The folklore of a region is read most clearly in its dances, its songs and its dress. In Amasya these three are not displayed separately; at certain turning points in life, above all at weddings, they run together. On Friday a flag is raised in front of the wedding house and the drum begins to sound, and from that moment the everyday time of the village or neighbourhood runs on a different clock. Then a great fire is lit in the square, and in the middle of a ring of people two dancers chase one another. While the Yeşilırmak flows on below, a memory passed from generation to generation, most of it never written down, continues to work above. The pages that follow gather the written part of that memory, namely the recorded folk dances, wedding customs, costumes and songs, on the basis of academic studies and official cultural inventories.

The Place of Folklore in Amasya

Amasya is a province in the interior of the Central Black Sea region, settled along the Yeşilırmak valley; its districts are Merkez, Göynücek, Gümüşhacıköy, Hamamözü, Merzifon, Suluova and Taşova. According to the records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Culture Atlas, the local dances are generally performed at weddings, henna nights and other special evenings, and when young men leaving for military service are seen off. This observation shows that Amasya folklore is less a stage spectacle made to be watched than a language that accompanies the thresholds of life: marriage, military service, festivals and harvest.

It is often said that the regional dances resemble the horons of the Black Sea. No source confirms this comparison. Most of the recorded dances take the form of halay, karşılama and spectacle dances performed around a fire. Rahime Deveci's field research on Amasya weddings adds a further detail: the form of the dance changes from district to district and often from village to village, and the only constant is that the moment a wedding begins is marked by a dance. Deveci's research rests on interviews with informants in 2018 and 2019 and is derived from the doctoral thesis she defended in 2021; for this reason some of the practices described below survive today only in villages that have preserved their tradition.

Recorded Folk Dances

The Culture Atlas and the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism give a long list of regional dances: Narilli (Narey), Topal Kız (Sırıklı), Noktalı, Karlıdağlar, Kasap Oyunu, Temürağa, Küstahlı, Sarhoş Halayı, Manili, Dallihe, Esen Yel, Semah, Mektepli, Yanlama, Yelleme (Sallama), Burçak Tarlası, Köroğlu Halayı, Tanakul, Çerkez Halayı, Oduncular, Amasya Ağırlaması, Düz Ağırlama, Hoşbilezik, Sarıkız, Tamzara and Jandarma. The spelling of some names varies from source to source; the Jandarma dance appears in one record as Candarma. Other compilations also mention names such as Merzifon karşılaması, Sıçrama halayı, Terli koyun, Üçayak, Bildiş oyunu, Dalliko and Laz halayı. Given that the same dance may be known by one name in one village and by another in the neighbouring one, it is only natural that the lists differ. Read together, they reveal three main strands: men's dances on the themes of military service and valour, the halay family such as ağırlama and karşılama, and spectacle forms played around a fire.

Yelleme and Mahir Çavuş

According to the records, Yelleme is performed mostly by young men leaving for military service and at its core carries a sense of valour. In the same records the dance of Mahir Çavuş appears under a separate heading. In the account, Mahir Çavuş was a brave man who lived in Göynücek and lost his heart to a girl in one of the district's villages, and the dance is dedicated to that love. No written document for the story has been produced; it has entered the records as a tradition living in the region, and the dance is still performed.

Sim Sim

The best known of Amasya's dances is Sim Sim, also called Sinsin in some places. According to the description in the Culture Atlas, the dance is performed around a fire, with one hand behind the back and the other raised, to the accompaniment of drum and zurna. While one dancer performs his show in the middle, a second rushes in quickly, shouting a cry, and tries to chase him off and strike him. What matters is the speed of the movements and the elegance of the dance; two dancers who agree on it may also perform a show facing each other.

In an article published in the journal Dede Korkut in 2023, Rahime Deveci describes the dance's place in the wedding in detail. According to the author, the groom's henna nights in the region are called "simsim nights" and the village squares "simsim squares". The dance is played on two nights: on the night before the henna night it is the "small simsim", reserved only for the unmarried young men of the village, and on the henna night itself the "great simsim". The yiğitbaşıs, the leaders of the young men, call the people with the cry "Daradura gel gel, simsime gel" ("Come, come, come to the simsim"). The person who opens the dance is expected to be older, respected and self-assured. The drum and zurna begin slowly, and the dancer's movements quicken with the music. At the peak the second dancer leaps into the square, claps, spins on his own spot with eagle figures and tries to land a punch on the first dancer's back. If the punch lands, he takes the other's place; if it does not, the first dancer carries on.

The ending of the dance is also bound by a rule. A respected man takes a half-burnt log from the fire and hurls it far away, and once the log has been thrown Sim Sim is not played. The same article reports that the Sim Sim fire lit on the henna night is kindled with the kindling brought from the bride's house together with the henna; in this way the fire becomes a link joining the two houses.

The dance, known to be played at every wedding in Taşova, was treated by Gültekin Erdal and Kelime Erdal in the journal Hikmet in 2025. The abstract of the article defines Sim Sim as a two-person rhythm dance of hands, arms, feet and body, notes that it is also played in Tokat, Sivas and Çorum, and adds that the audience keeps the tempo by clapping and encourages the next pair of dancers before the music ends. Sim Sim therefore cannot be regarded as peculiar to Amasya alone; the region is one of the places that keeps it alive in its most rule-bound form and most tightly tied to the order of the wedding.

The dance's link with fire is read from another angle in Ali Toraman's article in the Amasya special issue of the Amasya University Journal of Social Sciences. Toraman recalls that in Turkish culture fire is less an object of worship than a means of cleansing, and gives examples from Amasya. He reports the view, expressed among the people, that jumping over the Nevruz fire in Göynücek is done to be rid of the grime of the year, and states, relying on Taştan's 2019 study, that Sim Sim played around a fire carries a meaning in the same direction. This is an interpretation. No early written document on the ritual meaning of the fire has been produced, and no firm judgement can be made about the origin of the dance.

Kaplumbağa and Kartay

The Culture Atlas describes Amasya as a region quite rich in spectacle dances. These are generally performed at weddings after the Sim Sim fire; Kartal (Eagle), Kaplumbağa (Tortoise), Arap (Arab) and Deve (Camel) are among them.

The Kaplumbağa game is played at night during weddings lasting three to five days. After a guest throws a piece of the fire into the air to announce that Sim Sim is over, the wedding steward arranges the players. One player asks the steward for land to plough and sow; a man wearing a hide on his head becomes the ox and ploughs the field, and then maize is scattered. The "tortoises", their hands tied to their feet and crouching on their knees, enter the field and begin to gather the seeds. When the farmer sees this he turns them onto their backs, and the tortoises, struggling helplessly to get back onto their feet, make the crowd laugh. In the end the farmer takes pity, sets them right and drives them out of the field with his goad. That the game imitates a scene of sowing and fertility is clear from the performance itself; the sources do not comment on it further.

In Kartay, that is the Kartal game, 8 to 10 people in a line raise their arms and circle, in movements recalling the flight of an eagle, around a sheep or lamb hide placed by the fire. The players show one another their strength in order to take the hide. The person who will take the hide has been decided beforehand. Holding a long stick, this player lines the other eagles up behind him and swings the stick toward whichever side the eagles attack from. According to the records, the game used to be played in the villages after Sim Sim.

Dances That Open the Wedding

Deveci's field research shows that the dance opening the wedding in districts and villages shares a common function. These dances mark the beginning of the ritual and carry the participants from everyday time into wedding time. The prominent examples in the research are as follows.

  • Esenyel (some villages of Gümüşhacıköy and Merzifon): Performed in front of the wedding house right after the drum is sounded and the flag is raised. Women and men form a large circle hand in hand, and hands, arms and feet move in harmony. When the drum and zurna fall silent, the dancers sing the tune together: "Esen yel olacaksın, sararıp solacaksın, ben hâkime danıştım, sen benim olacaksın" ("You will become a passing wind, you will turn yellow and wither; I consulted the judge, you will be mine") and lines such as "Hoppala yavrum yaz geldi, Merzifon'a kiraz geldi" ("Hoppala, my dear, summer has come, cherries have come to Merzifon") are among the words reported in the article. The same dance is also the first dance of the henna night at the bride's house.
  • Baş Halayı (villages of Akdağ in Suluova): The first dance of a series of halays. Young men perform it in front of the groom's house just before loading onto the groom's back the sack of wheat for keşkek.
  • Temur Ağa or Dik Topuk (Göynücek): A dance of the ağırlama group of halays, it is the first dance of the engagement, the wedding and every ritual gathering. The dancers lock hands by the little fingers to form a straight line, stamp their heels on the ground and go three steps to the left, then to the right.
  • Babayiğit (Merzifon): Part of the flag-raising ceremony. The congregation coming out of Friday prayer gathers in front of the groom's house and the imam prays. The flagpole is decorated with coloured paper strips, and an onion and a few rooster feathers are fixed to its tip. After the pole is raised amid prayers on the Prophet, the Genç Osman March is played and Babayiğit is danced. The choreography is built on the theme of valour and heroism.
  • Wuç (Circassian villages): The ceremonial dance that is danced first and last at Circassian weddings. It is arranged so that unmarried girls and boys can get to know one another, and the same order is followed at village weddings and at hall weddings alike.

What these examples share is that the dance falls not in a free entertainment part of the wedding but at the very start of the ceremony or at its most important points of transition. According to Deveci, this placement is no coincidence; the dance serves as a signal announcing to the whole community that the wedding has begun and encodes the passage from everyday time to ritual time. The theoretical framework the author uses is the model of rites of passage of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. According to this model a transition such as marriage passes through three phases, separation, threshold and incorporation, and the wedding is the phase in which the passage from being single to being married is dramatised before the whole community. This interpretation is the author's analysis and not the people's own explanation, but it offers a useful reading for understanding the order of the ceremony.

The Wedding Calendar

The record titled Düğün Öncesi Hazırlıkları ve Düğün (Preparations Before the Wedding, and the Wedding) in the Culture Atlas gives the region's traditional wedding calendar in detail. As the wedding approaches, as before the engagement, "eksik görme" is carried out: the bride's mother and the groom's side go shopping together for the wedding dress, the furnishings of the new home and gifts for the bride's side. Meat, rice, oil, the dowry chest and the things bought for the bride are sent to the bride's house on Friday, before the wedding begins, to the accompaniment of drum and zurna. In the Alpaslan township of Taşova this practice is called aşboğaz or seysana. Deveci's article also lists other names for the same practice, such as kalın, yük, ağruk, tohumluk and kaftanlık.

The day before the wedding, stuffed vine leaves are rolled at the wedding house. At the hour announced over the loudspeaker, neighbours and relatives, mostly women, come together bringing wheat for soup or bulgur. At the groom's house the drum and zurna team starts to play from Friday on, a flag is raised so that the wedding house is known, and the wedding steward and the yiğitbaşı are appointed. The bride and the groom-to-be each choose a best man or witness, and the guests are served a meal called danışık yedirme. On Saturday the two sides come together in a large space in the village and in a wedding hall in the town. The wedding ends with gold being pinned on the bride and groom, and the groom's family bears all the expenses. According to Deveci the ritual does not stop there; within the sequence lasting up to a week and often three days, the bride's bath, the henna, the fetching of the bride, her bringing down into the house, the wedding night and the day after are successive units, each with a meaning of its own.

The Henna Night

On Saturday evening the henna night is held at the bride's house. The henna prepared by the bride's mother is placed in the middle of a tray, and candles are stuck around it. The bride is dressed in the henna outfit, she is made to weep with henna songs and hymns, and her henna is applied after a gold coin is placed in her palm. Accompanied by drum and zurna, the groom too comes to the bride's house to get the henna. According to the record, the prepared henna, together with candles, nuts, a towel and a handkerchief, is sold on a tray to the groom's best man for a certain tip, and the best man sells it on to the groom for a higher price. In villages a hen is also taken from the bride's house, and the party goes back to the groom's house dancing.

The bride's house does not hand over the henna easily. According to the pattern reported by Deveci, the kızbaşı, the leader of the bride's girls, makes the groom's young men dance for a while by saying "Delikanlılar halay çekmezseniz gınayı vermem" ("Young men, I will not give the henna unless you dance the halay"), and when the yiğitbaşı convinces her that they have danced enough, the bargaining over the henna begins. In Hamamözü this test is applied to the groom himself: the bride's friends make the groom dance until he is tired, until his best man comes and rescues him.

While henna is applied to the groom, the best man dips his finger in the henna, raises his hand and counts one, two, three. The unmarried young men try to reach the henna-stained finger; whoever reaches it first is believed to be the first to marry. The remaining henna is distributed to friends with the words "darısı bekârların başına" ("may it be the turn of the unmarried"). On the same night the names of unmarried girls are written under the bride's shoes, and the one whose name is rubbed out is believed to be the next to marry. The source records these as beliefs.

The Bride's Bath, Fetching the Bride and the Veil

According to Deveci, in Amasya the kız içi, kızbaşı gecesi or ana kınası held for the bride, together with the küçük sinsin gecesi held for the groom and the next day's güvey hamamı and gelin hamamı (the groom's and the bride's baths), make up the separation phase of the ritual. In the villages of Uygur, Sevincer and Yağcıabdal in the central district, a mourning is performed before going to the bath: the bride is seated on a cushion in a black chador, and she embraces her mother and they weep together. In the villages of Davutevi and Ardıçpınar in Göynücek, a lament is sung by an âşık, a folk bard. In Merzifon the bride, after being washed, is made to dance around the göbek taşı, the heated marble slab of the bath; in Gümüşhacıköy young girls holding lit candles circle around her singing hymns while she is washed. The article interprets these practices as a rite of passage; this interpretation is the author's analysis.

Dances that turn around the bride just before the henna is applied are also a shared feature of the region. In Gümüşhacıköy this is called Kız Oyunu, and in the villages of Kızoğlu and İbecik in the central district it is called Ellik. In Davutevi, one of the Sıraç villages of Göynücek, the bride herself dances the Semah. In the villages of Kızseki, Vermiş and Yenice, young girls pass the henna tray from hand to hand and circle around the bride singing the songs "Yüksek yüksek tepelere" and "Kınayı getir aney" until she weeps. After the bride has wept, roasted chickpeas brought from the groom's house are thrown one by one onto her head. In Taşova the bride's face is covered with a red kerchief, and the cloth is lifted from time to time to see whether she is weeping; if she is not, the songs and the circling continue.

On Sunday the bridal car is decorated to fetch the bride. The bride's house ties yemeni, chiffon or towels onto the arriving cars. The young girls do not open the door in order to get a tip and sit on the bride's dowry chest. Her brother ties a red kardeş kuşağı, a brother's sash, around her waist, and the bride does not get out of the car until her father-in-law has paid a tip. Before the bride enters the house, the groom scatters nuts and small coins over her from a height, or her mother-in-law breaks a jar full of coins. The bride is made to step on a lamb hide, she smears oil on the doorstep, passes over an iron basin and is seated on her own dowry chest facing the qibla. She gives sweets to her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. At the veil stage, according to Deveci's records, wheat is put in the bride's right hand and barley in her left. A woman who plays the frame drum and sings a song goes in front and the bride follows behind, and they dance scattering the wheat and barley.

Traditional Dress

According to sources on regional dress, men wear a dal fes on the head and tie a yemeni around its edge. The shirt (göynek) is of white linen with a hakim collar and black buttons. The waistcoat, called delme in the region, is lined and sleeveless, open in a V at the front, and black or navy in colour. The back of the shalwar is slightly gathered and its legs are narrow, and a wide patterned sash is tied around the waist. Over knee-length, hand-embroidered woollen stockings with gonç patterns, a çarık (leather sandal) bound with leather laces is worn. A silver chain called köstek, a purse and a handkerchief are also men's accessories.

Women's dress is more layered. In the list of one folklore source, an inner göynek, shalvar, üçetek, önnük, shawl, cepken, waistcoat, sash, fes, yemeni, stockings and çarık are given. According to Kadir Aydın, the traditional women's dress worn by the Yörüks in the villages of Ilısu and Karayakup consists of twelve pieces: fes, sequinned yemeni, göynek, üçetek, cepken, waistcoat, sash, çarpana sash, shalvar, stockings and çarık. The headdress is a fes of burgundy felt, also called tepelik, boncuklu fes or terlik, and coloured beads are strung on the threads that fall to the level of the forehead. The small differences between the two lists show that the costume changes by district and village. Rather than speaking of a single Amasya costume, it is more accurate to speak of a family of closely related garments.

Songs and Music

Academic studies on Amasya folk songs also introduce the region in figures. Nail Demircioğlu's 2022 article in Art Vision states that the TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire contains 48 songs belonging to the Amasya region. Haluk Yücel's study of Amasya songs in terms of their words and musical elements draws on the TRT archive, the Amasya Türküleri CD prepared by TRT, and the book Amasya Türküleri of the Amasya Municipality. In the research on Alevi-Bektashi elements based on the same sources, about 40 songs were examined, and songs on the themes of separation, love and longing were found to come first, followed by laments and works of semah character.

Yücel's 2016 study on Merzifon examines 94 Merzifon songs. In this sample songs with religious content account for 20.2 per cent, love songs for 17 per cent, separation songs for 13.8 per cent and laments for 4.2 per cent, and the study notes that the main instrument accompanying Central Black Sea songs is the bağlama. It should be borne in mind that the two studies rest on different samples. One surveys the whole province and the other a single district, so the conclusions they reach on the most frequent theme differ from each other.

The core of wedding and square music, however, is the drum and zurna. All the ceremonies described above begin with their sound. Henna songs are the means of making the bride weep, and "Yüksek yüksek tepelere" and "Kınayı getir aney", recorded by Deveci, are among them. The songs and long airs are treated in detail in a separate article on the site; here it is enough to establish their link with the folk dances. Dance, song and ceremony are like three faces of the same event, and when thought of apart from one another part of their meaning is lost.

Âşıks and Epics

An article in the journal TEKE examining the âşık-style epic tradition in Amasya concludes that the Janissary corps in Amasya, which had a historical mission as a city where princes were raised, encouraged this tradition and that Alevi-Bektashi culture also nourished it. Âşık Özlemî, who lived in Gümüşhacıköy, is a local âşık introduced in a study in the Motif Akademi Journal of Folklore. Amasya's folk music has therefore been fed not only by anonymous songs but also by poets known by name.

Beliefs Tied to Fire and Water

Folklore does not consist of dance and song alone. The field notes reported by Ali Toraman show that fire in the region carries meanings of purification, healing and protection. In Aydoğdu, one of the central villages, before going up to the summer pasture the animal flocks are gathered in a walled place called çalman and passed over a fire lit on the threshold of the gate; in this way it is believed that sick animals will recover. In the village of Oğuzeli in Göynücek, the disease called derma is treated with barley and fire. The smoke of wild rue is carried around the house against the evil eye.

Fire also has a place in practices connected with death. In Göynücek the place where the dead body was washed is purified by lighting a fire. Until recently a fire was kept burning at night for three or four days in the house of the dead; today this has been replaced by lighting candles or leaving the lights on. It is believed that the fire burning until morning in front of the house of the dead on the night of the burial cleanses those left behind (Taştan, 2019). Geçden, another illness name in the region, is a state of unease and sleeplessness thought to arise from actions such as throwing rubbish outside or pouring boiling water after dark and described as being struck by a jinn. In its treatment, iron objects such as a heated pair of tongs, a shovel and a knife are quenched in cold water, and the patient is fumigated with the smoke that rises. Toraman draws attention here to the idea that iron too frightens jinn away.

Toraman interprets these practices as traces in Amasya of the fire cult in Turkish mythology. This connection is the author's thesis. No document has been produced proving the ancient religious origin of every practice, and the reader may regard these practices both as the continuation of an old belief and as folk practices formed later in the region.

Folklore Today

According to a report from the Amasya Governorate, foreign folk dance groups also take part in the International Amasya Atatürk Culture and Art Festival, held on 12-22 June. The report states that groups from Croatia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus visited the Governor; the report gives no year. The local dances, however, are still on the real stage of the wedding. According to Deveci's observation, the groom's family's henna nights in Amasya continue to be the true setting of Sim Sim, but in recent years it has become widespread for the kızbaşıs to put on shows with costumes and drums obtained from wedding organisation companies. The same author argues that dances today are mostly regarded as a mere means of entertainment, whereas they have functions in the meaning structure of the wedding. In some places the wedding hall alone has taken the place of the square, but the drum and the fire still mark the beginning of the wedding in the same way.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Rahime Deveci, "Amasya Yöresi Düğünlerinde İcra Edilen Dansların Ritüel İşlevleri", Dede Korkut Uluslararası Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Araştırmaları Dergisi, issue 31, August 2023, pp. 72-101.
  • Gültekin Erdal and Kelime Erdal, "Amasya'nın Geleneksel Halk Oyunu: Taşova Simsimi", Hikmet - Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi, issue 22, Spring 2025, pp. 372-386 (abstract). dergipark.org.tr
  • Ali Toraman, "Türk Mitolojisinde Ateş Kültü ve Amasya'daki İzleri", ASOBİD (Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi), Amasya Special Issue, September 2022, pp. 11-26.
  • Haluk Yücel, "Amasya Türkülerinin Söz ve Müzik Unsurları Bakımından İncelenmesi", The Journal of Social Sciences (SOBİDER), 2018, issue 22 (abstract); "Merzifon'un Kültürel Mirası: Merzifon Türküleri", Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, vol. 9, issue 42, February 2016.
  • "Amasya Yöresi Türkülerinde Alevi-Bektaşi Unsurları ve Bu Eserlerin Müzikal Analizleri", Online Journal of Music Sciences (abstract).
  • "Amasya'da Âşık Tarzı Destan Geleneği", Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim (TEKE) Dergisi (abstract); "Âşıklık Geleneği ve Geleneğin Çerağlarından Amasyalı Âşık Özlemî", Motif Akademi Halkbilimi Dergisi (abstract).

Official sources

  • T.C. Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Culture Portal: "Amasya Halk Oyunları", "Amasya Halk Oyunları / Kaplumbağa Oyunu", "Kartay Oyunu", "Amasya Düğün Öncesi Hazırlıkları ve Düğün" (Culture Atlas, Amasya).
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism: "Yöresel Halk Oyunları", "Kına Gecesi" (amasya.ktb.gov.tr).
  • T.C. Amasya Governorate, "Amasya'ya Gelen Halk Dansları Ekipleri, Tarihi ve Kültürel Dokusunu Görmekten ve Misafirperver Halkı ile Tanışmaktan Duydukları Mutluluğu İfade Etti" (amasya.gov.tr).

Other sources

  • Nail Demircioğlu, "TRT Repertuvarında Bulunan Amasya ve Samsun Yöresi Uşşak Türkülerinin Makamsal ve Ritmik Yönlerden Karşılaştırmalı İncelenmesi", Art Vision, 28 (49), 2022, pp. 162-171 (abstract). dergipark.org.tr
  • Kadir Aydın, "Halk Oyunları Giysileri Amasya", Yeşilırmak Gazetesi, 7 April 2023; folklor.gen.tr, "Amasya Yöresi Giysileri".

Online sources