The road that leaves Amasya and follows the Yeşilırmak north-eastwards reaches Ziyaret, at a distance the old records call one hour's journey, on the skirts of a small mountain that runs off Akdağ. It is the only town (belde) with its own municipality in the central district, and in 2025 a total of 5,070 people lived in its three neighbourhoods, Aşağı, Yukarı and Saraycık. Still called Ziyere by local people, the settlement is identified in Arabic and Seljuk sources with a fortress named Zemendû or Semendû, and in Ottoman records with a village called Ziyâre. In the middle of the nineteenth century Ziyere, with 254 households the largest village in the Akdağ sub-district, had close to two thirds of its land under mulberry orchards. Because the buildings and families of the town's two main neighbourhoods, Aşağı and Yukarı, are described in detail in separate articles, this page deals with the town as a whole, the history of its name, the municipal period and the people not covered in those neighbourhood articles.

Zemendû, Ziyâre, Ziyere

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar shows that the older name of Ziyâre was Zemendû or Semendû, using passages he quotes from Bedreddîn Aynî's Ikdü'l-Cümân and from Ibn Bîbî's history of the Seljuks; according to Aynî, the same place is called "Ziyâre" when the letter zâ is read with an i. Yasar says that the old documents in Amasya always write the settlement's name as "Ziyâre", and that the popular "Ziyere" is a softened form of it. On the origin of the name he puts forward two separate guesses: that the "Sanit" or "Sanlı" Turks living in the city called the place "Sanit", which in time turned into "Semendû"; and that the Seljuk Sultan Mesud came here so often in spring and stayed so frequently in his pavilion that the place began to be called "ziyâre", a place visited. Elsewhere in the book he also writes that Sultan Mesud had the settlement rebuilt and gave it the name Ziyâre himself. Yasar bases none of this on documents, and he openly admits that it could not be established who gave the name.

The date and the reason for the present form "Ziyaret" come from two different sources. According to the town municipality's own history, the municipality was founded in 1958 as the "Ziyere Belediye Başkanlığı", and the name was changed to Ziyaret in July 1962 by decision of the municipal council. Songül Keçeci Kurt places the change after the proclamation of the Republic and gives as its reason the great number of visits to the Hicabi Baba Tomb in the town. Kurt gives no date, and the municipal record says nothing about a reason; read together, they show that the municipality's own name remained Ziyere until 1962. Bekir Başalan, listing the thirty-five settlements in the central district whose names were changed, counts Ziyaret/Ziyere among the examples, like Ermiş/Vermiş and Ümük/İmük, in which the new name was chosen to sound close to the old one. Yasar rejects the explanation of Georges Perrot, who travelled in Amasya in the nineteenth century and linked the name to the many visits paid to the Aynalı Mağara on the road; in Yasar's view the cave was never regarded by Muslims as a grave to be visited.

Semendû in the Sources

Yasar presents Semendû as a place mentioned since the time of the early Islamic raids on Amasya. Relying on Dhahabî, he relates that Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik conquered the city of Semendû in Byzantine territory in the year 94 (712-713), and relying on Tabarî and the Ikdü'l-Cümân that Maslama came to Amasya and Semendû; from this he concludes that Semendû lay near Amasya. The same author writes that in the year 120 (737-738) the emir Sulayman ibn Hisham, with a force brought from Damascus, halted in "the town of Semendû (Ziyâre)" near Harşena. The account of the Danishmendid Melik İsmail taking refuge here and being besieged when the Crusaders entered Amasya in the year 493 (1100) appears on the same pages. The report that in the Seljuk period the emir of Sivas, Kır Han of Khwarazm, was exiled to the fortress of Zemendû and died there comes from Ibn Bîbî. All these lines rest on the medieval sources Yasar collected; no excavation or survey of remains shows exactly where in the present town Semendû stood. In Yasar's own day only a "very faint" ruin was left of the fortress.

Ziyâre in the Ottoman Records

In the published index of the accounts register of the provinces of Karaman and Rûm, compiled in 1530 in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, Ziyâre appears as a village among the places attached directly to the city of Amasya, on pages 354-355 of the register. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the settlement was entered, together with a few villages such as Ağılcık, in the city's own section. Three hundred years later the situation had changed. In the temettuat (income survey) registers of 1844-1845 Ziyere is a village attached to the Akdağ sub-district of the kaza of Amasya; the register headings speak of "the Soğukpınar, Aşağı and Yukarı quarters of the village of Ziyere, dependent on the sub-district of Akdağ". The other villages of the Akdağ sub-district named in the same list include places that still belong to the central district today, such as Kızseki, Karakise, Kızılkışlacık, Yıkılkan and Aktaş.

Among the works of Ziya Pasha, who became governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya in 1863, was the building of the road to the village of Ziyere, one hour from the city; the documents put the village at 200 households at that date. On the eve of the First World War, in 1914, the population of Ziyere appears within the population breakdown of the provincial centre of Amasya: 285 Muslims and 27 Greeks in Soğukpınar, 796 Muslims and 23 Greeks in Yukarı, 292 Muslims in Aşağı, 1,423 people in all. Keçeci Kurt concludes from this record that the village had by then been attached to the centre. Soğukpınar did not survive as a separate quarter; its name lives on today as the name of a street within Aşağı Mahalle.

Mulberries, Vineyards and Trade

The temettuat registers of 1844-1845 show Ziyere as a village of orchards far more than a village of grain. Of the 254 heads of household, 178, or seventy per cent, were gardeners; occupations such as shepherd, ploughman, barber, seller and silk-weighing master made up the rest. The cultivated land amounted to 627 dönüm, of which 400 were mulberry, 167 vineyard and only 60 arable field. The large share of mulberry has to do with silkworm rearing: the largest single item among the taxes taken from the village was the silk tithe of 7,681 kuruş. Keçeci Kurt writes that silkworm disease reduced production in Amasya after 1865 and that the mulberry was gradually replaced by fruit such as cherries. Most of the 1,821 animals registered in the village were goats and kids, and 26 beehives and a few mills in each quarter were also entered in the registers.

The registers enter a trading income for almost every household in Ziyere; the village's total income was 222,755 kuruş and its total tax 22,796 kuruş. Household incomes were close to one another, and every holding was under ten dönüm. Ziyere's size also stands out in the records: according to the registers of the same year, the most populous village of the kaza of Taşova had 90 households, and that of Gümüşhacıköy 86. Yasar's observation at the end of the nineteenth century also concerns the gardens; everything apart from the east side of the settlement is vineyard, vegetable plot and orchard, and "the finest apples" come from here. When Amasya's spring outings are listed, the vineyards of Ziyâre are named among the city's well-known excursion spots.

The Ziyârîs

The name Ziyâre also lives on in the learned history of Amasya as a nisba, a name of origin. According to Yasar's biographical volumes, Ebû Saîd Ahmed Çelebi, Mevlânâ Şemseddîn ez-Ziyârî, was the son of Ziyârelizâde Şerefeddîn Ya'kûb Çelebi, and his lineage went back to Mevdûd Çelebi bin Ali ez-Ziyârî. After studying under Şemseddîn Mehmed el-Hallâtî and Ebu'l-Fazl Ahmed es-Sinobî, he served for years as deputy (nâib) to the chief judge of Amasya, became chief judge himself in the time of the emir of Amasya Kutluşah and his son Hacı Şâdgeldi, and died in 767 (1365-1366). In the seventeenth century İbrahim Efendi of Ziyâre taught at the Kâsım Bey Medrese in Hakala and held the preaching chair of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque; dismissed in the Emirs' affair of 1099, he went on pilgrimage, settled in Ziyâre on his return and went on preaching, and died early in 1114 (1702). Because his sons and grandsons served as imams of the same mosque, the family came to be called the "Hacı İmamoğulları".

The life of Ahmed Efendi, son of İsmail from the Ziyâre quarter, offers an example of the town's dervish circles in the nineteenth century. A pupil of Hacı İsmail Efendi of Niksar in Amasya, Ahmed Efendi became preacher of the Soğuk Pınar Mosque in 1251 (1835-1836) and, after receiving authorisation from the Naqshbandi sheikh Hacı İsmail Efendi, built a Naqshbandi dervish lodge in Ziyâre and became its sheikh. When he died in the month of Dhu al-Qadah 1270 (1854) he was succeeded by his son Seyyid Ali Efendi. This lodge was a different building from the one founded in 1212 next to the Keçioğlu Mosque by Abdülbâki Hicâbî Efendi of Crimea. Hicâbî's son-in-law and successor, İbrahim Efendi of Ziyâre, imam of the Keçioğlu Mosque, took over as sheikh of the Hicâbî Lodge after 1238 and died in 1253 (1837-1838). It follows that in the first half of the nineteenth century the town had two separate Naqshbandi lodges.

Town Administration

The first mayor of Ziyere was İzzet Kazancı, who took office on 1 August 1958. In the list published by the municipality he is followed by Abdullah Celep, Celal Elver and Ruhi Kabakçı; Ruhi Kabakçı, who took office in 1962, the year the name was changed, remained mayor until 1968. Over the last quarter-century the town's administration has passed between two people: Mehmet Uyanık was mayor in 1999-2009 and 2014-2024, and Ahmet Kemal Dayıoğlu in 2009-2014 and again since 2024. Some of the surnames on the list also turn up in the old registers: the Kabakçı family was one of the most numerous lineages of Aşağı Mahalle in 1844-1845, and according to the interviews Keçeci Kurt carried out in the town in 2016, the surname Celep derives from the nickname Celeboğlu found in the registers, while the Kazancı family still keeps livestock. The municipality lists as the town's historic sites the Hicabi Baba Mosque and Tomb, the Aynalı Mağara, the Three Caves, the Small Cave, the Tomb of İbrahim Dede, the Cin Hamamı and a historic plane tree; for most of these no published study has been found.

The Ziyâre Bridge

At the start of the road from the city to Ziyaret, where the Tersakan stream joins the Yeşilırmak, there stood a single-arched bridge that Yasar calls the "Ziyâre Bridge". Yasar writes that the bridge's old name was the "Mes'ûd Bridge", and that this name and its architecture show it to have been the work of the Seljuk Sultan Mesud; he compares its arch to that of the Kuş Köprü, but finds it more graceful. According to current inventory records, the bridge was in use until the 1970s; when it was then decided to build a new bridge in its place, the arch was demolished and the piers were left buried under the ground. The Aynalı Mağara on the same road is, in Yasar's account, the only one of the rock-cut tomb chambers around the city whose location he gives as "on the Ziyâre road".

Population

The population of Ziyaret is the sum of the three neighbourhoods within the town's boundaries. According to the 2025 results of the Turkish Statistical Institute's address-based population registry, 5,070 people lived in the town, 2,586 men and 2,484 women; of these, 3,328 lived in Aşağı, 1,457 in Yukarı and 285 in Saraycık. The same three neighbourhoods totalled 3,060 in 2007. The growth has not been steady: Aşağı Mahalle jumped from 1,488 to 2,094 between 2011 and 2012, then stayed between 2,100 and 2,260 for eight years. A larger jump came in the last year, when the total for the three neighbourhoods rose from 4,181 in 2024 to 5,070 in 2025, an increase of 889 people in a single year. The sources do not explain what building activity or change in registration lies behind this increase.

Comparison with older figures can only be rough. For the 254 households of 1844-1845, Keçeci Kurt gives an estimate of 1,270 people, reckoning five persons per household; the population counted in 1914 was 1,423. According to information Keçeci Kurt cited in 2016, which the municipality still publishes, the town had 3,901 inhabitants, 900 households and 3,855 land parcels, and its altitude is given as 435 metres. A growth of the population to three and a half times its size within a century is a rise that Ziyaret's closeness to the city could explain, but this reading is drawn from the figures and is not stated in any source.

Chronology

712-713 (94): According to the Arabic sources cited by Yasar, Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik conquers Semendû.

737-738 (120): Sulayman ibn Hisham halts at the town of Semendû near Harşena.

1100 (493): The Danishmendid Melik İsmail takes refuge here during the Crusader siege.

1365-1366 (767): Ebû Saîd Ahmed Çelebi ez-Ziyârî, chief judge of Amasya, dies.

1530: Ziyâre is recorded in the accounts register of Karaman and Rûm as a village attached to the city of Amasya.

1797-1798 (1212): Abdülbâki Hicâbî Efendi founds his lodge next to the Keçioğlu Mosque.

1844-1845: The temettuat registers record Ziyere as a village of 254 households in the Akdağ sub-district.

1854 (1270): Ahmed Efendi, founder of a Naqshbandi lodge in Ziyâre, dies.

1863: The road to Ziyere is built under the governorship of Ziya Pasha; the village has 200 households.

1914: 1,423 people are counted in the three quarters of Ziyere.

1958: The Ziyere municipality is founded.

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

2025: The town's population reaches 5,070 in three neighbourhoods.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources