The Shape of the Route

Walking the Ferhat Water Canal is one of the few outings in Amasya that takes you through the rock itself. The route begins on the Amasya-Tokat highway, where it enters the city, at the locality of Ferhat Arası in the Helvacı neighbourhood. A traveller who has driven two or three kilometres along the highway and looks carefully at the rock slopes on the left will see a thin line running along the hillside, a little above the foot of the cliffs. About two kilometres of the canal, running parallel to the highway, can also be followed easily from outside. The stretch suited to walking is only a part of this, because a section of about 675 metres was cleared of rubble and earth fill in the cleaning and rescue excavation carried out by the Amasya Museum in 1997, and it can now be entered and followed on foot.

Sources give the total length of the line as anything from six to twenty-five kilometres. The reason is that the visible stretch, the part that continues as a tunnel beneath the city and the distant ends that have not been excavated are counted separately. Hüseyin Hüsameddin, following the line from both ends early in the twentieth century, described it as a water channel some eighteen kilometres long in all, beginning in front of Şahin Kayası, about fifteen kilometres south of Amasya, and running to the eastern end of the city. The architects who led the work of 1997-1998 record that most of the roughly six-kilometre stretch between the prison site in the Helvacı neighbourhood on the west and Kibrithane, the old industrial quarter of the Bayezid Paşa neighbourhood on the east, now survives as a tunnel beneath the buildings of the modern city. The date of construction, the building technique, the full line that begins at the Kırkgöz spring on the Çekerek and the debate over dating are treated separately in the article on the history of the Ferhat Water Canal. What follows are the stops met by a visitor who goes to the head of the canal and walks in the direction of the water's flow, together with the history of those stops.

Ferhat Arası and the Ferhat Rock

Ferhat Arası, which gives the route its name, is the south-western gorge of Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that the sheer rock rising south-west of Karakaya is called Ferhat Kayası, the Ferhat Rock, and the ridge running east from it Ferhat Dağı, and he notes that the surroundings took the name Ferhat Arası because the rock stands over this gorge. In his description the rock rises about three hundred metres above the ground. Its west-facing front is precipitous and its top is flat. Its northern skirt was covered with vineyards and vegetable gardens, while its south-western skirt was nothing but black stone. The eastern side of the level ground opens onto cool upland pastures and well-watered, airy villages. The author also presents Amasya as a whole as an ancient city built at the foot of this mountain, which he calls "Ferhat-Fon-Pont".

One detail that Hüsameddin saw on the west-facing foot of the rock still matters to anyone looking at the canal today. About three metres above the ground there is an arch-shaped hollow. It is roughly six feet wide and two and a half metres deep, and in the author's words it looks as fresh "as if it had been carved yesterday". This hollow is one of the reasons the legend was attached to the rock. The name of the rock, the presence of the hollow and the course of the water channel as far as Ahır Önü were put together, and from them grew the popular tale that Ferhat had pierced the rock for love.

Ferhat Arası was also part of old Amasya's belt of vineyards. Hüsameddin lists, on the south bank of the river and running west from the Mosque of Sultan Bayezid II, the vineyards of İnehan, Yörgüç Paşa, Hacılar Meydanı, Ferhat Arası and Çalan Köprü in that order. Hacılar Meydanı, the Pilgrims' Ground, took its name from the prayers said there for pilgrims leaving for and returning from the Hijaz. This stretch, which now seems squeezed against the edge of the highway, was until a century ago an entrance to the city running between vineyards. The names of these vineyards between the walking section of the canal and the city are a reminder that the route lies not outside the city but on the edge of old Amasya.

Old Fountains on the Road and the Veng Ridge

The southern foot of the Ferhat Rock was called Helvacı Pınarı and its northern foot Veng, and both lay on the Tokat road. Helvacı Pınarı stood at the eastern end of the gorge. It took its name from a fountain built there by Helvacı Mehmed Ağa, a former mütesellim (deputy governor) of Amasya who died in 1064 (1653-54). The same Mehmed Ağa is known to have repaired the Mağdinus Bridge a year earlier. In 1210 (1795-96) el-Hâc İbrahim Ağa, one of the notables of Amasya, restored the fountain, had its conduit cleaned so that the water ran again, and endowed several shops for its upkeep. The fact that the neighbourhood around the canal bears the name Helvacı keeps the memory of this fountain alive.

There was another fountain in Ferhat Arası, called Bey Pınarı. It was built in 1164 (1750-51) by el-Hâc Osman Bey, who had earlier served as a sanjak governor (mirliva) in Egypt, and he brought its water and arranged its endowment. Osman Bey came from an Amasya family. After the political struggles in Egypt he was allowed to settle in Amasya in 1159, and in the city he built a hadith college and library, the two-gated Taş Han and this fountain on the road through Ferhat Arası. Hüsameddin notes that in his own day both fountains were in ruins.

Veng was the name of a ridge on the left of the Tokat road, at the end of the Memi Dede Önü cemetery and above Hacılar Meydanı. On both sides lay Greek and Armenian cemeteries. At the end of the path stood an earthen mass from whose pores water dripped constantly, and a small basin of black stone in which the drops collected. Hüsameddin describes the water as clear but tasteless and heavy, and relates that after long neglect the place became, from around 1300 (1882-83) onward, a spot where first Armenians and then Greeks gathered on Sundays. The Greeks told a story linking the name to Yovannis, a disciple of one of the apostles, and the Armenians a similar one about Ohannis. These stories show that the surroundings of Ferhat Arası formed a landscape of tales not only for the Muslim population but for all of the city's communities.

Starting Point and Getting There

The walk begins at Ferhat Arası, at the foot of Ferhat Mountain. Those coming on foot from the city centre can follow the bank of the Yeşilırmak and then the signs for the Ferhat Water Canal towards Ferhat Hill. Two figures circulate in the sources for the distance from the centre. Publications introducing the museum give about two kilometres, while some accounts give nine kilometres and refer to the road as the Amasya-Erzurum road. The more common description places the museum on the Amasya-Tokat highway. The difference may depend on which point in the city centre the measurement is taken from, but no exact distance has been confirmed. Drivers simply need to head along the Amasya-Tokat highway towards Helvacı, and those arriving from Tokat can follow the signs for Ferhat Hill after entering Amasya. A car park is reported to be available near the museum. City minibuses and municipal buses are said to run in this direction, with stops named after the Ferhat Water Canal or the museum.

The Çağlayan Bridge, which the traveller from Tokat crosses on approaching the city, is also an old marker of this route. Hüsameddin, who calls it Çalan Köprü, places it at the end of the southern gorge, that is, of Ferhat Arası. Its foundations, top and sides are of stone, and its arches and piers of red brick. The author links the name to a small, square, room-like projection in the middle of its south face, that is, to the word "çalık", and records that in old documents the bridge appears as the İltekin Bridge. The common view today is that the bridge, about 70 metres long with six arches, was built in 1075 or 1076 by the Danishmendid emir İltekin Gazi. Some sources, however, attribute it to İltekin's son Hüsamüddevle Hasan in the twelfth century. The bridge stands in the Helvacı neighbourhood, close to the Eryatağı turn-off on the Tokat highway.

No ticket is reported to be needed for the walk, and the canal is an open-air site that can be visited freely. There is little shade on the slope, so morning or late afternoon is both cooler and better for picking out the chisel marks and vaults in the raking light on the rock face. The ground is uneven in places. Comfortable shoes with firm soles and clothing suited to the season are needed.

Walking Inside the Canal

In travel accounts the route is followed in the direction of the water's flow, towards the city. Where it is cut into the limestone, the canal is on average 87-97 centimetres wide and about 120 centimetres high including the vault. These dimensions mean that an adult walks with head bowed and shoulders close to the walls. About eighty centimetres above the floor, small ledges twenty centimetres deep have been cut into both walls. These are where the springing of the vault that covered the canal rested, and they are easy to spot while walking. On the floor and the lower part of the walls one sees the lime deposit left by water flowing for centuries. In places this deposit rises up to ninety centimetres from the floor and has the consistency of travertine. Hüsameddin also writes that he saw thick lime deposits up to ten centimetres deep and dried moss inside the channel, and that from these he understood that water had flowed along it for centuries.

The line winds to follow the slopes of the mountain and the recesses and projections of the rock. On the mountain side the wall was cut back an extra 1.5 to 3 metres to keep rubble from falling into the canal. On the steep slopes there are turns approaching 360 degrees, and at these points the facing rock walls were carved from end to end. Travel writers describe these sections as the most striking part of the canal. The absence of a straight axis also challenged the team that surveyed the canal in 1997. For this winding line, where conventional measurement was inadequate, a polar coordinate method was used with a theodolite and a level, 53 polygon points were fixed inside the canal with wooden stakes and steel nails, and the survey was drawn in two stages, before and after excavation. The gradient of the line is around seven per thousand, which is not something a walker can feel underfoot. The engineering calculation becomes clear only when one sees how the water kept faithfully to the same fall in height over a long distance.

Some sections of the canal are covered not by rock but by vaults of rubble masonry. Where it crosses stream beds, vaults 30 centimetres thick, built of roughly dressed stone, are supported by side walls twenty centimetres thick, and here the inner width drops to around 70 centimetres. In the vaulted section uncovered by the excavation, the vaults were measured at 240 centimetres in length, the inner height of the canal at between 125 and 150 centimetres depending on the slope, and the facing walls carrying the vault at between 80 and 105 centimetres high. Vaulted sections are more frequent in the area known as "the Polygon", but some of them are reported to have collapsed or broken in places. It is safer to keep to the open and sound-looking sections than to linger beneath parts that have collapsed or are close to collapse.

Details to Look for Along the Way

Several features recorded in detail during the 1997 excavation and later studies make the walk more meaningful. While the rock was being cut, wedges 40-60 centimetres long were driven in across the line of the canal, and several pins were set along the same line to break the pieces away from the main block. Cross-hatched chisel marks about two centimetres deep, still visible on the sides, show that the rock was cut with metal chisels driven by hand. Not a single tool was found in the excavation, so these marks are the only direct evidence about the craftsmen. The researchers note that the technique of cutting the rock resembles that of the royal rock tombs of Amasya, made in the second century BC. Anyone who has visited the royal tombs above the city sees the same chisel discipline here again, on the walls of a water channel.

On the inner face there are traces of horasan mortar, a local mix of lime with crushed fired clay and sand. A layer about three centimetres thick containing brick dust was exposed on the floor, and the researchers believe it was laid to prevent water loss through the fissures and cracks in the bedrock. Examination of ten plaster samples sent to the laboratory showed that fired clay fragments of various sizes and river sand were used in the plaster of the walls and floor, while certain dark layers taken from the side of the canal were a deposit formed on the walls while the water flowed and afterwards. In places the floor drops a further 3-4 centimetres into small basins that served for settling and resting the water. Where the canal met flood beds, its outer face was strengthened with buttresses and its inner face plastered. All this shows that it was a water structure designed with its maintenance in mind.

During the excavation, pottery fragments and a round lid with a single handle dating to the eleventh-twelfth centuries, an arrowhead ten centimetres long with two sharp-edged wings that probably belongs to the Early Roman period, vessel fragments of the Byzantine period and a wall cutting across the canal were found inside the canal and around it. A simple grave was uncovered in front of this wall, and after following the canal for about four metres the wall cut across it once more towards the west. The semicircular apse of a small chapel dated to the twelfth century was also exposed on the outer face of the canal. Its walls are of rubble masonry and its inner face plastered with horasan, its floor bears a badly damaged mosaic with geometric patterns in white, brown, turquoise, yellow and green stones, and roof tiles with relief decoration and fired clay building plaques were recovered outside its southern walls. These finds show that the line had lost its function after the twelfth century and that its surroundings had been opened to settlement.

The plants in the rock fissures and along the edges of the vineyards are also worth noticing while walking the canal. In the plant inventory made before the excavation in 1997, some fifty plant species were counted around Ferhat Arası. The most interesting of them is Sideritis amasiaca, endemic to Amasya, which flowers yellow in midsummer and spreads over dry mountain slopes and vineyards. The plant is recorded as having been first collected by the German botanist J. Bornmüller on Lokman Mountain in Amasya.

The 1997 Excavation and the Conservation Project

The canal was registered as a monument and an immovable cultural property by decisions of 1975 and 1988. Until 1997, however, neither a scholarly study nor any conservation work had been carried out. In that year, at the initiative of the Governorship of Amasya, the Amasya Municipality and the Amasya Museum, Işık Aksulu and Gediz Urak of Gazi University were commissioned to prepare the "Amasya Ferhat Water Canal Conservation Proposals and Environmental Reorganisation Project". The project covered the registered 675-metre section in Ferhat Arası that runs parallel to the highway and is the best suited to conservation and landscaping. The fieldwork and reports were completed between June 1997 and June 1998.

Permission for the cleaning and excavation was granted by the General Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture on 12 September 1997, and the Governorship's approval followed on 29 September 1997. The work was led by the museum director Ahmet Yüce with the museum researchers Celal Özdemir and Muzaffer Doğanbaş, and it was completed in thirty working days. The site looked very different in those years. At its southern end the canal passed behind a slaked-lime plant, then ran behind a car service station and a roof-tile and brick yard, and ended in front of a sand-screening plant. The authors of the project identified these businesses, which occupied the broad strip of land between the canal and the highway, as structures incompatible with the monument that spoiled both its appearance and its use.

The conservation proposals were drawn up with both the canal and its future visitors in mind. They recommended removing about 1,200 cubic metres of loose rock debris from above the canal and then building a retaining wall about 65 metres long and 1.5 metres high to protect the canal from rubble falling from above. Because the streams in the area flow across the canal, five separate drainage openings were planned to carry the water away from it. Filling the voids in the rock with a mortar made of aggregate from local stone, brick dust and hydraulic lime, consolidating the surfaces where the plaster had fallen away and cleaning the moss from the footpaths were also among the proposals.

For the landscaping, walkways around the canal, viewing terraces, open and covered seating areas, a botanical garden displaying plants native to Amasya and a pond, a glass-fronted contemporary café-restaurant, car parks for 52 cars and 2 buses on both sides of the road and a light overpass linking them were designed over an area of about three hectares. A sculpture keeping alive the legend of Ferhat and Şirin was also proposed for the start of the canal, regarded as the gateway to the city. The authors who published the project wrote in 2006 that the proposals had not yet been carried out, and expressed the hope that their article would mark a new beginning for administrators and townspeople. The presence today of the Lovers Museum, opened beside the canal in 2013, together with a viewing terrace and walkways, shows that part of the idea of opening the area to public use was realised by the municipality in later years.

The End of the Route and Traces in the City

The rock-cut section at Ferhat Arası ends where the highway has shaved back the rock. Beyond it lies a broad hill covered with trees, and the canal is thought to have crossed this hill by tunnels. For the walker this is the end of the route, because the canal goes underground as it nears the city. Within the city the line reappears in a tunnel remnant marked by a plaque at the entrance to the Amasya İmam Hatip High School. Only the crown of the vault of this protected tunnel comes to the surface, and it cannot be entered. One of the plaster samples examined in the 1997 work was taken from the vault above this school and found to share the characteristics of the vault plaster at Ferhat Arası. In the Beyazıtpaşa neighbourhood, too, rock-cut basins and channel remains can be made out here and there.

Hüsameddin traces the course of the line through the city neighbourhood by neighbourhood. According to him, after Ferhat Arası the channel passes in front of Memi Dede, winds through the Gökmedrese, Şamlıca, Receb, Çeribaşı, Acem Ali, Uzun Mustafa, Gümüşlüzade, Mehmed Paşa and Sevadiye neighbourhoods, and ends at a square hole about four metres across cut into a rock south of Kibrithane in the Bayezid neighbourhood. The author writes that the channel coming from Şahin Kayası was about a metre wide and two metres deep, that it grew larger as it entered the city, and that the part in Şamlıca was built on a bigger scale. In the section in the Mehmed Paşa neighbourhood he observed that water still flowed in his own day, increasing in spring and diminishing in the hot days. Since the sections at the entrance to the city were dry and ruined while water ran here, he concluded that other sources joined the channel inside the city.

The other end of the route is more problematic. Followed from Ferhat Arası away from the city, the line runs into a quarry and is cut off. A journalist who explored this stretch wrote that he came upon three separate quarries within a few kilometres, gave up trying to find out whether the trace continued beyond the quarry, and turned back towards the city. For this reason the line a visitor can walk is limited to the section at Ferhat Arası that was cleared by excavation.

Another detail the visitor can take in is the course of the canal towards the city. Along the way the line may also have gathered water from other springs, and in this respect it resembles a water network more than a single conduit. No evidence has yet been found of where and how the network crossed the Yeşilırmak. Oliver and Caroline Nicholson, in a short study published in 1993, stress that the water channel was cut for the most part into the face of the cliffs that form the valley side south and west of the city, on the right bank of the river. Amasya Castle on the left bank had its own water arrangements, described by Strabo, and the two systems should not be confused. The same authors recall that the saying "Tokat dumps in it, Amasya drinks it", which describes the river as beautiful but not fit to drink, is at least as old as Evliya Çelebi. The saying makes it easier to understand why the city went to such lengths to bring water from a mountain spring.

One of the traces in the city is an inscription. A three-line Greek inscription on the wall of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque, built in 1428 in the Ottoman period, is recorded as stating that the water channels were repaired in the third century AD. The repairs observed in several places on the vaults spanning stream beds were considered consistent with this. For this reason the traces of the route on the city side are limited to the visible tunnel plaque, the remains in Beyazıtpaşa and scattered evidence of this kind, and it is not possible to follow the whole line on foot. Even so, seeing with one's own eyes how water crossed this distance through the rock, among the hills that ring Amasya like a bowl and rise 400-500 metres above the river, is the real reward of the route.

The Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum

The natural stop on the walk is the Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum right beside the canal. Built by the Amasya Municipality and opened in 2013, the museum was set up, with the protection of the canal in mind, on ground that had until then been derelict. Municipal officials base the museum's name on the fact that for centuries the area has been called Ferhat Arası, the mountain behind it Ferhat Mountain and the canal above it the Ferhat Water Canal. The building has an elliptical plan with a wedding hall at its very centre. In its garden are a symbolic tomb of Ferhat and Şirin and miniature models of Amasya's historic buildings. A viewing terrace and walkways also surround the museum.

The museum has nine sections: Ferhat and Şirin, Kerem and Aslı, Leyla and Mecnun, Romeo and Juliet, the architect Sinan and Mihrimah Sultan, Anatolian Minstrels, Courtship Culture in Anatolia, Divine Love and a gift shop. The stories are told through silicone and wax figures, reliefs, period sets, lighting, music and scents specific to each room. The visit moves from human love stories towards the narrative of divine love. The Anatolian Minstrels section features Âşık Veysel, Karacaoğlan, Âşık Mahsuni Şerif and Dadaloğlu. According to the municipality, about 32,000 local and foreign visitors toured the museum in 2016 and 76,000 in 2017, and 35,000 came in the first six months of 2018. Opening hours are announced as 08.00-17.00 every day of the week. It should be kept in mind that these hours may change.

Those wishing to see the museum and the canal on the same day can walk the canal first and then call at the museum, or start at the museum and go down to the entrance of the canal. The symbolic tomb in the museum garden is the present-day counterpart of the old grave that has been pointed out for centuries on top of the Ferhat Rock, and it becomes more meaningful when read together with the debate described below.

The Legend and Reading the Route

The walk gains its meaning from the story from which the canal takes its name. The name comes from the canal's position at the foot of Ferhat Mountain and refers to the tale. In the form told in Amasya, Ferhat was a famous painter-decorator who lived in Persian times. While decorating the pavilion that Sultan Mehmene Banu had built for her sister Şirin, he saw Şirin and the two fell in love. Ferhat sent word to the Sultan asking for Şirin's hand. The Sultan did not want to give her sister away and, to put Ferhat off, set him the condition of cutting through Elma Mountain and bringing water to the city. Ferhat, with the strength that love gave him, began to cut through the mountain. When he was about to finish the canal, Mehmene Banu sent her old nurse to bring him the news that Şirin had died. Ferhat threw the pickaxe in his hand into the air, it fell on his head, and he died on the spot. When Şirin heard the news she ran to the rocks, and on seeing her lover's lifeless body she threw herself down from them. The two were buried side by side on the rocks where they died. It is said that every spring two roses grow on the two graves, and just as they are about to meet, a black thorn bush springs up between them and keeps the roses apart.

In some versions Ferhat's tool appears as a clay pipe (künk) instead of a pickaxe (külünk), and in some it is Şirin's father who asks him to cut through the mountain. In the folk version recorded by Hüsameddin, Ferhat built that long water channel in thirty-nine days to win his beloved and pierced the rock in his way through the force of love. To lend weight to this tale, a grave five metres long and two and a half metres wide on top of the Ferhat Rock was ascribed to Ferhat the Lover, and it was said that people of old were very tall. These differences show that the legend was handed down orally for centuries. The story also caught the attention of foreign travellers. Beginning with Evliya Çelebi, Otter and Sestini in the eighteenth century and Ker Porter, Ouseley, Ainsworth, Hamilton, Skene and Perrot in the nineteenth told the story of Ferhat while describing the water channel. Van Lennep, for his part, recorded a different local legend that ascribed the rock-cut channel to the daughter of a king of Amasya.

The legend itself has been debated. Kara Müftüzade Mustafa Vazıh Efendi, a historian of Amasya, concluded on examining the question of the Ferhat Rock that it had been pierced by Ferhat, the lover of Şirin. Hüsameddin considers this view mistaken. In his opinion it was impossible for one man to build such a water channel, eighteen kilometres long, cut into the rock as tunnels in four or five places and solidly built in masonry, not in thirty-nine days and not even in thirty-nine years. Even the lime used along a road of three hours could not have been burnt in that time. The author argues that those who had it built must have possessed great political and financial power, and by comparison with the water works that the Pontic king Mithridates built at Zile he attributes the channel to that dynasty. He adds that German, French and English travellers who visited Amasya also attributed the work to the kings of Pontus. In the second volume of his work he writes that the water channels must be the work of Pharnaces II.

Hüsameddin relates two further explanations for the name. According to a historical miscellany of unknown author and date, when the Persian shah Khosrow Parviz invaded Anatolia and took Amasya, he appointed one of his commanders, Ferhad bin Efruhte, governor of the region, and the rock was named Ferhat Kayası after this governor, who repaired the water channels. The author accepts that in the time of Khosrow Parviz Pontus was under Persian rule for seven or eight years, but finds the governorship of Ferhad bin Efruhte and his repair of the channels historically doubtful. The second explanation rests on the Danişmendname. During the siege of Amasya by Melik Ahmed Danişmend Gazi in 467 (1074-75), one of his emirs, Ferhad Gazi, climbed Fon Mountain from in front of Helvacı Pınarı, fell fighting there and was buried on the spot. In Hüsameddin's view the large grave on the mountain belongs to this Danishmendid emir. The mountain took his name, and the grave was later enlarged and ascribed to Ferhat the Lover.

The author also touches on the literary source of the legend. In his view the story of Ferhat and Şirin is a corrupted form of the love of Khosrow and Shirin treated by Nizami of Ganja. Khosrow is the Persian shah Khosrow Parviz. Hüsameddin identifies Şirin with Maria, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Maurice, but this identification is the author's own interpretation and is not confirmed by the sources. Images of the two are carved on the rock of Mount Bisotun in Iran. Hüsameddin argues that the western beginning of the Pontic mountains was considered to be Ferhat and their eastern end Bisotun, that some Arabic geography books call the whole range Bisotun, and that the name "Bisotun" is a corruption of "Pontus". He thinks these resemblances may have given rise to the tale. The narrative of Ferhat and Şirin does not belong to Amasya alone and is part of a broad tradition stretching from Persian and Azerbaijani literature to Anatolian folk storytelling. Amasya's share lies in tying the story to its own hillside, its own mountain and its own water channel. The chisel marks in the rock call to mind the story of a painter-decorator, whereas behind them stand nameless craftsmen working to meet a city's need for water. The walk offers the chance to hold these two readings side by side on the same slope.

Ferhat Arası in History

As the narrow gateway into Amasya from the south, Ferhat Arası has several times been a stage in the city's history. According to the account Hüsameddin draws from the Danişmendname and other epic sources, when Melik Ahmed Danişmend Gazi marched on Amasya from Turhal in the month of Rajab of the year 467, he halted with İltekin Gazi, commander of the vanguard, in front of the city's southern gorge. It was spring, the river had overflowed and water covered everything. Both sides of the gorge were fortified like castles, and the Fon and Kelkis mountains and Ferhat Arası were filled with Byzantine soldiers. When the Byzantine commander held out from a steep position in Ferhat Arası and the river closed the narrow part of the gorge, the Danishmendid army withdrew and waited for the waters to fall.

According to the same account, when the army returned to the gorge some time later it advanced in two columns. Emir Ahmed Gazi marched along the right bank of the river, that is, on the Helvacı Pınarı side, and İltekin Gazi along the left bank, west of Çalan Köprü. Meanwhile Ferhad Gazi's column was climbing Fon Mountain. Since most of these details rest on epic sources, it is more accurate to read them as the city's memory of conquest. Even so, the account clearly shows the place of Ferhat Arası in the defence of Amasya and the narrow geography of the two banks of the gorge that walkers still see today.

In the Ottoman period, too, Ferhat Arası was the road on which distinguished visitors to the city were received. As Hüsameddin relates, Sultan Murad IV, returning from the Yerevan campaign in the month of Jumada al-Akhira of 1045, that is, at the end of 1635, continued his journey without stopping at İnepazarı and reached Çalan Köprübaşı as the call to the night prayer was being made. The sultan rested there until late at night in the great garden and pavilion of Hoca Ahmed Paşa, and the imperial tent and the tents of the dignitaries were pitched that night at Hacılar Meydanı. Sultan Murad himself entered the city at night and lodged in Hoca Ahmed Paşa's mansion on the riverbank, so that the welcoming procession that had been prepared came to nothing. This small episode shows that the stretch where the canal begins today was regarded for centuries as the threshold of the city.

Practical Notes for the Visit

The canal was registered in 1975 and 1988 and is protected as a first-degree monument. Not touching the rock face or the vault stones, not climbing and not writing on the walls contributes directly to the canal's protection. In the conservation project the limestone section of about 600 metres is named the Ferhatkaya Formation, and the rock faces are stated to reach 15-20 metres in height. This layered limestone is vulnerable to chemical decay through the seepage of groundwater. The geological report for the area notes three main fault lines, a fractured rock structure separated by clay fillings 5-15 centimetres thick, and blocks tending to slide in the direction of the canal. For this reason one should not stand for long directly beneath the cliffs, and should take extra care after rain and in periods of freeze and thaw. The museum's visitor notes likewise ask that walkways be used with care, that exhibits not be touched and that no food or drink be brought into the museum grounds.

Chronology

1st-2nd century BC: The construction of the canal is dated in the sources variously from the Late Hellenistic to the Early Roman period; there is no exact year.

3rd century AD: According to a Greek inscription on the wall of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque, the water channels are repaired.

12th century: The line is recorded as having lost its function after this date, with its surroundings opened to settlement.

1074-75 (467): According to the account based on the Danişmendname, the army of Melik Ahmed Danişmend Gazi clashes with Byzantine forces at Ferhat Arası.

1635 (1045): Sultan Murad IV halts at Çalan Köprübaşı on his return from the Yerevan campaign, and his tent is pitched at Hacılar Meydanı.

1653-54 (1064): Death of the former mütesellim Helvacı Mehmed Ağa, builder of Helvacı Pınarı.

1750-51 (1164): El-Hâc Osman Bey builds the Bey Pınarı fountain in Ferhat Arası.

1795-96 (1210): El-Hâc İbrahim Ağa restores Helvacı Pınarı.

1975 and 1988: The canal is registered as a monument and immovable cultural property.

1997: The Amasya Museum carries out cleaning and a rescue excavation on the 675-metre section at Ferhat Arası; Işık Aksulu and Gediz Urak of Gazi University begin preparing the conservation and landscaping project.

2006: The project is published in the METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture; the authors state that the proposals have not yet been implemented.

2013: The Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum is opened by the Amasya Municipality.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, pp. 7-8, 33-43 (Ferhat Rock, Ferhat Arası, the water channel, Helvacı Pınarı, Bey Pınarı, Veng), pp. 88-91 (vineyards, Çalan Köprü) amasya.bel.tr
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 2, p. 181 (Pharnaces II), pp. 270-276 (the Danishmendid siege of Amasya) amasya.bel.tr
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 4, pp. 73-75 (Murad IV's arrival in Amasya)
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 12, pp. 178-181 (Ebubekir Beyzade Osman Bey)

Academic studies

  • URAK, Gediz - AKSULU, Işık, "Documentation for Preservation of the Ferhat Water Canal in Amasya", METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 23/2, 2006, pp. 93-112
  • NICHOLSON, Oliver - NICHOLSON, Caroline, "The Aqueduct at Amasya in Pontus", Anatolian Studies, 43, 1993, pp. 143-146

Official sources

  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Ferhat Su Kanalı", amasya.ktb.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Hürriyet Seyahat, "Bu kanalı Ferhat'ın oyduğunu sanıyorsanız yanılıyorsunuz"
  • Anadolu Agency, "Dillere destan aşkların müzesi", 29 September 2018
  • İNCEÖZ, Serap, "Ferhat ile Şirin Âşıklar Müzesi", Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019
  • ODÖO (EBA), "Ferhat ile Şirin Aşıklar Müzesi"
  • Objektif Amasya, "Dünya üzerindeki tema olarak aşkın işlendiği tek müze", 21 April 2020

Online sources