Alpaslan lies east of Taşova, at the foot of the slopes overlooking the Yeşilırmak valley, and is today a village of the district. For half a century it was a small town with its own municipality, and in the Ottoman registers, under the name Zuday, it was the most populous and land-rich village of the kaza (district) of Sonisa. The settlement takes its present name from Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan, a Rifa'i sheikh who settled here in the middle of the thirteenth century and founded a dervish lodge (zaviye). His Arabic endowment deed of 1257 is regarded as the oldest known written document of the Turkish period for the village and for the whole Taşova region, and it ranks among the earliest securely dated records of the Rifa'i order in Anatolia. North of the village, on the hillside the locals call Ziyaret ("the shrine"), stand the sheikh's tomb and the remains of his complex. The small municipal museum, housed in an old Ottoman bathhouse, keeps finds ranging from the Hellenistic age to the Republican years, together with the sheikh's walnut cenotaph, the door of his tomb, his endowment deed and his family tree.

Location and the Changes in Its Name

Alpaslan is about 9 kilometres from the centre of Taşova and 65 kilometres from the city of Amasya. It stands at an altitude of roughly 508 metres and commands the broad valley where the Yeşilırmak opens onto the Taşova plain. The slopes of Akdağ rise to the south and east, while old Sonisa, today's Uluköy, lies to the west. This position kept the village close, throughout its history, to the roads running between Amasya and Niksar and between Tokat and Canik. Fertile soil, streams coming down from the mountain and the summer-pasture tracks leading north made settlement possible here from early times.

The village has changed its name several times over the centuries. Local researchers record that its ancient name was Zito, although no ancient source confirming this name has been cited. In the endowment deed of 1257 the settlement appears as "Zeytuva" or "Zitay". Ottoman records first used the name Zedvi and later Zuday; the records of 1926 show Zuday, and those of 1968 Yolbaşı. The present name Alpaslan, a choice that ties the village's history to the memory of the sheikh, took hold from the 1960s onwards. The local historian Enver Seyhan sets out this chain of names as "Zedvi village, Zeytuva, Zitay, Zuday, Yolbaşı, Alpaslan".

The Taşova Region from Antiquity to the Seljuks

Traces of settlement around Taşova go back to about 5000 BC. The region saw in turn the rule of the Hittites, Phrygians, Cimmerians and Persians, and passed under Macedonian control when Alexander the Great took Anatolia in 331 BC. After the break-up of the Macedonian kingdom, the Kingdom of Pontus, founded in 291 BC, ruled this valley together with Amasya for more than two centuries. Following Julius Caesar's victory over the Pontic king Pharnaces near Zela in 47 BC, the area entered Rome's sphere of influence, and around AD 25 it was fully annexed to Roman territory. The Taşova region remained under Rome until 395 and then under Byzantium for many centuries. Umayyad raiders are reported to have reached the area in 712, after which it returned to Byzantine rule.

That Zuday was an ancient settlement is clear from the finds made around the village. Pontic and Roman coins, tear bottles recovered from graves and remains of church walls dated to the Byzantine age show that the settlement was alive long before the Turkish period. The mound and necropolis at Ayınyakası, also called Çayırbaşı, in Alpaslan were placed under protection as a first-degree archaeological site in 2014. Sadi Bayram observed on the spot that ancient building fragments had also been reused as spolia in the construction of Seyyid Nureddin's complex. The District Governorship of Taşova, for its part, notes that a large share of the antiquities of the region has been destroyed by haphazard illicit digging. The story of how the Alpaslan Museum was founded can be read as the villagers' resistance to this destruction.

After the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 opened Anatolia to Turkish migration, the region fell to the Danishmendids in 1075. The principality founded by Melik Danişmend Gazi turned Amasya and Niksar into centres of Turkish-Islamic culture. Taşova and its surroundings passed to the Seljuks of Rum in 1174, in the reign of Kılıç Arslan II. After the defeat at Kösedağ in 1243 the region fell into Mongol oppression, famine and disorder. The echoes of the Babai revolt were felt in this valley too. When the Seljuk administration divided the country in two, Taşova remained within the province of Rûm, whose government was left to Seyfeddin Torumtay. Seyyid Nureddin's endowment deed was drawn up in September 1257, in the midst of these turbulent years. The presence of the name Torumtay son of Abdullah among the witnesses of the deed also recalls the document's link with the local administration of the time.

Who Was Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan

What is known about Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan er-Rufai rests largely on two documents. The first is his Arabic endowment deed dated Ramadan 655 (September 1257); the second is a genealogy (silsilename) dated 996 (1588) showing the lineage of his son Seyyid Fettah Velî. According to the deed, Seyyid Nureddin's father was Sarı Muhyiddin, his grandfather Mehmed, and the latter's father Ebûbekir er-Rufai of Kemah, who is described in the deed with the epithets "lord of lords" and "the elder". Some local publications attach these epithets directly to Seyyid Nureddin and read "Kemâliyeli" instead of Kemah; in the order Bayram gives from the deed, however, they belong to the grandfather's father. The title seyyid reflects the family's belief in its descent from the Prophet, and the fact that the deed was certified by the heads of the Prophet's descendants (nakîbüleşraf) of Sonisa and Niksar shows that this claim was also accepted in official circles.

Local tradition and the common histories of Taşova say that Seyyid Nureddin migrated from Khorasan and settled in present-day Alpaslan in 1257. Some sources give this settlement more generally as "the 1200s". In this period, when the Mongol invasions drove a great wave of migration from Central Asia and Iran into Anatolia, dervishes coming from Khorasan founded lodges in the Anatolian countryside and became pioneers of both religious life and settlement. Seyyid Nureddin's Khorasanian origin rests on local tradition. The epithet "of Kemah" in the deed, on the other hand, suggests that the family lived at least for a time in eastern Anatolia, in the Erzincan region. The two pieces of information do not exclude each other, but no document showing the details of the migration route is known.

Some publications write that Seyyid Nureddin served as a military adviser to the Seljuk rulers and was remembered as "the commander of the martyrs". These descriptions come from popular legends and museum presentations and have not been confirmed by a contemporary source. It is also said that Şeyh Mehmed Abdal, buried in the village of Şeyhli in Taşova, was his brother; this link too is known only from local tradition. Some local historians claim that the family which later founded the Tâceddinoğulları principality, centred on Niksar, descended from Seyyid Nureddin's grandson Tâceddin Doğan Şah, and that this family belonged to the Çavundur tribe of the Oghuz. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, however, presents the father of Tâceddin Bey, founder of the principality, as a Turkmen lord named Emir Doğanşah who acted independently after the collapse of Ilkhanid rule, and it mentions no kinship with Seyyid Nureddin. That one of Tâceddin Bey's sons bore the name Alparslan and was killed by Kadı Burhâneddin in 1394 makes for a curious coincidence of names. No documented line of descent links the two families.

The Endowment Deed and the Genealogy

For many years the original deed remained in the hands of one of Zuday's old families. According to Enver Seyhan, the document was held by Remzi Saçlı, son of Cemal, grandson of Hacı Şakir Efendi, a former qadi of Sivas, who lived in the Çılkıdır quarter of Taşova. In June 1992 Saçlı gave the deed and the genealogy to the Alpaslan Museum for a symbolic sum, in view of their importance. In the same period Sadi Bayram, a specialist at the General Directorate of Pious Foundations, obtained a copy of the documents through the then mayor, Muttalip Öztürk; he presented his study at the Ninth International Symposium on Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Studies in Ankara in 1992, published a short summary in the Festschrift for Yılmaz Önge in 1993, and published his full study, together with a translation of the deed, in the journal Vakıflar Dergisi in 1994. The Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin had known the date of the deed but did not include its text.

The deed relates that Seyyid Nureddin established a large endowment for the lodge. According to Bayram, the endowment extended over a wide area that included the whole of Taşova, the nearby villages of Erbaa and the eastern parts of Amasya. The document was certified by the qadi of Sonisa, the nakîbüleşraf of Sonisa, the qadi of Niksar, the nakîbüleşraf of Niksar and an inspector of endowments. The mention of the lodge as a building in the deed leads Bayram to conclude that the complex had been completed before the date of the deed. The lodge was open to passing travellers and to men of learning. According to a detail Bayram highlights, no condition was laid down that the office of sheikh of the lodge should belong only to the Rifa'is. Bayram takes this as the sign of a period in which sharp divisions between the Sufi orders had not yet emerged.

The document also sheds light on the economic life of thirteenth-century Anatolia. The deed records that cotton was grown on the skirts of Akdağ at altitudes of up to 1,600 metres. It stipulates that the staff of the endowment be paid a daily wage of 1, 2 or 5 silver dirhams, and that each be given, according to the importance of his post, 5, 8 or 10 measures of wheat a year and one measure of ginned cotton. Among the conditions of the endowment is that its lands should not be leased for three years or more, that is, for two years at most. This provision can be read as a measure to prevent endowment property from being effectively alienated through long leases. The presence among the witnesses of Turkish names of Central Asian origin, such as Torumtay son of Abdullah, Arslan Toğmuş, Kaan Aytoğmuş and Arslan Toğmuş son of Sünç, is in Bayram's words noteworthy as a reflection of the society of the time.

Another value of the deed is that it is the oldest known comprehensive source for the place names of the Taşova region. Ninety-five per cent of the village and locality names in the document are Turkish, and according to Bayram half of them are still used by the elderly. In describing the boundary of the village of Sepetlü, the deed lists the Felanbil lands, Boraboy, Haddadi and Gökdere. The Yeşilırmak is called the "Great River" or the "Tozanlu River", and the Destek stream appears as the Mermun River. Sonisa, Tekaloza (today's Gürsu), Tarıtma (Ballıca), Kalikale (Dörtyol), Baladan (Kumluca) and the castles of Yenişehir and Karakuş are among the places named in the document. From the absence of the villages of Gudere and Halamaz on Sepetlü's boundaries, Enver Seyhan concludes that these villages had not yet been founded in 1257.

The genealogy is an illuminated document showing the family tree of Seyyid Nureddin's son Seyyid Fettah Velî. It bears the date 996 (1588), but Bayram, judging by the style of its illumination, believes it was completed around 1771. One of the first Ottoman records of the endowment appears in register no. 490, known as Amasya Muhasebe, with the phrase "Vakf-ı Seyyid Nureddin der karye-i Zeytuva tâbi-i kazâ-i Sonisa" (the endowment of Seyyid Nureddin in the village of Zeytuva, dependent on the kaza of Sonisa). Another document in the archives of the pious foundations is a patent of appointment (berat) dated 22 April 1856. According to it, the half share of the cook's post of the endowment of "the late Seyyid Nureddin's Lodge, Soup Kitchen and Zaviye in the village of Zuday, dependent on the kaza of Sonisa" was given, upon the childless death of Seyyid Mustafa, a descendant of the founder, to his brother Seyyid Yakub Efendi. The document shows that in the mid-nineteenth century the lodge was still functioning as a soup kitchen (imaret) and that its posts were held by the founder's descendants. Histories of Taşova record that the endowment continued its activity until 1901.

The Rifa'i Order and Its Earliest Traces in Anatolia

The Rifa'iyya is the Sufi order named after Seyyid Ahmed er-Rifâî (d. 1182), who lived in the Batâih region of southern Iraq. It is counted among the first orders to complete its organisation in the twelfth century and is known for its loud recitation of the divine names (dhikr), its communal rituals and the practices of wonder-working called "burhan". When the order entered Anatolia is not known with certainty. In the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam article on the Rifâiyye, the earliest evidence is listed as the endowment deed of September 1257 for the lodge of Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan, a Rifa'i sheikh's gravestone dated 1295-1296 found at Develi, and Eflâkî's record that Rifa'is were present in Konya during Rumi's lifetime. Together these three pieces of evidence show that the order had existed in Anatolia since the middle of the thirteenth century. The deed at Alpaslan is therefore also an important document in the history of the order.

Sadi Bayram also counts among the first Rifa'is of the region Küçek Seyyid Ahmed-i Kebîr, buried at Ladik in Samsun. According to Eflâkî, this sheikh met Rumi in Konya and exchanged cloaks with Hüsameddin Çelebi in Amasya. The walnut cenotaph of his son Seyyid Necmeddin Yahya, bearing the date 761 (1359-60), stands in the village of Yolpınar in Suluova. These lodges, founded at close dates around Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ladik, suggest that the Rifa'iyya was widespread in northern Anatolia long before the Naqshbandiyya. The earlier version of this text described the tradition as "Ahi-Rifa'i". The documents clearly show Seyyid Nureddin's Rifa'i identity, whereas a direct link with the Ahi brotherhoods has not been documented. Even so, the lodge's openness to travellers and men of learning points to the same milieu as the tradition of hospitality seen in the Ahi lodges of the period.

Ibn Battuta's Visit to Sonisa

While travelling through Anatolia between 1332 and 1334, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta came from Sivas to Amasya and, after describing that city, with a great river running through it and surrounded by vineyards and gardens, stopped at a town called Sûnusâ. According to his travel account, he stayed as a guest in a Rifa'i lodge there before setting out towards Gümüş. Sûnusâ is the Sonisa of the Ottoman records, the area of today's Uluköy. Some researchers think that the place where the traveller stayed was a settlement between Taşova and Alparslan. Local historians accept that this lodge was Seyyid Nureddin's own. Sadi Bayram's reading is somewhat different: in his view, Ibn Battuta visited the sons of Küçek Seyyid Ahmed-i Kebîr of Ladik at the lodge in Sonisa. The identity of the lodge the traveller visited is therefore uncertain, but it is clear that a Rifa'i lodge was operating around Sonisa in the first half of the fourteenth century.

A sign that Seyyid Nureddin's family remained respected in the region in the fourteenth century is found in Bezm ü Rezm, the work in which Esterâbâdî recounts the life of Kadı Burhâneddin. As Bayram reports, Kadı Burhâneddin appointed as mediator in his dispute with Emir Ahmed and the Tâceddinoğulları "the son of Sheikh Nureddin, the imam and leader of the age, one of the greatest of the sheikhs of Islam, administrator of the province of Danişmendiye", and asked that the sheikh's opinion be respected. Bayram connects this record with Seyyid Nureddin's family. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam article on the Tâceddinoğulları, however, names the person who acted as envoy in the same events as Sheikh Nusret, one of the notables of the village of Dânişmendiye, and his son. This difference in the reading of the name leaves open the question of whether the sheikh in Bezm ü Rezm belonged to Seyyid Nureddin's family. The name of Seyyid Nureddin also appears in a village sale document dated 1301, published by Osman Turan.

The Tomb and the Remains of the Complex

Seyyid Nureddin's tomb lies north of Alpaslan, on the hillside the locals call Ziyaret. According to Sadi Bayram's survey on site, there are remains here of a complex consisting of a tomb, a mosque, a small bathhouse, an oven, a caravanserai, a soup kitchen, a lodge and storehouses. The tomb contains two graves, and Bayram is certain there is a crypt beneath it, though he notes that this can only be revealed by excavation. The old floor lies about one to one and a half metres below the present ground level. The buildings, set against the slope, have gradually filled with earth washed down over time. Part of the south wall of the mosque still stands, and the place of the minaret base to the north can be made out. The bathhouse and the oven stand northeast of the minaret. In front of them, facing stones and jamb stones lie stacked at random, awaiting researchers. To the west and south of the complex lies the hazire, the old graveyard.

The main walls of the bathhouse are sound, and the terracotta pipes running inside the walls clearly reveal the heating system. The hypocaust has not been badly damaged. The inner surfaces are plastered, there are no tiles in visible places, and the niches of the private bathing cells can be distinguished. The village elders say that wooden storehouses built in a later period stood behind the bathhouse. According to Zihni Özdemir, a local man with an interest in history, as reported to Bayram, the soup kitchen stood on the east side and the caravanserai and guesthouse on the west. The complex's water still flows today, but it seeps into the foundations of the old buildings and damages them. In his article written more than thirty years ago, Bayram called for the foundations to be rescued from the water without delay and for excavations to be carried out on the site. Calls in the local press for the complex to be uncovered by excavation continue today.

The region lies on the North Anatolian Fault, and the tomb and its surroundings have been shaken by earthquakes many times. Bayram writes that the earthquakes of 1823, 1901 and 1939 caused great damage to the buildings. Following the 1939 Erzincan earthquake and the tremors and landslides that followed until 1942, old Zuday had to be moved from its place on the slope to a less steep site about a kilometre to the south. The present settlement is the result of this move, and the tomb and the remains of the complex were therefore left outside the new village, in the old settlement area. The earthquake of 1509 that shook Istanbul, remembered as the "Lesser Apocalypse", is also reported to have affected the Sonisa region for a long time. Old writers further record that the region was frequently struck by earthquakes and that at one time the population abandoned it entirely.

The tomb stands beside the half-ruined lodge building and has been restored in this state. Local people know it as a work of the Seljuk period. The walnut cenotaph inside the tomb was moved to the village museum for safekeeping by the then mayor, Muttalip Öztürk. The cenotaph has undergone minor repairs and most of it has survived intact. The door of the tomb is likewise displayed in the museum. The saint after whom the town is named is still visited by villagers with all kinds of wishes. The legends told around the tomb and the traditions of votive offering and prayer live on, handed down from generation to generation. Villagers in trouble or with a wish turn to this shrine in search of peace of mind, and the tomb is mentioned in this respect in compilations on the votive sites of Amasya.

The Question of the Tomb in Niksar

There is a second view as to where Seyyid Nureddin is buried. In his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), Hüseyin Hüsameddin wrote that one of the tombs consisting of two adjoining iwans at the entrance of the Melik Gazi cemetery in Niksar might belong to Seyyid Nureddin. Sadi Bayram also states that during his work on the deed he established that this two-iwan tomb belonged to Seyyid Nureddin and his son Alaaddin Savcı Bey. The building in Niksar has no foundation inscription and contains no grave, and it is not known by whom or when it was built. Today the Municipality of Niksar has turned these iwans into an open-air museum displaying gravestones of the Tâceddinoğulları period. The contradiction between the two graves in the tomb at Alpaslan and the attribution of the iwan in Niksar to the sheikh can only be resolved by excavation and archival research at both sites.

Zuday in the Ottoman Period

In the Seljuk and Ottoman periods Zuday was one of the villages of the kaza of Sonisa, which was attached to Niksar. Sonisa appears in the records as Sonusa in 1333 and as Sonisa in 1484, and it was for a long time the district centre of the region. Evliya Çelebi passed through Sonisa several times because it lay on the Great Road (Ulu Yol), and he described it as a prosperous town of three hundred households with caravanserais, a bathhouse, a mosque and prayer halls. The Taşova region had become Ottoman territory in 1425, when Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) put an end to the Tâceddinoğulları principality. That an Ottoman-period bathhouse of Zuday is used today as a museum shows that the village also had the look of a small town in these centuries.

The economic condition of the village in the nineteenth century is known in detail from research on the temettuat (income) surveys of the 1840s. In those years Zuday, with 137 households, was the most populous settlement of the nahiye (sub-district) of Sonisa. Only five of these households were landless. With 2,743 dönüms of cultivated land the village held the most land in the sub-district, though most holdings were divided into 1 to 25 dönüms per household. Zuday also ranked first with 92 dönüms of vineyards and 123 dönüms of gardens. It led the sub-district in wheat with 275 kiles, in barley with 190, in rye with 48.5 and in bitter vetch with 14.5. In livestock it came second after Haddadi, with 608 head of cattle and 231 draught animals. There were 181 beehives in the village. These figures show that Zuday was a prosperous farming village that had grown up around the endowed lodge.

The region also went through great hardships from time to time. In 1777 a famine broke out after a very poor harvest, and the people of the kazas of Sonisa, Taşabad and Erek left their homes and migrated towards Amasya, Canik and Niksar. Because this migration harmed the landholders, Hacı Ali Pasha, the governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya, asked that the migrants be returned to their former homes. During the Turkish War of Independence the region was the scene of attacks by Pontic Greek bands. Among the incidents recorded for Taşova in this period is the killing of Abdullah, an immigrant from Refahiye living in Zuday, by the bands on 20 June 1921, and the seizure of his belongings.

The First World War and the Soldiers of Zuday

The most painful page in Alpaslan's recent history is the years of the First World War. It is said that when mobilisation was declared in 1914 about three hundred soldiers were sent off from the village in a single day, and that three or four brothers from the same house, or a father and son, were called up together. A story still passes from mouth to mouth among the people about a father and son who served in the same barracks without ever seeing each other. According to local tradition, of the soldiers sent off in 1914 only twenty were able to return to the village in 1918. The information plaques in the museum garden, however, give figures compiled from the records of the Erbaa Recruitment Office. According to these, 332 men from Zuday were called up during the mobilisation, and the fate of 193 of them is unknown. The lists were read by Zihni Özdemir, the accounts clerk of the Zuday Municipality of the time. The names of those who took part in the War of Independence are also displayed in the museum garden.

Town and Village in the Republican Period

In the early years of the Republic, Taşova, under the name Yemişenbükü, was attached to the Erbaa district of Tokat, and Zuday was part of this administrative structure. Taşova became a district on 4 August 1944 and, because of the difficulty of reaching Tokat, was attached to Amasya in 1953. The founding date of the municipality in Alpaslan is given in the sources as 4 December 1963 or 1964. When the population fell below two thousand, the town's municipal status was abolished in 2013, the decision took effect with the 2014 local elections, and Alpaslan became a village again. At the same time the municipalities of Uluköy, Esençay, Destek, Akınoğlu, Boraboy, Belevi, Özbaraklı and Ballıdere were also abolished. With this, Taşova's system of sub-districts and small towns passed entirely into history.

The population figures clearly show the emigration the village has experienced over the last half century. The population, 3,075 in 1970, fell to 2,933 in 1990 and 2,535 in 2000, then declined to 1,567 in 2007 and to 1,098 in 2022. The village lives today on farming and animal husbandry. Milk production is an important source of income, and an on-site milk cooling system has been in use in the village since 2014. Cherries, wild pears, hawthorn, cornelian cherries and rosehips are among the main products of the area.

The Alpaslan Museum

The founding of the Alpaslan Museum rests largely on the efforts of one man. Muttalip Öztürk, who established the new settlement of the village after the earthquake and served as its mayor for many years, began buying antiquities one by one with his own money when he saw villagers selling objects turned up in their fields to scrap dealers in times of need. The museum's inventory book contains entries dating from 1958. According to Bayram, the municipal museum was founded in 1960. Official presentations state that the first core of the museum was formed in 1964 with archaeological and ethnographic objects collected from the area. In 1991 an Ottoman-period bathhouse was arranged as a museum, and in 1994 the museum opened in this building under the name Alpaslan Municipal Museum.

All the objects displayed in the museum were collected from the village and its immediate surroundings. The collection ranges from prehistoric finds to Hellenistic, Pontic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman coins, jugs, jewellery, gravestones, agricultural tools and weapons, manuscript copies of the Qur'an and fossils. A reconstruction of a traditional village room and examples reflecting Seljuk and Ottoman woodwork are also on display. Archaeologists of the Amasya Museum have certified that some of the objects here are Roman works some two thousand years old and that others are older still. Since Taşova has no museum of its own, Roman, Hittite and Ottoman finds from excavations around the district are displayed in the Amasya Museum and the Alpaslan Museum.

The most important pieces in the museum belong to Seyyid Nureddin. The original Seljuk-period walnut cenotaph brought from the ruin site north of the town, the wooden door of the tomb, the original deed of 1257 and the genealogy are kept here. Local sources report that the door of the mosque inside the lodge is also in the museum. Thanks to these objects, Alpaslan has become one of the rare places that preserve in the same village both building fragments of a Seljuk-period endowment and its founding document. Local writers complain that the museum is little known in the surrounding area.

Chronology

47 BC: With Julius Caesar's victory over Pharnaces at Zela, the Taşova region enters Rome's sphere of influence.

1075: The region passes to the Danishmendids.

1174: Taşova and its surroundings come under the Seljuks of Rum.

1257 (Ramadan 655): Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan er-Rufai establishes an endowment for his lodge in the village of Zeytuva (Zuday).

1301: The name of Seyyid Nureddin appears in a village sale document published by Osman Turan.

1332-1334: Ibn Battuta stops at Sonisa and stays in a Rifa'i lodge.

1425: Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) ends the Tâceddinoğulları principality, and the region becomes Ottoman territory.

1588 (996): The date on the genealogy of Seyyid Fettah Velî.

1777: Famine drives the people of Sonisa and its surroundings to migrate.

1823: The tomb and the complex are damaged in an earthquake.

1840s: With 137 households, Zuday is the most populous village of the sub-district of Sonisa.

22 April 1856: A patent is issued for the cook's share of Seyyid Nureddin's lodge and soup kitchen.

1901: The complex is damaged again in an earthquake. The endowment remains active until this year.

1914: During mobilisation, 332 men from Zuday are called up.

1939-1942: After earthquakes and landslides, the village is moved about a kilometre to the south.

1944: Taşova becomes a district; in 1953 it is attached to Amasya.

1963-1964: A municipality is established in Alpaslan. The museum's first collection is formed.

1991: The Ottoman-period bathhouse is arranged as a museum.

1992: The deed and the genealogy are acquired by the Alpaslan Museum.

1994: The Alpaslan Municipal Museum opens. Sadi Bayram publishes his translation of the deed in Vakıflar Dergisi.

2014: Municipal status ends and Alpaslan becomes a village. The Ayınyakası mound and necropolis are declared an archaeological site.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. III, Istanbul 1927.
  • Abdülhalim Durma, Evliyalar Şehri Amasya, 2003.

Academic studies

  • Sadi Bayram, "Anadolu'da XIII. Yüzyıl Bir Rufai Zaviyesi", Prof. Dr. Yılmaz Önge Armağanı, Selçuk University Centre for Seljuk Studies, Konya 1993, pp. 179-186.
  • Sadi Bayram, "Amasya-Taşova-Alparslan Beldesi Seyyid Nureddin Alparslan er-Rufai'nin 655 H./1257 M. Tarihli Arapça Vakfiyesi Tercümesi ile 996 H./1588 M. Tarihli Seyyid Fettah Velî Silsile-namesi", Vakıflar Dergisi, no. 23 (1994), pp. 31-74. tasova.net
  • Tahsin Koçyiğit, "İbn Battuta'nın Karadeniz Seyahati Üzerine Bazı Mülahazalar", Dinbilimleri Akademik Araştırma Dergisi, IX/4 (2009).
  • Osman Turan, "Selçuklu Devrine Ait Köy Satışı Hakkında Bir Vesika", Vakıflar Dergisi, no. X (1973).

Official sources

  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Alpaslan Müzesi" presentation (amasya.ktb.gov.tr).
  • Burak Eryılmaz, "Alpaslan Belediye Müzesi", Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019.
  • Municipality of Taşova and District Governorship of Taşova, history of Taşova. tasova.bel.tr

Other sources

  • Mustafa Tahralı, "Rifâiyye", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, Istanbul 2008. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Tâceddinoğulları", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Aziz b. Erdeşir-i Esterâbâdî, Bezm ü Rezm, trans. Mürsel Öztürk, Ankara 1990.
  • Rahime Özdoğan, Amasya'da Adak Yerleri ile İlgili Halk Anlatıları, 2006.
  • Enver Seyhan, "Taşova Nahiye ve Kasabalar ile Köylerin Tarihçesi" and "Taşabat, Sonusa, Zuday", articles on tasova.net and ulukoy.net.
  • Kültür Envanteri, "Nureddin Alparslan Türbesi (Niksar)", 2023.
  • "İlk Çağlardan Günümüze Uzanan Bir Tarih (Alpaslan Köyü)", tasova.net news.
  • "Alpaslan (Zuday) Köyü", tariheglencesi.com.

Online sources