Ziyaret is a town in the Central District of Amasya, about three kilometres from the provincial centre, to the northeast of the city. Today it looks like a quiet settlement of orchards and gardens, yet its name, fortress, tombs, bath and rock-cut tomb make up a separate chapter of Amasya's history. Over the centuries the settlement changed names several times and left traces from every age, from the Christian period through the Danishmendids and Seljuks to the Ottomans. The ties of Halvetî and Naqshbandi circles to the area also explain the form its name has today.

Location and Geography

Ziyaret lies on a slope facing the city of Amasya, at the foot of a small mountain that branches off Akdağ and descends toward the Yeşilırmak. According to an old description cited in Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, the settlement sits in a long valley running from northeast to southwest. The valley stretches about thirteen kilometres, from the Ziyere quarter to the Çalan locality southwest of Amasya, and its width varies between one thousand metres and three kilometres. Broad plains lie to the east and west, and gardens and vineyards fill the land on the other three sides. According to figures published by the municipality, the town had roughly 900 households and 3,901 inhabitants in 2014; its elevation is given as 382 metres.

It is known as a place with cold water and sound air. One assessment cited by Yasar holds that the old fortress stood north of the city in a closed, gulf-like position, so the air around the fortress was said to be heavy; the rest of the settlement, by contrast, opens toward Amasya and slopes down to the Yeşilırmak. Apart from its eastern side, everything is vineyard, garden, greenery and melon field. The earliest varieties of apple come from here, and okra and muscat apples are among the produce of the vineyards. The abundance of water and the breadth of the vineyards have long given the people of Ziyere an enterprising temper.

Origin of the Name and Earlier Names

History books carry several accounts of the settlement's name. In the İkdü'l-Cüman, Bedreddin el-Ayni mentions the name Zemendu as a fine and fortified town and writes that it turned into the form "Ziyare". Yasar likewise reports that the very old name of today's Ziyaret was Zemendu or Semendu, and that over time, among the people, it evolved into Ziyere or Zeyre. In some accounts the settlement's still older name appears as Küdüs-i Mübarek; this name, meaning "pure and sacred place", is read as a sign that the region was a religious centre even before Islam. Starting from the Sanit or Sanlı Turks settled in Amasya, Yasar also considers that the name Semendu may be a corrupted form of "Sanit"; this is a conjecture and has not been confirmed by any other record.

As for the present name "Ziyaret", according to municipal records the institution was founded in 1958 under the name "Ziyere Municipality" and, by a municipal council decision of July 1962, the name was changed to Ziyaret. According to oral tradition collected by Songül Keçeci Kurt, the name was given because of the heavy visitation to the tomb of Hicabi Baba after the proclamation of the Republic. Municipal publications instead link the name with Hoca Muhibbeddin Mevdud ez-Ziyari and argue that Ziyari's name became Ziyare and then Ziyaret. The same publication rejects the views that the name derives from those who visited the Aynalı Cave or the old Zire church. It appears that there is no single definitive answer on the name; the fortress, the place of pilgrimage and personal names may have become intertwined.

The Christian Period and the Aynalı Cave

The most striking structure showing Ziyaret's importance before Islam is the Aynalı Cave ("Mirrored Cave") on the old road. Carved into the rock, it is the largest and best known of the rock-cut structures in the Amasya valley. It took its name because its facade gleams when the sun strikes it; the surface of the rock has been polished from end to end. According to the measurements in the municipal publication, the facade is about 9.8 metres wide and 13 metres high. The structure is reached from the ground by four steps, and from the outside its skilled workmanship is evident. Inside there are two rooms, one rectangular and one square. The rectangular one is regarded as the main burial chamber. The walls of the square room bear remains of coloured frescoes thought to have been made by the Byzantines in the eleventh century. On the vault the twelve apostles are depicted, six on the right and six on the left. The north and south walls show male and female figures, and on the east side there is a Deesis composition consisting of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Iohannes.

On the pediment of the cave there is an inscription meaning "High Priest Tes". The French traveller Georges Perrot (rendered Jorj Perru in the sources) notes that the lower line of this inscription has been erased, and he relays a tale explaining the erasure: a Turk whose horse fell in front of the cave, believing there was a devil inside, scraped away the writing. The author of the municipal publication thinks this story was invented by local Christians; he observes that whoever erased the lower line would also have erased the upper one, and that in those days Christians feared the devil more than Muslims did. According to Osman Fevzi Olcay, a further inscription reading "KAXMZEQ" was once seen beneath the cave, but it can no longer be read. A record taken from old history books says the widespread Greek belief that a metropolitan named Asteris is buried in the cave has no basis. The same record supports the view that the tomb, with its inscription above the door, may belong to one of the great seers who held as much authority as kings. Strabo's mention of the priests of Komana and Zela is consistent with this view; according to Strabo, the most influential people of this region were the temple priests.

Close by is a smaller rock cavity that the local people call the Small Cave. According to travellers, this tomb belongs to a woman named Pifodor, a member of a ruling family. While the Aynalı Cave was made for a man of religion, the Small Cave is thought to have been cut for a member of the dynasty, like the royal rock tombs in Amasya. In both structures the original burials have not survived. The folk tale attached to the Aynalı Cave is the legend of Güzelce Kız. According to it, a king's daughter, the most beautiful girl in the world, always goes veiled, and her father promises her to whoever can lift the veil and endure her beauty. Princes and heroes from the seven climes wait timidly in the Amasya square. In the end a poor but brave youth lifts the veil, the two of them turn to charcoal at once, and they are buried in the two separate chambers of the rock tomb near the city. Since that day the facade of the tomb has shone like the girl's face, and it took its name from that brightness.

The Danishmendids and the Crusader Attack

According to the old records cited by Yasar, the Ziyaret area appears in the pages of history from the earliest Muslim conquests. A record dated Hijri 120 (737-738 CE) states that the Umayyad commander Süleyman, son of Hişam, camped at Semendu, a village of Harşena, and thereby halted the campaign toward Pontus. After the Danishmendids conquered Amasya in 1077, the city, according to these records, became an important centre of the region.

The heaviest trial came during the Crusades. In the years given in the source as 1098 and 1100 (some studies date the Crusader expedition to 1101), the emir of Amasya, Melik İsmail Gazi Danişmendî, withdrew to the Semendu (Ziyare) Fortress in the face of the Crusader army, gathered the Turks there and defended the city from that point. The Crusaders burned and ruined Amasya and destroyed even its churches; the stones of the demolished churches are said to have been used later in the Torumtay Tomb, the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque and other buildings. Ziyaret itself was burned and ruined at this time, and the sources write that it was the place that suffered most in this attack. After staying in Amasya about three months, the Crusader army was forced to turn back the way it had come, because of the night raids by Danishmendid bands, the shortage of food and clothing, and the measures taken against it. On the way back it also devastated Semendu.

The Danishmendid ruler repaired the town quickly and gave it the name "Danişmendiyye". Old records mention a quarter called Danişmend Mahallesi; Yasar reads this as a trace of that rebuilding. The municipal publication writes that, under the settlement policy of the Turks, they lived outside the cities so as not to disturb the non-Muslim population, which is why the Muslim cemetery was established at the entrance to the town and stands in the same place today. According to the same publication, the Christian cemetery of the Greeks and Armenians lies below today's Babaküstü quarter.

The Seljuk Period and Hoca Muhibbeddin Ziyari

According to Yasar, when the Seljuk Sultan Mesud made Amasya his seat of government, he restored the city and founded new settlements on the ruined banks of the Yeşilırmak. Of these new settlements, the one south of the Yeşilırmak was named Simre, Zemendu to the northeast was named Ziyare, and another near Amasya was named Kedagra. It is claimed that because he came often in spring and sat in his pavilion, the word "Zemendu" came to be pronounced "Ziyare". The municipal publication states that this pavilion stood in what is today the dam area. Since the dates in this account do not fully match what is known about the Danishmendid-Seljuk transition, the story should be read as a local tradition.

The most prominent name of the Seljuk period in Ziyaret's history is Hoca Muhibbeddin Mevdud ez-Ziyari. The municipal publication writes that in 680 (1281) Ziyari had a mosque and two baths built on the site of today's Hicabi Baba Mosque, with a stone foundation, walls and minaret of red brick and a wooden upper part; elsewhere it states that Ziyari gained renown in Anatolia in 690 (1291). The same publication adds that he had a school and a lodge built here. A note taken from Yasar states that Ziyari's grandson Saidüddin Mevhub died in 787 (1385) and lies buried in front of the Şadgeldi Pasha Tomb, his name and fame being written on his gravestone. The municipal publication argues that Ziyaret took its name from this man; recalling that the first act of the Turks in their settlement policy was to build a mosque and a bath, it says that Ziyari was among the greatest factors in the Turkification of the town and the spread of Islam.

This bath is known among the people as the Cin Bath ("Jinn Bath") and still stands today. According to the municipal publication it was the town's first bath. It was damaged in various earthquakes, repaired in 1563 by Keçioğlu el-Hac Ali Çelebi, and repaired again in 1797 when Hicabi Baba reorganised the endowed works. The mosque was likewise ruined in earthquakes and restored around 970 (1562-1563) by Keçioğlu Ali Çelebi, who also put its endowments in order. For this reason the mosque was called Keçioğlu Mosque both among the people and in official records. Beside it were an old bath, a dervish lodge (zaviye) and a school. According to the account based on Yasar's text, Ali Ağa of the Keçi Bey family also had a mosque, a school and a bath built in these years, endowed his property to cover their expenses, and turned Ziyaret into a handsome town.

The Ottoman Period

In Ottoman Amasya, Ziyaret seems to have been a favourite of the prince-governors. According to the municipal publication, Bayezid II, the prince of Amasya and later sultan, came here to hunt and rearranged the present Gölbaşı locality. Yasar, for his part, writes that during Bayezid II's governorship of Amasya, in 1465-1466, he had the lower lake built and turned the vineyards beneath it into a private garden. The construction date of Ziyaret's central mosque is given as 1669, and the plane tree in the mosque courtyard is probably of the same age.

The date the historic plane tree was planted is unknown. Ottoman statesmen are known to have made a habit of planting a plane tree beside every charitable work, because the hollow trunk of the plane draws lightning and absorbs the water at a building's foundations. The fact that in Ziyaret the plane was planted not beside the minaret but where it stands today is explained by the presence of the period's church close to the minaret. For centuries the elders sat at the foot of this tree and the town's children grew up in its shade; the people still protect it today as a legacy from their forebears.

At the time of the 1844-1845 temettuat survey, Ziyere was a village attached to the Akdağ district of the Amasya sanjak in the province of Sivas. According to Kurt's study, the village consisted of three quarters and 254 households, among which were 23 non-Muslim families. The village economy rested on gardening, the growing of mulberries and vines, and above all on small-livestock herding; donkeys and mules were used for transport. The same study reports that around 1914 the village was attached to the Amasya centre. Details at the quarter level are given separately in the article on the Yukarı quarter.

Hicabi Baba

The name most often mentioned in Ziyaret's spiritual life is Hicabi Baba, that is, Abdülbaki Efendi. According to the municipal publication, this Naqshbandi sheikh, who came from Bahçesaray in Crimea, was a grandson of the şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi. There are two different pieces of information on the date of his arrival in Anatolia: Kurt's study gives 1774, the year Crimea was occupied by Russia, while the municipal publication gives Hijri 1191 (1777). He settled in Amasya, came to the Ziyere quarter, completed his education under the müderris Örgüplü Hacı Ahmed Efendi and received his licence (icazet) from him. Later, wishing to attach himself to a spiritual guide in Sufism, he pledged allegiance to Sheikh Mustafa Efendi, the Naqshbandi sheikh known as the Sheikh of Turhal. Sheikh Mustafa Efendi is said to lie in the Kesikbaş Tomb in Turhal.

The story of his name is told among the people as follows. One day Sheikh Mustafa Efendi asks his pupils to gather flowers for him from the Ziyaret hills. The pupils race one another over the hills and in the evening present the most fragrant flowers and roses to the sheikh. Abdülbaki Efendi, however, arrives with no flowers, ashamed. When the sheikh asks the reason, he says that every one of the flowers was remembering God in its own tongue and that he felt shy of plucking them. Turning to his pupils, the sheikh says that this is why he loves him so much, and says, "Let your name be Hicabi." Thus Abdülbaki Efendi comes to be called Hicabi Efendi and Hicabi Baba. This is a legend; it can be supported neither by a historical document nor by any other source.

Hicabi Baba had a dervish lodge built beside the Keçioğlu Mosque in the Ziyare quarter. According to the municipal publication this lodge dates from 1212 (1797) and its first sheikh was Hicabi Baba himself. After his death his successor (halife) and son-in-law İbrahim Zühdi Efendi took his place, and when he died the lodge was converted into a school. Hicabi Baba died in 1231 (1822-1823) in the Ziyere quarter of Amasya and was buried in the courtyard of the mosque that bears his name. According to Osman Fevzi Olcay, he left ten to fifteen works, though the municipality has not been able to reach them. According to Kurt's note, his work Zübdetü'l İslam was published in simplified form in 2013 by Ziyaret Municipality Publications. An eulogy of eleven couplets written by the poet Türabi in honour of his tomb is also known; the line "Visit once, and God grants your wish" in this poem shows the tomb's place in the popular mind.

Those going to military service and those setting out on the pilgrimage stop at the tomb before leaving and pass beneath its banner. Hicabi Baba has been regarded by the townspeople as a source of trust and spiritual strength. İbrahim Dede was Hicabi Baba's son-in-law; he became sheikh in his place, carried on Hicabi Baba's station and earned the people's respect. His grave is on a hill southeast of Ziyaret. Since Hicabi Baba's family was buried in his own tomb, İbrahim Dede lying in a separate grave is probably for that reason. It is said that small children who cannot yet walk are still taken to this grave today and prayers are offered.

The Halvetî and Naqshbandi Heritage of Amasya

Ziyaret's religious identity should be considered together with Amasya's Sufi tradition. Amasya produced Pir Şücaeddin İlyas, one of the first great representatives of the Halvetî order in Anatolia. According to Assoc. Prof. Metin Hakverdioğlu, Pir İlyas was sent to Shamakhi at a young age during the Interregnum, when Timur entered Anatolia; there he became a pupil of Ömer Halvetî, and on returning to Amasya he spread the Halvetî path here. According to Yasar's Amasya Tarihi, the order spread so quickly that it overshadowed the old fame of the Babaî and Mevlevi paths. A considerable share of the dozens of tombs in Amasya belongs to Halvetî sheikhs.

In Ziyaret, Hicabi Baba and İbrahim Dede represent the Naqshbandi line. The lodge's conversion into a school after it shows that the town had a lodge, a school and a madrasa side by side, and the municipal publication stresses that this trio contributed to the way the townspeople were brought up. The combination of tomb, fountain and mosque as charitable works is common around Amasya. In Yuvacık village in the Central District, the Mevlevi sheikh Şeyh Cui Baba is said to have retired to his village in 1414 and founded a Mevlevi lodge, a dervish lodge and a school there, and the fountain he built still stands beside the mosque. The village was long called Şeyhcui. This information belongs to a neighbouring settlement. Ziyaret's own tradition of charitable works takes concrete form in Keçioğlu Ali Çelebi's mosque, bath and lodge.

The Municipal Era and Population

The municipal organisation in Ziyaret was founded in 1958. Its first mayor was İzzet Kazancı; he was followed by Abdullah Celep (1959), Celal Elver (1960) and Ruhi Kabakçı (1962). Ahmet Yücel served in two separate terms (1968 and 1994), and in the 1970s Adem Daniş and İsmail Kibaroğlu held office. Bekir Kazancıoğlu was elected in 1984 and Mustafa Baykara in 1989. After 1999 Mehmet Uyanık served as mayor in four separate terms (1999, 2004, 2014 and 2019), while in 2009 the office was held by Ahmet Kemal Dayıoğlu.

The population of the town was 2,652 in 1985, 2,529 in 1990 and 3,438 in 2000. After falling to 3,060 in 2007, 2,841 in 2008 and 2,813 in 2009, it rose to 3,114 in 2011 and 3,675 in 2012, reaching 3,901 in 2014. In 2015 it was 3,860, in 2019 3,747, and in 2020 3,965 people lived there. Cuisine also stands out in the local culture: keşkek set in trays in village ovens, the toyga soup served at weddings, pancakes (akıtma) at the pre-dawn meals of Ramadan, rice with eriște noodles, stuffed vegetables with broad beans and okra dishes are listed in the municipal publication as elements of the town's culture. According to the same publication, everyone in the town greets everyone else, native or stranger, and helping the poor between neighbourhoods remains a custom.

Chronology

737-738 (Hijri 120): According to old records, the Umayyad commander Süleyman camps at Semendu.

1077: The Danishmendids conquer Amasya.

1098-1100 (1101 in some sources): A Crusader army burns and ruins Amasya and Semendu; Melik İsmail Danişmendî defends the city from the fortress.

1281: According to the municipal publication, Hoca Muhibbeddin Mevdud ez-Ziyari has a mosque and two baths built (the same publication also gives the date 1291).

1385: Ziyari's grandson Saidüddin Mevhub dies.

1465-1466: According to Yasar, Bayezid II, as governor of Amasya, has the lower lake built.

Around 1563: Keçioğlu el-Hac Ali Çelebi repairs the mosque and the bath.

1669: Given as the construction date of the central mosque.

1774 or 1777: Hicabi Baba comes from Crimea to Anatolia.

1797: Hicabi Baba has his dervish lodge built.

1822-1823: Hicabi Baba dies.

1844-1845: In the temettuat survey the village has 254 households.

1958: Ziyere Municipality is founded.

1962: By municipal council decision the name Ziyere is changed to Ziyaret.

Bibliography

Primary sources

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