About Mezirme

Official name

Ballıkaya Documented (Ministry of Interior, administrative units) (Vikiveri)

Local name

Mezirme

Earlier names in the records

Merzume (1530), Mezirme (1916) Documented (Nişanyan place names)

Administrative status

Neighbourhood (mahalle) of Hekimhan district, Malatya province Documented (Law No. 6360)

Location

38.8525° N · 38.0979° E (OpenStreetMap)

Elevation

New settlement approximately 1,521 m, remains of the old village approximately 1,465 m (SRTM)

Population

256 (2021) · 222 (2025) (TÜİK, ADNKS)

Where is it?

Ballıkaya lies in the north of Malatya province, between the district centres of Hekimhan and Arguvan. By road it is approximately 23 km from the centre of Hekimhan, approximately 20 km from the centre of Arguvan and approximately 80 km from Malatya city centre (OSRM).

The nearest settlements, as the crow flies, are İğdir approximately 2.8 km to the west, Başkavak 3.2 km to the south-west and Çeki 4.9 km to the south-east (OpenStreetMap).

The settlement lies at an altitude of approximately 1,500 metres. To the north the land rises quickly: within 1.3 km north of the centre of the settlement, the elevation increases by approximately 190 m (SRTM). Local sources refer to the band of rock on these slopes as the Ballıkayalar, which gave the village its name (Özerol, blog); for details, see theBallıkayalar page.

The name

The earliest known names of the settlement appear in written records as Merzume andMezirme. The place-name inventory Nişanyan Yeradları records the name Merzume in a record dated 1530 and the name Mezirme in a record dated 1916 (Nişanyan place names). Harun Yıldız, drawing on a 2004 study by Yalçın and Yılmaz, reports that the name Mezirme also appears in the Ottoman tax survey registers of 1517 (Yıldız 2012, p. 130).

Today its official name is Ballıkaya. We have not yet found an official document showing in which year the name was changed; local sources date the change to the early 1960s Reported (Özerol, blog).

Where does the name “Ballıkaya” come from?

There are two differing accounts of this. Both are reported information; neither has been confirmed by documents.

• According to local sources, the name (literally “honey rock”) comes from the honey found in the band of rock to the north of the village Reported (Özerol, blog).
• According to a source on the Şah İbrahim Velî ocak (a hereditary sacred lineage), Mezirme was given the name Ballıkaya because Şah Velî, who is said to have lived in the 17th century, kept vineyards and gardens and worked as a miller and beekeeper. Yıldız reports this from Abbas Yıldırım’s 2006 book Reported (Yıldız 2012, p. 130).

It is also claimed that the name “Mezirme” derives from the word mezra (a small settlement attached to a village) Reported (Özerol, blog).

Old village and new settlement

The present settlement was built as a planned housing estate immediately to the north of the old village; the old village has been abandoned (Nişanyan place names). On OpenStreetMap the remains of the old village are marked approximately 400 m south of the centre of the new settlement (OpenStreetMap).

Administrative status

For many years Ballıkaya was a village belonging to Hekimhan. Law No. 6360, enacted in 2012, established a metropolitan municipality in Malatya; the legal personality of the villages in the province was abolished and they were joined, as neighbourhoods, to the municipality of the district they belonged to (Law No. 6360, Article 1). These provisions of the Law took effect at the first general local elections, that is, on 30 March 2014. Since then Ballıkaya has been a neighbourhood of Hekimhan Municipality, administered by a muhtar (elected neighbourhood head).

Population

Source: TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) Address-Based Population Registration System (TÜİK, ADNKS). The figures show the people whose registered address was in Ballıkaya in that year; those who come to the village in summer and people from the village who live elsewhere are not included.

Faith and culture

According to its entry in Nişanyan Yeradları, Ballıkaya is an Alevi Turkish settlement, and it is known as the centre of the Şah İbrahim Velî ocak (Yıldız 2012, p. 129) (Nişanyan place names). For details, see theFaith and Culture page.