CRIMEA

George Page
Micha Jelisavcic
John Sloan

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This site is devoted to the history of Crimea. Here we have added the article on Crimea from the great 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1910. It obviously is dated now, but actually gives a better flavor of what Crimea was like in the 19th century, not long after the Crimean War, than a recent article would. Crimea We are adding the encyclopedia articles on individual topics such as Bospor, Chersonesus, Scythia, Khazars, and the like. We will show selected photos taken during visits to Sevastopol and surrounding region in 1992, 1993, and 1997. For convenience we have divided the material into the subject categories listed below.
We owe a tremendous debt for the success and great enjoyment of our visits to Dr. V. Krestiyannikov and Mr. Pavel Lyashuk of the Museum of the Heroic Defense of Sevastopol - the Panorama Museum in Sevastopol. In addition to providing us with all logistic support and their personal extensive knowledge of Crimean history, they also organized meetings with expert historians and archeologists at every location we visited. We have endeavored to list the names of these individuals, who were so generous with their time and knowledge. For many of these topics our first exposure to the subject was the visit to the site itself. This is especially true for the archeological sites. We are including as much as possible about the archeological sites because we believe participating in these exciting exploration projects would be of great interest to American students. We met many English speaking students at these summer camps and believe participation would be a great experience for American students. Micha Jelisavcic recorded the discussions as he interpreted and is now translating them. He is also translating the many books we were given by their authors during these visits. In addition, we are researching the subjects via library references and will be adding information as we find it. Links to web sites will also be provided. The topics included here obviously only touch on a few aspects of the history of Crimea. For instance its role in the Russian Civil War and in World War II is not yet included. Eventually we hope to complete a book on the entire history. Among those we met and to whom we will to express great thanks are the following:
Dr. Inna A. Antonova - Chersonessos Museum
Dr. Oleg Beliy - Eski Kerman, Mangup, Chufut-Kale
Dr Ol'ga Dashevskaya - Belyaus-Donuzlav
Dr. Aleksandr Gertsen - Mangup
Aleksei Ivanov - Sudak, Kutlak - Feodosia - Armyanskaya Krepost'
Dr. Vadim Kutaisov - Kalos Liman
Vladimir Pavlenkov - Evpatoria
Dr Eugeniy Turovskii - Chersonessos Museum
Dr. Sergey Vnukov - Kara Tobe

Here we are expanding an outline chronology of events related to Crimea. And here will be an outline of the history of Crimea.
The Panorama museum has prepared an ambitious project for placing it's extensive holdings on computers and making this available to researchers world-wide. It is currently seeking to raise funds to accomplish this. As a small token of our gratitude and in an effort to assist with this, we will sell copies of the photos shown here and listed in our catalogue and forward the proceeds to the museum. Please contact Xenophon for information about prints or high quality digital versions of these photographs and for information about participating in future visits to Crimea. For further information about the museum, its holdings and anything related to historical oriented visits to Crimea please contact Mr Pavel Lyashuk

Map of Crimea

This map is extracted from a US Government map and shows the locations we visited. Crimea map. We have a special section listing the many maps we have of Crimea.

Archeology

• Alma river - Scythian city and cemetery
• Chersonesus ancient Greek colony, later Byzantine city. The article on Chersonesus from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica is here.
• Donizlav - Belyaus - ancient Greek seacoast colony, then Scythian
• Kalos Limei - ancient Greek city, then Scythian town
• Kara Tobe - ancient Greek outpost near Evpatoria
• Kutluk - Bosporian kingdom outpost fort on south east coast
• Mangup - kale - Byzantine fortress, then capital of Feodora principality

Fortresses

• Chufut - Kale - Byzantine, then Tatar, then Kariate fortress
• Chembalo Genoese fortress at Balaklava
• Eski - Kerman - early medieval cave city, and an article on the 'cave cities'
• Kalimata Feodorite fortress at Inkerman
• Coming Kaffa Genoese fortress city now Feodosia. The article from the 11th edition of Encyclopdia Britannica on Theodosia is here.
• Kutluk Bosporian fortress on Crimean coast
• Mangup - kale - Byzantine, then Goth-Alan, fortress
• Sudak Genoese fortress

Crimean War

• Crimean War - general introduction, article from 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1910.
• Alma illustrated description of first battle of the Crimean War, The narrative of the course of the battle written by Kinglake is at Kinglake..
• Balaklava narrative of the second battle of Crimean War
• Balaklava description of town and tour of battlefield.
• Inkerman narrative of the third battle of Crimean War
• Inkerman description of tour of battlefield.
• Sevastopol port and naval base besieged during Crimean War and World War II. The article on Sevastopol from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica is here.
• Panorama museum in Sevastopol
• Museum of the Black Sea Fleet
• Russian memorial cemetery for Crimean War
• Simpson illustrations from his eye-witness book of paintings on Crimean War
• Article about a famous saber during Crimean War.

Other Historic Locations

• Bakhchisarai Tatar capital of Crimea and Khan's palace
• Evpatoria ancient Greek city (Kerkinitida), then Tatar (Gozliv), and 19th century center of Kariates.

Historic Peoples

• Scythians ancient neighbors of Greeks. The article on Scythia from 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica is here.
• Bosporian kingdom - sometimes independent, sometimes vassal or ally of Roman or Byzantine empires. Here we have the article from the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica
• Khazars medieval Turkic people whose empire centered between Black and Caspian Seas north of Caucasus and who controled much of Crimea at various times. This site created by Kevin Brook is the last word on this people and it has a huge bibliography and many related web links. The article in 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica on Khazaria is here.

Links to other web pages

This page last edited on 28 November 2006. To return to the main Xenophon page To send comments or questions please contact Xenophon or make an entry in our guest book..