Merzifon is an old plain town in the north of the Yeşilırmak basin, attached to Amasya. It stands on a gently sloping hill at the southern foot of Mount Taşan (today Tavşan), and before it, towards the south-east, stretches a broad plain known as Yedikır. It is thought to have been founded at the edge of the fertile Chiliokomon (Binköy) plain, where today's Suluova begins, on the site of the ancient settlement of Phazemon. Its formation as a Turkish-Islamic town did not come about through a single conquest. The Danishmendid advances that followed Manzikert took the town from Byzantium, Seljuk rule made it a centre of learning and building, and the age of Mongol governors and local beys left it in uncertainty for more than a century. When Bayezid I (Yıldırım) entered the region in the early 1390s, Merzifon passed to Ottoman administration, and that transition shaped the next six hundred years of the town.

The Name and the Town Before the Turks

The origin of the name is disputed. The explanation that derives it from Barsevinç of the Huns has no basis; the view that reads it as "border town of the Pontic state," from the Persian merz ("border, place") joined to the word Pont, is also doubtful. It is reported that when the Roman commander Pompey defeated King Mithridates of Pontus in 64 BC, a settlement called Fazemonid stood here, that Pompey declared it a city and named it Neapolis, and that in time the place came to be called Phazemon Neapolis. In the fifth century Stephanus of Byzantium recorded the town as Phamidzon (Famizon). The name then turned into Famezon, Mazifon, Marsovan and Mersivan; Seljuk sources wrote it as Bâzimûn, Persian sources as Merzubân, and Ottoman documents with the spelling Merzifon. The popular pronunciation Mersivan is the last link in this long transformation.

In his History of Amasya, Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar discusses both explanations at length. In his view the name built from "merz" and "Pon" means "the Pontic border, the Pontic encampment"; he regards the popular form Marsıvan as a corruption of the name Barsevinç, and suggests that the original core of the town may have been the village of Marınca, some two kilometres north-east of Merzifon, with Merzifon itself starting as a special encampment and only later growing into a town. Some provincial yearbooks state that the town was conquered by Mengücek, ruler of Erzurum, and took its name from him; Hüsâmeddîn finds this claim "rather strange," since the name Merzifon was known earlier and the two names share no resemblance in sound. His explanations resting on the Huns reflect the historical outlook of his day and are not supported by present-day research; his view that Marınca was the old core also remains a conjecture.

The town remained attached to Amasya under Roman and Byzantine rule; in 395-396 it was plundered by the Huns, who had entered Byzantine territory from the Caucasus, and in the early eighth century it came briefly under Arab rule through the Umayyad raids, after which Byzantium regained control. A small inner citadel stood on the hill in the middle of the town; in Hüsâmeddîn's day its ruins could be seen on the south-eastern side of the town, and he notes that the structure had no importance that would rank it among the ancient monuments. The arrival of the Turks was laid over this long Roman and Byzantine past.

The Danishmendid Conquest After Manzikert

Alp Arslan's defeat of the Byzantine army at Manzikert in 1071 opened the gates of Anatolia to the Turkmen beys. It is reported that Merzifon was conquered immediately afterwards by İltegin Gazi, one of the Danishmendid emirs. Dânişmend Gazi, founder of the Danishmendid dynasty, had fought at Manzikert and, according to the sources, formed the core of his principality by taking Sivas from Byzantium around 1080. Using Sivas as his base, Dânişmend Gazi and his emirs added the districts of Amasya, Tokat, Niksar, Kayseri and Çorum to his realm. A commander named İltekin is also counted among these emirs. The sources do not say plainly whether he is the same man as the İltegin Gazi who conquered Merzifon, but it is clear that the district fell to the share of the Danishmendid beys.

Drawing on works such as the Târîh-i Âl-i Dânişmend and the Dürretü'l-Eslâk, Hüsâmeddîn describes the course of the conquest in greater detail. According to his account, in 468 (1075-1076) Melik Ahmed Dânişmend Gazi marched with İltigin Gazi on Nikonya (Çorum), took its lord Nastûr prisoner, and then captured the fortress of Eflanus (Osmancık) by force. He next came before the fortress of Mangıriyye (Gümüşhacıköy); after a siege of a few days first Mangıriyye and then the people of Merzifon asked for quarter and surrendered. Melik Ahmed Gazi thereupon sent several of his emirs to take the towns of Havza and Köprü and himself returned to Amasya. In this account Merzifon passed into Turkish hands without fighting, through a capitulation that followed the fall of the neighbouring fortress. Since the details and the date 468 rest on the later Danishmendname tradition, they should be treated with caution; the information linking the conquest of Merzifon to İltekin Gazi appears in Hüsâmeddîn as well.

İltegin Gazi's son, Hüseyin Gazi, who bore the title Sihâmüddevle, is known to have lived in Merzifon for a long time. The place where he stayed was remembered first as a village and later as a quarter. Recorded as Samadola in the Ottoman tax registers and as Sehmüddevle in the avârız register of 1642, this settlement is today the town's Samadolu quarter (known more recently as Buğdaylı). Hüsâmeddîn names Sehmüddevle Hüseyin Gazi as emir of Merzifon and writes that he had a mosque and an endowment here, and that both the names "Sihâmüddevle Quarter" and "Sihâmüddevle Village" appear in the old records. Elsewhere the same author presents him as the brother of Hüsâmüddevle Hasan Gazi Bey, who built a masjid near the Yağıbasan Khan in Amasya; the genealogies of the Danishmendid beys are not firmly settled in the sources. The name carries the memory of the Danishmendid commander to the present and is one of the oldest traces left in the town by Turkish rule.

The Danishmendid name also lived on in the village and sub-district names of the Merzifon district. The Gümüştekin sub-district, covering the western part of the district, is attributed according to Hüsâmeddîn to Gümüştekin Gazi, son of Melik Ahmed Dânişmend Gazi; once attached to the district of Bulak, it was later joined to Merzifon together with its villages. The role of the Danishmendids in Anatolia went beyond seizing towns. During the Crusades the principality supported Kılıç Arslan I, besieged Malatya in 1100 and took it in 1103, and captured Bohemond, founder of the Principality of Antioch, releasing him for a ransom. Merzifon was one of the northern fringe towns of this turbulent politics. In terms of buildings the Danishmendid mark is clearer in Amasya: the oldest Turkish building there is the mosque built by Melik Gazi of the Danishmendids just east of the citadel, on the site of today's Şamlar Mosque. For Merzifon, some sources state that once the town came under Islamic rule some buildings surviving from the Byzantine period were converted into a mosque and a madrasa.

Seljuk Rule

The Danishmendid union weakened through the quarrels within the dynasty after Melik Gazi. Kılıç Arslan II (1155-1192) took advantage of this disarray and gradually eliminated the principality. The process stretches from the mid-1170s to 1178; the reign of Nasreddin Muhammed, last ruler of the Danishmendid dynasty, is given as 1175-1178. In this process Merzifon came under the rule of the Anatolian Seljuk state. Amasya was known by the title "Dârü'l-izz" and, in the partition made among his sons towards the end of Kılıç Arslan II's reign, fell to Nizâmeddin Argun Şah. The place of Merzifon in this partition is not separately stated in the sources.

The oldest monument of the Seljuk age in Merzifon is the mosque named after Muînüddin Pervâne Süleyman (the Great Mosque, Ulucami). The Pervâne was the most powerful statesman of the Seljuk state under Mongol control; he built a khanqah, a bath and the hospital now known as the Gökmedrese in Tokat, a madrasa in Kayseri, and restored the Alâeddin Mosque in Sinop. The mosque in Merzifon is the northern link in this building activity. Its inscription, dated 663 (1265), was published by Halil Edhem in 1920 in an article entitled "Merzifon'dan Pervane Muinüddin Süleyman Namına Bir Kitabe". The mosque later burned; the date of the fire is given as 1904 in some sources and 1902 in others. Today only its inscription, two door leaves and its minbar survive; it is thought to have stood in the Yokuşbaşı district, at the head of Eskicami Street. The site, long left as an empty plot, was designated once again as a place of worship, and in 2015 work began on a reconstruction project faithful to the original plan.

In neighbouring Amasya, the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247) and the Gökmedrese Mosque (1266-1267) still stand from the same age; Merzifon was a link in this belt of mosques and madrasas. Amasya's Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb (1209-1210) is another example of the endowment tradition of the Seljuk period, and Amasya is reported to have been a cultural centre that trained scholars and artists in this age. Judging by the names and organisation of its quarters, Hüsâmeddîn places the real growth of Merzifon after 670 (1271-1272). In his view the oldest quarter of the town is the Erzincânî quarter; because the celebrated scholar Şerefeddîn Mehmed Erzincânî lived and taught there until 768 (1366-1367), the name of the great city he came from passed to the quarter. That this quarter name appears among the non-Muslim quarters in the register of 1520 suggests that the name may have passed to a different population in later centuries; this is an inference.

In these centuries two events shook the political life of the region. The first was the Babai revolts. The movement started by Baba İshak, the deputy of Baba İlyas, also affected the Amasya area, and Baba İlyas was captured and executed on the towers of Amasya Castle. The second was the Mongol invasion after the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243. Once the Mongols had taken Amasya and begun to govern the city through governors of their own appointment, Seljuk authority weakened in practice and a new period opened in Anatolia.

Mongol Governors and the Estates of the Merzifon Plain

The traces of the Mongol age in Merzifon are seen most clearly in the names of the district's sub-districts. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Alıcak Noyin, overseer of the province of Rum, came to Amasya, moved on to Merzifon, settled on his estate in what is now known as the Alıcak sub-district, and supervised the whole province of Rum from there. By Hüsâmeddîn's reckoning this sub-district, covering the south-west of the district, has borne his name since 670 (1271-1272); there is no other trace of the commander in the sub-district apart from his name, but some of his descendants became Muslims and went on living there. In this account the Merzifon plain had become one of the administrative centres of Mongol rule in Anatolia.

Zogay, steward of Alıcak Noyin, had also acquired an estate called "Zogay Alanı" in the north-east of the district; the present Zoğu sub-district is a corrupted form of his name. Relying on Arabic sources, Hüsâmeddîn describes Zogay's oppression at length: he extended the town tax he levied on each person even to newborn children, and took the children of the poor who could not pay, for three akçe apiece, selling them to Egyptian merchants as slaves and concubines. For this reason the people's complaints fell "like rain" upon the Ilkhanid ruler Abaqa Khan. Zogay's name had become a proverb for tyranny among the people. This account rests on the compilation of a single author and its details could not be confirmed by another source, but it is noteworthy as a reflection of the local memory of Mongol tax pressure.

The name of the Gelgiras sub-district, covering the south of the district, is linked to the same circle. Written as Gelingiras in the old records, the name comes from Kiras Hatun, daughter of Alıcak Noyin and wife of İzzeddîn Mehmed Pervâne Bey; because she owned this estate when she was a bride, the place was called "Gelin Kiras" (Bride Kiras), and in time the name was shortened to Gelgiras. The lady had a bath in the village of Gelingiras, the centre of the sub-district. Gelgiras was for a long time the centre of a separate district; Hayreddîn Hızır Paşa, who rose to prominence in the reign of Mehmed II, built a mosque here, and his son Hasan Paşa a madrasa and a school. By the time Hüsâmeddîn was writing the town had declined and only the remains of buildings could be seen.

The Ilkhanid and Eretnid Period

From the late thirteenth century Merzifon was ruled first by the Ilkhanids and then by their heirs, the Eretnids. In the Ilkhanid period governors of Mongol origin were appointed to Merzifon and its surroundings. According to the narrative, the Ilkhanid ruler Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan entrusted the administration of the region to the Mongol bey Demirtaş, son of Chupan. More is known about neighbouring Amasya: the city came for a time under the rule of Tâceddin Altınbaş, son of the last Seljuk sultan Gıyâseddin Mesud II, and was then governed by Eretna and his successors, who ruled from Sivas. Merzifon's fortunes in these years were largely tied to those of Amasya, and as the hands governing the region changed, the town was ruled as part of the same sphere.

After the collapse of the Ilkhanid state, the Eretnid principality emerged, centred on Sivas and Kayseri (1335-1381). Its founder, Alâeddin Eretna, of Uighur origin, was one of the commanders of Timurtaş, the Ilkhanid governor of Rum. After Eretna's death the principality was weakened by the throne struggles among his sons, the independent behaviour of governors and the loss of territory to neighbours such as the Karamanids. Alâeddin Ali Bey, who had come to the throne at thirteen, died of plague in 1380 during a campaign against Amasya. His seven-year-old son was proclaimed ruler, but soon afterwards Kadı Burhâneddin Ahmed first seized the regency and then, eliminating the child ruler, founded in 1381 the state that bears his name.

Amid these upheavals Amasya became a separate political unit as an emirate attached to the Eretnids. Emir Hacı Şadgeldi is said to have governed it, with a brief interruption, from 1359 to 1381; it is recorded that Şadgeldi defeated Ali Bey of the Eretnids and took the city. Kadı Burhâneddin marched against Şadgeldi, whom he saw as the most powerful rival threatening his throne, defeated him and had him killed in the autumn of 1381. The struggles between Şadgeldi and his ally Melik Ahmed on the one side and Kadı Burhâneddin on the other also affected Merzifon, and the town changed hands several times in these years. On Şadgeldi's death his son Ahmed, seeking to avenge his father, looked for support first from Kötürüm Bayezid of the Candarids and then from the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, and defended Amasya against Kadı Burhâneddin. Although Kadı Burhâneddin routed the emir of Amasya repeatedly in 1384, he could not take the city. This search for support prepared the political ground for Ottoman intervention.

The Taşanoğulları and the Emirate of Merzifon

The sources do not agree about the administration of Merzifon at the end of the fourteenth century. In some accounts the district was held between 1353 and 1396 by the Taşanoğulları, a family of Turkmen beys, and Ottoman rule was established in the time of Hasan and Ali Bey of that family. Esterâbâdî, who narrates the events surrounding Kadı Burhâneddin, reports instead that he plundered the town and that Celâleddin (Kötürüm) Bayezid, one of the Candarid emirs, also joined the struggle.

Hüsâmeddîn gives an account of the origins of the Taşanoğulları that is not found elsewhere. According to him, the whole of the mountain covering the north of Merzifon was the private estate of Taşan Bey, a descendant of the Seljuk Husrev Şah who lived at Kedeğra. Taşan Bey gained power by exploiting the confusion that followed the disappearance in 727 (1327) of Timurtaş, governor of Rum, and then attached himself to Eretna Bey and set up a small emirate. After Eretna's death he recognised no one and made the mountain his seat; this is why the mountain came to be called Mount Taşan, while in popular speech the name turned into Mount Tavşan. In another section of Hüsâmeddîn's work it is written that Celâleddîn Taşan Bey, son of Emîrdâd, ruled the districts of Köprü, Havza and Merzifon and lived in the high mountains and summer pastures between Köprü and Merzifon. The attachment of the family to the Seljuk line is peculiar to this source and could not be confirmed by other documents.

Mount Taşan, as Hüsâmeddîn describes it, is a mass resembling a coffin in shape, stretching some forty-five kilometres from the Tersakan stream to the Kızılırmak at Osmancık, twenty-five kilometres wide at one end and eight at the other. Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy lie at its southern foot, Havza and Köprü at its northern foot; its eastern slopes are covered with forest and summer pastures. This position shows that a family dominating the mountain could also control the roads between the four towns, and explains why the Taşanoğulları are named together with both Köprü and Merzifon.

The internal history of the family can also be traced in fragments. According to Hüsâmeddîn, in the emirate of Köprü and Merzifon Haydar Bey of the Taşanoğulları was succeeded by his brother Umur Bey, and open conflict broke out between Umur Bey and Araboğlu Zeynel Bey, emir of Zeytun. Taşan Bey's children and grandchildren, such as Bâlî, Ahmed, Ali, Hasan and Şâhin Bey, went on living on the mountain and made their names lasting by endowing part of their lands. Hüsâmeddîn writes that the family lived mostly in the town of Merzifon, accepted Ottoman protection before its peers and proved its loyalty in battle; he also records that in some works such as the Bezm ü Rezm Merzifon was for a time known as the "Vilâyet-i Hâs" in reference to the Taşanzâdes. Halil İnalcık likewise states that after Bayezid's arrival in the region the Taşanoğulları of the Merzifon area, together with the Tâceddinoğulları of the Çarşamba valley and the lord of Bafra, recognised Ottoman sovereignty. The details of the Taşanoğulları's position in Merzifon nevertheless remain a subject awaiting further documentation.

Political uncertainty did not halt building activity. In neighbouring Amasya, works from these years such as the Dârüşşifâ (1308), the Gümüşlü Mosque (1326), the Saraçhane Mosque (1372), the Hızır Paşa Mosque and the Tomb of Şadgeldi Paşa continued to rise. This picture shows that the local dynasties of the age of the beys sustained the tradition of endowment and building without interruption, and that the Ottomans inherited the region on top of an institutional foundation that was already working in this way. In the Ottoman age new buildings were added in Amasya such as the Beyazıt Paşa Mosque (1414-1419) and the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque (1430); at the beginning of the sixteenth century the city counted nine mosques, ten madrasas, four zawiyas, six imarets and fifteen baths. Merzifon was the northern plain town of this network and founded its own endowed buildings within the same tradition.

Bayezid I and Ottoman Rule

The Ottomans' first dealings with the region go back to before Bayezid I came to the throne. Halil İnalcık states that the belief that Bayezid was the first Ottoman governor of Amasya arose from the passing of some areas under Ottoman administration during the relations with Emir Ahmed of Amasya, who accepted Ottoman sovereignty against Kadı Burhâneddin (1384-1388). After his accession, Bayezid marched against Süleyman Bey of the Candarids in 1391 but could not prevail against the forces of Kadı Burhâneddin, Süleyman's ally. The following year, having taken Süleyman Bey's lands, he marched on Osmancık despite Kadı Burhâneddin's objections; Kadı Burhâneddin won the clash at Çorumlu and the Ottoman forces withdrew. According to İnalcık, the emir of Amasya, besieged by Kadı Burhâneddin, surrendered the city to the Ottomans in 1392, and Bayezid came to the region the following year and took possession of Amasya.

Merzifon lay at the very centre of this struggle, since every army coming to Amasya from the north and west halted on the Merzifon plain. In 795 (1393) Kadı Burhâneddin came to Merzifon once more, set up his headquarters and sent troops to Amasya. Bayezid I, drawn into the affair, reached Merzifon with a large army and took the town. This entry is widely cited as the date on which Merzifon was joined to Ottoman territory. The matter was not, however, settled in a single stroke. It is reported that Bayezid was defeated by Kadı Burhâneddin at this time, but that at the end of a renewed struggle he annexed Amasya to Ottoman territory and left the administration of the city to his son Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed); the date given for Amasya is 1398. Some accounts state that the struggle lasted about three years and that the Merzifon area passed definitively to the Ottomans towards 1396.

Relying on the Bezm ü Rezm, written at Kadı Burhâneddin's court, Hüsâmeddîn places the same events at an earlier date. In his narrative Kadı Burhâneddin came to the Amasya region for the second time and descended on the plain of Merzifon, and Ahmed Paşa, beylerbey of Amasya, and Alp Arslan Bey, lord of Canik, asked Bayezid I for help. Kadı Burhâneddin moved from Merzifon through the Amasya gorge and forced his way into the city, while Ahmed Paşa shut himself up in the citadel and resisted. Having finished his business in Kastamonu, Bayezid came swiftly and camped on the Merzifon plain, and as soon as Kadı Burhâneddin heard of his coming he withdrew from Amasya. The author of the Bezm ü Rezm, Azîz bin Erdeşîr, tells of this withdrawal in a way that shields his master: the sultan had stayed long in Amasya and dispersed his soldiers in every direction to gather provisions, and on learning that the Ottoman ruler had come to Merzifon with a heavy army he turned towards Turhal to complete his preparations. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Bayezid then set out from Merzifon and came to Amasya at the beginning of the year 793 (late 1390 to early 1391), took Tokat and rewarded Ahmed Paşa, who had shown his loyalty.

This difference of dates in the sources is striking. Hüsâmeddîn criticises the reliance of Ottoman chronology on the dates of coins and recalls that Egyptian historians place the taking of Konya and Kayseri by Bayezid in earlier years; in this way he moves the encounter on the Merzifon plain to 1390-1391. Accounts based on Esterâbâdî, by contrast, place Bayezid's capture of Merzifon in 795 (1393). It is also possible that Bayezid came to the Merzifon plain more than once; that the two dates may belong to different campaigns is an inference. As Hüsâmeddîn relates, Kadı Burhâneddin's attacks continued even after this; after the victory at Nicopolis Bayezid sent Timurtaş Paşa, beylerbey of Anatolia, to Amasya, and Timurtaş Paşa reached Amasya in the month of Zilkade of the year 798 (summer 1396) and marched against Kadı Burhâneddin. It may be considered that the accounts saying the Merzifon area passed definitively to the Ottomans towards 1396 relate to this campaign.

The Arrival of Mehmed I and Hacı Mehmed Bey, Emir of Merzifon

The new order was soon tested. When Bayezid was defeated and captured by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Ottoman unity fell apart. Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), who had fought in the battle, withdrew with his forces to Amasya and used it as a base of operations against his brothers İsa and Süleyman. Hüsâmeddîn writes that when the prince came to Amasya the emir of the districts of Merzifon and Gümüş was Hacı Mehmed Bey of the Âbâdoğulları of Hakala. Hacı Bey lived in Merzifon, his brother Abdullah Bey in Hakala. İsfendiyar Bey of the Candarids had won over the emir of Osmancık and Kara Devletşah, who lived at Hakala, in order to keep the prince away from Amasya; Kara Devletşah's ten thousand horsemen were an overwhelming force against the prince's five hundred.

As Hüsâmeddîn tells it, the family of the emir of Merzifon resolved the situation. Hacı Bey and his nephew Hasan Bey informed the prince of the trap laid for him as soon as they learned that he had reached Osmancık. When Kara Devletşah and his men were drunk at a banquet prepared for them, Mehmed's forces fell upon them, killed Devletşah and scattered his horsemen. The people of Amasya welcomed the prince before Hakala; Mehmed entered Amasya in the month of Şevval of the year 805 (spring 1403) and became its independent emir. This account appears in detail only in Hüsâmeddîn's compilation, but it is important in showing that the local beys of Merzifon stood beside the Ottoman prince at the very first step of the Interregnum. Mehmed, who restored Ottoman unity at the end of the Interregnum struggle, came to the throne in 1413. With peace restored in the region, Merzifon too regained its former importance.

A District of the Sanjak of Amasya

Under Ottoman administration Merzifon became a district (kaza) of the sanjak of Amasya, attached to the province of Sivas. The district did not cover a wide area; at the beginning of the sixteenth century only eight villages were attached to its centre. According to Hüsâmeddîn, the present district of Merzifon was formerly made up of three separate districts named Merzifon, Merzifonâbâd and Gelgiras; the centre of Merzifonâbâd was the town of Bulak, now a village attached to Gümüşhacıköy. When these districts were abolished in the late nineteenth century, part of their villages was joined to Merzifon, and the district was divided into the sub-districts of Alıcak, Zoğu, Gelgiras and Gümüştekin. The fact that the sub-district names derive from Mongol governors and from Seljuk and Danishmendid beys shows that the administrative map of the district took shape in the first two centuries of the Turkish-Islamic age.

Amasya, by contrast, was an important princely seat where, from Mehmed I onwards, Murad II, Mehmed II and Bayezid II served as sanjak governors; Alâeddin, son of Murad II, Şehzade Ahmed (Prince Ahmed), son of Bayezid II, and Süleyman the Magnificent's sons Şehzade Mustafa and Şehzade Bayezid also served here. Merzifon never became a princely sanjak itself, but it grew in the shadow of this setting. Hüsâmeddîn writes that in the years when Mehmed I governed Amasya he came to Merzifon and had a palace built here, and that the town thereby gained an important place in Ottoman history.

The First Ottoman Endowments

In the first half-century of the Ottoman age the town took on an institutional appearance. The most important building of this period is the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa. According to the Arabic inscription in thuluth script above the arch of the entrance iwan, construction began in 817 (1414) at the order of Mehmed I and was completed in 820 (1417) by Umur Bey b. Ali. Hüsâmeddîn places the madrasa, together with a bath, in the year 818. Its architect, Ebû Bekir b. Muhammed Hamza el-Müşeymeş, belonged to a family of architects from Damascus; his name also appears in one of the inscriptions of the Bayezid Paşa Mosque in Amasya, dated 817 (1414), and his son Ahmed is named in the inscription of the Karaca Bey Mosque in Ankara. The same master working in Amasya and Merzifon at the same time suggests that the two towns were part of a single building programme under Mehmed I.

The madrasa is one of the few buildings that kept alive in the Ottoman period the open-courtyard, four-iwan plan, one of the oldest madrasa schemes of Turkish-Islamic architecture. Around a square courtyard about fifteen metres on a side are set the entrance iwan, an iwan serving as a summer classroom, two winter classrooms and, between them, twenty cells in groups of five. The pointed arch of the entrance iwan, built of dark red and pale yellow stone, recalls Mamluk taste; the carved wooden leaves of the courtyard door, decorated with geometric motifs and hadith phrases in thuluth, are now in the Ankara Ethnography Museum. The local people called the building the "Merzifon Sultâniyesi." Scholars such as Ferîdüddîn-i Dîvânî, Seydî Şemseddin Ahmed-i Kırîmî, Rükneddin Abdülkerim of Amasya and Nizâmeddin Abdurrahman-ı Âftâbî taught here. After 1844, when the teaching post began to pass from father to son, the scholarly life of the madrasa came to an end and the building was used for a time as an arms depot. The clock tower above the iwan was added in 1865 by Ziyâ Paşa, governor of Amasya.

Other endowed works followed the madrasa. The imaret that Mehmed I's mother Devlet Hatun built in 822 (1419) together with a mosque and a zawiya, the Tâceddin İbrahim Paşa Mosque, probably dated 828 (1425), and the Medreseönü Mosque (830/1427), known as the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Mosque but in fact built by Murad II, are endowed works of this period. Hüsâmeddîn adds to these the mosque of Hoca Hacı Hasan Çelebi, the bath that Murad II built together with his mosque, the mosque and school of Kadı Mahbûb Çelebi, the bath built by Mehmed II in 878 (1473-1474), the lodge belonging to the Zeynîs built by Şeyh Ali Çelebi of Merzifon, and the mosque and school founded by Bozacı Ali Çelebi in his own quarter in 900 (1494-1495). According to Hüsâmeddîn, the descendants of Yûsuf Paşa, steward of Devlet Hatun, served as trustees of the lady's endowments for some four hundred years and produced statesmen such as Şehsüvâr Paşa and Ahmed Paşa. The Alaca Minare Masjid (906/1501) and the Sofular Mosque (sixteenth century) followed. These buildings determined the physical appearance of the town in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Town in the Sixteenth Century

The Ottoman tax registers show what kind of population and pattern of quarters three centuries of Turkish-Islamic accumulation had left in the town. In 926 (1520) the town of Merzifon had thirty-four quarters in all, twenty-eight inhabited by Muslims and six by non-Muslims. The population was roughly five to six thousand; 1,025 households were counted, 786 Muslim and 239 non-Muslim. Some of the quarter names have survived to the present: Câmi-i Atîk (today Eskicami), Câmi-i Cedîd (Camicedit), Hacı Balı, Harmanlı Mescidi, Hoca Süleyman, Kadı Mahbub (Gazimahbup), Mahzen, Neccar and Sofular. Among the other Muslim quarters were names such as Bakkal Süleyman, Çilehâne-i Halîfe, Hacı Âdil Mescidi, Mescid-i Ahî Bahtiyar, Seydi Bölüğü, Sütçü, Şatırvan, Tarakçı and Tuzpazarı; the most populous of the non-Muslim quarters were Bozahâne, Erzincani, Kaplan and Kilise. It may be supposed that the people who gave their names to the quarters were local notables between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hüsâmeddîn, too, links quarter names such as Kadı İmâdeddîn Mahbûb-ı Buhârî, Hoca Süleyman and Sofular to well-known figures of the ninth Hijri century, and Seydî Bölük and Ali Bozacı to those of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

An annual revenue of about 82,000 akçe from the commercial and industrial taxes of the town was assigned to the sultan's crown estates. At the end of the sixteenth century, in a town with an adult male population of 1,783, the number of Muslim households was recorded as 781 and that of Christian households, made up of Armenians, as 175. In the avârız survey made in the mid-seventeenth century twenty-eight quarters were found, and Christians who had come from outside and settled were registered in four quarters. The figures in this register show that the numbers given by Evliya Çelebi, who came to the town in February 1648, such as forty-four quarters and four thousand houses, were exaggerated. These figures show that the town developed steadily under Ottoman administration and that a multi-faith society lived around its Turkish-Islamic core.

Sufism and Cultural Life

From the Danishmendid age onwards Merzifon had taken on the appearance of a typical Turkish-Islamic town, with its madrasas, mosques, masjids, dervish lodges and tombs and various charitable foundations. The ancient inner citadel stood on the hill in the middle of the town; the outer citadel lay at the foot of the hill and has not survived. Pîrî Baba holds an important place in the spiritual history of the town. According to legend he came to Anatolia with the permission of Hoca Ahmed Yesevî, but in reality he probably lived in the second half of the fifteenth century. What is known of his life rests on the Menâkıb-ı Pîrî Baba written by Hoca İbrâhim and on Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme. According to the Menâkıbnâme, Pîrî Baba was from the village of Narince near Merzifon and as a child was apprenticed to a shoemaker in the town. Hüsâmeddîn dates the zawiya of Pîrî Baba of Khorasan to 868 (1463-1464); Hoca İbrâhim, for his part, says that he himself built the Pîrî Baba Zawiya mentioned in the tax register of 926 (1520).

At the centre of Pîrî Baba's legends lies his relationship with the sultan of the day. The dervish, who lived in the furnace room of the bath, did not leave even during the hours set aside for women, which drew the anger of the ulema of Merzifon, and he was denounced to the sultan. In the Menâkıbnâme the ruler who comes to Merzifon to punish him is Mehmed II (the Conqueror); Pîrî Baba wins his heart with his miracles and foretells the conquest of Istanbul. Evliya Çelebi, however, writes that the sultan to whom he was denounced was Murad II, and relates that when the prophecy came true 366 villages and the town of Merzifon were endowed to the lodge. The fact that the dervish is called "ışık" in the sources and went about naked shows that he belonged to the Kalenderi milieu; the tension with the ruler in the legend has been interpreted as a reflection of the distance between free-spirited Kalenderi dervishes and the ulema of the town. The lodge bearing his name and the Pîrî Baba cult that grew up around it have kept their influence to the present day. The tombs of Sufis such as Şeyh Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî (fifteenth century), Kılıç Baba, İsmâil Dede, Topçu Baba and Pehlivan Dede also still stand in the area. Hüsâmeddîn also counts Sünbül Sinan Efendi, founder of the Sünbüliyye order, among the great saints raised by Merzifon.

Evliya Çelebi describes Merzifon in the seventeenth century as a walled town with lively trade. Most of the buildings such as the bedesten, the Taşhan, the mosque complexes and the waterworks were added to the town in later centuries, above all through the complex built by Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa between 1666 and 1679, and they reinforced the permanence of the town in the Ottoman age. According to Hüsâmeddîn, the pasha turned the masjid built by his mother Âbide Hatun in his birthplace, the village of Marınca, into a mosque, then built his great mosque in the middle of the town and set up some thirty fountains with water he brought from Mount Taşan. Six hundred years after the Danishmendid conquest, Merzifon was rebuilt once again at the hands of a grand vizier it had raised itself.

Chronology

  • 1071: Battle of Manzikert; afterwards Merzifon was conquered by İltegin Gazi, one of the Danishmendid emirs.
  • 1075-1076: According to Hüsâmeddîn, Melik Ahmed Dânişmend Gazi's campaign against Nikonya, Osmancık and Gümüş; the people of Merzifon asked for quarter and surrendered.
  • 1175-1178: Kılıç Arslan II put an end to the Danishmendid principality; Merzifon came under Anatolian Seljuk rule.
  • 1243: Battle of Kösedağ; the period of Mongol-Ilkhanid rule began.
  • 1265: Date of the inscription of the Muînüddin Pervâne Süleyman Mosque.
  • 1271-1272: According to Hüsâmeddîn, the Alıcak sub-district began to bear the name of the Mongol overseer Alıcak Noyin.
  • 1327: Disappearance of Timurtaş, governor of Rum; according to Hüsâmeddîn, the rise of Taşan Bey.
  • 1335-1381: Period of the Eretnid principality.
  • 1380-1381: Death of Alâeddin Ali Bey; foundation of the state of Kadı Burhâneddin; killing of Hacı Şadgeldi, emir of Amasya.
  • 1390-1391: According to Hüsâmeddîn, Bayezid I came to the Merzifon plain and Kadı Burhâneddin withdrew from Amasya.
  • 1392: According to İnalcık, the emir of Amasya surrendered the city to the Ottomans.
  • 1393: Bayezid I took Merzifon during his struggle with Kadı Burhâneddin.
  • 1396: Timurtaş Paşa came to Amasya against Kadı Burhâneddin.
  • 1398: Amasya joined to Ottoman territory; its administration left to Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed).
  • 1402: Battle of Ankara; Mehmed I withdrew to Amasya.
  • 1403: Kara Devletşah eliminated with the help of Hacı Mehmed Bey, emir of Merzifon; Mehmed I entered Amasya.
  • 1414-1417: Construction of the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa.
  • 1419: Imaret of Devlet Hatun.
  • 1520: 34 quarters and 1,025 households counted in Merzifon; the Pîrî Baba Zawiya recorded in the tax register.
  • 1648: Evliya Çelebi's visit to Merzifon.

Bibliography

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