The village now called Sarıyar was known until recently as Morami, a name which, according to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, comes from a Halveti sheikh buried there. The 1845 temettuat register shows it as a village of the Ezinepazar sub-district with nineteen households but an income per household more than two and a half times the sub-district average; it was also one of the two villages in the sub-district where the dye plant cehri (dyer's buckthorn) was grown. At the end of 2025, 249 people lived in Sarıyar, which belongs to the Central District of Amasya.

Merâmî Baba and the Name Morami

In the Central District table of Bekir Başalan's study of Amasya place names, Morami is given as the former name of Sarıyar. According to Asena Yalnız's study, the new name is an adjectival compound of "sarı" (yellow) and "yar", a word meaning a cliff-like place open on its sides; it has no link in sound with the old name. The only explanation of the old name is found in Yasar's Amasya Tarihi. Describing the Öz sub-district, which covered the southern parts of Amasya and had Ezinepazar as its centre, Yasar writes that "eş-Şeyh Merâmî Baba", one of the Halveti sheikhs, is buried in "the Village of Merâmî" that bears his name. Morami can be read as the form this name took in local speech; Yasar gives no further information on the sheikh's life or period.

The name Morami is easily confused with Moramul, the former name of today's Bağlarüstü village west of Amasya. Başalan lists the two villages separately. The 1845 records also make it clear that they were different places: in the list of those owning property in the village of Sevincer, İmamoğlu Ahmed of "Moramul karyesi" and Hacı Osman and Kethüda Veysel of "Morami karyesi" are written separately. For this reason what Yasar relates about Moramul (the farm of Emîr Âmûl, the zeamet of the castle wardens, the Moramullu family) has not been used on this page. In the village index of the 1530 Karaman and Rûm account register, no name in the form Morami or Merâmî has been found.

The Village of Morami in 1845

Tayfun Soydal's thesis on the temettuat registers of the Ezinepazar sub-district finds 19 households in a separate register for the village of Morami; on the assumption of five people per household, the population is estimated at about 95. Seventeen of the heads of household are recorded as rençber (farmers); there is also one cowherd and one calf-keeper. Among the recorded family nicknames are Kethüdaoğlu, İsmail Kethüdaoğlu, Kara Alioğlu, Abacıoğlu, Bekiroğlu, İlyasoğlu, Çolakoğlu, Karagözoğlu, Çulhaoğlu, İmamoğlu and Keleşoğlu.

The village's land is large for the number of its households: 471.5 dönüms of cultivated and 474 dönüms of uncultivated fields together with 24.5 dönüms of vineyard, 970 dönüms in all. This corresponds to a share of more than 51 dönüms per household. The harvest is recorded as 134.5 kiles of wheat and 78.5 kiles of barley. Livestock consists of 639 head of sheep and goats, 87 head of cattle and 16 pack and riding animals; annual income from sheep and goats is 2,967 kuruş. The village's total income is calculated at 20,977 kuruş. The 1,104 kuruş per household is more than two and a half times the sub-district average of 424 kuruş. The vergü-yi mahsusa demanded from the village was 2,110 kuruş; both this tax and the tithe per household were above the sub-district average.

Perhaps the most distinctive entry in the register is cehri. Cehri is a plant whose fruit yields a yellow-green dye used for colouring silk and cotton cloth. Soydal establishes that in the Ezinepazar sub-district cehri was grown only in the villages of Morami and Abacı. In Morami, Kethüdaoğlu İbrahim, registered in household no. 1, is recorded with 99 kuruş of cehri produce, and Kelmeoğlu Cuma, registered in household no. 15, with 252 kuruş.

Neighbours and Outside Owners

The list of people who owned land in Morami but lived elsewhere also shows the village's surroundings. The great majority of them are from the village of Tatar; more than twenty Tatar villagers, among them Karaahmedoğlu Hüseyin, Sofuoğlu Mehmed, Kulecioğlu Ali, Köleoğlu Mehmed, Saniye Hatun and Ayşe Hatun, held fields of one or two dönüms each in the village. Owners from the villages of İlyas, Yenice, Keşlik, Üfte (today's Sarımeşe), Abacı and Kızılca-i Sagir are also listed. One name comes from farther away: Molla Osman, who lived in the village of Sancı in the Zile kaza of Tokat, owned a vineyard of two dönüms in Morami. Soydal also notes that 60 milch goats, 90 dry goats and 60 kids belonging to people living elsewhere were registered in Morami. The fact that Tatar and Üfte are today among the villages around Ezinepazar supports the view that Morami too lay south of Amasya, near these villages.

Present Condition

In the village drinking-water inventory of the 2023 provincial environment report, Sarıyar's network appears as a system built in 1993 and fed from a spring; an average of 8,249 cubic metres of water a year is drawn for the village, and the water is classed as sufficient. The remarks column carries the note "done in 2017"; the table does not say what was done. The separate network of the Ova hamlet attached to the village was built in 2012; it uses both spring and well water and works by pumping. The population shown for this hamlet in the inventory is 161.

Population

Sarıyar was a village of 552 people in 2007 and 2008, when the registry series begins. In the following years the population fell quickly; a sudden rise to 538 in 2013 lasted only a year, and the next year the figure dropped to 444. In 2020, 328 people were registered, and in 2023, 272. In 2025 the village had 249 residents, 123 men and 126 women; in eighteen years more than half of its population has been lost.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Bekir Başalan, "Amasya İlinde İsimleri Değiştirilen Yerleşim Yeri Adları Üzerine Bir İnceleme", Folklor Akademi Dergisi, 7(3), 2024, pp. 1382-1391 (p. 1385). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4249891
  • Asena Yalnız, "Amasya İli ve İlçelerinin Renk Adlarıyla Oluşan Yer Adlarının Gramatikal ve Bölgesel İncelemesi", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (ASOBİD), 12, 2022, pp. 133-159 (p. 142). amasya.bel.tr
  • Tayfun Soydal, Temettuât Defterlerine Göre Ezinepazar Nahiyesi'nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Yapısı, Master's Thesis, Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2018, pp. 6, 25, 31, 34, 36, 38, 40, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 59, 62, 80-81, 96-98. https://acikbilim.yok.gov.tr/handle/20.500.12812/37199

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources