A book on the history of Crimean Tatar architecture has been published
Yukhym Krykun, a noted Crimean researcher specializing in historic structures, has published a book fundamentally altering our current views on the peninsula. What architecture we can see now appears to be a faded copy, a meager remainder of the beauty and grandeur marking the structures built centuries ago. In fact, what we have today is probably less than ten percent of what existed in the past.
“Why are we so excited exploring architectural sites, experiencing many an exhilarating moment of discovery sending our mind astir? What objective and subjective criteria does our society apply in assessing such memorial sites? What genetic code does it take for a man to preserve old traditions and memories?” Yukhym Krykun had these and more questions in mind when starting on his book, Crimean Tatar Architectural Monuments (Tavryda Publishers, 2001).
He writes that the history of the book is quite complicated and getting it published took almost ten years. The first and only manuscript nearly perished after its first editor, Sviatoslav Sosnovsky, was murdered in Simferopol. He had just begun work on the text. After the funeral only part of the manuscript was found in his voluminous archives. The current edition is the second, Ukrainian-language, one (considerably expanded; unlike the first Russian edition, it is enriched with 55 illustrations and numerous comments by experts on art and architecture).
“As in any other sphere, discoveries do not often happen in architecture; a lucky find is borrowed when designing other structure and is then duplicated as a confirmation of rational use and aesthetic perfection in creative culture, giving birth to a new architectural style, construction, and artistic traditions. Suffice it to remember the Bakhchisarai Palace and its long trace of borrowed construction and decorative components. Even if our generation has not inherited the best examples, owing to the whims of historical fate, they have traveled a hard road and this experience has told on the overall condition of architecture, the way age wrinkles one’s face, inspiring respect and affection in most, while irritating all those mankurt zombies, unburdened with culture, who strive to destroy and otherwise get rid of things they do not understand and consider hostile. Over 1,500 architectural sites are stone pages in Crimean annals; they are entered into registers of varying caliber, and the energy concentrate of the geological strata pressed in 10 to 15 meters of the Crimean soil is a unique source cosmic in scope. Watching Crimean construction projects for the repatriates, one senses man’s ardent desire to break free from the tight embrace of gray featureless intersection, yet often it is merely outward decorative inheritance, seldom reaching the level of precious original solution. Knowledge of traditions and the ability to put them to tactful use have always been indicative of a high cultural standard, preventing bad mistakes, and this is something the modern Crimean housing developers lack. In a way, this book is aimed at restoring the lost Moslem architectural traditions in the Crimea.” reads the introduction to Yukhym Krykun’s book by T. Memetova, candidate of science in architecture.
Yukhym Krykun has worked on the peninsula since World War II. He has been a member of the Architects’ Union since 1964, author of structures well known in Simferopol, including residential districts and buildings on Kyivska Street; books such as South Coast Architecture, Crimean Architectural Monuments, and What’s Beyond the Horizon? (on the prospects of Crimean architecture). He has prepared texts for tourist guides, written articles for newspapers and magazines, and also received the prestigious title of Meritorious Architect of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea.
“Temples, palaces, mausoleums, fortresses, public buildings, walls that seem to have come from alien worlds, eventually to sink into oblivion — all these things are priceless. Yet they are not kept in bank vaults like precious stones; they are not displayed at art galleries as are valuable canvases; they are not even kept in the lap of Mother Earth like archaeological objects. They are left to the mercy of the elements, exposed to severe winds and acid rain, biting frost and scorching sun. These ruthless servants of inexorable time have always been zealously aided by man. We burn down old defenseless structures or crush them with sledgehammers (at one time this was done methodically and on a mass scale), tear them apart with crowbars, jackhammers, bulldozers or explosives,” writes Yukhym Krykun.
There are two precious aspects to Crimean Tatar Architectural Monuments. First, the author has collected unique data concerning practically all Crimean Tatar architectural attainments, structures that are still on the peninsula and those lost in the run of time. The book contains numerous reproductions based on archival and historical sources. They relate to many lost structures, of which the fortress of Or Kapu is probably the most interesting. Built at the Isthmus of Perekop, the moat between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov is the only thing left of the fortress. The reconstructions of the fortresses of Yeni Kale and Arabat, the khan’s palace at Bakhchisarai, Scythian Naples, etc., are also noteworthy. Second, the book is richly illustrated, most reflecting lost architectural elements that now can be found only on paper.
Another valuable aspect is that the book makes it possible not only to store information about important Crimean architectural projects, but also contains useful expert findings and the author’s studies of ancient architectural styles, methods, and forms. It describes practically all Crimean Tatar architecture, from the Isthmus of Perekop to the Old Crimea to Bakhchisarai to Gevlev (Yevpatoriya). It is, therefore, also recommended as a reference source for studying, restoring, popularizing, and protecting Crimean Tatar architectural memorials.
For many readers this book will be a true discovery. Thus, almost everybody living in and outside the Crimea knows about the moat of Perekop, yet very few also know that it was once not just a huge ditch, but also part of the grand fortress of Or Kapu that had completely blocked the road to the peninsula the length and width of the isthmus, all the way from one sea to the next. Yukhym Krykun describes Or Kapu at that distant period: “Or Kapu, the fortress at the Isthmus of Perekop, suffered the greatest damage, compared to all the other fortresses of the Crimean khanate. Nothing is left of it except the moat, walls — and memories.
“The Isthmus of Perekop. The locality, the town, and the village have the same name, from the ancient Scythian name of the bank and ditch crossing the sandspit between Sivash and the Black Sea, linking the peninsula to the mainline like an umbilical cord. The bank is some 20 meters wide and 8 meters high at the base, stretching for 8 kilometers. On the Crimean side, the bank is preceded by a ditch 20 meters wide and 10 deep, believed to have been filled with seawater once. Greek historians called it Taphrosus (Taphgrosus), actually meaning Perekop Eventually, the name became official and for a long time belonged to a fortified city. Scythians and Sarmatians/Alans took turns controlling Taphrosus. Waves of nomad hordes — Huns, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians — rolled past and across the city. Tatars poured into the peninsula through the isthmus in 1223.
“The Tatars inheriting the peninsula from the Golden Horde quickly realized the advantages of the ditch and the bank and founded the fortress of Or Kapu (Fortress Gate) in place of Taphrosus. Later, the Ottoman Turks fundamentally rebuilt and reinforced Or Kapu, and gave it a more cheerful name: Ferahkerman (City of Joy). The bank and the ditch were renovated and faced with ashlar. It was then that the bank became known as the Turkish Wall.
The rectangular fortress assumed different shapes at different periods, for now and then it was repaired, expanded or ruined. Various eyewitness accounts offer different assessments of the structure. Yevliya Chelebi, of whom the reader has heard, saw a pentagonal double fortification, 23 arshins [1 arshin=2 ft. 4 in.] in height and three thousand footsteps in circumference, with three iron gates facing southward and sided by cannons, 300 covered balconies, and 20 rectangular towers seen at a distance of five days of travel from the fortress. Inside the fortress, the learned Turk saw 80 Tatar buildings with earth roofing. Outside, there were 300 buildings with clay roofs and a mosque with a beautiful low white marble minaret.
Envoy Vassili Tyapkin and clerk Nikita Zotov (a special mission sent by Russian Tsar Alexei to the Crimea in 1680) saw “Perekop, rectangular and built of stone, with one gate providing entrance and exit and another gate covered over with earth on the Crimean side; on the Moscow side was a solid wall. There are many dwelling structures and lofts attached to the fortified walls. The walls are built of stone and brick and timber held in place by mortar made of clay and earth, denying the structure any strength. There are just eight towers on the walls and by the gates, and a moat surrounding the city, about three sazhens in depth [1 sazhen= 2 m., 13 cm.]. There is a bank on both sides of the city, stretching to the sea; also a moat by the bank, on the Moscow side facing the steppe, not too deep and divided; there are many apertures and passages on the bank.”
N. Witsen, a noted Dutch statesman, author of the book, North and East Tataria (Amsterdam, 1690), included a picture of the fortress-city of Perekop, with a clear layout featuring numerous structures dating to Ferahkerman (Or Kapu) and environs.
Russian traveler Vassili Zuyev, visiting the Crimea on a mission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was amazed to see a mysterious owl, the symbol of wisdom, carved in stone on the fortress gate of Or Kapu. The sole entrance to the fortress under the Turkish flag, with a garrison of 1,500 officers and men, was through a chain drawbridge on the north side.
In 1736 and 1738, Or Kapu was seized and then left by Russian troops, and it was only in July 1771 that Russia took final possession of the fortress, whereupon it was ruined.
Gilbert Romm, the French family tutor of Pavel, 13-year-old son of Count Stroganoff, visiting the Crimea in 1768 to study geography en route, saw only the ruins of seven towers “located as follows: two in the town, two closer to Sivash, three farther toward the Black Sea.” The largest outermost hexagonal tower was still complete with several stone sentry boxes. Romm noticed various bas-reliefs in the stone facing of the fortified walls, they looked somewhat like those famous huge monstrous stone figures of Scythian goddesses of fertility. The bas reliefs were chaotically installed in the masonry, more often than not turned upside down. Those were remnants of ancient images used as construction material, probably the last desperate efforts of the defenders of Or Kapu.
Perekop has seen much in its long lifetime: the birth, flourishing, and death of the legendary city of Taphrosus, Or Kapu (Ferahkerman), later Perekop proper that would perish in the civil war, destroyed by artillery fire in 1920. What was left was dismantled to provide stone and bricks to build fortifications on the Turkish Wall. Nothing remains today, except the long earth bank and ditch dug by Scythians, later dug over and over by numerous different peoples, washed in the blood and sweat of the warring parties, proving immune to the ravages of time. Here and there, on and beside the bank, one can see modest obelisks, sad reminders of the heavy march of history, arresting the attention of rare travelers. In place of the old city is a small village, also called Perekop, and plenty of dachas being built closer to the bay.
The site is visited by archaeologists, historians, artists, and literati. They come to explore and to think about events long since history, about the present realities, and about the future. They spend evenings and nights by campfires, meeting and admiring sunrise.
