The reunification of Crimea with Russia in 2014 and the centuries-old historical path of the peninsula, which has become one of the most significant "crossroads of cultures" in Eurasia, make the study of its historical heritage increasingly relevant in the modern era of the clash of civilizations and the revival of Russia. The editorial board of the magazine "Vostok (Oriens)" offers readers a series of articles devoted to various aspects of the history and culture of medieval Crimea.
From the analysis of the first instrumental plan of the ancient settlement of medieval Solkhat in 1783, it follows that the Rabbanites and Karaites in the XIII-XIV centuries lived in neighboring communities surrounded by buildings of the Islamic community of the city. There is reason to believe that the core of the Jewish community was formed in the pre-Urban period (i.e., several decades before the 1260s). From the point of view of urban structure, the population of Jewish neighborhoods was a single community. Hebrew remained the language of ritual and epitaphs for all members of the community; dialects of Turkic were the language of everyday communication. Hebrew was used in the inscriptions on applied seals; one of the finds contains a Judaico-Arabic bilingualism.
The Solhat Synagogue can be tentatively dated to 1260-1280, based on the materials of coin finds from previous excavations. Its area is about 214 sq. m. The walls are laid out in the technique of shell masonry on lime mortar; the floor is made of flat stone. The sacral (southern) wall has preserved traces of an altar niche (ghalal). Perhaps the altar niche was decorated with marble mosaics. The plan of the synagogue is presumably close to a three-nave basilica with a stone arcade.
The estimated size of one parish, based on the area of the prayer hall, is about 1070-1100 people (based on 5-6 family members). The hypothesis of the existence of two equal parishes - Karaite and Rabbanite-suggests a doubling of this number. This means that the total population of the community was 23-25% of the city's population of 8-9 thousand people.
Keywords: Crimea, Solkhat, Rabbanites, Karaites, Jewish community, synagogue, archeology.
KRAMAROVSKY Mark Grigoryevich-Doctor of Historical Sciences, Leading Researcher, State Hermitage Museum; solkhat@gmail.com.
Marc KRAMAROVSKIY - Dr. of Historical Sciences, Leading Research Fellow, The State Hermitage, Sankt-Petersburg; solkhat@gmail.com.
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JEWISH SCIENCES OF THE SOLKHAT-CRIMEA IN THE THIRTEENTH-FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
Marc KRAMAROVSKIY
The paper analyses the first tool plan of the ancient settlement of medieval Solkhat of 1783. Rabbanite and Karaime lived there in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. Their neighbours were an Islamic community of the city. The centre of a Judaic community perhaps developed in pre-settlement period, i. e. some decades prior to the 1260th. From the point of view of city structure, the population of the Jewish quarters constituted a single community. Language of ritual and stone epitaphs for all members of a community was Hebrew. Turkish dialects became the language of household communication. According to monetary finds, the synagogue of Solkhat may be dated from the 1260-1280.
Keywords: Crimea, Solkhat, Karaimes, Rabbanites, Jewish community, synagogue, archaeology.
The historical topography of the city of Crimea in the XIII-XIV centuries initially developed within the framework of three communities - Christian, Islamic and Jewish. Of these, the Muslim one turned out to be the youngest, since before the XIII century. The Northern Black Sea region did not know Islam as a vector of development. It is important to emphasize that the formation of urban structures of Solkhat, within which a new religious community for Taurida was born and developed, went simultaneously with the strengthening of Islamic choice within the Khan's headquarters on the Volga, mirroring this process.
The general structure of the city was already defined by the end of the XIII-beginning of the XIV century or a little earlier. Its planimetry is known to us from the first instrumental plan of 1783, which preserved the main features of the second half of the XIV century (Fig. 1) [Kramarovsky, 1989, pp. 141-157].
In the early 1360s, the area of the city was slightly reduced. The governor of Crimea Kutlug-Buga, who was defeated in 1362 by the troops of Olgerd (1345-1377) near Blue Waters, 1 decided to protect Crimea-Solkhat from the Lithuanian threat with a defensive ditch and rampart due to the false, as it turned out later, danger of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (VKL) advancing on the south-eastern Crimea. By this time, the city served as the"... economic center and headquarters of the head of the right wing ... " of the Golden Horde [Grigoriev and Frolova, 2002, p. 265]. In 1375-1380, the Kutlug-Bugi earthen rampart was replaced by the Beklarbek Mamai 2 by a system of stone walls with defensive towers [Kramarovsky, 2012, pp. 219-228], aimed at curbing separatism and increasing militarization of the Genoese Kaffa. As a result, both defensive belts finally consolidated the rejection of part of the early quarters of the south-western sector of the settlement, where the Christian population of the city had lived since the middle of the XIII century, leaving no more than 2.2 square meters inside the defensive belt. km of city squares.
1 Kutlug-Buga, a supporter of Mamai, as governor of the Crimea, was apparently responsible for the tax collections of the Right Wing of the Golden Horde. Taxes from the Podolian lands ceased to flow even under Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1316-1341. Kutlug-Buga headed a coalition of Horde noyons, which included the governor of Kyrk-Epa Hadji-bek and the ruler of the Crimean principality Feodoro Dmitry. As a result of the defeat on the Blue Waters River, a tributary of the Southern Bug, Lithuania captured all the Horde lands of the Black Sea region west of the Dnieper rapids and north of the lower reaches of the Dniester and Southern Bug. The Kiev, Podolsk, and Vologda regions became subordinate to Lithuania. Ukrainian colleagues consider the Sinevoda victory of Olgerd as the liberation of Ukrainian lands from Horde dependence [Galenko, 2005, p. 137; Motsia, 2006, p.92, 93]. V. D. Smirnov (1846-1922) gave one of the first comprehensive analysis of historical information about the victory of Lithuania in 1362 in 1887 [Smirnov, 2005, pp. 151-154].
2 The activity of Mamai as a guardian of Berdibek traditions (the emir entered the family of Khan Janibek in 1342-1357 as a gurgen-son-in-law), the assessment of political forces on the eve of the Battle of Kulikovo and the results of his rule is actively reviewed in modern historiography. For the mid-fourteenth-century crisis in the Black Sea region, see [Karpov, 1990, pp. 220-238].
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1. Plan-scheme of Solkhat (based on the map of 1783).
Each of the three communities was not united either ethnically or confessionally. Thus, the Christian quarters knew representatives of several faiths - Orthodox (Byzantine), Nestorian, Greek Catholic, Catholic and Armenian-Gregorian. Sunni Muslims (they were, as the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta testified, the Uzbek Khan himself (1312-1342) and his relative - one of the most influential dignitaries of the Khan's administration-Kutlug-Timur (?-1335 / 1336) [History of Kazakhstan, 2005, p. 235] 3, head of the "Islamic party", a recent beklarbek and governor of Khorezm since the early 1330s.) did not immediately take a dominant position in the city. Apparently, until the last years of the thirteenth century, the position of the Islamic and Christian communities was close to parity, if not equilibrium. This can be seen from the echoes of the debate about the ban on bell ringing in the Christian quarters of Solhat, preserved in Vatican documents. The ban attempt was not immediately successful. In the 1280s, in Crimea, the Franciscans baptized Yaylak, the wife of the all-powerful Horde prison guard Nogai, and several large Mongol beks. The strengthening of the position of the Christian community made it possible to preserve the church tradition of festive chimes in the city until the beginning of the XIV century. The bell ringing, which so frightened Ibn Battuta in Kerch in March 1333, was already abolished in Solkhat.
The basis of the Islamic community in Solkhat was formed by neophyte Turks who moved to sedentarism, and natives of the Islamic cities of Central Asia and the Middle East, including the Rum Sultanate, ravaged by the Genghisids. Families with Mongolian roots, not easily identified because of the recently adopted Muslim names, were an absolute minority among the city's population. However, exactly
3 On the peculiarities of the Golden Horde Islam, see: [Kramarovsky, 2014(1), pp. 64-74].
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they formed the power pyramid, and they had the opportunity to acquire tarkhanism (privileges) similar to those obtained by Muhammad, the son of Haji Bayram (labeled Timur-Kutluk), and the conditions for their own approval, including within the traditional framework of Islam [Smirnov, 2005, pp. 156-157; Kramarovsky, 2013, pp. 35-45].
Two sects lived in the Jewish quarters: the Karaites lived according to the laws of the written Torah; the Rabbanites followed the Oral Law. The general daily life of the townspeople (during the city's heyday in the first half of the XIV century, their number probably reached eight thousand) was determined by three main factors: the autocracy of the governor of the Golden Horde khan-Baskak; the common market for all townspeople, the development of which was spurred by the introduction of national coinage from the beginning of the 1260s; the unity of individual forms of citywide life For example, water management systems [Kramarovsky, in print]. In relations with the city administration, the priority of the Islamic community is indisputable.
The Jewish community of the peninsula was formed from sub-ethnic groups of Turkic-speaking Karaites (some authors mistakenly see them as descendants of the Khazars) [Seliverstov, 2011, p. 185]4, Karaites from the Middle East and Asia Minor, and Persian-and Greek-speaking Romaniot rabbis from Byzantium and Iran. Each group had its own identity.
The Rabbanites and Karaites of Solkhat, according to the city plan of 1783, lived in semi-enclaves surrounded by buildings of Islamic quarters. But from the point of view of the urban structure, the entire population of the Karaite-Rabbanite development was a single community. We do not have direct data to establish the level of parity between both groups of the population. I share M. B. Kizilov's cautious assumption about the Rabbanite majority of Solkhat Jews [Kizilov, 2011, p. 178], 5 but rather in the second half of the 14th century. I also believe that the core of the community was formed in the pre-Urban period before the 1250s and 1260s - the time when the mint began working, marking the transition from the settlement to the city proper. It is noteworthy that in Crimea during this period, the silver anonymous yarmak with the inscription "Amir of Crimea" was replaced by coins with the name of the issuer - Temir Buka (Tuka) [Khromov, 2004, p. 15-17].
So far, no pre-Mongol Solkhat layers have been found in our excavations at the ancient settlement. A. S. Firkovich's hypothesis about the Khazar era of the Karaite community is based on falsified dates of five Solkhat tombstones of the alleged X-XI centuries (Firkovich, 1872, p.210). Nevertheless, the legend about the Khazar past of the city was supported by I. A. Baranov (Baranov, 1990: 83-85). But his assumption is untenable, because it is based on erroneous attributions of lifting material. Veniamin Tudelsky's report about the Jews of the Tauride Solkhat of the XII century is also considered unfounded: "...we have no written sources about the presence of Jews in the Crimea from the end of the XI century and up to the last quarter of the XIII century" [Kizilov, 2011, p.88]. One should agree with this. It is necessary, however, to check once again the mention of the toponym "Solhat" in one of the manuscripts of the collection of A. S. Firkovich (RNB (IPB), manuscript Heb. I In N 72). We are talking about a manuscript dedicated to the Karaite community of Sulhat / Solhat with the text of the 150th Psalm of David. Here, on one of the pages, there is a note about the purchase of a manuscript in the town of Matarkha (Taman); V. V. Lebedev dated the monument to 1129 [Lebedev, 1987, p. 60]. If the date of the manuscript is not a forgery, then the settlement (pre-urban) period of Solkhat lasted for more than a century. This, in turn, contradicts the archaeological observations related to the history of the ancient settlement.
4 For a critique of the Karaite character of Judaism in Khazaria, see [Kizilov, 2011, pp. 72-75, 77, 87, 88-90].
5 At the same time, it is appropriate to note the existence of a Jewish substrate in the Turkic-Byzantine-Latin Sughdea, as indirectly evidenced by the discovery of a mold with a Jewish inscription; see: [Baranov, 2004, pp. 542-543, Fig. 14].
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The earliest indisputable evidence of the Karaite and Rabbanite communities dates back to 1278, when the work Sefer ha-mivhar ("The Chosen Book") by the Karaite author Aharon ben Joseph ha-Rofe (≈1250-1320) mentions a calendar dispute between representatives of both religious groups (Ahiezer, 2015, p.25). This means that by the last third of the thirteenth century (or somewhat later), each of them must have had its own synagogue (the Greek "synagogue" corresponds to the Hebrew beth hakenessei). According to the legend of the XVIII century, in Solkhat during the heyday (i.e., at the end of the XIII-XIV centuries), the Karaite community allegedly had seventeen schools and four synagogues-kenassas. One of them allegedly could accommodate more than 3 thousand parishioners (!). Its vaults were supported by 44 columns of wood and marble.6 Despite the excessive exaggeration of dozens of times, in the legend retold by the gazzan of the Chufut-Kala Karaite community, Shemuel Kaly ben Joseph (d. 1754), ideas about the forever lost "golden age" of Solkhat co-religionists were postponed.
The location of the extant Solkhat synagogue is located in the south-east of the central part of the settlement. M. B. Kizilov suggested that the synagogue was located in the area of the hill "Kemal Ata", where in the first third of the XIX century finds of stone tombstones with inscriptions in Hebrew were noted [Kizilov, 2011, p.179-181]. The historian himself, following A. I. Markevich [Markevich, 1888, p.64-77], sees the hill in the north-east of the settlement. However, the real site of Kemal Ata is the south-eastern end of the spur of Mount Taz Agarmysh, which was called Nogaily-oglu back in the XIX century. Both are located a hundred meters from the city limits of the second half of the XIV century. In fact, Kemal Ata is a mound of a Bronze Age mound with Muslim inlet burials on the surface (Kramarovsky and Khavrin, 1998(1), p. 38-41; Kramarovsky and Khavrin, 1998(2), p. 21-25; Kramarovsky and Khavrin, 2007, p.77). Already at the end of the XIII century. this place has become sacred for the population of the local Islamic community. Here, according to legend, in memory of the elder dervish Kemal Ata (hence the name of the hill), a Sufi monastery and a mausoleum were built, which became a city for Muslimsziyaret - a place of pilgrimage (both structures have not been preserved). Sheikh Kemal Ata (Kemal Baba) - an associate of Sary-Saltuk7, one of the leaders of a group of Anatolian Turks who came to the Crimea with the Seljuks of ex - Sultan Rum ' Izz-ad Din Keikavus II in 1265. Sary-Saltuk returned to Dobrudja with part of the Seljuq horde after the sultan's death in 1278; Kemal Ata died in Solkhat, probably at the end of the XIII-beginning of the XIV century.
In the late 1830s, it was here, at the western foot of the Kemal Ata hill, that A. S. Firkovich discovered five stone Karaite tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions, of which he attributed the earliest to 910. [Firkovich, 1872, p. 210] 8. The tombstones were taken "for eternal storage" in the town of Gozlev (Belogorsk), where they disappeared without a trace. Part of the Karaite burial ground, preserved by the XVIII century, is marked on the topographic plan of 1783, just near the Kemal Ata hill. The Rabbanite burials were probably located in a separate mass closer to the wheel road to Kaffa and, therefore, were located north of the Karaite ones. The tombstones of the Rabbanites, according to A. S. Firkovich, contained dates of the XIV-XVI centuries.
The topography of the burial grounds of the Jewish and Islamic communities, separated by a shallow ravine, is noteworthy. The distance was so short that in search of the tombstone of the exegete and physician Aharon ha-Rofe revered by the Karaites, A. S. Firkovich, by mistake, apparently caused by the lack of inscriptions, opened, as he himself admits in the "Book of Memorial Stones", the grave of Kemal Ata [Firkovich, 1872, p.210].9
6 The legend was included in the book "Samuel's Cloak" by Samuel Calla (Yelyashevich, 1993; Kizilov, 2000, p. 121).
7 Sary-Saltuk ( Sary-Saltyk)-the head of the Seljuk Turks who moved with Izz-ad Din Keikavus II to the Crimea, after the death of the sultan, who returned with a horde of Anatolian nomads to Dobrudja. "Sary-Saltyk's personality is surrounded by a halo of sanctity and even glorified by miracles" (Smirnov, 2005, p. 57).
8 L. S. Firkovich's data were criticized by his younger contemporaries, and the author himself was convicted of falsification. See, for example: [Kunik, 1876; Harkavy, 1876].
9 For notes on the Sufi sheikh Kemal Ata, see [Abdulvapov, 2006, pp. 140-149].
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2. Ostracon from the excavations of the Solkhat prayer house.
Both the Jewish and Islamic burial grounds were located outside the residential development zone 10, and it is impossible to imagine that the Kenassah synagogue building was located outside the city limits in isolation from the community quarters.
Before presenting some observations on the results of excavations of the synagogue in the 2015 season, we note that the question of its confessional affiliation has been repeatedly discussed at meetings of the Tauride Scientific Archival Commission (TUAC) since the end of the XIX century [Prokhorov, 2007, pp. 162-177]. In the course of discussions on the issue of attribution of the monument, two diametrically opposed views were formed. Proponents of one point of view considered the ruins that have come down to us to be the remains of a synagogue, for which, however, the dilemma of Rabbanite-Karaite affiliation remains unresolved [Markevich, 1902, pp. 45-47]11. P. I. Golladsky, a member of the archaeological expedition of Professor I. N. Borozdin, a practicing architect and expert on architectural monuments of the Crimea, suggested identifying the ruins with "Tatar mosque". This point of view was expressed by him in a report on the architectural monuments of Solhat at the TUAC meeting in 1925.
Paradoxically, the mutually exclusive definitions are based on one common reason - the southern orientation of the object. It is determined by the location of the city on the geographical map of the world. Jerusalem, toward which the Jewish ritual calls for the ge'gal prayer niche to be turned, is located to the south of Solhat; both cities lie on the same meridian 12. In turn, the mihrabs of Solhat mosques also point south (towards Mecca).
In the legend to the preserved historical monuments of the Islamic, Christian and Jewish communities on the city plan of 1783, the object of interest is designated as "Jewish school".
A few additional words about the discussion about the orientation of the Jewish house of worship in Crimea. The southern version of the planning structure was established here in contrast to the traditional idea of the eastern wall of the temple as the central part of the sacred space in the synagogue architecture of the Rabbanites of the western regions of Eastern Europe. The latter does not apply to this case, since, according to the ritual enshrined in Halakha, the code of Jewish law, both Rabbanites and Karaites are required to turn their faces towards Jerusalem during prayer. The tradition dates back to the time of the prophet Daniel, who prayed in front of the synagogue windows facing Jerusalem (Dan. 6.11). So, I agree with A. I. Markevich that the confessional affiliation of the Solkhat synagogue cannot be decided on the basis of its planning structure, which is based on the southern orientation of the monument [Markevich, 1902, pp. 45-47]. In order not to discuss the absurd assumption of an Islamic alternative to the monument, I will inform you, breaking the sequence of presentation, that in the ABM-
10 The Muslim burial ground was excavated by us in 1994-1996 [Kramarovsky, 1997, pp. 31-33].
11 A. I. Markevich did not attach any importance to V. D. Smirnov's observation that "...the architectural style of this building is not similar to the Tatar one, especially the shape of the main niche in the southern wall (emphasis added by me - M. K.)" [Smirnov, 1887, p. 284].
12 The longitude of Jerusalem is 35°12 '58"; the longitude of Solhat is 35°5 '23"; the distance between Solhat and Jerusalem is 1,476 km.
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Fig. 3a. Excavation plan with a grid of land plots.
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Fig. 3b. Dimensional drawing of the synagogue.
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During excavations in August 2015, in the area of the altar niche in the floor layer of the prayer house, we found a marble ostracon with neatly carved four square letters of the Hebrew alphabet (Fig. 2). According to M. B. Kizilov, the inscription apparently consisted of fragments of two words - the end of one and the beginning of the other, as indicated by a small caesura between the letters "kuf" and " gay " 13. This is the first and so far only artifact of this kind directly from the cultural layer. Without overestimating the significance of the find, it is impossible not to note (along with other signs) its importance for determining the monument as the ruins of a Rabbanite synagogue.
The synagogue is oriented along the north / south line with an azimuth of 156-157 (Fig. 3a, b)14. The geometry of the regular rectangle, which is the basis of its plan, is still broken. The southern wall forms an angle of 83-86°at the intersection with the eastern wall. One possible explanation, but probably not sufficient, is that the marking of the sacred wall of the synagogue was carried out during the winter solstice.
Measurements of the walls (along the external contour) gave the following results: the length of the western and eastern walls was 18.13 m; the length of the southern and northern walls was 14.79 m; and the thickness of the walls was 0.9 m.
Thus, the area of the object in the interior (taking into account the thickness of the walls) is 214.3 sq. m. 15 Like any other, the Solhat synagogue should have had a central - male-entrance and a female, side entrance. According to Professor V. D. Smirnov, during his arrival in the Crimea (1886) [Smirnov, 1887, p.284], one of them was located at the corner junction of the northern and eastern walls of the synagogue. Currently, this opening can not be traced due to the demolition of part of the wall under the outbuildings of modern times. Traditionally, the women's side entrance led to the second-tier mezzanine (in this case, probably near the eastern wall), but there is no evidence for this. Traces of the main entrance can be traced at the junction of the northern and western walls of the synagogue.
Lighting of the interior was carried out through narrow windows, similar to loopholes. Similar windows can be seen in the upper part of the southern wall of the Solkhat madrasah (mid-1330s). A part of such a window is also preserved on the western wall of our object, at a height of 3.7 m from the floor level (Fig. 4). Probably, each of the longitudinal walls contained three or even four narrow windows, and one-two were located in the southern (sacred) wall of the synagogue.
Fragments of the stone floor paving were preserved at the junction of the southern and eastern walls (Fig. 5), the southern and western walls, and the junction of the northern and western walls. Some variations in elevation can be attributed to the uneven draught of the building. The floor of the room was paved with flat stones, not having a clear geometry, worn out
13 I would like to express my deep gratitude to M. B. Kizilov for the consultation.
14 Taking GPS coordinates gave the following results: C - 3 Kenassa angle N45. 03263, E35. 10348; S-W angle N45. 03248, E35. 10356; S-To angle N45. 03252, E35. 10371; S-To angle N45.03266, E35.10358. All definitions were made by A. N. Teplyakova; Excavations were carried out by students under the direction of E. I. Seidaliev; measurements were made by architect P. Novikov. For information about the typical orientation of synagogue objects, see: fSalmona. Sigal, 2011; Lokotko, 2002].
15 The walls are laid out in the technique of shell masonry on lime mortar. The material used is a ragged butte made of local marbled limestone, known for its strength. Masonry of the front surfaces of the walls was carried out in horizontal rows of large stones with leveling pads in several rows of small and flattened stones. The space between the masonry faces was filled with small rubble on lime mortar. Wooden beams with a cross-section of 12 x 17 cm were laid in the thickness of the walls every 1.5-1.7 m (voids were preserved) (probably as a means of combating soil fluctuations during earthquakes). In several cases, on the eastern and northern walls (on the eastern one in the lower tier near the foundation), the method of laying stones with oblique masonry with a rise at an angle of approx. 50°is noted. Probably, this technique was intended to compensate for the spread during soil fluctuations. Sounding at the eastern wall showed that the foundation is laid out in 5-6 rows of large rubble; its thickness reaches 0.7 m. The foundation is laid out in a trench lowered to the mainland level (2.52 m from the conditional "0"). Protrusion of the foundation shelf of the eastern wall - up to 5-7 cm. The foundation of the southern wall of the structure is lowered to the level of the mainland to a depth of 1.94m from the conditional "0"; the protrusion of the foundation shelf is up to 27 cm. It follows that: a) the depth of the foundation depended on the level of the horizon of the continent; b) the foundation of the southern - sacred - wall was designed for greater loads than other walls of the structure.
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4. Drawing of the window of the western wall of the synagogue.
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5. The floor of the object at the junction of the southern and eastern walls.
from long-term use. Most likely, during the active operation of kenassa, its floors were covered with carpets.
Along the interior axis, in the center of the southern wall, the remains of an altar niche (ghalal) are preserved (Fig. 6-7). In it, according to the instructions of the halakha, there should have been aron ha-kodesh - "the holy ark", in which the Torah scroll was kept 16. The niche is located at a distance of 2.35 m from the floor (this is an important sign indicating the synagogue practice in the geometry of the sacred wall, distinguishing gehal from the Muslim mihrab, which is characterized by lying on the floor). floor level).
During the work, a stone capital was found, which was moved after the destruction of the synagogue to the south-western corner of the prayer hall. The capital is made of soft limestone and decorated with four shallow vertical insets at the corners 17. The upper plane of the capital, facing the half-arches of the unprotected arcade, contains a slight depression under the cast in the form of a rectangle 35x35 cm. Apparently, the ceiling of kenassa was supported by an arcade supported on columns-three (?) in one row. The interior, therefore, was divided by a colonnade into three naves. The central nave of the synagogue was undoubtedly oriented towards the altar niche. The pitch of the colonnade could not be set in the current season, as this task can only be performed if the floor is completely opened, which turned out to be impossible for technical reasons.
The estimated height of the lost ceiling, the beams of which rested on an arcade supported by a colonnade (not preserved), is not less than 5.5 m.
16 Dimensions of the altar niche: depth 0.75 m from the front surface of the wall, width-1.7 m, height from the floor 2.35 m. Width of the masonry projection framing the altar niche at floor level 5.5 m. The upper edge of the niche is outlined in an arc with a radius of approx. 0.75 m. In 1902 A. I. Markovich wrote: "The kivot niche of this synagogue is covered with inscriptions with the names of visitors, and Jews say that these are all the names of Karasubazar Krymchaks, i.e. Jews, and Karaites claim that there were also many names of visitors-Karaites, even Firkovich, but the Jews destroyed these inscriptions "[Markevich 1902, p. 46]. It is necessary to take revenge that traces of graffiti with poorly distinguishable Jewish inscriptions remain on the coating of the sacred niche to this day.
17 Its dimensions: height 40 cm, size of the upper plane 62×62 cm, size of the lower plane 54×54 cm.
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Figure 6. The southern wall of the object.
It can be assumed that the kenassa was covered by a gable tile roof. The closest analogy is the synagogue in Kaffa (1292, the monument has not been preserved, but it is known from a drawing from the album of Elohim. de Villeneuve) [Kizilov, 2011, p. 116] 18.
There is nothing unusual about the layout of the Solhat synagogue. The area at the main entrance, called in Hebrew Moshav Zekkenim (literally "the elders 'seat"), is traced in three sections near the north wall. There were places for elderly members of the community. The second-floor gallery-ezrat nashim, intended for women, has not been preserved. The central part of Kenassa is shulkhan (dosl. "table"), where ordinary members of the community were located, has so far been traced only in one area in the center of the room. Traces of the elevation-bim, from which Gazzan led the service, have not yet been reliably discovered. Along the axis of the interior, in the center of the southern wall, the remains of an altar niche have been preserved, as already noted.
The entire interior of the prayer hall, judging by the footprints at the junction of the western and southern walls, was plastered.
The revealed area of the structure (see above) provides a basis for the estimated size of one of the Jewish parishes. Based on the area per square meter per person - Karaites and Rabbanites prayed standing or half - sitting-the total number of co-religionists during the construction of the prayer house probably amounted to about 1070-1100 people (based on five or six family members). If we accept our hypothesis of two equal parishes - Karaite and Rabbanite - doubling the size of one gives an idea of the population of the entire community. Total estimated strength composition-
18 Close parallels are found in the bazilichny mosques of Solkhat - the so-called Uzbek Mosque of 1314 and the "Beybars Mosque" [Kramarovsky, 2014(2), pp. 205-213; Zilivinskaya, 2014, pp. 175-193].
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Fig. 7. Drawing of the southern wall.
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It employs approximately 2140-2200 people. This figure is approximately 23-25% of the total population of the city of 8-9 thousand people and does not seem exaggerated for Solhat during the period of stability. The period of stability of the city lasted for about a century until 1360, i.e. until the time of the political crisis in the Golden Horde, which caused an explosion of centrifugal tendencies among the Genghisids-the heirs of the Jochi Ulus.
One of the most difficult tasks is related to the dating of the object. During the opening of approximately 1/3 of the synagogue area in the summer of 2015, 32 coins were found, of which 17 units (53%) are indeterminable due to poor preservation. The earliest coin was a copper pool of Khan Mengu Timur (1266-1280) with the image of a solar sign. It is followed by the Tham-Mengu (1280-1287) and Tokty (1291-1312) pools. Coins of Khan of Uzbekistan (1312-1341) make up a quarter of the total number found. Coin finds with some caution give grounds for the assumption that the construction of Kenassa was built before the 1260-1280s. Apparently, the synagogue was built during the period when the governor of the Crimea was Tuka Timur (665-674 AD / 1257-1275 AD). Further research of the object will confirm or refute the proposed date.
To date, the range of artifacts that characterize the culture of the urban community is extremely small. There is a deaf claim that a Torah scroll with the date 1300 has been preserved from the Solhat synagogue. [Kandel, 1990, p. 264] 19, however, this report cannot be verified due to the lack of any information about the manuscript. The Museum of Taurida (Simferopol) contains a part of a tombstone from finds in the Old Crimea with an epitaph, which mentions the name of Mordecai, son of Mordecai (1417) [Markevich, 1892, p. 128]. In 1979, we discovered a fragment of a stele with a square Hebrew inscription outside the cultural layer. The inscription on the front side of the stele reads: "Grave monument of the elder son of Joseph, his memory is blessed, the son of Abraham, his memory is blessed. And he died (the son of Joseph) on the 3rd day of 23 Adar in the first year 5311 from the creation of the world. May his soul be woven into the wreath of life " (translated by E. K. Meshcherskaya). Thus, the tombstone dates back to 1511. I will note two more random finds of silver applied seals, probably from the XIV-XV centuries. (fig. 8a-b). The first of them contains a bilingual Arabic-Karaite inscription. O. F. Akimushkin tried to translate the Arabic part of the inscription, but the proposed reading requires clarification. A. A. Ivanov reads in the Arabic text of the inscription rather than the name, but the honorary nickname of Father Moses (Moshe) - "sadik" = tzaddik ("righteous man" in Hebrew): "Moshe, son of the venerable Sadiq." In Judaism, a tzaddik is a pious, sinless person who enjoys God's special favor; a person who knows and keeps the commandments of the Torah. An inscription in Hebrew tells the owner's name: "Moshe is the son of the venerable Lord Melchizedek" (translated by M. B. Kizilov). G. Akhiezer does not agree with this reading; she suggests a different reading: "Moshe b k r (ben quod rav) Malkitz [edek?] (or Malkiel) " 20. In 2014, in the north-eastern sector of the Solkhata settlement, a silver seal ring with black ink was found among the lifting material, decorated with a rosette with the "star of David" on a gilded field and a mirror owner's inscription. The Hebrew inscription located around the rosette reads: "Moshe, s(s) n p (och) g (osiodin) Shab (taya) " (reading by M. B. Kizilov).
The already mentioned ostracon with Hebrew letters, found in the sub-floor layer near the sacred niche, is probably a fragment of a marble tile in the shape of a hexagon 21. From such hexagons laid out mo-
19 Unfortunately, in a personal conversation, the author could not recall the source of information about the Old Crimean scroll, but assured of the reliability of its information.
20 Translated by O. F. Akimushkin-see: [Kramarovsky, 2015, p. 345, cat. N 179]. I would like to express my deep gratitude to A. A. Ivanov, M. B. Kizilov and G. Akhiezer for their consultations and translations of the seal inscriptions.
21 The idea of identifying the ostracon with an element of a geometric mosaic was suggested to me by Prof. Arch. David Cassuto, the University Center-Arielin Samaria) in consultation about the Solhat Synagogue, for which I would like to express my deep gratitude.
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Figure 8a. Print with Arabic-Karaite bilingualism. 8b. A ring seal with an inscription in Hebrew.
a stutterer, whose composition can be assumed to have been decorated with clay (Fig. 9-10). Unfortunately, we do not have the data to reliably reconstruct the pattern of this mosaic.
Judging by the mass material from the ancient settlement layer, there is no reason to assume the existence of any special group of ceramics in the city-Karaite or Rabbanite. The population of all ethnic and religious communities (provided that we are talking about tableware) preferred ceramics with graffiti of the Byzantine or Asia Minor type and expensive imports from the craft centers of the Volga region and the Middle East. Kitchen and container ceramics from our excavations at the ancient settlement and the surrounding suburbs most likely reflect the local tradition. At the same time, we can assume the existence of special vessels for sacred purposes.
The intellectual level of the Jewish community is determined by the names of its outstanding representatives. Above, we have already mentioned the name of the Karaite doctor Aharon ha-Rofe. In the middle of the 14th century, the activity of Avraham Kirimi (Avraham Krymsky), a native of the Solkhat exegete-rationalist Rabbanite community, flourished [Tsinberg, 1924, pp. 93-110]. Here, in 1358, he wrote an extensive commentary on the Pentateuch (in the collection of the Russian National Library). From the preface, it is known that Abraham's teacher was Shemariah b. Elijah Ikriti of Negropont. His commentary on the Torah, The Language of Truth, is the earliest known original work of Crimean Jews from the advanced Middle Ages. At the end of 1392 or somewhat later (1397-1398), Avraham Kirimi, along with other Karaites, Rabbanites, and Muslim Tatars, was captured by the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas (1392-1430) in Troki (present-day Trakai near Vilnius, where a large Karaite community later grew up). As a prisoner, but this time of the Crimean Tatars who robbed Kiev, then part of Poland, Moshe b appeared in the Crimea in 1506. Yaakov Gagole (Exile), who held a prominent position in his homeland as "the crown of the entire community, a rabbi, theologian and Kabbalist mystic." He was a frail and sickly man who had once been educated in Constantinople, where he excelled in astrology, mathematics, and philology. In Crimea, he was bought out of captivity by the local Jewish community. In 1514-1515, Moshe b. Yaakov completed a commentary on ibn Ezr's "Orarnechaned" in Solhat (Zinberg, 1924, pp. 98-110). Later, Moshe the Exiled moved to Kaffa, where Jews from many countries lived, praying according to various rituals. Moshe b. Yakov, having written the charter of the communal structure and compiled the "prayer book of the Kafa ritual", reconciled everyone and thereby won everyone's trust and grateful memory.
The loss of Solkhat's status as a regional" capital " center on the peninsula in the 16th century led to a decline in the activity of urban life and, as a result, the erosion of the Jewish community. In the middle of the 17th century, the Turkish traveler Evliya Celebi noted in Eski-
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9. The southern wall of the synagogue. Niche (gokhal) with reconstruction of mosaic decoration.
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Fig. 10. Reconstruction of the main decorative element of gzhal.
In the Crimea, there is only one street inhabited by Jews [Celebi, 1928, p. 662]22.
Multi-vector culture is a characteristic feature of Solkhat-Crimea. This model is also reflected in the life of the Karaite-Rabbanite community. Its content is formed by the traditions formed on the maternal soil long before the resettlement to the Crimea, where development continued, but already in the conditions of the Golden Horde city. The population of urban communities owes the preservation of their own identity in the conditions of the "new homeland" to the absence of a violent policy of cultural assimilation among the Genghisids. The peculiarity of the urban culture that has developed in Solkhat is that it is created by migrants not only from different ethno-religious communities, but also from different regions of the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds. In some cases, the family roots of members of the Muslim community, for example, are documented by their father's nisbas-nicknames in the epitaphs of tombstones of the XIII-XIV centuries. Nisbas point to the connection of Muslim migrants with Central Anatolia (Konia, Sivas, Tokat), Eastern Anatolia (Akhlat), the north of Asia Minor (Kastamuna), the northern part of Syria (Haleb-Aleppo), and finally Irbil (Erbil), the center of Syrian Christianity in Iraq (Akchokrakly, 1927, p. 4). 3-9]. It is no coincidence that the Anatolian-Seljuk line in construction technologies, crafts and art dominates the urban architecture, ceramics and fine plastics of Solkhat in the 14th century. It is not only clearly distinguishable stylistically, but also prolongs the very existence of "Seljuk art" for a century and a half, having been developed after the fall of the Rum (Konya) sultanate in the early XIV century [Kramarovsky, 2014(3), pp. 5-17]. Approximately the same mechanism is observed in the development of the Armenian contribution to the artistic heritage of the city [Mikaelyan, 1974, p. 16, 17; Korkhmazyan, 1978]. But more often than not, the cultural "roots" of migrants remain difficult to analyze, which is also typical of the heritage of the Karaite-Rabbanite community.
Nevertheless, the state of continuity in the evolution of certain lines in the culture of individual diasporas (language, writing, scriptorium activities, architecture of public buildings, construction practices, water use traditions, art crafts) created the ground for the rapid formation of Solkhat-Crimea's own urban culture as a recognizable phenomenon. The results were immediately reflected in the lifetime of one or two generations of recent immigrants. Of course, this applies not only to Anatolian-Seljuk or Armenian communities, but also to all other communities, including Jewish ones.
The study of Solhat Judaism is just beginning. So far, it has not been possible to discover the burial grounds of the community and, consequently, to obtain materials for describing the funeral rite. Unfortunately, the density of modern settlement development gives little reason for optimism when studying the medieval dwelling and a number of other aspects of the life of the Jewish Solhat population.
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