Ramadan changes the rhythm of daily life in every city in Anatolia; the hours of the market, the time of the evening meal and the length of the night's sleep are all rearranged around the month. In Amasya the change has an added detail that comes from the city's topography. The town lies along both banks of the Yeşilırmak beneath the steep flank of Mount Harşena, so any sound that rises from the citadel carries across the whole valley. That the sound of drum and zurna, and today the melodies of the municipal band, rise from the citadel as iftar approaches is a custom that suits this geography well. The cannon shot fired from the same place, the sahur drummer who walks the neighborhood lanes and the iftar tables to which neighbors invite one another are the main elements of Ramadan in Amasya. The citadel concert is roughly a hundred and sixty years old, and the municipal band is described as the oldest Ramadan band in Türkiye.

The Turkish Islamic Encyclopedia (TDV) entry on Ramadan lists the many religious and social customs with which the month is observed in Türkiye and across the Islamic world: lighting lamps in mosques, stringing mahya lights between minarets, iftar invitations, increased aid to those in need, announcing the time of sahur in the streets with drums and mani verses, organizing entertainments on Ramadan nights, and preparing foods specific to the month. Amasya's practice stays within this general framework; its distinction is that the time is announced from the height of the citadel and to the accompaniment of a band. Lines written more than a century ago by the city's historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar show that this distinction has old roots, and that the cannon and the drum at the citadel were already part of the city's Ramadan routine in those years.

The Origin of the Custom and Ziya Pasha

According to local tradition and official statements, the custom began in the 1860s, when Ziya Pasha, then the mutasarrıf (district governor) of Amasya, had drums and zurna played from the citadel on a Ramadan day. Ziya Pasha, a well-known figure of Tanzimat-era literature, was born in Istanbul in 1829, rose from a post as a palace secretary, and, because he could not get along with Grand Vizier Âli Pasha, was removed from Istanbul and appointed mutasarrıf first in Cyprus and then in Amasya. His tenure in the sanjak of Amasya lasted two years, from 1863 to 1865. According to the study that Kenan Akyüz published from archival documents, during these two years the pasha undertook an intensive building program; in the center of Amasya and its five districts he had six government mansions, six schools, a secondary school, six clock towers, a covered bazaar (bedesten) and a prison built, and he had new roads and squares opened in the city center. Hüsameddin also records that in 1281 (1864-1865) the pasha had the Palace Gate in front of the Alçak Köprü, a gate of black marble with a very graceful arch, pulled down, and that against the danger of floods he had a wooden bridge built on the foundations of the Alçak Köprü. The placing of a new cannon in the citadel is mentioned among the works of the same year.

Because the state treasury could not cover the cost of these works, local levies were imposed, and when the burden also fell on the notables and the ulema of the region, conflict became unavoidable. Akyüz's documents show that the struggle that ultimately led to the pasha's removal from the governorship was the one fought against the local notables and ulema; among those who spearheaded the rumors of malfeasance about him were a former mufti of Zile and a member of the district council. Ziya Pasha was transferred to the governorship of Canik, returned to Istanbul in October 1865 and was appointed to the Meclis-i Vâlâ (the High Council). He began openly criticizing the policies of the Sublime Porte in the newspaper Muhbir, fled to Paris in 1867, and in 1868 published the newspaper Hürriyet in London with Namık Kemal. He died in Adana on 17 May 1880 at the age of fifty-one; that only one gold coin and three mecidiye were found on him is taken as a sign that he left no great fortune. As Akyüz also notes, the friction with local powers in Amasya left its trace in the pasha's later writings criticizing provincial administration. Attaching the Ramadan music and cannon to this short but eventful Amasya posting rests on solid historical ground once it is considered together with the record of the citadel described below.

The Citadel Cannons and Hüsameddin's Record

In his account of the history of Amasya Citadel, Hüsameddin writes that the lower bastion of the citadel, which overlooks the city, was set aside as the residence of the dizdars, the beys and aghas who commanded the citadel garrison, and that this system of dizdars lasted until 1255 (1839-1840). Under the dizdars served the citadel steward, the citadel assistant, the gatekeepers and the soldiers of the garrison, who in time of campaign took on the defense of the city. There had once been many cannons in the citadel; in 1248 (1832-1833) one of them was kept and the others removed. In 1281, the mutasarrıf of Amasya, Ziya Pasha, removed the old cannon and had a muzzle-loading cannon installed in its place. According to Hüsameddin this cannon was placed in the room of the dizdar aghas, an opening was cut in front of it, and it came to be fired only on official and religious days. Because of its height its sound carries as far as villages two hours' walk away.

The same page contains a short but valuable note about Ramadan: from the beginning of Ramadan until the end of the holiday, cannons are fired from the citadel and drums are beaten; the gunners and drummers are salaried by the municipality of Amasya and receive an annual allowance. This record shows the two basic elements of today's practice, the firing of the cannon from the citadel and the announcing of the time by drum, as the ordinary routine of the city at the beginning of the twentieth century. That the men were paid by the municipality also suggests that the task had already ceased to be one person's charitable work and had become a service undertaken by local government. That the men who fire the cannon today and the band itself belong to the municipal staff is a direct continuation of this arrangement. Hüsameddin's record also brings the oral account linking Ziya Pasha with the Ramadan cannon together with a document: the year 1281, in which the pasha placed a cannon in the citadel, corresponds to 1864, and all the figures given for the band's age lead to this year as well.

In those years Ramadan music was played by a mehter ensemble in place of a band. Hüsameddin writes that in his own childhood an Ahmed Agha, from the family descended from the Janissary officer Alemdar Ahmed Agha and known as the Alemdaroğulları or, for short, the Alemoğulları, was the mehterbaşı (leader of the mehter band) in Ramadan. Since Hüsameddin was born in 1869, this memory belongs to the Amasya of the 1870s and 1880s. The existence of a mehterbaşı in the months of Ramadan shows that the sound rising from the citadel was not a single drum but was played by an ensemble. No document has been found on when the shift from the drum-and-zurna ensemble to the municipal band took place.

On the Age of the Custom

The ages given for the band fit the date 1864. In 2019 the custom was said to be 155 years old, in 2022 158, in 2024 160, in 2025 161 and in 2026 162, and all these figures lead to the same year. In 2020 it was written that the cannon had been fired for about 165 years, which points a few years further back. By contrast, a news report published in 2008 says the band had been giving concerts for 138 years. No document has been found about the date or details of the first concert, and for the band's first concert the account rests on oral transmission; what is documented is that Ziya Pasha had a cannon placed in the citadel in 1281.

Differing information also circulates about the cannon itself. It is said that the cannon fire in Amasya is about six hundred years old; yet in a statement by the mayor it is said that the firing began in the 1860s on Ziya Pasha's instruction. The two accounts are irreconcilable, and no basis has been found for the six-hundred-year figure. A news report written in 2012 claims that the cannon in use dates from the 1600s; since Hüsameddin writes that Ziya Pasha removed the old cannon and had a new muzzle-loader installed, these two pieces of information do not agree either. Given that there was more than one cannon in the citadel until 1832, it is possible that one of the old cannons was later put back into use, but there is no record showing this. In 2020 the municipality had the cannon used at iftar and sahur redesigned and renewed so that it could be used more safely.

The history of the Ramadan cannon in the Ottoman world also helps to place the Amasya practice. There are differing traditions about the origin of the custom, of Mamluk and Egyptian provenance, and the sources disagree on its starting date. It is accepted that in the Ottoman lands the regular iftar cannon was first fired in Istanbul at Anadolu Hisarı and then spread to provincial centers such as Ankara, Maraş, Shkodër and Acre. In the capital the cannons were fired from several points such as Seraskerkapısı, Selimiye, Tophane and Baruthane. At a time when homes had no clocks and city clock towers were not yet widespread, the cannon was a cheap signal that everyone could hear at the same moment. That Ziya Pasha placed a cannon in the citadel while building six clock towers in Amasya can be seen as two sides of the same concern for regulating time.

What those who speak of the custom agree on is that it was first a means of telling the time before it was a show. In the years before electricity and clocks became widespread, the approach of iftar and sahur was announced by the band, and the moment itself by the cannon. Erol Mutlu, the municipality's director of culture and social affairs, explains that in this practice of more than a hundred and fifty years, the residents were at first reminded of iftar and sahur times from the citadel by Ramadan drummers, and that today this duty is carried out by the municipal band with mini concerts before iftar and sahur.

The Concert at the Citadel

In today's practice, the municipal band climbs to the citadel on Mount Harşena before iftar and sahur throughout Ramadan. The citadel, about 300 meters high in the middle of the city, is not easy to reach; Mutlu says the band climbs the hard-to-reach citadel summer and winter alike. The group heads for the citadel from the city center on an open-top bus, playing marches and songs. At the citadel, in a concert that begins about an hour before iftar, regional pieces, heroic folk songs and the year's popular songs are played; the concert continues in the same manner at sahur. A report written in 2008 relates that the fourteen-member ensemble climbed to the citadel every day, that the concert ended fifteen minutes before iftar, and that as the concert began, iftar tables started to be set in the homes.

The best-loved aspect of the concert is that it takes requests from listeners. In 2008 the band leader Cemal Aylak recounted that messages arrived on their phones when they began the concert, and that the most requested piece that year was Fatih Ürek's song Hadi Hadi. In 2022 the leader Hakan Dinçer said that the first request was Mavi Boncuk and that requests could be sent both by phone and through the band's social media account. In 2024 Dinçer said he had been with the band for twenty years and that it had no counterpart in Türkiye; that same year a sixty-eight-year-old listener phoned the leader to ask for Kilo Kilo Elmalar, saying he had listened to this band every Ramadan since childhood. In 2026 a seventy-year-old resident of Amasya asked for Erik Dalı and recalled how, in his childhood, they would eagerly await the band and the cannon fired from the citadel. The band does not play only in Ramadan. The municipal band is part of official and public ceremonies in every season, from Republic Day to the Victory Day of 30 August, from 19 May to neighborhood festivities, but the melody that echoes through the streets on Ramadan nights is regarded as its most popular activity.

The custom has not continued without interruption every year. Because Ramadan 2023 came immediately after the Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes, the deputy governor announced that no entertainment would be held during the month, that the band would not play from the citadel and that only the cannon shots would continue. The decision clearly shows the two separate functions of cannon and band: the cannon carried on as a means of announcing the time, while the band, regarded as the sound of joy and celebration, fell silent that year.

Going up to the citadel on the first iftar day to watch the concert and fire the cannon has become a custom for officials. In 2022 the mayor, the governor and members of parliament were at the citadel for the first iftar of Ramadan. In 2024 Mayor Bayram Çelik fired the first iftar cannon, with the governor and members of parliament also attending. In 2025 Governor Önder Bakan and Mayor Turgay Sevindi fired the cannon together, and the governor referred to the practice as a custom maintained since Ottoman times. In 2026 the governor fired the first iftar cannon by remote control. That day the governor said that Amasya was a city in which Ramadan traditions are kept alive, and the mayor noted that the hundred-and-sixty-two-year-old band carries on a cultural heritage.

The Cannon Shot

The cannon fired from the citadel complements the concert. A single shot is fired at iftar and three at sahur. The meaning of the sahur shots differs for each: the first means get up, the second eat, the third go to sleep. The people of Amasya call this sequence "1 K 2 Y" for short. According to another interpretation reported in 2012, the first shot is meant to wake people, the second to announce that they may begin eating, and the third to tell them to stop eating and drinking; the two accounts part ways at the last link of the sequence. Mutlu also describes the cannon shots before iftar and sahur as a custom peculiar to Amasya.

The moment for the shot is taken from below, from the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid II. In 2012 the municipal employee who fired the cannon explained that when iftar time came he fired it after a light signal given from the mosque, and that the call to prayer was recited right afterwards. The same employee recalls that in his first years on the job, while waiting with the cannon ready, he realized three minutes before iftar that he had no lighter in his pocket, and so he called down from the citadel to the hodja and asked him to recite the call to prayer. Seyfettin Gökçe, a worker of the municipal parks and gardens directorate who had been firing it for nineteen years as of 2008, said that thanks to this custom the people of Amasya break their fast and eat their sahur. In 2012 Gökçe added that for years he had broken his fast at the citadel rather than at home, sometimes bringing his family with him and sometimes staying alone.

The sound of the cannon does not reach everywhere. The city has grown since the time when Hüsameddin spoke of villages two hours away. In 2012 the then mayor, Cafer Özdemir, said that Amasya had far outgrown its boundaries of the 1860s, that only about a third of the city broke its fast to the sound of the cannon, and that they were nevertheless trying to keep this old custom alive. Today most households learn the time from the phone and the television, but in the neighborhoods near the citadel slope the sound of the cannon is still the signal to sit down at the table.

The Sahur Drummer

The drum is a very old instrument in Turkic culture; in Central Asia it was known by names such as kavrüg, tug or tavıl, it was used as an official and religious instrument from the time of the Huns, and in the Ottoman period it was used for signaling time as well as for relaying news. Evliya Çelebi writes that in the seventeenth century inns, caravanserais, walls and city gates were closed at set hours with the sounding of the derbend drum. In Ottoman cities, waking people for sahur on Ramadan nights by beating a drum and reciting manis was among the duties of the night watchmen. Since the watchman's post was regarded at that time as a well-paid job, even civil servants could work half a day and make a living by drumming or watchmanship at night.

The reciting of manis began with the sighting of the crescent, and the drummer would go door to door after iftar until the tarawih prayer and again at sahur. The manis were made up of eight-syllable quatrains, and were recited in a half-joking vein suited to each house and family. A yellow flower was placed in the window of a house with a sick person, and the drummer would not recite a mani in front of that house. Drummers would collect from every house kerchiefs, cloth and bundles with a tip tied to the end. These are accounts of general Ottoman practice and are not a document specific to Amasya.

The watchmen's and drummers' manis lived on orally for a long time and were collected later. Mehmed Halid Bayrı's collection Bekçi ve Ramazan Manileri (1959) and M. Şakir Ülkütaşır's article on old Ramadan drummers and drummers' manis (1969) are among the known examples of this body of verse. In the collected manis, the welcome to the month is expressed as follows: "A blessing came to us from the Truth, hard matters became easy, this night of ours is a beginning, O sultan of months, welcome." Another mani describes setting out: "I set out on my way with the basmala, I greeted right and left, O my fortunate master, may the blessed hour bring good." Since the drummer recited quatrains that varied according to the householder and the family, the same mani was not repeated at every door.

That drumming in Amasya is a municipal duty is nothing new; in Hüsameddin's time, too, those who beat the drums at the citadel received an annual allowance from the municipality. The drummer still walks the neighborhoods today. The Ramadan manis he recites while beating his drum both wake and amuse. As the holiday approaches, he goes from door to door to collect his tip as the reward for a month of labor. There has also been a year in the district of Taşova when the Ramadan drummers attached to the municipality woke people for sahur with regional folk songs at the residents' request. The municipal band's playing in the streets at sahur and iftar offers a melodic alternative to the traditional drummer; people come out into the streets to listen to these melodies and record them on their phones.

Welcoming Ramadan and the Mahya

In Amasya the arrival of Ramadan is welcomed in the city square before it is heard from the citadel. In recent years a ceremony has been held in Yavuz Selim Square on the first night of the month; after a prayer led by the provincial mufti, a mahya is lit to the accompaniment of hymns. The mahya lit in 2023 read "Hoş geldin ya şehr-i Ramazan" (Welcome, O month of Ramadan), and residents had their photographs taken in front of it. Illuminated inscriptions strung between minarets are among the most familiar sights of Ramadan in Ottoman cities. In Amasya this sight, together with the sound rising from the citadel and the cannon shot, forms one of the signs announcing that the month has begun.

Sermons, Lessons and Tarawih in the Mosques

After the evening call to prayer the mosques fill and tarawih is performed in congregation. One of the mosques most favored by the people of Amasya is the Bayezid Mosque, built by Sultan Bayezid II in 1485 and known for its complex and soup kitchen; the TDV Islamic Encyclopedia dates the building to the late fifteenth century. It is said that this mosque overflows on tarawih evenings. After the prayer, gatherings for conversation and talk in the tea houses carry the evenings of the month into the late hours of the night. The Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr), regarded as the night on which the Quran began to be revealed and as better than a thousand months, is spent in prayer and worship; among Muslim communities it is accepted as the most valuable time of Ramadan.

In Ramadan the Bayezid Mosque was more than a place of prayer; for a long time it served as the city's preaching pulpit. Hüsameddin's biographical volumes name the scholars who preached to the people in this mosque during Ramadan. Hafız Derviş Mehmed Efendi, son of Ahmed Agha of the Üçler quarter, was born in 1233 (1817-1818), studied with well-known teachers of Amasya after memorizing the Quran, lived in his house in the Sofular quarter and preached in the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid every Ramadan until the end of his life; he died in 1305 (1887-1888), and Hüsameddin calls him "vâiz-i meşhûr", the famous preacher. Ahmed Nafiz Bey of the Hacı Esad Ağazâde family, one of the notables of Amasya, also preached and gave counsel to the people in the same mosque during Ramadan after receiving his diploma.

One of the twentieth-century representatives of this tradition is the mufti of Amasya, Mecdîzâde Abdurrahman Kâmil Yetkin. Appointed mufti in 1900 and holding the post at intervals until his death in 1941, Kâmil Efendi also served as kürsü şeyhi (pulpit preacher) at the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid, and before becoming mufti he gave Quran commentary lessons to the public every year in Ramadan. In the autobiography he wrote, he mentions commentary lessons he gave in the Gümüşlü Mosque during Ramadan, each series completed in thirty lessons; the opening of the sura Luqman, the end of the sura al-Furqan and the suras al-Fajr, al-Balad and al-Layl are among their subjects. That the thirty lessons match the thirty days of Ramadan shows that they were arranged according to the calendar of the month. This commentary has not survived in any known copy. His son Mehmet Sabri Yetkin, while working as a librarian in Amasya, translated a Persian work by Jami into Turkish with a commentary during Ramadan 1931.

The Iftar Table and Ramadan Charity

Iftar is opened with dates and olives, followed by a bowl of soup. The foods most often seen at iftar in Amasya cuisine are cicik soup, lentil soup, rice with egg noodles, börek, hoşaf and çörek. Among the city's own specialties, toyga soup, keşkek, stuffed vine leaves, stuffed broad beans, buttery katmer and meat dishes also reach the table. In Amasya mutton is washed, seasoned with çemen and set aside for the winter for keşkek or çemenli yemek; this preparation, combined with dried broad beans and meat, turns into stuffed broad beans (bakla dolması), which has become one of the region's well-known dishes. Breaking the fast after the cannon shot at sunset, tasting these dishes forms the table side of the custom.

Looking after the poor in Ramadan is an old custom in Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that İbrahim Agha, son of Uncu Hacı Hasan, who made his fortune in the flour trade, endowed his shops and appointed a preacher to the Fethiye Mosque, gave alms to the poor of his quarter during Ramadan, and died in 1210 (1795-1796). In his memoirs Osman Fevzi Olcay also relates that next to the room on the Yeşilırmak side of the madrasa built by Mehmed Pasha, brother of Hızır Pasha of the Kösemihaloğulları, there was a bakehouse with an oven, and that in this oven pide was baked for a whole month, especially in Ramadan, and distributed to the townspeople, to the poor of the quarter and for charitable purposes. As far as he remembered, Olcay dates the construction of the madrasa to 902 (1496).

In Amasya the iftar table is not confined to the family. Neighbors invite one another; special effort is made so that the poor and those without family also receive a share from the table. In 2019 Mayor Mehmet Sarı said that neighborhood iftars attended by two thousand people a day were held in the city and that Ramadan events were organized for a month in the area called Gezi Yolu; saying "All iftar tables in Amasya are open to you," he added that every table has a keşkek and stuffed vine leaves. The boutique hotels of the historic Yalıboyu on the bank of the Yeşilırmak and the restaurants on the hilltops with views of the city also prepare iftar menus; tea is brewed there in the large copper samovars peculiar to Amasya.

The clearest example of the shared table is found in the villages. In Boraboy, a village of 785 people in the district of Taşova, a single iftar table is set every evening throughout Ramadan. Families who put their names on a list take turns preparing the food; depending on the weather, the iftar is held in the mosque courtyard or in the hall beneath the mosque, the fast is broken with the evening call to prayer, and after the prayer everyone goes home. In 2026 the village headman, İzzet Öz, said they had completed the twentieth year of this communal iftar, that the iftar and sahur meals of the elderly were carried to their homes in food carriers, and that rich and poor alike sat at the same table. Villagers say that during Ramadan no food is cooked in any house at iftar time.

Holiday foods follow a different pattern. Guests who visit at the holiday are offered meat dolma, keşkek, baklava and poppy-seed çörek; the custom of giving children pocket money and a piece of lokum wrapped in a handkerchief still continues in Amasya.

Ramadan in Amasya in the Old Records

In Hüsameddin's chronicle the month of Ramadan sometimes appears as the backdrop of the city's political events. The earliest record concerns the Byzantine campaign of the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tasim in 223 (838). Relying on the Kitâbü'l-Maârif, Hüsameddin relates that the caliph reached Harşena at the end of Shaban, entered the city when the Byzantines sued for quarter, made peace with them and freed the Muslim captives while keeping the Ramadan fast in Amasya, and returned to Baghdad at the beginning of Shawwal. This account could not be confirmed by other sources and rests on the source Hüsameddin used.

The records from the Ottoman period are more concrete. In Ramadan 1076 (1666) word spread that the city steward Seyyid Ahmed Agha had gathered certain people at his house on the pretext of an iftar invitation and was stirring them up; the steward was dismissed on the first day of Shawwal, and the affair was suppressed before it turned into disorder. On the eighteenth evening of Ramadan 1196 (1782), Emir İmamoğlu Hacı Halil Efendi, professor at the Bekir Pasha Madrasa and first imam of the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid, who had been invited to iftar at the chief notable's mansion at Köprübaşı, was shot dead by an unknown person in front of the Greek church while returning home after the tarawih prayer. Hüsameddin writes that Halil Efendi was an outspoken scholar who objected to the chief notable's affairs, and that the people laid the murder at the door of the mutasarrıf Mikdad Pasha and the chief notable. Both events indirectly show that Ramadan iftars were occasions at which the leading men of the city gathered.

The greatest disaster in Amasya's recent history also fell on a Ramadan evening. Osman Fevzi Olcay relates that during the years of the First World War, five or six months after the deportation, in a month of Ramadan and exactly at iftar time, a fire that broke out in a carpenter's shop next to the house rented by Gazazoğlu Hamdi Agha razed the town to the ground. According to Olcay's figures, three thousand one hundred and thirty houses, two thousand shops, seventeen hans, nineteen mosques, three churches, seven baths and ten dervish lodges were reduced to ashes within four hours. Olcay makes no comment on whether the iftar hour, when everyone was at the table, played a part in the spread of the fire; the year of the fire is not stated explicitly in the memoirs either.

Ramadan in the City of Princes

Amasya is called the "city of princes" because it was the city where many Ottoman princes received their first education and learned statecraft. Visitors who come to spend Ramadan tour the Amasya Museum, the Şehzadeler (Princes) Museum, the Royal Rock Tombs and the Maiden's Palace on Mount Harşena and the Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum by day, visit the tombs in the city, and wait for iftar time around these places. The sound of the band rising from the citadel, the cannon shot, the iftar tables and the sahur drummer make up the evening and night part of this tour of the city.

Chronology

223 (838): According to Hüsameddin, Caliph al-Mu'tasim keeps the Ramadan fast in Amasya; not confirmed.

1485: Cited as the date of construction of Sultan Bayezid II's mosque and complex in Amasya.

1076 (1666): In Ramadan the city steward Seyyid Ahmed Agha is dismissed for gathering men on the pretext of an iftar invitation.

1196 (1782): Hacı Halil Efendi, imam of the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid, is killed on the eighteenth evening of Ramadan while returning from tarawih.

1210 (1795-1796): Death of Uncu İbrahim Agha, who helped the poor of his quarter in Ramadan.

1248 (1832-1833): One of the cannons in the citadel is kept and the others removed.

1863-1865: Ziya Pasha is mutasarrıf of Amasya.

1281 (1864-1865): Ziya Pasha removes the old cannon in the citadel and has a new muzzle-loader installed; according to tradition, his having drums and zurna played from the citadel also dates to these years.

1870s-1880s: In Hüsameddin's childhood, Ahmed Agha of the Alemdaroğulları is mehterbaşı in Ramadan.

1305 (1887-1888): Death of Hafız Derviş Mehmed Efendi, who preached in the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid during Ramadan.

1931: Mehmet Sabri Yetkin translates a work by Jami with a commentary during Ramadan.

2008: The band is reported to be continuing a 138-year-old tradition; the fourteen-member ensemble plays at the citadel an hour before iftar.

2012: It is reported that the cannon is fired on a light signal from the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid.

2019: The custom is said to be 155 years old.

2020: The Ramadan cannon is renewed.

2022: The custom is said to be 158 years old.

2023: Because of the earthquakes the band does not play from the citadel; only the cannon is fired.

2024: The custom is said to be 160 years old; the mayor fires the first iftar cannon.

2025: The custom is said to be 161 years old; the governor and the mayor fire the cannon together.

2026: The custom is said to be 162 years old; the governor fires the first iftar cannon by remote control; the communal iftar in Boraboy village completes its twentieth year.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, pp. 79-81 (e-book 1-4, p. 100); vol. 2 (e-book 1-4, p. 301); vol. 4 (e-book 1-4, pp. 590, 671). amasya.bel.tr
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 6-8 (e-book, pp. 66, 224, 241); vols. 9-12 (e-book, p. 168).
  • Olcay, Osman Fevzi. Amasya Hâtıraları: Bildiklerim, Gördüklerim, İşittiklerim ile Amasya. Simplified by Turan Böcekçi and Mehmet H. Seçkiner. Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, 2009.
  • Anadolu Agency, Ramadan 2019 report and archive report on Ramadan traditions.

Academic studies

  • Özel, Recep Orhan. "Amasya'da Bir İlim Yuvası: Mecdîzâde Abdurrahman Kâmil Yetkin (ö. 1941) ve Oğulları." Journal of the Faculty of Theology of Amasya University, vol. 6, no. 10 (June 2018): 39-72.
  • Akyüz, Kenan. Ziya Paşa'nın Amasya Mutasarrıflığı Sırasındaki Olaylar, Belgeler I. Ankara 1964 (Belleten, XXX/117, 1966 review). belleten.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Konyapedia, "Ziya Paşa" entry.
  • İslam Düşüncesi Atlası, "Ziyâ Paşa" entry.
  • TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entries "Ramazan" and "Beyazıt II Camii ve Külliyesi".
  • İHA and Habertürk, "Amasya'da Ramazan bandosundan 162 yıllık gelenek", 19 February 2026. haberturk.com
  • Habertürk (AA), "Amasya'da Boraboy köyü sakinleri iftarı evlerinde değil bir arada yapıyor", 20 February 2026.
  • Milliyet, "138 yıllık Ramazan Bandosu", 2008. milliyet.com.tr
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