paralysis, those who have suffered a stroke spend a night there. The Fedai Baba Tomb in the same town belongs to the folk poet whose real name was Hüseyin Gümüş and who died on 26 October 1940. The Pîrî Baba Tomb in Merzifon is likewise a regional centre of faith that brings together Alevi and Sunni visitors from the neighbouring provinces.

The Etiquette of Visiting

The relationship the people of Amasya have with these places is shaped by a body of customs passed down from generation to generation. A person with a wish, one who has fallen into hardship, or one who wishes to give thanks arrives at the tomb having performed ablutions and with a pure heart. Inside, the Qur'an is recited, very often a Yâsîn, prayers are said and the Fatiha is dedicated to the soul of the saint. Visitors usually enter the tomb with great reverence, bowing; they touch the stones of the place and the cenotaph with their hands, in some places they kneel and bow before the door to go in, and on leaving they walk backwards with their faces turned towards the tomb. An Ottoman couplet above the door of the Pîrî Baba Tomb expresses this etiquette of visiting: "Zâir, gir bu makama ba-hulûs, ba-ihtirâm / Kıl ziyaret merkad-ı Pîrî Baba zîr-i bu makâm"; that is, let the visitor enter this station with a pure heart and with reverence, and visit the grave of Pîrî Baba who lies beneath it.

The days of visiting are not chosen at random either. The Ehli Hatun Tomb is visited every day of the week but is busiest on Fridays; children who cannot walk are taken to Halkalı Dede especially on Saturdays. In many places it is believed that a wish will be granted if one goes on three or seven consecutive Thursdays. Nothing is taken away from a place of visitation; it is believed that anyone who carries off even a dry twig, a straw or a pine cone will suffer for it and that the saint will trouble him in his dreams. Around the tomb people do not speak loudly, do not throw rubbish and do not cut trees. Some visitors take a pinch of earth from the tomb and taste it with the tip of the tongue; the people call this earth "cevher" (essence) and believe that the blessing of the visit is carried with it. The water of the fountain or well beside the tomb is also taken home for those unable to come.

Vows, Sacrifices and Wishing Customs

The most heartfelt of the customs woven around the tombs is the one known among the people as adak or nezir, the votive offering. A person who wishes to attain a desire resolves to make an offering if the wish is fulfilled; once the wish comes true, he keeps his word. Sometimes an animal is sacrificed, sometimes food, money or lump sugar is distributed to the poor, sometimes service is rendered to the tomb. The kind of vow varies with the weight of the wish: at the Ehli Hatun Tomb only those who want a child vow a sacrifice, while for other wishes religious vows such as prayer and fasting are made. In the villages small offerings such as hens and cockerels are common; the feet of the slaughtered bird are hung on the tree at the shrine and the meat is shared out in the village. When the wish is fulfilled the sacrifice is brought to the tomb and cooked there, and it is sometimes eaten together to the sound of drum and shawm, with dancing.

Expressing a wish through a tangible sign is a distinctive feature of these customs. The cloths and rags tied to the trees around the tombs, the candles that are lit and the stones pressed onto walls are all part of this language. At some tombs a stone is pressed against the wall while a wish is made; if it sticks, the wish is believed to be accepted, and if it falls, not. Many shrines have wishing stones made of prayer beads or pebbles: the person makes a wish, decides in his mind on odd or even and counts the stones; if the result matches the number he chose, the wish will come true. The people of the region express the rule that the decision must not be changed afterwards with the phrase "your heart must not be divided." There are also places where the person whose trouble has been resolved unties the rag he had tied to the tree. Although these customs are lived within a religious framework, they are an expression of the human need to share pain, to keep hope alive and to take refuge in a spiritual power.

The most striking of the customs connected with the wish for a child is the practice the people call "satma," selling. A childless woman is led around a tree or a tomb at a shrine, accompanied by prayers and set words, and the child to be born is "sold" to the saint; in some places a rope is tied around the woman's neck. Children born after such wishes are named Satılmış if a boy and Satı if a girl. The Dedelik shrine at the entrance to the village of Değirmendere in Amasya, the rock and oak shrines in the village of Kayrak and the tomb in the village of Geydoğan near Taşova are among the places where this practice is found. Under a tree that stands alone on a rock in a highland pasture near the village of Uygur, known as Ebe Kayası, a woman is believed to lie who died weeping because she had no child. The visiting woman comes here at the earliest hour of the morning together with a woman versed in the rite and is led three times around the tree; a short exchange of words passes between them and a third woman sitting at the foot of the tree, and at the end they all say together, "Olur inşallah, durur inşallah," "God willing it will come, God willing it will stay."

Wishes Associated with the City's Tombs

Some of the tombs in the city centre have become identified with particular wishes. The Ehli Hatun Tomb in the Kurşunlu neighbourhood is visited especially by women; people come for the good fortune of young girls who wish to marry and for couples who wish to have children. The visitor performs two cycles of prayer, prays and makes her vow; then she looks into the well in the tomb, and if a light is seen in the well, the wish is believed to be accepted. To the Halkalı Dede Tomb in the Şehirüstü neighbourhood are brought children who cannot yet walk although the time has come. The Wishing Well in the Hızırpaşa neighbourhood, also called the Well of Hell, is likewise regarded as a shrine: the person making a wish covers his head with a towel, leans over the well and gazes carefully into the water; if a light rises from the water or a frog appears, the wish will be granted.

The Tezveren Evliyası, the identity of whose saint is unknown, is one of the places in the city to which the most varied wishes are carried. People who wish to be rid of bad habits, the childless, unmarried girls, and those who want success in examinations or a house or a car come here. The visit begins on Tuesday evening, continues for three days in a row and ends on Friday evening. Before the evening call to prayer the Qur'an is recited in the tomb, after the call the evening prayer and the prayer of need are performed, wishes are made between the evening and night prayers, and the cenotaph is circled three times. Each person brings an object related to his wish: a student hoping to pass an exam leaves a pencil or an eraser, someone wishing for a house or a car leaves a key. The lump sugar handed out at the tomb on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays is also believed to be sacred.

Shrines and Sacred Places in the Villages

Beyond the city the variety of places of visitation increases still further. Some of these places have a tomb or a grave, while others are simply a tree, a rock, a spring or a hill. The people often call places of the second kind "nazarlama," and the same customs as at the tombs are practised there. The man who lies in the Şeyh Sadi Tomb in the village of Şeyhsadi is said to have been one of the Alevi-Turkmen notables of the region and the teacher of Hacı Bayram Veli. Although rebuilding has taken the tomb far from its original form, it receives visitors from all over the country; when a wish is fulfilled a sacrifice is offered here. It is believed that one cannot pass through the hollow rock at the head of the cenotaph if the vowed sacrifice has not been made. The Hasan Baba Tomb near Ezinepazar is visited for the health of those going to military service and for rain in times of drought. Before the rain prayer held here the women and children go from house to house collecting food, and the men gather seventy thousand small stones and recite suras over each one; on the day of the prayer a sacrifice is made and the stones that have been prayed over are left in a sack in the well beside the tomb.

Cender Evliyası, also called Emuren Dede, in the village of Kışlabeyi (formerly Cender) near Göynücek, is a saint of whom it is told that, to prove his sainthood to those who demanded a miracle, he entered a red-hot oven in his clothes and came out unburnt holding a tuft of grass; every year the villagers find this "davar otu" (flock grass), sacrifice an animal beside it and smear its blood on the grass. Gülben Evliyası in the village of Beşiktepe in the same district is a juniper tree believed to have sprung from the grave of a girl who fell in love with a young man and, unable to be united with him, sickened and died. In the Merami Baba Tomb in the village of Bağlarüstü there is a hollow piece of bone resembling an ear; it is believed that Merami Baba brought this bone from Crimea, and a cure for deafness is sought by dripping a few drops of the water inside it into the ear. At the Çamdibi shrine in the village of Çiğdemlik the tree is believed to have stood there since the creation of the world; young men going to military service stop here, coins are thrown for plenty and feed is left for the birds. At İz Kayası north of Ezinepazar the hollows resembling footprints on the rock are believed to be the footprints of Hızır; those who come for their sores take water with a spoon from the small pools here and walk away without looking back.

There are similar shrines in the neighbouring Zile area, and these are sometimes mentioned together with Amasya's votive places. One of the most interesting is Kamer Kaya in the village of Turgutalp near Zile. Located beside a large rock and held sacred by the people, this place is visited by the childless. It is told that those whose animals have strayed leave an object belonging to the animal beside the shrine for a day, take it the next day to the stable, and believe that the lost animal will sooner or later be found. Kamer Kaya is also visited to "bind the mouths" of wild animals that attack the flocks.

Placing Knives for the Saints

A practice seen around Amasya and Tokat, mostly in Turkmen-Alevi villages, and rarely encountered elsewhere in Turkey, is "placing knives for the saints." A person suffering from an aching or painful complaint places in the evening a knife in a bowl full of water for each saint in the vicinity, turning each one towards the direction of that saint's shrine. On rising in the morning, he believes that his pain was relieved by the saint on the side of whichever knife shows signs of rust. Food such as buns and pastries is then left at that saint's place for passers-by to eat, and candles are lit; in other words, a bloodless offering is made. At the Dilek Evliyası in the village of Çiğdemlik the practice takes place at the shrine itself: the childless leave a knife in the water of the spring beside it, and if the knife rusts quickly, they offer a sacrifice.

The folklorist Necdet Kurt sees behind this custom an ancient reverence for iron. Among the Turkic peoples ironworking was considered a sacred skill, and iron was thought of as a protective power that made wishes come true; customs found in many parts of Anatolia, such as placing a knife under a newborn's pillow or on a corpse, are also connected with this belief. According to Kurt, the thought of the person placing the knife is this: if a saint can make even iron rust in a single night, he can also relieve my aches and pains.

The Layers of Belief

The wishes of those who go to these places are as wide as life itself. People with facial paralysis, children who are slow to walk or fretful, mothers with little milk, those longing for a child, farmers waiting for rain, those stricken with jaundice, those with sores and boils, unmarried people seeking a match, those who want to protect their animals from wild beasts, and those who want a job or success in their studies all come to these doors. The shrines in the region are so numerous that the researchers who have recorded them say that writing them all down would produce a corpus of at least three volumes. At many shrines, however, there is no particular ritual at all; they are honoured simply with a quiet and respectful visit.

Researchers see in some of these customs the traces of pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs. The sanctity of natural features such as trees, water, stones, mountains and hills, and rules such as circling the shrine, going on particular days, leaving without looking back and not cutting trees, are interpreted as forms of the old Yer-Su (Earth-Water) belief and of ancestor veneration that have taken on new guise within Anatolian Islam. That nearly every family in the village of Yeşilöz in Amasya has a shrine of its own is noteworthy in this respect: Karaağaç Dede, belonging to the Kasımoğlu family and said to be five hundred years old, is visited on the first Thursday of each month to heal warts on the hands; Çatmabaşı Evliyası, belonging to the Kocaoğulları, is a great rock without a grave, and people do not speak loudly when passing by it. According to Necdet Kurt, practices at shrines in Alevi-Turkmen villages have been shaped by the requirements of that faith, and those in Sunni-Turkmen villages by Sunni forms of worship; yet in both the influence of the old beliefs is evident. Harun Yıldız, for his part, emphasises that those who come to these centres of faith, believing that those who lie there were close to God, pray for their sake and hope for healing from God.

These visiting traditions also keep a collective memory alive. As young people follow their grandfathers and grandmothers around these tombs, they also learn the history of the city and the stories of the people behind those stones. In this way the valour of a ghazi, the miracle of a saint and the wisdom of a sheikh are handed down from generation to generation. To know Amasya only through its citadel, bridges and mansions would be incomplete; to understand the city one must also know its spiritual figures, the legends that have grown up around its tombs and its customs of visitation.

Chronology

606 (1209-10): According to its inscription, the Halifet Gazi Madrasa is built.

619 (1222): The Danishmendid emir Halifet Gazi is appointed governor of Amasya by Kayqubad I.

622 (1225): Halifet Gazi's endowment deed for the madrasa is drawn up.

1232: Halifet Gazi falls as a martyr on the campaign against the Georgians and is buried in his tomb in Amasya.

638 (1240): Baba İlyas-ı Horasânî is killed during the Babai Revolt and his body is hung from the citadel of Amasya.

1242: The Cumudar Tomb beside the Burmalı Minare Mosque is built.

1278: Seyfeddin Torumtay has his tomb built opposite the Gök Medrese.

799 (1396-97): According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, Sheikh Hamza and his son Akşemseddin settle in Kavak, then attached to Amasya. Some sources give this date as 1383 or 1384.

1406: After the death of Timur, Pîr Şücâeddin İlyas returns from Shirvan to Amasya and brings the Halvetiyye to the city.

815 (1412): Pazarlıoğlu Yâkub Pasha founds the Çilehâne (Yâkub Pasha) Lodge in the Pirler quarter; its endowment deed is registered in February 1413.

833 (1429): Pîr İlyas dies.

861 (1457): The date on the Arabic gravestone found in the Kurtboğan Tomb. Some sources give Sheikh Hamza's death as 1415.

1486: Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Bey has the tomb of Pîr Şücâeddin İlyas (the Upper Pirler Tomb) built.

1647: Sections of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa destroyed in the earthquake are rebuilt in timber.

1827: Hamdullah Çelebi, head of the Hacı Bektaş Veli lodge, is exiled to Amasya.

1836: According to Alevi-Bektashi tradition, Hamdullah Çelebi dies in Amasya.

1847 / 1868: The Hamdullah Efendi Tomb is built; the sources give two different dates.

1870: Şirvanlızâde Mehmed Rüşdü Pasha has the Şirvanlı İsmail Tomb built for his father.

1888: The Halifet Gazi Madrasa is thoroughly repaired by the mufti of Amasya, Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi.

1940: The folk poet Fedai Baba (Hüseyin Gümüş), who lies in his tomb at Yassıçal, dies on 26 October.

2012: A rescue excavation is carried out at the Kurtboğan Tomb and the original sarcophagus is reached.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Necdet Kurt, "Amasya ve Tokat Çevrelerinde Türbe ve Yatır İnanç Pratiği Örnekleri ile Velilere (Evliyalara) Bıçak Koyma İnancı", Kültür Evreni, no. 47, 2022, pp. 103-123. https://isamveri.org/pdfdrg/D03503/2022_47/2022_47_KURTN.pdf
  • Emir Hüseyin Enîsî, Menâkıb-ı Akşemseddin, trans. Bilal Aktan and Mustafa Güneş, Istanbul 2015 (cited in: Melek Karadeniz, "Kurtboğan Evliyasının Bilinmeyen Hikâyesi", 2022). https://www.maarifinsesi.com/7613-2/
  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vol. I (cited in: Karadeniz, op. cit.; Tanman, op. cit.).

Academic studies

Official sources

Books

  • Muzaffer Doğanbaş, Amasya Türbeleri, Amasya 2018 (cited in: Karadeniz, op. cit.).

Other sources

Online sources