Guide
This channel dates from the late Hellenistic and early Roman period and was made to supply water to the ancient city of Amasya. It was cut through rock as tunnels, walled in places, and laid out by levelling to follow the fall of the ground. Also called the Ferhat water channel, it runs six kilometres. The stretch of about two kilometres at Ferhatarası, running parallel to the road, can easily be followed from outside.
The name comes from where it lies. Because the channel is on the skirts of Ferhat Dağı, it was attached to the well-known folk story of Ferhat and Şirin.
In that legend Ferhat is a famous painter and decorator who lived under the Persians. While working on the ornament of the pavilion Sultan Mehmene Banu had built for her sister Şirin, he sees Şirin and the two fall in love. Ferhat sends word to the sultan asking for her hand. Unwilling to give her sister, and to put him off, the sultan sets a condition: he must cut through Elma Dağı and bring water to the city. Ferhat, driven by love, begins to break through the mountain.
As he was about to finish the channel that would carry the water, Mehmene Banu sent her old nurse to him with the news that Şirin had died. At that news Ferhat threw the pick in his hand into the air; it came down on his head and he died there. Hearing of it, Şirin came in fear and haste to the rocks where it had happened, and unable to bear the sight of his death she fell from them and died as well. The two were buried side by side in those rocks. It is said that every spring two roses grow on the two graves, and that just as they are about to reach one another a black thorn appears between them and keeps them apart.
