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Chufut-Kale (; Russian and Ukrainian: Чуфут-Кале - "Chufut-Kale"; ; Karaim: Кала - קלעה - "Kala") is a medieval city-fortress in the Crimean Mountains that now lies in ruins. It is a national monument of Crimean Karaites culture just east of Bakhchisaray.
Its name is Crimean Tatar and Turkish for "Jewish Fortress" ("çufut/çıfıt" - Jew, "qale/kale" - fortress), while Crimean Karaites refer to it simply as "Fortress", considering the place as historical center for the Crimean Karaite community. In the Middle Ages the fortress was known as "Qırq Yer" (Place of Forty) and a...
In the 15th century the first Crimean Khan, Hadji-Girei, realizing the fortress’ advantages, turned the old section of the town into his fortified residence. After the defeat of the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate became considerably stronger. The significance of Kyrk-Or as a stronghold declined, and the Crimean Khan...
After the Crimea's conquest and its inclusion into the Russian empire, the fortress inhabitants were permitted to live anywhere in the Crimea. From that time on, Chufut-Kale was deserted. By the mid-19th century the town ceased to exist.
There are many legends concerning the place. According to one, it was called "Qırq Yer" because the khans Meñli Giray or Tokhtamysh, the founders of the city, brought with them forty Karaite families, and in their honor called it the "Place of Forty".
"Chufutkale" is mentioned (and also transliterated as "Chew-Foot-Calais") in Vladimir Nabokov's 1968 masterpiece, "Ada", page 338. The novel uses the site for the death of a minor character, Percy de Prey, during an imaginary Second Crimean War in 1888.
It is also mentioned in Jonathan Littel's great book "The kindly Ones" (2006) page 232 and is used to emphasize the regions intricate history.
Adam Mickiewicz wrote a sonnet "Droga nad przepaścią w Czufut-Kale" ("The Pass Across the Abyss in Czufut-Kale"), published in 1826.
Mount Sapun or Sapun Ridge (, , ) is a 240 m high ridge to the southeast of Sevastopol, situated on the disputed Crimean peninsula.
It became the site of heavy fighting during the siege of Sevastopol (1941-1942), and also during its recapture in 1944.
When defending Sevastopol the Soviet troops held the Sapun Ridge and could observe German movements to the city from the south.
It took Wehrmacht nearly 2 weeks of desperate fighting to take control over these positions in late June 1942. As a consequence, Soviet troops had to evacuate from Crimea.
In 2 years, on the final stage of the Crimean Offensive the assault of Sapun-gora on 7 May 1944 was successful for Red Army. On 9 May 1944, just over one month after the start of the battle, Sevastopol fell. German forces were evacuated from Sevastopol to Constanța.
Later in 1944 the first monuments to the Soviet warriors on this place were erected, in 1959 the diorama showing the assault of the German fortifications was opened.
In 1921 the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created. This republic was dissolved in 1945, and the Crimea became an oblast first of the Russian SSR (1945–1954) and then the Ukrainian SSR (1954–1991). From 1991 the territory was covered by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol City within inde...
Archaeological evidence of human settlement in Crimea dates back to the Middle Paleolithic. Neanderthal remains found at Kiyik-Koba Cave have been dated to about 80,000 BP. Late Neanderthal occupations have also been found at Starosele (c. 46,000 BP) and Buran Kaya III (c. 30,000 BP).
Archaeologists have found some of the earliest anatomically modern human remains in Europe in the Buran-Kaya caves in the Crimean Mountains (east of Simferopol). The fossils are about 32,000 years old, with the artifacts linked to the Gravettian culture.
During the Last Glacial Maximum, along with the northern coast of the Black Sea in general, Crimea was an important refuge from which north-central Europe was re-populated after the end of the Ice Age. The East European Plain during this time was generally occupied by periglacial loess-steppe environments, although the...
Proponents of the Black Sea deluge hypothesis believe Crimea did not become a peninsula until relatively recently, with the rising of the Black Sea level in the 6th millennium BC.
The beginning of the Neolithic in Crimea is not associated with agriculture, but instead with the beginning of pottery production, changes in flint tool-making technologies, and local domestication of pigs. The earliest evidence of domesticated wheat in the Crimean peninsula is from the Chalcolithic Ardych-Burun site, ...
By the 3rd millennium BC, Crimea had been reached by the Yamna or "pit grave" culture, assumed to correspond to a late phase of Proto-Indo-European culture in the Kurgan hypothesis.
In the early Iron Age, Crimea was settled by two groups: the Tauri (or Scythotauri) in southern Crimea, and the East Iranian-speaking Scythians north of the Crimean Mountains.
Taurians intermixed with the Scythians starting from the end of 3rd century BC were mentioned as Tauroscythians and Scythotaurians in the works of ancient Greek writers.
The origins of the Tauri, from which the classical name of Crimea as "Taurica" arose, are unclear. They are possibly a remnant of the Cimmerians displaced by the Scythians. Alternative theories relate them to the Abkhaz and Adyghe peoples, which at that time resided much farther west than today.
The Greeks, who eventually established colonies in Crimea during the Archaic Period, regarded the Tauri as a savage, warlike people. Even after centuries of Greek and Roman settlement, the Tauri were not pacified and continued to engage in piracy on the Black Sea. By the 2nd century BC they had become subject-allies of...
The Crimean Peninsula north of the Crimean Mountains was occupied by Scythian tribes. Their center was the city of Scythian Neapolis on the outskirts of present-day Simferopol. The town ruled over a small kingdom covering the lands between the lower Dnieper River and northern Crimea. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, Sc...
The ancient Greeks were the first to name the region "Taurica" after the Tauri. As the Tauri inhabited only mountainous regions of southern Crimea, at first the name Taurica was used only to this southern part, but later it was extended to name the whole peninsula.
Greek city-states began establishing colonies along the Black Sea coast of Crimea in the 7th or 6th century BC. Feodosiya and Panticapaeum were established by Milesians. In the 5th century BC, Dorians from Heraclea Pontica founded the sea port of Chersonesos (in modern Sevastopol).
In 438 BC, the Archon (ruler) of Panticapaeum assumed the title of the King of Cimmerian Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying the city with wheat, honey and other commodities. The last of that line of kings, Paerisades V, being hard-pressed by the Scythians, put himself under the pro...
In the 2nd century BC, the eastern part of Taurica became part of the Bosporan Kingdom, before being incorporated into the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC.
During the AD 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries, Taurica was host to Roman legions and colonists in Charax, Crimea. The Charax colony was founded under Vespasian with the intention of protecting Chersonesos and other Bosporean trade emporiums from the Scythians. The Roman colony was protected by a vexillatio of the Legio I It...
Throughout the later centuries, Crimea was invaded or occupied successively by the Goths (AD 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (4th–8th century), the Khazars (8th century).
Crimean Gothic, an East Germanic language, was spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century.
In the mid-10th century, the eastern area of Crimea was conquered by Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev and became part of the Kievan Rus' principality of Tmutarakan. In 988, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev also captured the Byzantine town of Chersonesos (presently part of Sevastopol) where he later converted to Christianity. An im...
At the same time, the southern fringe of the peninsula was controlled by the Byzantine Empire as the Cherson theme.
Kiev lost its hold on the Crimean interior in the early 13th century due to the Mongol invasions. In the summer of 1238 Batu Khan devastated the Crimean peninsula and pacified Mordovia, reaching Kiev by 1240. The Crimean interior came under the control of the Turco-Mongol Golden Horde from 1239 to 1441. The name "Crime...
The Byzantines and their successor states (the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461) and the Principality of Theodoro (early 14th century–1475)) continued to maintain control over parts of southern Crimea until the Ottoman conquest in 1475. In the 13th century the Republic of Genoa seized the settlements which their rivals, ...
In 1346 the Golden Horde army besieging Genoese Kaffa (present-day Feodosiya) catapulted the bodies of Mongol warriors who had died of plague over the walls of the city. Historians have speculated that Genoese refugees from this engagement may have brought the Black Death to Western Europe.
After Timur destroyed a Mongol Golden Horde army in 1399, the Crimean Tatars founded an independent Crimean Khanate under Hacı I Giray (a descendant of Genghis Khan) in 1441. Hacı I Giray and his successors reigned first at Qırq Yer, then - from the beginning of the 15th century - at Bakhchisaray.
The Crimean Tatars controlled the steppes that stretched from the Kuban to the Dniester River, however, they were unable to take control of the commercial Genoese towns in the Crimea. After the Crimean Tatars asked for help from the Ottomans, an Ottoman invasion of the Genoese towns led by Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1475 bro...
After the capture of the Genoese towns, the Ottoman Sultan held Khan Meñli I Giray captive, later releasing him in return for accepting Ottoman suzerainty over the Crimean Khans and allowing them rule as tributary princes of the Ottoman Empire.<ref name="blacksea-crimea/hist"></ref> However, the Crimean Khans still had...
Crimean Tatars introduced the practice of raids into Ukrainian lands (the Wild Fields), in which they captured slaves for on-sale. For example, from 1450 to 1586, eighty-six Tatar raids were recorded, and from 1600 to 1647, seventy. In the 1570s close to 20,000 slaves a year went on sale in Kaffa.
Slaves and freedmen formed approximately 75% of the Crimean population. In 1769 a last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, saw the capture of 20,000 slaves.
The Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group dominated the Crimean Khanate from the 15th to the 18th centuries. They descend from a complicated mixture of Turkic peoples who settled in the Crimea from the 8th century, presumably also absorbing remnants of the Crimean Goths and the Genoese.
Linguistically, the Crimean Tatars are related to the Khazars, who invaded the Crimea in the mid-8th century; the Crimean Tatar language forms part of the Kipchak or Northwestern branch of the Turkic languages, although it shows substantial Oghuz influence due to historical Ottoman Turkish presence in the Crimea.
A small enclave of Crimean Karaites, a people of Jewish descent practising Karaism who later adopted a Turkic language, formed in the 13th century. It existed among the Muslim Crimean Tatars, primarily in the mountainous Çufut Qale area.
In 1553–1554 Cossack Hetman Dmytro Vyshnevetsky (in office: 1550-1557) gathered together groups of Cossacks and constructed a fort designed to obstruct Tatar raids into Ukraine. With this action, he founded the Zaporozhian Sich, with which he would launch a series of attacks on the Crimean Peninsula and the Ottoman Tur...
In 1774 the Crimean Khans fell under Russian influence with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. In 1778 the Russian government deported numerous Greek Orthodox residents from Crimea to the vicinity of Mariupol.
In 1783 the Russian Empire annexed all of the Crimea.
The Taurida Oblast was created by a decree of Catherine the Great on 2 February 1784. The center of the oblast was first in Karasubazar but was moved to Simferopol later in 1784. The establishment decree divided the oblast into 7 uyezds. However, by a decree of Paul I on 12 December 1796, the oblast was abolished and t...
After 1799, the territory was divided into uyezds. At that time, there were 1,400 inhabited villages and 7 towns—Simferopol, Sevastopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Feodosiya, and Kerch.
In 1802, in the course of Paul I's administrative reform of areas that were annexed from the Crimean Khanate, the Novorossiysk Governorate was again abolished and subdivided. Crimea was attached to a new Taurida Governorate established with its centre at Simferopol. The governorate included both the 25,133 km2 Crimea a...
By the late 19th century, Crimean Tatars continued to form a slight plurality of Crimea's still largely rural population but there were large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians as well as smaller numbers of Germans, Jews (including Krymchaks and Crimean Karaites), Bulgarians, Belarusians, Turks, Armenians, and Greeks a...
The Tatars were the predominant portion of the population in the mountainous area and about half of the steppe population. Russians were concentrated most heavily in Feodosiya district. Germans and Bulgarians settled in the Crimea at the beginning of the 19th century, receiving a large allotment and fertile land and la...
The Crimean War (1853–1856), a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Duchy of Nassau, was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining O...
Following action in the Danubian Principalities and in the Black Sea, allied troops landed in Crimea in September 1854 and besieged the city of Sevastopol, home of the Tsar's Black Sea Fleet and the associated threat of potential Russian penetration into the Mediterranean. After extensive fighting throughout Crimea, th...
The war devastated much of the economic and social infrastructure of Crimea. The Crimean Tatars had to flee from their homeland "en masse", forced by the conditions created by the war, persecution and land expropriations. Those who survived the trip, famine and disease, resettled in Dobruja, Anatolia, and other parts o...
In 1909, the Russian battleship "Potemkin" accidentally sank a Russian submarine.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the military and political situation in Crimea was chaotic like that in much of Russia. During the ensuing Russian Civil War, Crimea changed hands numerous times and was for a time a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. It was in Crimea that the White Russians led by Ge...
Approximately 50,000 White prisoners of war and civilians were summarily executed by shooting or hanging after the defeat of General Wrangel at the end of 1920. This is considered one of the largest massacres in the Civil War.
Crimea changed hands several times over the course of the conflict and several political entities were set up on the peninsula. These included:
On 18 October 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the Russian SFSR which, in turn, became part of the new Soviet Union. However, this did not protect the Crimean Tatars, who constituted about 25% of the Crimean population, from Joseph Stalin's repressions of the 1930s. The Gree...
From 1923 until 1944 there was an effort to create Jewish settlements in Crimea. At one time, Vyacheslav Molotov suggested the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland.
Crimea experienced two severe famines in the 20th century, the Famine of 1921–1922 and the Holodomor of 1932–1933. A large Slavic population influx occurred in the 1930s as a result of the Soviet policy of regional development. These demographic changes permanently altered the ethnic balance in the region.
Sevastopol held out from October 1941 until 4 July 1942 when the Germans finally captured the city. From 1 September 1942, the peninsula was administered as the "Generalbezirk Krim" (general district of Crimea) "und Teilbezirk" (and sub-district) "Taurien" by the Nazi "Generalkommissar" Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld (1898–1...
The Crimean Jews were targeted for annihilation during Nazi occupation. According to Yitzhak Arad, "In January 1942 a company of Tatar volunteers was established in Simferopol under the command of "Einsatzgruppe 11". This company participated in anti-Jewish manhunts and murder actions in the rural regions."
In 1944, Sevastopol came under the control of troops from the Soviet Union. The so-called "City of Russian Glory" once known for its beautiful architecture was entirely destroyed and had to be rebuilt stone by stone. Due to its enormous historical and symbolic meaning for the Russians, it became a priority for Stalin a...
On 19 February 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the transfer of the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This Supreme Soviet Decree states that this transfer was motivated by "the commonality of the economy, the proximity, and close economic and cultural relations be...
In post-war years, Crimea thrived as a tourist destination, with new attractions and sanatoriums for tourists. Tourists came from all around the Soviet Union and neighbouring countries, particularly from the German Democratic Republic. In time the peninsula also became a major tourist destination for cruises originatin...
The North Crimean Canal (Russian: Северо-Крымский канал, Ukrainian: Північно-Кримський канал; in the Soviet Union – North Crimean Canal of the Lenin's Komsomol of Ukraine) is a land improvement canal for irrigation and watering of Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine, and the Crimean peninsula. The canal also has multipl...
The construction preparation started in 1957 soon after the transfer of Crimea of 1954. The main project works took place between 1961 and 1971 and had three stages. The construction was conducted by the Komosomol members sent by the Komsomol travel ticket (Komsomolskaya putyovka) as part of shock construction projects...
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine. Independence was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea. 54% of the Crimean voters supported independence with a 60% turnout (in Sevastopol 57% supported independence). The percentage of the ...
This new situation led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised. In August 1991, Yuriy Meshkov established the Republican Movement of Crimea which was registered on 19 November.
On 2 September 1991, the National Movement of Crimean Tatars appealed to the V Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies in Russia demanding the program how to return the deported Tatar population back to Crimea. Based on the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (the Crimean parliament) on 26 February 1992, the Crimean A...
On 14 April 1993, the Presidium of the Crimean parliament called for the creation of the presidential post of the Crimean Republic. A week later the Russian deputy, Valentin Agafonov, stated that Russia is ready to supervise the referendum on Crimean independence and include the republic as a separate entity in the CIS...
Following the ratification of the May 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership on friendship and division of the Black Sea Fleet, international tensions slowly eased off. With the treaty, Moscow recognized Ukraine's borders and territorial integrity, and accepted Ukraine's sovereignty over Crimea and Sev...
However, other controversies between Ukraine and Russia still remain, including the ownership of a lighthouse on Cape Sarych. Because the Russian Navy controlled 77 geographical objects on the south Crimean Shore, the Sevastopol Government Court ordered the vacating of the objects, which the Russian military did not ca...
In 2006, protests broke out on the peninsula after U.S. Marines arrived at the Crimean city of Feodosiya to take part in the Sea Breeze 2006 Ukraine-NATO military exercise. Protesters greeted the marines with barricades and slogans bearing "Occupiers go home!" and a couple of days later, the Crimean parliament declared...
In September 2008, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in the Crimea and described it as a "real problem" given Russia's declared policy of military intervention abroad to protect Russian citizens.
During a press conference in Moscow on 16 February 2009, the Mayor of Sevastopol Serhiy Kunitsyn claimed (citing recent polls) that the population of Crimea is opposed to the idea of becoming a part of Russia.
Although western newspapers like the "Wall Street Journal" have speculated about a Russian coup in Sevastopol or another Crimean city in connection with the Russian-Georgian war and the Recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russia. Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), sta...
On the 55th anniversary of the transfer of the Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR (on 19 February 2009) some 300 to 500 people took part in rallies to protest against the transfer.
On 24 August 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held in Crimea by ethnic Russian residents. Sergei Tsekov (of the Russian Bloc and then deputy speaker of the Crimean parliament) said then that he hoped that Russia would treat the Crimea the same way as it had treated South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Chaos in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) during a debate over the extension of the lease on a Russian naval base erupted on 27 April 2010 after Ukraine's parliament ratified the treaty that extends Russia's lease on a military wharf and shore installations in the Crimean port Sevastopol until 2042. The Ch...
Before 2014, Crimea can be considered a part of the political base of then President Viktor Yanukovych. Thus, in the period just prior to 2014, Crimea was not experiencing intense mobilization against Ukraine or on behalf of absorption into Russia.
Within days, on 26 February 2014, hundreds of pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine protesters clashed in front of the parliament building in Simferopol. The previous day, 300–500 pro-Russia protesters chanting "Russia" had replaced the flag of Ukraine with the flag of the Russian Federation. Leaders of Crimean Tatars organised a...
On 27 February, unidentified troops widely suspected of being Russian special forces seized the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea and the building of the Council of Ministers in Simferopol. Whilst the "little green men" were occupying the Crimean parliament building, the parliament held an emergency session. It...
The "little green men" began to surround Ukrainian bases in the peninsula and soon individuals were kidnapped. On 11 March, after disagreements between Crimea, Sevastopol, and the interim Government in Ukraine, the Crimean parliament and the city council of Sevastopol adopted a resolution to show their intention to uni...
On 16 March, Crimea's government claimed that nearly 96% of those who voted in Crimea supported joining Russia. The vote received no international recognition and, aside from Russia, no country had sent official observers there.
On 17 March, the Crimean parliament officially declared its independence from Ukraine and requested to join the Russian Federation.
On 18 March 2014, the self-proclaimed independent Republic of Crimea signed a treaty of accession to the Russian Federation. The accession was granted but separately for each the former regions that composed it: one accession for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as the "Republic of Crimea"—the same name as the short-l...
All actions of Crimean parliament were declared null and void by Ukrainian constitutional court that led to its disbandment by Ukrainian parliament.
The Ukrainian parliament has stated that the referendum is unconstitutional. The United States and the European Union said they consider the vote to be illegal, and warned that there may be repercussions for the Crimean ballot.
On 27 March, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution 100 in favour, 11 against and 58 abstentions in the 193-nation assembly that declared invalid Crimea's Moscow-backed referendum.
In July 2015, Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, declared that Crimea had been fully integrated into Russia.
On 18 September 2016, the whole of Crimea participated in the Russian legislative election.
Zephyrium or Zephyrion () was a town of the Chersonesus Taurica (modern Crimean Peninsula), mentioned by Pliny the Elder.
The Treaty of Livadia () was an unequal treaty between the Russian Empire and the Chinese Qing dynasty signed in Livadiya, Crimea, on 2 October 1879, wherein Russia agreed to return a portion of the lands it had occupied in Xinjiang during the Dungan Revolt of 1862–1877. Even though Qing forces had reconquered the area...
The Qing dynasty under the Qianlong Emperor conquered Xinjiang from the Dzungar Khanate in the late 1750s. However, Qing China declined in the late 19th century following the First Opium War. A major revolt known as the Dungan Revolt occurred in the 1860s and 1870s in Northwest China, and Qing rule almost collapsed in ...
Russia was officially neutral during the conflict, but as a result of the Treaty of Tarbagatai in 1864, had already gained about of territory in Xinjiang. Furthermore, the Russian Governor-General of Turkestan had sent troops into the Ili Valley in 1871, ostensibly to protect his citizens during the rebellion, but they...

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