Every spring in the village of Yuvacık, in Amasya's central district, cauldrons are set up around the village mosque, sacrificial animals are slaughtered, and the villagers, joined by people from neighbouring villages and from the city, go out to pray for rain. Accounts differ on how old the ceremony is. One report calls the custom "about 500 years old", another "six centuries old"; the villagers themselves regard it as a duty handed down from their forebears over many centuries. They trace its origin to Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede, the Mevlevi sheikh who gave the village its name. In the work of the Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar this sheikh appears under his full name, Cemâleddîn Mehmed Cû'î Çelebi, as a man who built a mosque, a Mevlevi lodge, a public kitchen and his own tomb in the village and kept them running through a pious endowment. The rain prayer therefore reaches beyond a plea for rainfall; it has become a day of gathering on which a village recalls, year after year, its founder, its common property and its responsibility toward one another.

The Village's Location and Names

Yuvacık lies roughly three kilometres from the centre of Amasya, on the slope to the west of the city. Although its official name is now Yuvacık, the local people still call it Şeyhcui or Cıcui, and the village headman, speaking to reporters, prefers to say "our town". Hüsameddin describes the village of Şeyh Cû'î, in his own day, as one "counted within the city of Amasya". The detail points to the village's close ties with the city: the vineyards, the spring excursion grounds and the water channels between the two bound them together for centuries.

The village's oldest name is Kelkis. According to Hüsameddin, the place where the northern and western mountains of Amasya meet forms an arc-shaped circle; the whole of this circle was once known as Kelkis, while its middle in time took the name Şeyh Cû'î. The author states that this is recorded in the endowment deed of Şeyh Cû'î, and writes that the vineyards were known as Kelkis until the sheikh's time, and that the old name was forgotten once the sheikh settled there for a long period and built a mosque, a Mevlevi lodge, a school and a tomb. He adds that Arabic chronicles record the same place as "Kalis" and its vineyards as "Batn-ı Kalis". The vineyards below the village were called "Cığcığı" in popular speech, and the form Cıcui used today echoes that old local pronunciation.

There are two different accounts of how the name arose. Hüsameddin writes that the sheikh improved the village of Kelkis with great care and himself gave it the name "Village of Şeyh Cû'î". Abdülhalim Durma, who studied Mevlevism in Amasya, says instead that the village was given the name Şeyh Cuî after the sheikh's death. What both accounts share is that the name is tied directly to the sheikh's person and to the order he established in the village.

Sheikh Cemâleddîn Mehmed Cû'î

In local compilations Sheikh Cui, whose real name was Mehmet Cui and who is also known as Şeyh Mehmed Cui Dede, is introduced as a Mevlevi sheikh held in respect among the people. According to these compilations he rose to fame in the years when Amasya had only recently come under Ottoman rule, in the time remembered as that of Şadgeldi Pasha; he served as sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevi lodge and in 1414 withdrew to his own village, where he founded a Mevlevi lodge, a dervish lodge and a school. Durma adds that he endowed all the land of the village to the lodge, lived in the village for a long time, did not come down to the city, and was buried in his village when he died. The same author admits that little is known about the life of this sheikh, for all the great esteem the people showed him.

The biography in Hüsameddin's work widens this picture. According to him, Cû'î Mehmed Çelebi was the son of the eminent scholar Mevlânâ Fahreddîn Osmân bin Abdullah et-Türkmânî. He studied with Hüsâmeddîn Hasan Hoyî and with the Mevlevi sheikhs Celâleddîn Mehmed Dede and Nusretzâde Cemâleddîn Habîb Çelebi of Zile, and for many years taught Sufi learning as the reader of the Mesnevi (mesnevîhan) at the Amasya Mevlevi lodge. On the death of his sheikh, Hüsâmzâde Celâleddîn Mehmed Dede, he became sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevi lodge. The list of sheikhs that Hüsameddin gives in the first volume of the same work differs slightly: there, Nusretzâde Cemâleddîn Ahmed Dede of Zile is said to have been sheikh in the time of Şadgeldi Pasha, followed by his deputy Mehmed Cû'î Dede. Durma follows this second order. Whom Cû'î succeeded as sheikh thus remains in these two forms in the sources consulted.

The most striking aspect of the biography is the sheikh's relationship with Çelebi Sultan Mehmed. According to Hüsameddin, in the time of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed, Cû'î became greatly renowned for his lessons in hadith, Qur'anic exegesis and the Mesnevi; the prince then in Amasya, later Sultan Mehmed I, attended his lessons from time to time and showed him respect. The village of Kelkis to the west of Amasya, together with all its vineyards, was granted to the sheikh as freehold property by the sovereign. In this village the sheikh built a mosque, a Mevlevi lodge beside it, a public kitchen (imaret) and a tomb for himself, and endowed his properties to cover the expenses of these charitable foundations. The endowment is dated to the month of Zilhicce in the Hijri year 817, which corresponds to February-March 1415. The date of 1414 found in local compilations is consistent with the fact that the Hijri year 817 began in March 1414, and can be read as a round date for the construction of the buildings.

Hüsameddin states that he saw the sheikh's endowment deed and his certificate of succession (hilâfetname) with his own eyes. According to these documents, Cû'î's Mevlevi chain of succession reaches Sultan Veled by two lines: one runs through his sheikh Celâleddîn Mehmed Dede and the latter's father Hüsâmeddîn Hüseyin Dede, the other through Nusretzâde Cemâleddîn Habîb Dede and Ulu Ârif Mehmed Dede. Among his deputies are listed his son Âbid Ahmed Çelebi, Yoğurtçu Pîr Ahmed Dede and Sheikh Burhâneddîn İbrâhim Dede. The sheikh placed his son-in-law Ahmed Yoğurtçu Dede at the head of his lodge and died in the month of Zilhicce of the Hijri year 819, that is, early in 1417.

Hüsameddin describes him as a pious, devout, cultivated man, a poet and a righteous figure. He reports that he took the pen name Cû'î because of his severe ascetic exercises, that he read and taught Teftâzânî's work on legal theory, the Telvîh, thirty times, and that he wrote a fine commentary on the Qur'an. He supports this last point with an Aleppan source: in the work of the Aleppo historian Hanbelîzâde, among the teachers of a scholar of Aleppo appears the name of Şeyh Cû'î er-Rûmî, "whose commentary is known as 'the Sheikh's Commentary'", and it is noted that he read the Telvîh from beginning to end thirty times. Hüsameddin also writes that the sheikh was "by nature refined, gracious and inclined to building", and that he adorned the village's vineyards with flowers and fruit trees. The man remembered today as the founder of the rain prayer thus appears in the written sources both as a teacher of the religious sciences and the Mesnevi and as the founder of an endowment who brought his village to life with water, vineyards and charitable institutions.

Water, Vineyards and the Spring Excursion

To understand why the rain prayer holds such a place in the life of the village, one has to look at the village's relationship with water. Hüsameddin records that the water the sheikh brought to his village irrigated the vineyards below, and that the water, the village and its fields were endowment property. The lodge itself stood below the village, near a pond. Osman Fevzi Olcay, listing the great Sufis of Amasya, places "Pir Muhammed Cuî" "at the head of the pool of the Great Water of Şeyh Cuî Village". Today a fountain believed to have been built by the sheikh is said to still stand beside the village mosque. In a village where the memory of the founder is so closely linked to water, it is no surprise that the prayer offered against drought is remembered together with his name.

The vineyards of Şeyh Cû'î were also Amasya's best-loved spring excursion ground. According to Hüsameddin, the notables and the well-to-do of the city would move here from the twentieth of April and spend the spring in these vineyards, famous for their cherries and their elegant pavilions. The excursion season in Amasya began in spring and lasted until the end of May, and the vineyards of Şeyh Cû'î were counted the first of these resorts. Olcay, describing their state in the early twentieth century, writes that people moved to their pavilions here in the cherry season, that neighbours invited one another to sit beneath the cherry trees, and that when the heat began most returned to the city while some stayed until the grape harvest. One detail Olcay gives shows the everyday link between the village and the vineyards: every morning milk and yoghurt were carried from the village right up to the pavilions of the townspeople who had moved out for the season. That the rain prayer is still held between the end of May and the beginning of June, in the weeks when the crops need water, can be read from within this calendar of farming and vineyards.

Lodge, Public Kitchen and the Shared Table

In the order that Şeyh Cû'î established, hospitality mattered as much as worship; one of the chief duties of the endowment was to feed those who came and went. When Hüsameddin lists the eleven great hospices in Amasya open to travellers, wayfarers and the poor, he names the Şeyh Cû'î Hospice among them, and writes that their provisions were plentiful and their cooks and bakers appointed. The biography of Yoğurtçu Pîr Ahmed Dede, who took charge of the lodge after the sheikh's death, makes this tradition of hospitality more concrete still. This dervish, the son of Ömer Bey, son of the emir Şerefeddîn Mukbil Bey, and also known as Gülbeyoğlu, was formed in the company of Şeyh Cû'î; after his master's death he became sheikh of the Mevlevi lodge in the village, lived there teaching the Mesnevi, and strove to improve the morals of the villagers. Because he offered yoghurt to everyone who came to his lodge he was called "Yoğurtçu Dede", the Yoghurt Dede, and by endowing the field of Ilıca in the district of Arguma to meet the food expenses of the lodge he enlarged the Şeyh Cû'î endowment.

The date of Yoğurtçu Dede's death appears in two different forms in Hüsameddin's work. In the account of events in the third volume he is said to have died in the Hijri year 842 (1438-39), while his biography in the seventh volume places his death around the Hijri year 846 (1442-43). Both passages agree that he was buried beside his sheikh. According to Hüsameddin, the first sheikh of the lodge was its founder, Mehmed Cû'î Dede, followed by Pîrî Ahmed Dede, known as Yoğurtçu Baba, and then by Ömer Âhî Dede. The sheikhs who came after them were recorded under the title of "mesnevîhan".

The lodge went through ups and downs in the following centuries. Hüsameddin writes that Hacı Mehmed Çelebi, who in the Hijri year 1057 (1647-48) became sheikh and mesnevîhan of the Şeyh Cû'î Mevlevi lodge and trustee of its endowment, repaired the ruined lodge and brought the village back to life. Hacı Çelebi held the post for about ten years and died in 1067 (1656-57); his service was remembered so well that the name "Hacı Çelebi" became the byname of his line, and his descendants were called "Hacı Çelebizâdeler" and "Hacıoğulları". By the terms of the endowment deed, the trusteeship of the endowment and the posts of sheikh and mesnevîhan of the lodge were given to Cû'î's descendants. Hüsameddin gives a detailed list of the mesnevîhans of Şeyh Cû'î, most of them reputedly of Cû'î's lineage and some of them also holding the post of sheikh of the Amasya Mevlevi lodge, down to the Hijri years 1227-1228 (1812-13).

The village was also known for the people it produced outside the lodge. One of the best-known teachers of Qur'anic recitation and tajwid in eighteenth-century Amasya, the chief reciter (şeyhü'l-kurrâ) Hacı İbrâhim Efendi, was the son of Yahyâ bin İbrâhim of the village of Şeyh Cû'î and was known as "Cû'î İbrâhim Efendi". This teacher, who taught the science of Qur'anic recitation at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, died in the month of Zilhicce of the Hijri year 1179 (1766). Hüsameddin, for his part, notes that in his own time "no trace now remains" of the lodge. The tomb and fountain standing today beside the village mosque are regarded as the living traces of this institution.

The distribution of meat and bulgur pilaf cooked in cauldrons to everyone who comes to today's rain prayer lends itself to being remembered as a continuation of the hospitality of the Şeyh Cû'î kitchen and of Yoğurtçu Dede. Even so, no written document is known that shows a direct continuity between the two practices. Nor, in the works consulted, is there any record in Ottoman sources of a rain prayer being held in this village; the attribution of the ceremony to the sheikh rests today on the oral tradition of the villagers.

Accounts of the Ceremony's Origin

The accounts of how the ceremony began rest on this historical line. In a report published in 2019 the custom is presented as a rain prayer and sacrifice begun six centuries ago by Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede. According to the villager Rıfat Karaman, little rain used to fall because the area was rural; some 600 years ago Sheikh Cui Dede came and settled in the village and went out with the villagers to pray for rain, and the practice has continued as a custom from that day to this. In 2022 the village headman said that the same custom had been going on for five centuries. The gap between six hundred and five hundred years seems to arise from an orally transmitted tradition expressing its age in round numbers. Since the sheikh's endowment is dated to 1415, the establishment of the village's order goes back a little over six hundred years, which agrees with the "six centuries" account. Even so, no written document is known that shows in which year the first rain prayer was held.

Preparing the Ceremony

The custom is carried out by the villagers with their own means. According to the village headman, whose name appears in the reports as both Kemal Saka and Kemal Sakar, every detail of the organisation is handled through communal cooperation (imece). Preparations begin with the collection of a sacrifice fee set by the current management. Both those who live in the village and those who live in the city are responsible for this share; in the 2022 account the amount is described, according to the circumstances of the day, as the price of one kilo of meat from each household. Announcements are made to the villagers, the money is to be handed over to those in charge, and it is stated that the day of the outing will be announced later. One or more sacrificial animals are bought according to the money collected and the list drawn up. Once the day is fixed, the villagers are again informed by announcement. Meat pilaf made with bulgur is prepared as the meal of the prayer day.

What stands out in this practice is the way the burden is shared among households. Because the cost of the sacrifice is divided among everyone, those who have left the village are not excluded from the ceremony. In the headman's words, the villagers gather every year below the Şeyhcui Mosque to distribute keşkek and bulgur pilaf. The table set out after the prayer is the visible outcome of the ceremony.

The Circuit and the Prayer

The sacrificial animal is bought with the money collected a day or two before the rain prayer. One of the most remarkable practices of the custom is the circuit known in the village as "daire çevirme", "turning the circle". The village imams and other religious officials who know the tradition travel the field roads surrounding the village while reciting the Qur'an. According to the headman, this circuit used to be made on horseback; today it is made by car. Throughout the circuit, prayers are said for the village and its surroundings to be protected from every kind of accident, misfortune and disaster. In this way, while rain is being asked for, the cultivated fields, the roads and the village's surroundings are all brought together within the scope of the prayer.

On the day of the prayer, bulgur pilaf is cooked in the cauldrons; the meat of the sacrificed animal is added to this meal, and the meat pilaf is eaten to the accompaniment of prayers. A report on the 2026 ceremony describes its course as follows: first, complete readings of the Qur'an (hatm-i şerif) are recited, then hands are raised to the sky for mercy. The sacrificial meat is cooked in the cauldrons and served to hundreds of people. Prayer and meal are two inseparable parts of the same gathering; the prayer begins before the meal, and the meal continues with prayers.

Its Purpose: Rain, Abundance and Protection

According to the headman, the purpose of the event is for the villagers to keep their shared values alive in unity and solidarity, and to pray, in a religious and spiritual sense, for the village, its people, its farmland and its crops to be protected from every kind of disaster, accident and misfortune. This prayer, in his own words, means "in other words, giving thanks". As has become customary, the rain prayer is usually held in the last weeks of May. The dates can vary from year to year: the 2019 ceremony fell at the end of April, the 2026 ceremony in the first week of June. Because the day is set by decision of the villagers, the calendar is flexible.

In the villagers' words, the ceremony is described as a matter of identity. Şahin Saka says that as a child he came holding his grandfather's hand and now comes holding his grandson's hand, adding: "This is our identity. We keep alive the spiritual heritage that Sheikh Mehmed Cui Dede left us." Ziyaattin Ortaköylü stresses that the custom has become the most important value strengthening the unity and solidarity of the village. The headman, too, says that the custom was left to them by their elders, that they believe it will be carried on by the generations that follow, that participation is steadily growing, and that there are people who come from outside the city and even from abroad. The ceremony has thus become the annual meeting day of the people of Yuvacık together with everyone who has kept up their ties with the village.

The Auction of the Offal

One of the distinctive practices of the ceremony is the sale by auction of the offal of the slaughtered animals. In 2019 the Mayor of Amasya, Mehmet Sarı, described this practice as the auction of the offal alongside the sacrificial meat that is cooked and served to the public. In 2026 the headman described the custom as a tradition handed down from the past, and said that the income obtained both meets the needs of the village and strengthens the bonds among the villagers. What is sold is the offal and not the sacrificial animal itself; most of the meat is served to those who come, together with the pilaf.

The auction adds a dimension of solidarity to the ceremony. The income does not go to a single person or institution; it is used for the common needs of the village. In this way the food that is served does not go unrecompensed, and the custom meets the preparations for the following year from within itself. This arrangement recalls the old endowment logic of devoting income to the common affairs of the village, yet no written record of the needs on which the income is spent, or of the amounts involved, was found in the sources consulted.

Those Who Attend

The custom also attracts the interest of local government and official circles. In 2019 the Mayor of Amasya, Mehmet Sarı, the Amasya Provincial Representative of Türkiye Kamu-Sen, Şemsettin Dümen, and the Amasya Branch President of Türk Büro-Sen, Muammer Tufanoğlu, attended the ceremony together with nearly 600 villagers. The mayor stated that this was the fifth time he had come and that the custom had continued for more than six hundred years. In 2026 the Governor of Amasya, Önder Bakan, the Amasya Member of Parliament Haluk İpek and the former national wrestler Mahmut Demir, European, World and Olympic champion, took part in the programme; besides the residents of Yuvacık, hundreds of people from the surrounding villages and districts filled the village square. This attendance shows that the rain prayer is no longer merely a village affair and has become a gathering recognised across the province. Yet the running of the ceremony remains in the hands of the village; the order of the Qur'an readings and the prayer has been preserved.

The Religious Framework of the Rain Prayer

In Islamic law the rain prayer is known as istiskā. The word, which literally means "asking for water", denotes as a technical term praying to God in a particular manner for rain to fall. Istiskā occurs in two verses of the Qur'an, both of which concern Moses asking for water for his people. Many hadiths about the rain prayer are related from the Prophet: it is reported that during a Friday sermon he prayed at the request of a man who complained of drought, that he went out with his companions to pray for rain and prayed facing the qibla, that he turned his cloak inside out and that he performed two cycles of prayer. Taken together, these reports show that the prayer was sometimes held in the mosque and sometimes outside the city, sometimes with a sermon and ritual prayer, and sometimes with supplication alone.

All the schools of law regard istiskā as sunna. Abû Hanîfa held that the supplication is the essential element and that performing a special congregational prayer for it is not to be counted as sunna, while the majority also regarded the two-cycle prayer as sunna. Among the recommended practices before the prayer are bodily cleanliness, modest dress, calling the people to repentance and to avoid sin, fasting for three days and giving alms as far as one can. Raising the hands as high as possible while praying is sunna. The phrase "hands are raised to the sky" at Yuvacık is the village-scale counterpart of this practice. The article Mustafa Baktır wrote for the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam stresses that the rain prayer should not be understood in a way that abolishes the relation of cause and effect, and that prayer and trust in God should be seen as an attitude added to the measures that reason and science recommend.

The same article also notes that rain-making rituals are found in many religions and beliefs, that some local traditions include practices such as sacrificing animals and pouring their blood on the ground, and that practices in some Muslim societies bear traces of pre-Islamic beliefs. In the classification of the folklorist İlhan Başgöz, as cited by Özlem Demren, the "rain prayer" is a two-cycle prayer performed by the elders, usually outside the town at a suitable place, and has features common to all Muslim lands; but each region has added its own elements, such as reciting over pebbles and throwing them into water, or bringing animals, women and children into the ceremony. The ceremony described at Yuvacık, by contrast, is built on Qur'an reading, complete recitation, prayer and a shared meal; practices such as reciting over stones or turning garments inside out do not appear in the accounts of this village.

Comparison with Similar Customs in Anatolia

The rain prayer is kept alive in many parts of Anatolia, and each region has its own practice. The cultural inventory compiled for Isparta shows this variety. In the Atabey and Gönen districts of Isparta the prayer can last three days, from Wednesday to Friday. Those who perform the prayer are made to gather seventy thousand chickpea-sized pebbles; the Basmala and the Sura of Ikhlas are recited and breathed over each pebble, and the pebbles are then emptied into a stream or an irrigation channel. The congregation wear their outer garments inside out, lambs and sheep are brought along, children plead "give, my God, give", a goat bought in common is sacrificed, and a dish called "mahya" is cooked. The same compilation records the practice of children going from house to house collecting butter, bulgur, grape molasses, money and the like, attributed to the advice of Leblebici Baba. This information belongs to Isparta; no record has been found of such a practice in Amasya.

One of the examples closest in structure to Yuvacık is Ortaköy, in the Mamak district of Ankara, studied by Özlem Demren in a work published in 2006. Here, too, the rain prayer is usually held in May and June, when the crops have turned green and need water. Once the decision is made, the villagers are informed, appointed people go from house to house collecting money for the sacrifice, and bulgur, butter and bread are gathered from the homes; everyone gives what they can, and the poor need not give anything. In the morning the animals are slaughtered, cauldrons are set up in the village square, and meat and bulgur pilaf are cooked. In Ortaköy people then climb the hill beside the village, jackets are worn inside out, the imam prays and recites over seventy thousand small stones that have been collected, leads a two-cycle prayer, and the stones are thrown into the stream. On their return the whole population, rich and poor alike, eat the meal together, and some take food home as well.

The comparison brings out the particular features of Yuvacık. In both villages money is collected from households, the sacrificial animal is bought in common, bulgur pilaf is cooked in cauldrons, and the ceremony ends with a table shared by all. The climbing of the hill, the turning of garments and the reciting over stones that stand out at Ortaköy are, however, absent from the accounts of Yuvacık. What sets Yuvacık apart is the circuit made around the village lands, the complete recitation of the Qur'an, the auction of the offal and the attribution of the ceremony to a sheikh. Drawing on Pertev Naili Boratav, Demren notes that the "charity meal" eaten at a rain prayer ceremony is a practice aimed at pleasing God, and, starting from Durkheim's analysis of ritual, stresses that such ceremonies bring individuals together, strengthen social bonds, and help traditions to endure and beliefs to be renewed. The meaning the villagers of Yuvacık give the ceremony with the words "unity and solidarity" and "identity" accords with this analysis.

Another example cited by Demren shows how such a custom can weaken. In Tekirdağ people once went in a large group to a particular place, recited over stones, sacrificed an animal and shared a meal; in later years they merely gathered in the mosque and prayed, no stones were collected, and no meal was eaten after the prayer. At Yuvacık, by contrast, the sacrifice, the cauldron and the shared table have been preserved, and the ceremony has continued each year with ever larger attendance.

The Custom Today

As far as the reports show, the Yuvacık rain prayer looks less like a crisis ritual tied to a moment of drought and more like an annual gathering. Participation is said to grow every year, the custom appears in the local press, and it attracts the interest of local government and officials. Its basic elements are preserved in the form in which they are said to have been kept for centuries: the prayer, the sacrifice, the bulgur pilaf, the gathering of the village and the hospitality that reaches everyone. The 2022 report was headlined "An unchanging tradition"; the 2026 report describes the same elements again. The main thing that has changed is the means of transport; the circuit, once made on horseback, is now made by car.

The village headman's office, the religious officials attached to the mosque and the system of communal cooperation play a large part in keeping the custom alive. The sacrifice share divided among households, the announcements and the auction of the offal turn the cost of the ceremony into a shared responsibility of the village. The fact that generations who have moved from the village to the city can also take part shows that the ceremony serves to keep social bonds alive. In the village of a sheikh who, six hundred years ago, sought to sustain through an endowment the water that irrigated his vineyards, his kitchen and his lodge, the fact that the shared table is still laid through the common contribution of the village is the most tangible expression of Yuvacık's bond with its own past.

Chronology

Hijri 817 (1414-15): Cemâleddîn Mehmed Cû'î builds a mosque and a Mevlevi lodge in the village of Kelkis; in the month of Zilhicce (February-March 1415) he endows his properties to cover the expenses of these institutions. Local compilations date the same event to 1414.

Hijri 819, Zilhicce (early 1417): Şeyh Cû'î dies; his son-in-law Yoğurtçu Pîr Ahmed Dede takes charge of the lodge.

Hijri 842 or 846 (1438-39 or 1442-43): Yoğurtçu Dede, who endowed the field of Ilıca for the food expenses of the lodge, dies; Hüsameddin gives two different dates.

Hijri 1057-1067 (1647-1657): Hacı Mehmed Çelebi, as sheikh of the Şeyh Cû'î Mevlevi lodge and trustee of the endowment, repairs the ruined lodge.

Hijri 1227-1228 (1812-13): The last appointments in Hüsameddin's list of the mesnevîhans of Şeyh Cû'î.

30 April 2019: The rain prayer and sacrifice ceremony is held at Yuvacık; the Mayor of Amasya, Mehmet Sarı, and nearly 600 people attend, and the custom is described as "six centuries old".

30 May 2022: The rain prayer in the village known as Şeyhcui is reported as a custom "about 500 years old"; the headman describes the purpose and order of the ceremony.

9 June 2026: The rain prayer is held at Yuvacık with large attendance; Governor Önder Bakan, MP Haluk İpek and the former national wrestler Mahmut Demir take part, and the offal of the sacrificial animals is sold at auction.

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