Among the Western travellers who passed through Amasya in the first half of the nineteenth century, William John Hamilton stands out for looking at the city with the eyes of both a geologist and an antiquary. Although he stayed only three days in the summer of 1836, he climbed the castle, descended some three hundred feet down the secret passage cut into the rock, went round the royal tombs one by one, counted the bridges, noted the figures of silk production, and compared what he saw with Strabo's description of Amasya. The first volume of his two-volume Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia, published in 1842, opens with his own drawing of the royal tombs of Amasya.

Hamilton's real profession was geology. He served for many years as secretary of the Geological Society of London and twice as its president, was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society four times, and sat for a time in the British Parliament. The journey in Asia Minor and the book that came out of it became the best-remembered product of this life.

Family and Youth

According to the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, William John Hamilton was born in London on 5 July 1805. He was the eldest son of William Richard Hamilton. He was educated at Charterhouse and at the University of Göttingen, paying special attention to modern languages and history. In 1827 he was appointed attaché to the legation at Madrid, in 1829 he was transferred to Paris, and after returning to London he served for a time as précis-writer to Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office.

He turned to geology at his father's wish: the geologist Roderick Murchison gave him practical instruction. In 1831 he became a fellow of the Geological Society, and from 1832 to 1854 he served as one of its secretaries. Murchison introduced him to the young naturalist Hugh Strickland, and the journey to the East grew out of this acquaintance.

The Journey in Asia Minor

In the preface to his book Hamilton writes that in the early part of 1835, while thinking of an excursion to the European continent, he turned instead to the Ottoman provinces in Asia, because these regions were still "comparatively unknown" to the antiquary, the geographer and the geologist. He prepared for three or four months by reading the ancient writers and learning to use instruments such as the sextant and the circle. He counted himself fortunate in persuading Strickland to accompany him, but Strickland had to return to England at the beginning of 1836. Hamilton notes that Strickland's departure was a great loss to the geological investigation of the country, and an even greater one in ornithology and entomology.

The two first visited the Ionian Islands, the Bosphorus and the volcanic region of Katakekaumene in western Anatolia. After Strickland left, Hamilton followed alone, on horseback, a long route that reached as far as Armenia and crossed the whole length of Asia Minor back to Smyrna. In the preface he explains that, finding the existing maps "incorrect in the highest degree," he took great pains over his records of time, distance and direction, tried to fix positions by astronomical observation, and gathered a large collection of rocks and minerals. In Ankara he was also among those who copied fragments of the Greek translation of the Res Gestae inscription on the wall of the Temple of Augustus; Georges Perrot, who twenty-five years later uncovered the Greek text from behind house walls and copied it, writes that Pococke and Hamilton had published these fragments.

From the Black Sea to Amasya

In the summer of 1836 Hamilton turned inland from the Black Sea coast. According to his journal he was on the road to Vezirköprü on 31 July, reached Lâdik on 1 August, and then went on to Niksar and Tokat. On 9 August he travelled from Tokat to Turhal and on 10 August to Zile. He writes that after leaving Zile he passed through the valley where Caesar defeated Pharnaces II of Pontus and announced his victory with the words "Veni, vidi, vici," and that the deep ravine described by Hirtius corresponds exactly to this spot.

In the book the date of the journey from Zile to Amasya is printed as "Thursday, April 11"; but since the preceding days are 9 and 10 August, and 11 August 1836 did indeed fall on a Thursday, the correct date is 11 August 1836. That day, at the end of an eight-hour ride, Hamilton came down into the Yeşilırmak valley and saw the gigantic water-wheels, some with a radius of sixteen or eighteen feet, that irrigated the gardens and mulberry plantations on both banks. On the way one of the baggage horses broke a leg; while waiting for a fresh horse in a village called Aksaler, he watched gipsy women sing and dance in a wayside room. Approaching the city, he noted that the hedges were made of mulberry twigs stripped of their leaves by the silkworms, and that two miles from the town, in a narrow gorge, he saw the remains of an old water channel cut into the rock. At half past five in the evening he entered Amasya.

Three Days in Amasya

Hamilton's first impression was that the city, with its stone houses and its situation, had "an air of great superiority over most others in Turkey." On both sides of the main street he saw buildings "in the Saracenic style," some in ruins and some used as mosques, which he was told were the tombs of the early sultans who had taken the region from Byzantium. According to the information given him, the city had three to four thousand Turkish, seven hundred and fifty Armenian, and a hundred to a hundred and fifty Greek households. He writes that the city's chief interest came from its being the birthplace of Strabo, and includes in his book, in his own translation, Strabo's famous passage describing his native town.

Hamilton's most detailed observations in Amasya concern the castle. Going round to the east of the rock, which cannot be climbed directly from the town, he ascended by the narrow ridge connecting the castle with the mountains to the north. He argued that the "five or six stadia" Strabo gives for the height of the citadel describe the length of the road, since the summit can only be reached by this roundabout path. Near the beginning of the ascent he found two inscriptions cut into the rock and deciphered them with difficulty, returning on the following days at the hours when the sun gave the most favourable light; the inscriptions were published in the appendix to his book. On the summit he was surprised to find very few ancient remains: most of the walls were Byzantine or Turkish, but at the highest point stood the remains of two finely built Hellenistic towers. He recorded that the outer faces of the stones were slightly convex and that each course was sixteen inches thick and regularly laid.

What interested him most in the castle was the underground passage mentioned by Strabo. Hamilton, who had seen similar stairways cut into the rock in the castles of Ünye, Tokat, Turhal and Zile, thought that this one had been built either to obtain water or as a secret sally-port, and in either case dated from the Hellenistic period. He went down it with a guide and lights. At first the brick vaulting of the entrance made him doubt its antiquity, but after descending about twenty feet he reached the original entrance of Hellenistic masonry. On the steep descent, its steps worn away or filled with mud, he slid down fifteen or twenty steps at once, and finally, at a depth of about three hundred feet, came to a small pool of clear cold water, itself surrounded by a Hellenistic wall. He thought the well had once been deeper and had been filled with stones, and added that it might be one of the wells which Strabo says were destroyed on Pompey's orders. He writes that the similar passages at Ünye and Turhal strengthen the likelihood that these castles too were among the strongholds of Mithridates.

He counts the royal tombs just below the castle as five: three to the west and two to the east. He describes how the face of the rock had been artificially smoothed to heighten the effect, and how the western tombs were reached through a small grotto and along an open gallery cut into the sheer cliff and protected by a low parapet of rock. He notes that the farthest tomb is completely separated from the surrounding rock by a narrow passage and appears unfinished, that none of them bears an inscription, and compares them with the Aynalı Mağara outside the town described by Ker Porter. Below the smaller tombs to the east he saw considerable remains of old Greek walls and a square tower in the best Hellenic style, and writes that these are the walls Strabo describes as the enclosure containing the royal tombs.

Within the city he counted four bridges over the Yeşilırmak. The westernmost stone bridge was modern; the stone bridge just below the royal tombs was very old, "apparently Roman," and had sunk considerably since it was built; the third was the wooden bridge opposite the konak of the mütesellim (district governor); the fourth was the stone bridge half a mile lower down, at the end of the town. In the same street he saw the ruins of an old madrasa whose front wall was built of fragments of ancient cornices, friezes and architraves, and whose doorway had sides and lintel made of long stones bearing Greek inscriptions in large letters; he included these inscriptions too in the appendix of his book.

Hamilton's information on the economy of Amasya is brief but concrete. He writes that the plain below the town was covered with irrigated gardens and mulberry plantations, that silk was one of the staple products of Amasya, that more than fifty thousand okes were produced annually, and that the price was about a hundred and twenty piastres an oke. He visited a newly established mill by the river that wove a coarse woollen cloth, almost like felt, for the clothing of the Nizam troops: spinning, weaving and fulling the cloth with great wooden hammers were all carried out by means of a water-wheel set in the river. Hamilton says the machinery was very rude, but deserved encouragement as a beginning of manufacturing industry.

The traveller hears that a Greek school had lately been opened in Amasya with the permission of the authorities, the only one in that part of Asia Minor besides the one at Bafra. The chief priest of the Greek church, who called on him, told him that there were neither books nor manuscripts in Amasya, but that the college at Kayseri had a large library; when he was in Kayseri the following year, he would learn that there were no manuscripts there either. He writes that he found the bazaars small and ill supplied, that he bought from Armenian jewellers a few coins of Dia and Pimolisa, but that he could not find a single coin of Amasya itself. Another sight of the town struck him as well: the large white vultures that roosted at night in the surrounding cliffs and by day waited on the roofs and cleared away refuse, which the Turks never molested and to which they now and then threw food.

Hamilton learns that the water channel he had seen by the roadside on entering the city was attributed by the local people to Ferhat, and includes the story in his book: a rich young man in love with a beauty of Amasya accepts her condition that he bring water to the town from a distant valley, works alone for many years, and when at last an old woman tells him that his beloved is dead, he abandons the work and dies of a broken heart; the two are buried together on the top of a nearby mountain. According to Hamilton, Fontanier had mistaken this channel for the watercourse mentioned by Strabo.

Hamilton left Amasya for Çorum at half past eight on the morning of Monday, 15 August 1836. He retraced for three miles the road to Zile by which he had come, crossed the Yeşilırmak by a stone bridge and went on along the northern edge of the plain of Amasya. He writes that the plain had once been a lake, as he could tell from old beach lines running at the same level round the curves of the hills. In the book he says that a much longer time could well be spent in Amasya, examining the antiquities of the town and castle, the localities in the neighbourhood, and the silver, copper and salt mines near Merzifon.

The Book and His Later Life

After his return Hamilton was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society in 1837, an office he held again in 1841, 1842 and 1847. From 1841 to 1847 he sat in the Conservative interest as member for Newport, Isle of Wight. Having communicated the scientific details of the journey to the publications of the Geological Society, in 1842 he published with John Murray the two volumes of Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia; with some account of their Antiquities and Geology, illustrated with his own drawings. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, the work received the commendation of Alexander von Humboldt, and in 1843 Hamilton was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

In the following years he returned to geology, publishing studies on the rocks of central Tuscany in 1844, the agate quarries of Oberstein in 1848, and the geology of the Mainz basin and the Hesse-Kassel district in 1854-1855. He was elected president of the Geological Society in 1854 and 1865, and was known for anniversary addresses that gathered and assessed almost everything published in the science over the previous two years. From 1849 until his death he was a director and chairman of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. When his health failed he resigned his offices in 1866 and spent a year abroad; he died on 27 June 1867, shortly after returning to England. He married twice; he had one son by his first wife, and three sons and four daughters by his second wife, Margaret Dillon, whom he married in 1838.

His Place in the History of Amasya

Hamilton's Amasya chapter records a short visit, but it contains valuable figures and observations on the Amasya of 1836: the proportions of the Muslim, Armenian and Greek population by number of households, the quantity and price of silk production, the water-powered mill weaving cloth for the army, the opening of the Greek school, and the state of the four bridges. His descriptions of the castle and the royal tombs are joined to an effort to test Strabo's account on the spot; his descent into the castle's underground passage and his record of its depth and of the pool at its bottom are the most concrete example of this effort. The frontispiece of his book is also an image of Amasya from his own hand: the cliff, the royal tombs, the castle, and in the foreground tiled roofs and a minaret.

Chronology

5 July 1805: Born in London.

1827: Appointed attaché to the legation at Madrid; transferred to Paris in 1829.

1831: Became a fellow of the Geological Society; one of its secretaries from 1832 to 1854.

1835: Set out for the East with Hugh Strickland.

Early 1836: Strickland returned to England; Hamilton continued the journey alone.

11 August 1836: Arrived in Amasya from Zile.

15 August 1836: Left Amasya for Çorum.

1837: President of the Royal Geographical Society (again in 1841, 1842 and 1847).

1841-1847: Member of Parliament for Newport.

1842: Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia published.

1843: Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

1854 and 1865: President of the Geological Society.

27 June 1867: Died.

Bibliography

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