01/06/2015
Hey, are you ready for the next piece of gold from the treasury of natural wonders Crimea is going to surprise you with? Here you are... Chufut-Kale, just 3 km (1.9 mi) east of Bakhchisaray!
Chufut-Kale is a medieval city-fortress in the Crimean Mountains that now lays in ruins. It is a national monument of Crimean Karaite culture.
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".
Another legend, fostered by the Karaites to show the antiquity of their sect, says that Karaites were brought there from Persia at the time of the first Exile. The early settlers of the city exercised great influence upon their neighbors, the Khazars. The ḥakam Abraham Firkovich, who was very skilful in falsifying epitaphs and manuscripts, pretended to have unearthed at the cemetery of Chufut-Kale tombstones dating from the year 6 of the common era, and to have discovered the tomb of Sangari, which is still shown by the Karaites. According to Harkavy, however, no epitaph earlier than 1203 can be seen at the cemetery of Chufut-Kale, called "Vale of Jehoshaphat"; and the tombs do not belong to Karaites, but to the old Rabbinite settlers called Krymchaks. Chufut-Kale, however, existed as early as the seventh century. Abu al-Fida mentions it under the name "Qırq Yer".
