Sazköy, in the Central District of Amasya, is a small village where 160 people lived at the end of 2025. No published study mentions the village under its own name; but Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's Amasya Tarihi refers to a "Saz karyesi" (village of Saz) attached to the Öz sub-district, and to a farm belonging to the line of İltekin Gazi, one of the Turkish beys, that was known for centuries as the "Saz freehold". No document has been found that shows with certainty that these records belong to today's Sazköy; what follows should be read with that reservation.

The Village of Saz and the Saz Freehold

In Yasar's biographical volumes the name Saz first appears with Emîr Hüsâmüddevle Hasan Gazi, son of İltekin Gazi, who is named in the period of the conquest of Amasya. According to Yasar, Hasan Gazi endowed the village of Saz, which was his farm, to his descendants and died after 550 (1155); the farm was called "Emîr Hasan alanı" and "the Saz freehold". Yasar also writes, on the basis of the records, that the endowment this emir founded for the wooden tomb, west of the Torumtay Mosque, of Efrûmiye Bânû, who appears to have been his mother, lay in the Saz freehold.

The freehold stayed in the hands of the founder's line for a long time. Hasan Gazi's grandson Emîr Ziyâeddîn Aydın Bey was a Seljuk emir who died after 610 (1213-14), and "the Saz Farm endowed by his ancestor" was his freehold. Aydın Bey's grandson Emîr İzzeddîn Hasan Bey died in 715 (1315), and his son Alâeddîn Ali Bey also held the Saz freehold. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the freehold remained in the branches Yasar calls "Aydınoğlu": Aydın Bey, son of Hacı Savcı Bey, died after 768 (1366-67); another Aydın Bey, son of Hasan Bey, succeeded his father as holder in 841 (1437-38) and fell at the Battle of Varna in 848 (1444). A third Aydın Bey, son of Ali Bey, held together with his brother Hasan Bey the Emîr Hasan Alânî "otherwise the Saz freehold", and died at Chaldiran in 920 (1514). Yasar states that the freehold remained in this family's possession down to the generation of Habîb Ağa, who died in the Cretan campaign.

In later centuries the freehold passed into other hands. The Halveti sheikh Derûnî Mehmed Efendi, while sheikh of the Osman Efendi lodge, also held the Saz freehold, and died around 1114 (1702-03). Amasyalızâde İsmâil Efendi, who rose in the finance offices, was living in 1197 (1783) on the tax farm of the Saz freehold in Amasya.

The Sazlıoğulları

The only biography of a person from the village given by Yasar belongs to a scholar of the late eighteenth century. İbiş İbrâhim Efendi was, in Yasar's words, the son of Ali "from the village of Saz attached to the Öz sub-district of Amasya". He was trained under Fenercizâde Hacı Evliyâ Halil Efendi, drafted fatwas for his teacher during his term as mufti, and became known as "Hacı İbiş Efendi". After teaching for many years he became müderris of the Halifet Gazi Medrese in 1214 (1799-1800) and died on the first day of Muharram 1222 (March 1807). His sons Mehmed and Ali Efendi and their descendants were called the "Sazlıoğulları".

The Records and Sazköy

Yasar describes the Öz sub-district as the one covering the south of Amasya, with Ezinepazar as its centre. His statement that the village of Saz belonged to this sub-district places it in the belt of southern villages. The listing, in the 1845 temettuat registers, of a man named Hasan "from the village of Saz" among the outside owners of property in the village of Sevincer is another sign pointing the same way. On the other hand, there is no register for a village called Saz among the twenty-seven registers of the Ezinepazar sub-district examined by Tayfun Soydal, and Sazköy does not appear in the list of the 2008 Ezinepazar district bill either. Bekir Başalan's table does not count Sazköy among the renamed settlements. The identity of the village of Saz with Sazköy therefore remains a strong but unproven possibility, resting on the match of the names.

One more record complicates the picture. The 1530 Karaman and Rûm account register lists in the Geldiklan-âbâd sub-district a village called "Saz-doğmuş" together with its mosque (p. 359). Yasar also notes in a footnote that Devlet Şah, a descendant of Emîr Hasan, built a mosque in the village of Sazdoğmuş in the Geldiklan sub-district. The link of Emîr Hasan's line with this village too leaves open the possibility that the Saz freehold was Sazdoğmuş in Geldiklan rather than the village of Saz in Öz. Geldiklan was a sub-district separate from Öz; which record belongs to today's Sazköy has therefore not been settled.

Present Condition and Population

The village drinking-water inventory in the 2023 provincial environment report shows Sazköy's network as a system built in 1986 and fed by pumping from a well. An average of 8,453 cubic metres of water a year is drawn for the village, and the water is classed as sufficient. The inventory gives the village's population as 193 and shows no attached hamlet.

Sazköy's population was 203 in 2007 and rose to 228 in 2010, the highest value in the series. In the following years the figure moved between 190 and 205, and after 2020 it fell a little every year to 160 in 2025. In that last year the village had 93 registered men and 67 women; in this small population there are 26 more men than women.

Chronology

After 550 (1155): Emîr Hasan Gazi, who endowed the village of Saz to his descendants, dies.

848 (1444): Aydın Bey, holder of the Saz freehold, dies at the Battle of Varna.

920 (1514): Another Aydın Bey among the holders of the freehold dies at Chaldiran.

1222 (1807): Hacı İbiş İbrâhim Efendi of the village of Saz dies.

1845: Property of Hasan of the village of Saz is recorded at Sevincer.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources