🎲 Games · Game 3 · based on a legend
Ferhat's Mountain
According to the legend, the Sultan of Amasya set an impossible condition before he would give Şirin away: to pierce the great mountain and bring the waters of Şahinkaya to the city. Ferhat took up his pickaxe and began to dig.
How far can you dig in thirty seconds?
or press the space bar A vein has opened — strike now!
Take up the pickaxe
You have thirty seconds. As the rock gets harder you will need to strike more often. Now and then a golden vein opens; strike at that moment and you advance three times as far.
This is a game for fun, not a document. The tale of Ferhat and Şirin is Amasya's best-known legend; it is not the documented story of people who really lived. The 18 kilometres you will see at the end of the game, however, belong not to the legend but to the real water channel, and they are sourced.
The guest of the celebration
The fish of Balıklı Göl: Ferhat's water
As told in the village of İlyas in Amasya, the water that rises from the spring of Balıklı Göl (the Fish Lake) is the very water Ferhat tried to bring to Amasya. The fish of the lake are held to be saints' fish and are not eaten. Dig past 70 metres and the fish will leap for you.
- Where the water comes outIn the village of Azıtepe a shepherd plugs a spring with his cloak; the water comes out at Kaynar, that is, at Balıklı Göl.
- Saints' fishThe fish are said to go off to war and come back.
- From the pan to the waterIt is told that a fish someone tried to cook leapt out of the pan, out of the embers, back into the water.
These are folk tales, not documents. The teller of the story about the fish is Özkan Kaplan (b. 1969), who runs the Balıklıgöl. The fish are an illustration made with AI (Google Gemini). Source: Tuğrul Balaban, Amasya Efsane, Menkabe ve Memoratları (Amasya: Amasya Valiliği, 2014), 609-610.
How does the legend end?
Ferhat splits the mountains, and just as he is about to bring the water to the city, a woman sent by the Sultan appears before him: “Şirin is dead,” she says. Saying “if there is no Şirin, life is forbidden to me,” Ferhat throws his heavy pickaxe into the air and dies from the blow as it falls on his head. Şirin hears his cry and comes running; she cannot bear the grief, and she too dies beside him. The two lovers are buried side by side on this mountain — and the mountain is named Ferhat Dağı.
The game does not act out this part. The tale ends with two deaths; it would not be right to turn that into a game. The whole legend, with its sources, is on the stop page.