Asked where the name of Amasya comes from, most sources give the same answer: it is tied to Amasis, queen of the Amazons. The account is usually credited to the geographer Strabo, a native of the city, and is repeated in almost the same words: according to Strabo, the name Amaseia derives from Amasis, queen of the Amazons who were said to have lived in these lands. Because the statement appears in Turkish and English general reference works, it has gained wide acceptance. Strabo's own text, however, presents a more complicated picture. And once the forms of the name, the history of the city and the geography of the Amazon tradition are considered together, the place of the legend becomes easier to judge.

Forms of the Name

The oldest known name of the city is Amaseia. The Turkish Islamic Encyclopedia (TDV) entry on Amasya states that it is not known with certainty when or by whom the city was founded, but that it existed before the age of Alexander the Great (336-323 BC) and that its history is thought to reach back to the Hittite period. The moment the name first appeared therefore remains behind the documents, like the date of the foundation. The written uses available to us belong to the Hellenistic age, that is, to the coins and literary texts of the Kingdom of Pontus and then of Roman rule.

On ancient Greek and Roman coins the name is mostly written Αμάσεια (Amaseia); the forms Amassia and Amasia appear on the same coinage. Some examples show the spellings Amaccia and Amacia, and some readings give Amesseia. This variety consists of different spellings of a single name and reflects the fluctuation involved in rendering a place name in Greek and Latin script. In the Christian period the city appears in Latin and church sources as Amasea. Its Armenian form is Ամասիա (Amasia) and its Ottoman Turkish form is اماسیه (Amasiyye). Modern Amasya shows that all of these spellings carry the same sound.

The Turkish form Amasya emerged through usage that settled before and after the city passed into Turkish hands; the sources do not tie it to a precise date. In the Seljuk period the city was called by the title "Dârü'l-izz", and in Ottoman documents and literature the spelling Amasiyye was generally used. The name was thus never Turkified in a single act. The Greek and Latin sound simply continued, rounded to suit the speech of the new languages. The question of the name's origin accordingly stops being only a question of Greek etymology and becomes the question of whether an older, pre-Greek linguistic layer exists.

The Amasis Legend and Its Basis

According to the legend, the name Amaseia comes from Amasis, queen of the Amazons. In ancient Greek narratives the Amazons are mounted archers, women warriors. In the myths they are most often associated with queens such as Penthesilea, who took part in the Trojan War, and her sister Hippolyta, and Myrina, said to have founded Smyrna (Izmir). Amasis, by contrast, is not a widely known name among these queens, and the known sources contain no record of an Amazon queen of that name outside the Amasya legend.

The attribution of the legend to Strabo stems from the fact that he is the most famous person Amaseia produced. Strabo was born around 64 BC in Amaseia, in Pontus, into a wealthy family, and in his seventeen-volume Geographika he describes his homeland at length. Yet the third chapter of Book XII, where he describes Amaseia, contains no sentence stating that the name derives from Amasis. There Strabo describes the valley of the city, its rock, its palaces and royal monuments, its water reservoirs, its bridges and the surrounding land, but he does not dwell on the origin of the name. This does not prove that the explanation is absent from some other part of the Geographika or from a lost work. What is certain is that the legend does not appear in the Amaseia account, and that general reference works repeat it without citing a source. The phrase "according to Strabo" therefore stands as an attribution that still needs to be verified.

What Strabo writes about the Amazons points in another direction. He places the homeland of the Amazons not at Amaseia but on the plain of Themiscyra on the Black Sea coast. According to him, Themiscyra is a plain in the territory of Amisus (Samsun); it is washed by the sea on one side, rests at the foot of wooded mountains on the other, and is watered by the Thermodon and Iris rivers. He also ties to this region the line of Pindar that speaks of the Amazons ruling a far-reaching "Syrian" army. The Iris, that is the Yeşilırmak, reaches this plain by flowing past the very walls of Amaseia. In describing the course of the river Strabo calls Amaseia "my fatherland" and characterizes it as a very strongly walled city. The Amazon country and Amaseia lie on the same river system, but Strabo does not confuse the two places.

In the same section Strabo reports that the Amazons were also placed elsewhere. Some writers, altering the reading of a line of Homer, look for the Amazons between Mysia, Caria and Lydia, near Cyme. Strabo also records that the names of cities such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme and Myrina were said to come from Amazons. This information matters, because the habit in Anatolia of explaining a city's name by an Amazon queen or warrior ceases to be peculiar to Amaseia and appears as part of an old tradition of explanation. Ancient authors often tied the names of cities of unknown foundation to a hero or to a heroized woman.

Folk Etymology or an Old Name

The view that the Amasis explanation is a folk etymology rests on several observations. The first is that, according to Strabo and earlier writers, the center of the Amazon tradition is Themiscyra, and no archaeological or inscriptional link between Amaseia and the Amazons has been demonstrated. The second is that the name Amasis occurs among Amazon queens only in this legend. The third is the phonetic closeness of the name to the word Amazon and the fact that similar explanations were offered for other Anatolian cities. The relation of the name to the word Amazon therefore rests more on a similarity of sound than on a linguistic derivation.

On the other hand, the real origin of the name has not been clarified by this discussion either. If the history of the city does reach back to the Hittite period, the name may carry a layer older than Greek, belonging to one of the Anatolian languages. The known sources offer no proven explanation of such an origin, and any proposal on the matter remains a conjecture. This uncertainty does not mean that the name can be explained from a Greek root, just as it does not mean that Amasis was a historical person. The only firm datum is that the name has lived on from the Hellenistic age to the present with almost the same sound.

Strabo and His Homeland

Strabo has a large share in how well known the name Amaseia is today. His family was one involved in politics in the service of the kings of Pontus. Dorylaus the Tactician, his mother's great-grandfather, had been a commander in the service of the Pontic kings. A second Dorylaus, nephew of the first and son of Philetaerus, had received from Eupator (Mithridates VI) the highest honors and the priesthood at Comana. Strabo writes that when the king's war with Rome was going badly, his maternal grandfather, angered that Eupator had put to death his own cousin Tibius and Tibius's son Theophilus, obtained pledges from Lucullus and brought about the passing of fifteen garrisons to the Romans. Great promises had been made, but Pompey, who succeeded Lucullus, bore enmity toward everyone who had favored Lucullus, and the Senate did not ratify the honors Lucullus had promised to the people of Pontus. That Strabo reports this turbulent period of the Pontic aristocracy from his own family's memory makes what he says about Amaseia all the more valuable.

The dates of Strabo's life are not firm; sources place his birth between 64 and 62 BC and his death around AD 21-24. His mother's family was prominent under Mithridates Eupator, but it had changed sides in the war against the Roman general Pompey. This change of allegiance gave Strabo connections in the Roman world. The seventeen books of the Geographika rest partly on what the author saw himself in Anatolia, Greece, Italy and Egypt and partly on reliable earlier writers such as Polybius and Megasthenes. Although it is silent on the origin of the name, the work comes from an eyewitness who knew Amaseia on the spot, which makes it indispensable for the ancient topography of the city.

Strabo describes the city as follows. It is situated in a large deep valley through which the Iris flows, and by both human foresight and nature it is an admirably devised place, offering at once the advantages of a city and of a fortress. The rock that dominates the city is high and precipitous and descends abruptly to the river. On one side is the wall on the edge of the river where the city is settled, on the other the walls that run up to the peaks. The two peaks, united with one another by nature, are magnificently towered, and within this circuit lie the palaces and monuments of the kings. The neck between the two peaks is altogether narrow. Going up from the riverbanks and the suburbs there is a height of five or six stadia on either side, and from the neck to the peaks there remains a further ascent of one stadium, sharp and superior to any kind of force. The rock has water reservoirs inside it, and the city cannot be deprived of water because two tube-like channels have been hewn out, one towards the river and the other towards the neck. Two bridges have been built over the river, one leading from the city to the suburbs and the other from the suburbs to the outside territory.

The points at which this description matches present-day Amasya are clear. According to the Islamic Encyclopedia, the city lies 400 meters above sea level in a narrow valley opened by the Yeşilırmak and enclosed by high cliffs on both sides. The caves and royal tombs carved into the steep rocks rising north of the river, and the citadel just above them, are the first things anyone looking at the city sees. The Yeşilırmak runs through a valley of about four kilometers within the city, and because the settlement area on the left bank is very narrow, the settlement forms a thin strip on that side. The main area of growth lies on the right bank. The place Strabo calls "the palaces and monuments of the kings" is associated with the group of structures now known as the rock-cut tombs of the Pontic kings.

Strabo praises the surrounding land as well. According to him the territory of Amaseia is the largest and best of Pontus; it is well supplied with trees, part of it affords pasturage for horses and is adapted to the raising of other animals, and the whole of it is beautifully adapted to habitation. There are also strongholds demolished and land left deserted because of the Mithridatic War. One further detail about his homeland is worth noting. At the pyramids in Egypt he saw stones resembling lentils in shape and size, and was told that they were petrified remnants of the workmen's food, but he did not believe it; for in his own country (Amaseia), he writes, there is a long hill in a plain abounding in pebbles of a porous stone resembling lentils. A geographer used an observation from his own homeland as a yardstick against a claim made about a distant place.

Amaseia as the Pontic Capital

The place of Amaseia on the stage of history becomes clear with the Kingdom of Pontus. The Mithridatic dynasty, of Persian descent, rose in the struggles after the death of Alexander the Great, and Mithridates I (Ktistes, "the founder") proclaimed himself king of Northern Cappadocia and Eastern Paphlagonia in 281 or 280 BC, in conflict with Seleucus. Amaseia was the largest city and first capital of the kingdom, and the royal palace and tombs were located there. Mithridates Ktistes was probably buried in a royal tomb near the city, and after him all the kings of Pontus were laid to rest in the same place until the capture of Sinope. The Islamic Encyclopedia reports that during the Seleucid period the city was at times the capital of the Pontic kings. Some compilations push the years of its capital status much earlier, but because these dates do not agree with the founding year of the kingdom, they should not be regarded as certain.

In the time of Mithridates VI (Eupator) the kingdom entered long wars with Rome. Strabo writes that Eupator held the land from the Halys (Kızılırmak) River to the Tibareni and Armenia. The campaigns of Lucullus and then of Pompey ended in the king's defeat. Amaseia passed into the hands of forces under Lucullus around 70 BC; the Islamic Encyclopedia states that the city was included within Roman borders in 63 BC. The difference between the two dates can be explained by regarding the conquest and the administrative arrangement as separate stages. According to Strabo, Pompey reorganized the administration of the region. Strabo briefly notes that Amaseia was also given over to kings for a time, but in his own day it was already a province.

Amaseia continued to flourish in the Roman period. Around 2 or 3 BC it was attached to the province of Galatia, under the emperor Trajan (around 112) it was added to the province of Cappadocia, and in the 2nd century it received the titles "metropolis" and "first city". From the 3rd century onward it gained importance as a Christian metropolitan see. In the Late Roman period, as capital of the province of Helenopontus, its metropolitanate included cities such as Amisus, Sinope and Zela as suffragan sees. Among the notable Christian figures of this period are the warrior saint Theodore (Theodore of Amasea), who died before 319, and Bishop Asterius, who died around 410 and some of whose sermons survive. The Orthodox metropolitanate lasted until the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, after which its name survives only as a title (titular see) in the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. Throughout this long church history the city was always called Amasea.

The Name in the Arab, Byzantine and Turkish Periods

The city was taken by the Arabs in 712 and a few years later was recovered by Byzantine forces under the emperor Leo III (717-741). In the Komnenian period Amaseia is mentioned in the first book of Anna Komnene's Alexiad; it is where Alexios Komnenos received the Norman commander Ursel as a captive from the Turkish commander Tutach. According to the account, the people of Amaseia were asked for help in raising the money promised to Tutach, which caused unrest, and after a scene arranged by Alexios the people paid. Since the work was written by Alexios's daughter, it is noted that this account may not be impartial.

The dates for the establishment of Turkish rule vary by source. The Islamic Encyclopedia states that there is no certain information on when Amasya was taken by the Turks, but that it is known to have been under Danishmendid administration at the beginning of the 11th century. Some compilations write that Artuk Bey took the city after Malazgirt and that it was added to Danishmendid territory in 1080. The city then passed among the Anatolian Seljuks, Mongol governors, the Eretna principality and Kadı Burhâneddin, and joined Ottoman lands under Yıldırım Bayezid; this date appears in the sources as 1393 or 1398. Left to the administration of Prince Çelebi Mehmed, the city became after the Battle of Ankara in 1402 a base of operations against his brothers, and in the centuries that followed it was known as the city where princes were raised. Throughout all these political transitions the name continued, rounded to suit Turkish speech.

In the Ottoman period the name was mostly written Amasiyye in books and documents. According to the Islamic Encyclopedia, various authors used expressions such as "pearl of the cities of Anatolia", "Baghdad of Rum", "city of the sages" and "city of madrasas" for Amasya. The traveler G. Perrot, who came to the city in 1861, described Amasya as "the Oxford of Anatolia" and wrote that nearly two thousand students were studying in its madrasas. These were not new names added to the city but titles added to the old name; Amaseia has stood beneath all these ages with the same sound.

The Legend Today

The Amazon legend still has a place in Amasya's cultural memory. An Amazon festival is held every year in the Terme district of Samsun, in memory of Themiscyra, regarded as the Amazon homeland. In Amasya, the origin of the name is mostly tied to Amasis. That the legend circulates without being attributed directly to an ancient author has led it to be perceived as a historical fact. When one returns to the ancient sources, what one sees is that the Amazons are tied to Themiscyra, while Amaseia is tied to the history of the Pontic kings, the Roman province and the metropolitanate. Amasis's connection to Amaseia cannot be verified with the sources available to us today.

Chronology

336-323 BC: The age of Alexander the Great; Amaseia is accepted as having existed before this period.

281 (or 280) BC: Mithridates I (Ktistes) proclaims himself king of Northern Cappadocia and Eastern Paphlagonia; Amaseia is the first capital of the kingdom.

c. 64 BC: The geographer Strabo is born in Amaseia.

70 and 63 BC: Amaseia is taken by Lucullus's forces and included within Roman borders; the date varies by source.

c. 2-3 BC: Amaseia is attached to the province of Galatia.

c. 112: The emperor Trajan adds the city to the province of Cappadocia.

3rd century: Amaseia gains importance as a Christian metropolitan see.

712: The Arabs take the city; a few years later Byzantine forces under Leo III recover it.

11th century: The city passes to Turkish rule; at the beginning of the century it is in Danishmendid hands.

1393 or 1398: The city joins Ottoman lands; its administration is given to Prince Çelebi Mehmed.

1923: With the Greek-Turkish population exchange the activity of the Orthodox metropolitanate comes to an end.

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources