Yavru, home today to some seventy people, lies west of Amasya and is one of the villages recorded under the Geldiklan sub-district in Ottoman registers. In the summer of 2013 a building exposed by an illegal dig at the Küpderesi site in the village was uncovered in a rescue excavation by the Amasya Museum and Hitit University as a Roman villa with mosaic floors; the panel whose central medallion shows a tree bearing apples and three partridges became known as the "Amasya Apple Tree Mosaic". The village's written history begins with a farm attached to the tomb of a fourteenth-century treasurer and continues in Ottoman endowment records, in the estates of the castle wardens and in the biographies of the scholars of Amasya.

The Küpderesi Excavation and the Apple Tree Mosaic

The main publication of the excavation is Esra Keskin's article of 2017. Begun on 17 June 2013 with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, under the direction of the Amasya Museum director Celal Özdemir and with Keskin as scientific adviser, the work lasted twenty-nine days with eleven workers and ended on 15 July. Trial trenches were first opened, taking in the pit of the illegal dig, and as they were widened three rooms of a rectangular building aligned north-south came to light, together with graves.

The first room is 7.57 metres long and 4.15 metres wide. To the south of its mosaic-floored rectangular section, 0.47 metres lower, is a semicircular exedra paved with square bricks; Keskin suggests that this niche, floored with thick terracotta slabs, may have served some purpose connected with water. The walls are covered with red plaster two centimetres thick and stand in places to a height of 2.35 metres. Fragments of a collapsed vault, roof tiles and a thick mortared fill were removed from above the mosaic, and the floor was recovered largely intact.

The mosaic is laid with black, cream, white, green, red and yellow stones about one cubic centimetre in size. Working inwards, there are first two borders, one of wave scrolls and one of ivy branches, and within them a large ring 126 centimetres in diameter made of interlocking circles. The central medallion, 64 centimetres across, shows a tree with four apples: two of them among the leaves, two hanging as if weighed down, each given volume by yellow stones on one side and red on the other. The three partridges moving through the grass at the foot of the tree have red beaks and feet, and black wings and tails. The section below the medallion was damaged in the illegal dig; the scattered stones were gathered up and picked out by sieving the earth taken from the pit.

Keskin proposes that the building had two phases. Because the exact parallel of the surrounding circle pattern is found in the Zeugma mosaics, and parallels of the other motifs in Gaziantep and Hatay, she dates the first phase to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. A small niche in the east wall of the first room, displaced to the south of the building's axis, was opened later; Keskin interprets it as an apse and writes that this part of the building may have been converted into a small church or chapel in the 4th or 5th century. She believes that the apple tree and the partridges reflect a regional taste, which in turn points to a local mosaic workshop active in the area. The absence of finds other than a few potsherds, the thick layer of sand beneath the tiles and the slope of the ground also lead her to think that the building may have been struck by a flood.

The Farm of Fahreddîn Cevherî

Describing the upheavals of the emirate of Amasya in 757 (1356), Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar writes that the treasurer Hâce Fahreddîn Muhammed Cevherî endowed "the Yavru farm" and his other properties for the upkeep of the tomb he had built for himself in Amasya. Elsewhere, in a scholar's biography, Yasar says that the endowment deed of Fahreddîn Cevherî was drawn up in 747; the ten-year gap between the two dates is not explained in the work. The tomb appears in Yasar's list of tombs as a structure of four walls in the cemetery near the Ok Meydanı.

The farm's link with the village is plain in sixteenth-century records. According to Murat Alandağlı's study of the hurufat records, half of the mâlikâne of the village of Yavri in Geldiklanâbâd was assigned to the "Fahreddin Cevherî Endowment"; the Evkâf-ı Rûm register likewise shows the same half share as belonging to the Fahreddin Cevherî Tomb. The index of account register no. 387, dated 1530, records the village in the same form, "Yavri k., Geldiklan-âbâd n.: 362". Although the name differs from today's spelling by one letter, the sub-district and the endowment link show that the entry belongs to this village.

The Wardens' Estate

In later centuries part of the village's revenue went to the wardens of Amasya castle. Yasar relates that Dizdârzâde el-Hâc Ahmed Ağa, son of el-Hâc Hüseyin Ağa, son of Osman Ağa, warden of the upper castle, was one of the timar holders and served as castle warden for a long time "with the Maramul and Yavru estates". In 1171 (1757-58) Ahmed Ağa handed the post to his son Mahmûd Ağa and came down to the town, became a member of the council of notables and died at the beginning of 1180 (1766). In an older record cited by Yasar, the wardens' fief is said to have been drawn from the tithes of the villages of Moramul and Yağmur; the source does not say when Yavru entered this arrangement.

Süleyman Efendi of Yavru

The only scholar named in the sources together with the village is el-Hâc Süleyman Efendi. Yasar introduces him as the son of Ali bin Abdullah "from the village of Yavru on the western side of Amasya". He completed his studies under Cum'a Efendi and Müfessir Ahmed Efendi, well-known teachers of his time, taught for many years and served as professor in the medreses of Amasya. After retiring he became preacher and teacher of hadith at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, and he died around 995 (1587). Yasar describes him as a jurist, an accomplished scholar and a man strict in observing the commands of religion; his son Alâeddîn Ali Efendi also followed the path of learning.

Today

The village's drinking water comes from a network built in 2002, fed from a spring and worked by pumping; the 2023 environment report gives the average annual draw as 3,084 cubic metres and judges the supply sufficient. Unlike most villages of the Central District, the population has not fallen over the last eighteen years: from 57 in 2007 it rose to 71 in 2015, moved between 60 and 71 in the following years and reached 74 in 2024. At the end of 2025, 73 people were registered in Yavru, 38 men and 35 women.

Chronology

2nd-3rd century AD: First phase of the mosaic-floored villa at Küpderesi.

4th-5th century AD: Phase in which part of the building may have been converted into a small church or chapel.

757 (1356): The treasurer Fahreddîn Muhammed Cevherî endows the Yavru farm to his tomb; elsewhere Yasar dates the deed to 747.

1530: The index of register no. 387 records the village of Yavri in the Geldiklan-âbâd sub-district.

c. 995 (1587): el-Hâc Süleyman Efendi of Yavru dies.

1171 (1757-58): The warden Ahmed Ağa, holder of the Maramul and Yavru estates, hands his post to his son.

2013: A rescue excavation at Küpderesi uncovers the Apple Tree Mosaic.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources