The detailed historical record we have for Yağcıabdal comes from a single register, the temettuat register kept in the Ezinepazar sub-district in 1845. Even this one register describes the village with care. That year the village, written "Yağcı Abdal", had 25 households, and almost all the heads of household were farmers; the sub-district's largest number of milch cows was in this village, and income per household stood well above the sub-district average. At the end of 2025, 366 people were registered in Yağcıabdal, now one of the villages of the Central District of Amasya.

The Name

In the register the name appears as two separate words; today it is written as one. In Bekir Başalan's study of the renamed settlements of Amasya, Yağcıabdal is counted among the villages of the Central District whose names have been kept. No record has been found that explains what the name means or from whom it passed to the village. In the same sub-district, present-day Hasabdal was written "Asi Abdal" in 1845, which shows the word "abdal" in the names of both villages; but no document links this resemblance to a particular person or community. Nor does the index of the Karaman and Rûm account register of 1530 show any Amasya village of this name: the only village called Yağcı in the index lies outside the pages devoted to the Amasya liva, in the Simre-i Taşan sub-district.

The 1845 Temettuat Register

In his thesis on the temettuat registers of the Ezinepazar sub-district, Tayfun Soydal identifies the village's entry in register ML.VRD.TMT. 12960. Its 25 households place it in the middle of the sub-district's twenty-seven settlements; Soydal's estimate puts the population at 125, or 3.2 per cent of the sub-district. Twenty-three heads of household are recorded as farmers; of the remaining two, one is entered as amelmande, that is, unable to work, and the other as having no occupation. Beside villages such as Ovasaray, İlyas or Kızılca-i Kebir, made up almost entirely of gardeners, Yağcı Abdal stands out as a place that lived from its fields and its animals.

In the register the heads of household are often named by their nicknames rather than their given names. The list for Yağcı Abdal runs through Kameroğlu, Gözüaçıkoğlu, Öşroğlu, Kürtoğlu, Deli Hüseyinoğlu, Karacaoğlu, Gümüşoğlu, Kapusuzoğlu, Arslanoğlu, Bekaroğlu, Adiloğlu, Kör Hasanoğlu, Himmetoğlu, İbaoğlu, Kara Haliloğlu, Dağcıoğlu, Deligözoğlu, Eyüboğlu, Kadiroğlu and Battaloğlu. Of these names only Öşroğlu recurs, in two households; each of the others belongs to a single family.

Land and Harvest

The land held by the villagers came to 579 dönüms. Of this, 201 dönüms were cultivated and 370 dönüms uncultivated fields; 6.5 dönüms of kürüm vineyard and 1.5 dönüms of grape vineyard are also recorded, while no mulberry orchard is entered at all. Uncultivated land outweighs cultivated land by nearly two to one, and the thesis does not discuss the reason for this in the case of this village. The share per household is a little over 23 dönüms. The harvest records show 98.5 kiles of wheat and 51.5 kiles of barley; the grain total is 174.5 kiles, about seven kiles per household. People who did not live in the village also held land here: in Soydal's table of property owners residing elsewhere, two people, one of them İmamoğlu of the Çeribaşı quarter of Amasya, are recorded with 72 dönüms of fields cultivated jointly in the village.

Milch Cows and Packhorses

The register's most striking figures for the village concern its animals. Of 213 head of cattle, 128 are milch cows. A total of 820 milch cows were recorded in the sub-district, and the largest herd of them was at Yağcı Abdal; the village of Kale, in second place, had 93, and Asi Abdal 73. Sheep and goats number 574, and goats far outnumber sheep: alongside 132 milch goats and 268 dry goats, 59 milch and 58 dry sheep and 57 lambs are recorded. The annual income from these animals is calculated at 2,860 kuruş, or 114 kuruş per household.

In pack animals, too, the village stands apart. According to Soydal, only 18 packhorses were recorded in the whole sub-district, and 14 of them were at Yağcı Abdal; three donkeys are also registered in the village. Packhorses were used for carrying loads; even so, no one from the village is recorded in the register as a carrier or caravan man.

Income and Taxes

The village's total annual income is recorded as 14,848 kuruş. The 594 kuruş per household is clearly above the sub-district average of 424 kuruş. On the tax side, 1,501 kuruş of vergü-yi mahsusa, 980.5 kuruş of tithe and 46.5 kuruş of sheep tax were demanded from the village, a total of 2,528 kuruş, or 101 kuruş per household. Soydal mentions this village when listing calculation errors in the registers: the vergü-yi mahsusa, which comes to 1,374.5 kuruş when worked out, was entered in the register as 1,501 kuruş. In the amount of tithe per household the village is also one of the eleven settlements above the sub-district average.

The Village Today

In the village list of the 2023 environment report, Yağcıabdal's drinking-water network dates from 2006, is fed from a spring and works by pumping; an average of 13,666 cubic metres of water a year is drawn for the village, and the supply is judged sufficient. The same list includes separate networks, also dating from 2006, for the hamlets of Alışık, Subaşı (Çat), Doğankaya, Erikli and Kabaardıç attached to the village. The largest of these hamlets is Erikli with 83 people, the smallest Doğankaya with six.

The population series peaks at 603 in 2008 and then falls a little almost every year. Despite a brief rise in 2018, it dropped to 403 in 2021 and 385 in 2023, and by 2025 the figure had fallen to 366. In this latest record the village had 196 men and 170 women.

Bibliography

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