Despite the narrow valley in which it was founded, Amasya remained a lively commercial town for centuries. The roads linking Central Anatolia with the Black Sea coast passed through it along the Yeşilırmak; caravans from the east reached the city by way of Tokat and Erzincan, while goods bound for the west headed towards Çorum and Ankara. This position at a crossroads made the city both the market of its region and a regular stop on long-distance trade. The bedesten, hans and arastas built in the Ottoman period were the spaces of this commerce: in the bazaars of the coppersmiths, goldsmiths and weavers, craftsmen produced their wares and merchants bought and sold.

From the second half of the nineteenth century new institutions began to appear alongside this long-established order. First came an annual fair, then a commercial court, a chamber of agriculture and commerce, and a branch of the Ziraat Bank. Under the Republic, the reorganisation of the chamber of commerce, the arrival of the railway, the founding of a sugar factory at Suluova and the spread of cooperatives gave the economy of Amasya a new face. This transformation from bazaar to bank did not happen overnight; the old guild order and the new economic institutions lived side by side for a long time.

A City on the Trade Routes

Amasya's commercial importance stems first of all from its geography. Since antiquity the city had stood on the road connecting Tarsus, Kayseri, Zile and Samsun. In the Ottoman period the silk route running from Azerbaijan to Bursa was added to this. Persian silk travelled from Tabriz by way of the Aras valley, Erzurum, Erzincan and Tokat to Amasya, and from there continued westwards either through Kastamonu and Bolu or through Çorum and Ankara. For this reason the city was an important market for silks coming from the east. Its relative proximity to the port of Samsun, meanwhile, turned Amasya into a transit point carrying the produce of the interior to the Black Sea.

Its status as a princely sanjak also nourished trade. From the mid-fifteenth to the early sixteenth century the princes (şehzades), lalas (tutor-guardians), viziers and palace aghas sent to the city built not only mosques, madrasas and soup kitchens but also revenue-producing structures such as bazaars, hans and a bedesten. The rents from these buildings went to pious endowments (waqfs), which in turn kept the city's religious and social institutions running. Historians list the conditions for a town to become a princely sanjak as lying in a frontier zone, having served as the capital of an earlier principality, and standing out in history, culture and commerce; Amasya met every one of them.

This prosperity did not last for ever. From the late sixteenth century onwards, the declining importance of the trade routes, the Celali disturbances and the general difficulties of the state affected Amasya's economic life as well. Yılmaz Karadeniz notes that the growth the city had gained through the trade routes began to fade after this period and that the decline continued into the eighteenth century. Even so, the city kept its character as a local market and centre of crafts, and in the nineteenth century it revived again through silk production and its fair.

Bazaar, Bedesten and Hans in the Ottoman Period

The real centre of activity in an Ottoman city was formed by the bedesten, the bazaars and the great mosque. The bedesten was a closed, solidly built hall where the great merchants kept their shops and where valuable goods of the transit trade were bought, sold and stored; it was built only in large and wealthy cities. The bazaars clustered around the bedesten, and the open market was held either in the middle of the bazaar or right beside it. In the definition of the time, a city was a place "where the Friday prayer is performed and a market is held". The fact that Amasya possessed a bedesten places it among the large and wealthy cities of Anatolia.

The Amasya Bedesten

According to its inscription, the bedesten was built in 888 (1483) by Hüseyin Ağa, one of the palace aghas of Bayezid II. Hüseyin Ağa was a statesman with many charitable foundations in and around Amasya as well as in Istanbul and Edirne, and he had the bedesten built to provide income for his endowments. The building rose in the Kazancı quarter south of the Helkıs Bridge, and a market known as the Lower Market (Aşağı Pazar) grew up around it. In its original form it was a bedesten of medium size; it is recorded as having a plan of six domes carried on arches resting on two large central piers, with four doors, opening onto an arasta on its east side and surrounded on its other façades by arched shops. Semavi Eyice, however, describes the building as having four piers and nine bays; this discrepancy over the plan makes it difficult to trace the damage the structure suffered.

The later history of the bedesten is a series of misfortunes. It was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1079 (1668). In 1864-1865 the poet Ziya Bey (later Pasha), then governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya, had the lead stripped from its roof and its domes pulled down in the course of his building works in the city; complaints were lodged against him for this and an inquiry was opened. The roof built in place of the domes collapsed after a while, and for many years the bedesten stood as four open walls. In the 1950s part of it was demolished and an office block (iş hanı) was built on the site. When in 1957 there was pressure to demolish the remaining part for the same purpose, the building was saved through the efforts of Semavi Eyice. Around 1970, or according to some records in 1971, the Directorate of Pious Foundations revived the bedesten by rebuilding the domes of the surviving section. In the 1970s the northern section with two domes disappeared during the construction of another office block, and the building survives today with its four domes. Its inscription dated 1483 has come down to us.

Hans and Marketplaces

The hans, where merchants from near and far lodged, stored their goods and conducted their business, were indispensable elements of the Ottoman city. Among the buildings that brought life to the Lower Market in Amasya were the Bayram Paşa Han, the Bakırcıoğlu Han, the Menzilci Mirza hans and the Bezzâzistan. Later a second marketplace, the Upper Market (Yukarı Pazar), was established around the Kapan Han. Since the kapan was the place where goods subject to weighing were officially weighed and taxed, this han and its surroundings held particular importance in the trade of grain and other goods entering the city.

Markets were not confined to the centre. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a market called İbadullah in the Bozahane quarter, and another, known as the Kağnı (or Kanlı) Market, was set up around the Aydın Mosque and bathhouse in the Devehane quarter. This distribution shows that everyday trade formed its own centres in different quarters of the city. Nor did the townspeople live by trade alone: viticulture and gardening were widespread along the valley floors watered by the Yeşilırmak, and in 1576 the sources mention vineyards and gardens known as the Vineyards of Şehzade Ahmed in the direction of the Savadiye quarter. The townsman lived partly dependent on the market through the produce of these lands.

Among the buildings of a later period, the Taşhan is a two-storey han built in 1699 for Hacı Mehmed Paşa by the architect Mehmed Kalfa. It was restored in 2012 and reopened as a hotel. Buildings such as the Taşhan and the Kapan Han are tangible evidence that the commercial life of the city remained concentrated for centuries around the bedesten and the marketplaces.

Silk, Weaving and Crafts

The most remarkable branch of Amasya's economy in the Ottoman period was silk. In the sixteenth century silk weaving was widely practised in the city. Alongside it, a dye-house, a candle workshop (şemhane) and a mint were also in operation. Archival records give a striking idea of the volume of silk arriving from the east: in 1554-1555 the silk that officially entered the city and was weighed within ten months, that is, the amount entered in the register of the silk scales (mîzân-ı harîr), reached 10,632 lodra, roughly 15 tons. According to the research of İsmail Kıvrım, its position on the Persian trade route, its status as a princely sanjak, its proximity to the Black Sea ports and a climate suited to rearing silkworms made the city, after Bursa, one of the places whose silk was most sought after. Having become famous for its silk weaving in the sixteenth century, Amasya turned to producing its own silk once Persian silk was banned.

In the nineteenth century Amasya silk also attracted the attention of European merchants, and the city became a centre that produced and exported both silk and silkworm eggs. According to the French geographer Vital Cuinet, an average of 700,000-800,000 kilograms of cocoons were obtained in the region each year. A disease that spread among the silkworms ruined production within three years, and in 1880 cocoon output fell to 30,000 kilograms. Recovery began with the screening of diseased eggs by Pasteur's method and the replanting of mulberry trees; in 1890 production rose to 80,000 kilograms. Cuinet also writes that there were nearly 2,500 weavers in the city at the end of the nineteenth century. These figures show that Amasya still had a lively industrial and commercial life.

Alongside silk, crafts such as coppersmithing, goldsmithing, dyeing and weaving filled the city's bazaars. The weight of the bazaar in the urban fabric was reflected in the names of the quarters too. According to the first Ottoman survey (tahrir) of 1520, the city had 52 quarters, 48 Muslim and 4 non-Muslim; fifteen of them took their names from a mosque, masjid, soup kitchen or madrasa, fifteen from a scholar, sheikh or dervish, and six from a bazaar or market. Names such as Kazancı, Bozahane and Devehane carry the traces of crafts and trade in neighbourhood life down to the present. Long-established crafts such as coppersmithing survived in later centuries as well, living on as both a commercial asset and a cultural heritage.

Fixed Prices, Guilds and the Court Registers

The workings of the Ottoman bazaar are best revealed by the Islamic court registers. Yılmaz Karadeniz, who studied registers nos. 52 and 53 of Amasya, set out in detail the movement of prices in the city between 1764 and 1770. In this period the prices of basic foodstuffs and necessities were set by the narh, the official fixed-price system. The narh was usually set twice a year, in spring and in autumn. The qadi fixed the prices in consultation with the market inspector (muhtesib), the head of the market, the guild sheikh and the notables, and the resulting list was entered in the court register and distributed to the tradesmen. Compliance with the prices was closely supervised by the qadi, the market inspector and the guild steward (kethüda), and the shops of those who broke the rules could even be closed.

The registers also contain vivid details of guild life. When a narh was issued to the grocers in 1769, the entry states at its head that the matter had been settled with the knowledge of Seyyid Ali Çelebi, head of the city's market, and the elders of the grocers, in accordance with the sharia. In the period studied there were nine butchers at work in the city. No distinction was made between Muslims and non-Muslims in the appointment of butchers; in 1764 Kesdan Hafız Mustafa and a Christian named Manok opened a butcher's shop together. Butchers were bound by the condition that they should not leave the people in want and should always keep meat in stock. In the same years a narh was also issued for silk thread, braid and embroidery silk, the dirhem of silk thread being fixed at 7 akçe in 1766 and 6 akçe in 1769. The appearance of book prices in the registers shows that bookselling and the book trade were alive in the city.

The information Evliya Çelebi gives on the bazaars of Amasya in the seventeenth century is reported in different ways. Some studies state that the city had some 1,060 shops and busy, prosperous bazaars, while in others the figure appears as 106 shops. Since differences between manuscripts of the Seyahatname and misreadings are common in figures of this kind, it is not certain which number is correct; both versions, however, stress that the bazaars were busy.

Amasya's land regime also gave its economic life a distinctive character. Under the mâlikâne-divânî system applied in the Amasya, Divriği and Sivas region of the province of Rûm, the peasant, after paying the taxes on the land he worked to the zaim and the sipahi, also paid a further share to the land's actual owner as rent. This arrangement allowed a landowning group living in the city to draw its income from the villages and tied the urban economy closely to the agricultural production of its hinterland.

After the Tanzimat: The Fair, the Bank Branch and the Commercial Court

In the second half of the nineteenth century Amasya's commercial activity increased somewhat further. In 1863 the city was among the pilot regions chosen for growing cotton seed brought from Egypt, and attempts were made at cotton cultivation. Because of the revival of trade and its relative closeness to the coast, a fair was established in 1864, to open each year on the fifteenth of December and run until the end of the month. In this period grain production and fruit growing also held an important place in the city's economic life. The orchards of the Yeşilırmak valley were the growing grounds of the apples and other fruit that would later become bound up with Amasya's name.

The arrival of modern banking in the city also began in this period. The memleket sandıkları (local agricultural credit funds) founded by Midhat Pasha in 1863 spread throughout the empire with the regulation of 1867, were turned into menafi sandıkları in 1883, and were finally replaced by the Ziraat Bank on 15 August 1888. Sabit Genç, working on the yearbooks (salname) of the province of Sivas, establishes that in 1891 there was a bank branch only in the central district of the sanjak of Amasya, whereas by 1903 branches of the Ziraat Bank had been opened in all the districts of the sanjak. The first bank branch in Amasya was therefore already in operation before the Republic, in the last period of the Ottoman Empire; it was through this institution that institutional credit, free of dependence on the moneylender, became widely available to the farmer.

The same yearbooks list among the official institutions in the centre of the sanjak a commercial court, offices of the Public Debt Administration and the Régie, and a chamber of agriculture and commerce. Some of these institutions were opened later as the need arose; the Public Debt office, not yet seen in the records of 1884, appears in the yearbooks in 1891, and the Régie office together with the gendarmerie and police departments in 1903. Discussing matters of agriculture and trade was also among the duties of the district administrative council. In this way the regulation of trade began to pass, alongside the qadi and the market inspector, to new administrative and legal institutions.

Banking and Credit under the Republic

During the Turkish War of Independence the branches and funds of the Ziraat Bank gave cash assistance to the Kuva-yı Milliye (National Forces) and to local administrations; after the war, too, the restructuring of the bank directly affected the agricultural towns of Anatolia. In 1923 the number of branches and funds was raised from 110 to 300; in 1924 the bank was turned into a joint-stock company and extended wide credit, especially to the regions left devastated by the war. During the 1929 depression and the Second World War the bank also entered villagers' lives through money boxes that encouraged saving and through courses teaching farmers new agricultural techniques.

In agricultural towns like Amasya, banking answered first and foremost the producer's need for credit. Public banks such as the Ziraat Bank became a vital support for apple growers and sugar beet farmers. After the factory was founded, beet farming came to rest on contract production; the planning of sowing, the tending of the crop and the harvesting were carried out by the factory's agricultural service through its regional organisations. Agricultural credit and contract farming integrated the producer into the modern money economy. In time other bank branches opened in the city, and savings, credit and investment services became widespread. The deepening of the money economy enlarged the scale of trade and invigorated the economic life of the city.

The Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry

The most important role in the institutionalisation of modern trade was played by the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The chamber was founded in 1926 on the initiative of the draper Hasan Tahsin Efendi and began its work in a two-storey wooden building rented from Şıhlarlı Osman Efendi. Among the well-known members of its first board were Temiz Ali Efendi, Salih Hafız (Kılıçaslan), Çavuşoğlu Ahmet Efendi, Baytarzade Hacı İsmail Efendi, Kontratçı Hasan Efendi, Azgınzade Hacı Halil, Hacı Süleymanzade, Hacı Hafız Mustafa, Gevrekzade Nurettin, Veysibeyzade Sıtkı Bey, Rıfat Kazanasmaz and Göztaş Seda Cemal. These names show clearly how the tradesmen and merchant families of the old bazaar carried over into the new institution.

The chamber brought merchants and industrialists together under one roof, represented their interests, kept the trade register and promoted the city's economic potential beyond its borders. Acquiring its own building, however, took a long time. Nurettin Kütükçü, elected chairman of the board for the second time on 30 November 1954, took the initiative for a building and purchased a plot. During the chairmanship of Kemal Kelez, construction of a four-storey building began in 1959 on a plot of 250 square metres. In 1967, under Nihat Özdemir, a second four-storey block was added on the adjoining 250-square-metre plot; the premises thus extended over 500 square metres, and the number of units let to tradesmen rose to 12.

When the building could no longer meet the chamber's needs under the chairmanship of Enis Özdemir, extensive renovation was undertaken in 1999. In 2000 the board under Muammer Gedik continued its work in the new premises, consisting of ten rentable shops and offices; Gedik was re-elected chairman in the elections of 19 March 2005 and handed over to Murat Kırlangıç in June 2013. Membership has grown since the founding as the number of people engaged in trade increased; according to the chamber's own records, at one point 1,094 merchants and industrialists were registered in 15 occupational groups.

The growth of trade in the districts eventually made separate chambers necessary. A trade registry office was set up in Suluova on 29 December 1958, and D. Ali Özder was entered in it under number one. By 1974 the number of members from the district registered with the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry had passed 200. In view of transport and communication conditions, the Suluova Chamber of Commerce and Industry was officially founded in the same year, on 1 January 1974. Its founding expenses were met by money collected among themselves by its chairman, Ömer Saraçoğlu, and the first members of its assembly.

The Railway, the Sugar Factory and the Beginnings of Industry

One of the developments that most affected Amasya in the early years of the Republic was the railway. Amasya Station on the Samsun-Sivas line entered service in 1927; some sources date the construction of the railway linking the city to Samsun to 1930. The railway connected Amasya to Samsun, its natural port, and made it easier to transport fruit, grain and other agricultural produce. The narrow valley of the city's site limited its growth; the railway opened the way for the economic centre of gravity to shift over time towards the plains and the districts.

Industry in Amasya began largely through state initiative. The first step was taken in mining: the Old Çeltek Coal Works was established in 1926 and the New Çeltek Coal Works in 1955. Factory-scale industrialisation, however, came with the sugar factory at Suluova. Planned under the programme for expanding the sugar industry, the Amasya Sugar Factory had its foundation stone laid on 13 September 1953 at a ceremony attended by President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The factory began production with its first campaign in 1954 and, among the factories opened under the same programme, became the country's eighth sugar factory.

The factory's initial capacity is given in some sources as 1,800 and in others as 1,890 tons of beet per day. Capacity was raised to 2,400 tons a day in 1965 and 4,800 tons in 1968. Although a private company, the factory was managed by Türkiye Şeker Fabrikaları until 1991, when it took over its own management entirely and became the first sugar factory to be privatised. Later investments raised daily capacity to 5,500 tons. It is known that some 30,000 farmers in about 400 villages grew beet for it, that the wet beet pulp from the factory was distributed to farmers as animal feed, and that the molasses was used in alcohol production.

The factory's impact is plainly visible in Suluova itself. A small settlement of 1,110 people before the factory was built, Suluova grew rapidly with industrialisation. Beet pulp encouraged cattle fattening, and with the establishment in 1976 of a meat processing plant belonging to the Meat and Fish Corporation (Et Balık Kurumu), livestock farming became one of the district's main occupations. Agriculture, industry and trade formed a whole in which each fed the others. Alongside the weaving looms, flour, oil, feed and fruit juice factories processing agricultural produce were established in the province; the sunflower oil factory is mentioned among its oldest enterprises.

Cooperatives and Tradesmen's Organisations

Cooperatives also played an important part in the modernisation of Amasya's economy. Agricultural credit cooperatives and producers' unions enabled farmers to come together and gain strength in production and marketing. These bodies protected producers from the pressure of middlemen and helped them obtain a fair return for their labour. Milk collected by the producers' unions and cooperatives of Amasya and the neighbouring provinces began to be processed in factories established in the province; this arrangement gave the region's producers a regular market.

The chambers of tradesmen and craftsmen became the modern counterpart of the old guild tradition. They helped keep traditional crafts alive and supported professional solidarity, while tradesmen's credit and guarantee cooperatives made it easier for small businesses to obtain finance. Long-established crafts such as coppersmithing survived as both a commercial asset and a cultural heritage. Modern banking, cooperatives and the chamber organisations, combined with the traditional bazaar culture, gave Amasya a many-layered economic structure.

Organised Industry and Foreign Trade

In the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first, Amasya's economy entered a new phase. From 1976 onwards the Chamber of Commerce and Industry campaigned intensively for an organised industrial zone in the province. Around 2010 the province had four organised industrial zones, at Amasya, Merzifon, Suluova (mixed) and Suluova (livestock), together with seven small industrial estates. Industry, long made up of enterprises based on stone and clay, diversified into manufacturing, textiles, furniture and mining with the application of investment incentive laws.

In this period certain products carried Amasya's name abroad. The honey-yellow natural stone known as "Amasya Beige" was sold to 45 countries in 2009, led by China, India and the United Arab Emirates. The yeast factory in the province exported dry yeast to 40 countries in the same year and, in 2007-2009, alone accounted for about 27 per cent of Turkey's live yeast exports. A cooker hood manufacturer in Merzifon sold to 58 countries, and office furniture makers to countries such as India, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Merzifon airport, opened in 2008, and the natural gas supplied to the organised industrial zones were the infrastructure investments that supported this growth.

Thus the city where tons of Persian silk were weighed in the sixteenth century became, in the twenty-first, the centre of a province exporting yeast, natural stone and furniture. The historic bazaar around the Lower Market and the bedesten is still part of the city's commercial life today, while banks, chambers and cooperatives have been added to this old order, layer upon layer, over more than a century and a half.

Chronology

1483: Hüseyin Ağa, palace agha of Bayezid II, had the Amasya Bedesten built.

1554-1555: The silk officially entering the city and weighed within ten months reached 10,632 lodra (about 15 tons).

1576: The Vineyards of Şehzade Ahmed near the Savadiye quarter are mentioned in the sources.

1668: An earthquake caused heavy damage to the bedesten.

1699: Hacı Mehmed Paşa had the Taşhan built by the architect Mehmed Kalfa.

1764-1770: Narh records were entered in Amasya court registers nos. 52 and 53.

1863: Amasya was included among the pilot regions for trials of Egyptian cotton seed.

1864: A fair to be held each year in the second half of December was established.

1864-1865: Governor Ziya Bey (Pasha) had the lead removed from the bedesten and its domes pulled down.

1880: Because of silkworm disease, cocoon production fell to 30,000 kilograms.

1888: The Ziraat Bank was founded to replace the menafi sandıkları.

1890: Cocoon production rose again to 80,000 kilograms.

1891: In the sanjak of Amasya there was a bank branch only in the central district.

1903: Ziraat Bank branches had been opened in all districts of the sanjak.

1926: The Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry was founded; the Old Çeltek Coal Works began operating.

1927: Amasya Station on the Samsun-Sivas line entered service.

1953: On 13 September the foundation stone of the Amasya Sugar Factory was laid.

1954: The sugar factory carried out its first campaign.

1955: The New Çeltek Coal Works was established.

1957: The remaining part of the bedesten was saved from demolition through the efforts of Semavi Eyice.

1958: The Suluova Trade Registry Office was established.

1959: Construction of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry building began.

1967: A second block was added to the chamber building.

1974: The Suluova Chamber of Commerce and Industry was founded.

1976: The Meat and Fish Corporation's meat plant opened at Suluova; the chamber began its efforts for an organised industrial zone.

1991: The Amasya Sugar Factory became the first private sugar factory to take over its own management entirely.

2008: Merzifon airport entered service.

2009: Dry yeast was exported from the province to 40 countries and natural stone to 45.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, "Tarihçemiz" and "Amasya Tarihi".

Academic studies

  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, no. 5.
  • Sabit Genç, "Amasya Sancağının İdari Durumu ve Nüfus Yapısı (1880-1915)", Kırıkkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 11/1 (2021).
  • İsmail Kıvrım, "Osmanlı Döneminde Amasya'da İpekçilik", Turkish Studies, 6/4 (2011).

Official sources

  • Governorship of Amasya, "Bedestenler".
  • Amasya Municipality, "Amasya'nın Tarihi".

Other sources

  • İlhan Şahin, Feridun Emecen, "Amasya", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. III, Istanbul 1991. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Semavi Eyice, "Bedesten", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • Yılmaz Karadeniz, "Amasya'da Fiyatlar (1764-1770)".
  • Suluova Chamber of Commerce and Industry, history of its founding.
  • T.C. Ziraat Bankası, "Bankamız Tarihçesi".
  • "Amasya'da Sanayi ve Gelişimi" (compilation based on 2009 data of the Provincial Directorate of Industry and Trade), 2011.
  • History of the Amasya Sugar Factory (local compilation, 2007).
  • Wikipedia, articles "Amasya Bedesteni", "Taşhan (Amasya)", "Amasya Garı" (supplementary source).

Online sources