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The Crimea and Rum in the 13th–14th centuries: The Anatolian Diaspora and Urban Culture of Solkhat
Authors: Kramarovsky M.G.
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It was within the period between the second half of the thirteenth century and the early fourteenth century that the Northern Black Sea region started to get islamized. Solkhat, the administrative centre of the Golden Horde in the Crimea, played a crucial part in this process. The current paper is concerned with two closely related issues: the Anatolian diaspora and the development of the “Asia Minor” vector in the culture of Solkhat. According to some historical sources, the Seljuk expansion into the Crimea started as early as in the 1220s, when Hussam al-Din Chopan seized Sudak. The Seljuks built a garrison Mosque there and established the Sharia laws for a certain period of time. These actions, however, didn’t have a far-reaching effect. There is no evidence of the population being forced into Islam. When Hussam al-Din moved over to Rum, he left a garrison in Sudak to control the sea ports.
The archaeological findings in the Byzantine settlement of Khersones reveal a more diverse pattern of relationships with Islamic Anatolia. The findings include a substantial group of the Seljuk ceramics of the thirteenth century, coins and some other artifacts. I believe it is not unlikely that there was a small Islamic community in the Northern part of the city. It could have been destroyed during the period of the Seljuk expansion in the first third of the thirteenth century.
The Turkic people of Anatolia started to penetrate the Eastern Crimea in great numbers in 1265. This process was influenced by the diaspora made up of the supporters of the ex-sultan of Rum, ‘Izz ad-Din Kaykaus (1246–1257). ‘Izz ad-Din’s Horde arrived in Crimea via Dobrudja in 1265, following their patron. This fact is mentioned in a historical compilation made by a Turkish author Yiaziyi-oglu Ali under sultan Murad (1421–1451), probably, in 1424. According to this compilation, which, in its turn, is based on the information provided by Ibn Bibi (the thirteenth century), the horsemen warriors arrived in the Crimea with their families. The new-comers settled outside the city, but Solkhat and Sut(d)ak were given to ‘Izz ad-Din, khan Börke’s son-in-law, as the ikta.
Another finding from Belogorsk area (the Crimea) is a hanging lead seal bearing the titles of the three rulers of Rum between 1249 and 1237, ‘Izz ad-Din Kaykaus II, Rukn al-Din-Kilich Arslan IV and Allah ad-Din Kayqubad I. It means that the contacts between Rum and the administration of the Golden Horde were established at least as early as in the middle of the thirteenth century. After ‘Izz ad-Din’s death (circa 1280) the Seljuks of Sary Sultuk returned to Dobrudja.
Between 1265 and 1280 Kemal Baba’s (Kemal Ata’s) cult arose in Crimea. Kemal Baba was a sufi sheikh, a follower of Sary Sultuk. He died in 1278 in Solkhat, and it could have been by Sary Sultuk’s order and to commemorate Kemal Baba that the sufi abode and the mausoleum were built there. They used to be a ziyarat, but none of them has survived until nowadays. The contacts with Anatolia can be traced in the iconography of the double-headed eagle on the puls of Solkhat bearing Talabuga khan’s tamga (1287–1290); images of a double-headed eagle can be seen on Janibek’s puls in the middle of the fourteenth century.
When the Jochids chose Islam as their religion, they unconsciously followed the Great Seljuks’ experience. There were a number of reasons for that. The first one is the fact that they chose a Sufi-like branch. According to C.E. Bosworth, they did so because the Turcic people’s Islam kept some traces of Seljuk tradition and some other Shamanistic beliefs. This hidden Paganism is believed to explain not only the choice of the Sunnite branch of Islam, but also of its Hanafite Maddhab.
Under Börke (1257–1267), who was the first khan to adopt Islam, the new doctrine couldn’t neglect the fact that the khan’s surroundings belonged to different cultural backgrounds: Tengrism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Nestorianism. According to J.S. Trimingham, ‘Sufism’s role was of considerable significance, not as a Way, but through its men of power, manifested also after their death from their tombs, many of whose structures were raised by Mongol rulers’.
In 1334 the Arab traveler Ibn Batutta was in Solkhat where he met Abu Bakr Rumi, a sheikh from Asia Minor, who wrote the Persian Sufi treatise Qalandar-name. A copy of Qalandar-name is being prepared for publishing by a group of scholars from Kazan, directed by Il’nur Mirgaleev. Abu Bakr was born in Akshehir (Anatolia), but apparently spent most of his life in Solkhat as the imam of one of the two jame mosques of the city. In his treatise poem he once refers to the ruler of Solkhat as ‘Seljuk’ – most probably, in order to flatter him. It is extremely important that the onomastic data from Solkhat often reveal the names of people belonging to the Seljuk Diaspora, whose fathers, according to nisbas, came from Anatolia, for example al-Kastamuni (the thirteenth century), al-Akhlati, at-Tokati, as-Sivasi, as well as Yaakub Konevi (1328), a sheikh from Otuz (the neighbourhood of Solkhat).
Two more names worth mentioning here: those of the builders (architects) belonging to different generations of one and the same (?) family from Arbel (Irbil), the Northern Iraq. The first one is Abdul Aziz ibn Ibrahim al-Irbili, the author of the ‘Mosque of Uzbek’ (1314), whose name can be found in the dedicatory inscription on the portal. The name of the second one, Mahmud ibn Osman al-Irbili, is known from the keystone which we found in 1985 in the layer of destruction of a fifteenth century mausoleum. According to Ibn Battuta, the Sufi abodes (khanqahs) – centres of religious zeal and ‘schools’ where Sufi experience was taught – were founded by immigrants from Iraq, too.
Thus, as we can see from the narrative sources, as well as from the names of the refugees from Anatolia and Northern Iraq, including those in the Crimea, the so called ‘minor migration’ was the second and, most probably, the main reason that the Seljuk ‘inoculation’ worked in the culture of the Islamic city communities.
As to the materialistic component of life, the Seljuk influence can be traced in almost all the kinds of building and handicraft activities. The core of the Islamic Solkhat was formed between the first third of the fourteenth century and the second half of the fifteenth century. Its centre was the architectural ensemble of a madrasa and ‘the Mosque of Uzbek’, which was rebuilt on a new site. The new ‘Mosque of Uzbek’ repeated the portal, the mirhab and the main elements of the arcade of the original one, dating back to 1314. The mosque was obviously rebuilt closer to the Northern wall of the madrasa (built in the first third of the fourteenth century) in the late fifteenth century. In 1332–1333 Injebek Khatun, the mother of the Mongol ruler of the city, ordered and sponsored a new madrasa with four iwans and a portal of the Asia Minor style. The three-dimensional decorations of the mosque and the madrasa, including the two-level structure of the capitals, belong to the same tradition. Besides its didactical function, madrasa also served as a muvakkithane, that is, it was responsible for keeping prayer times.
The Seljuk ceramics of Solkhat is represented by a series of glazed ceramics with under-glaze sgrafitto drawing. The most interesting finding is a bowl dating back to the first half of the fourteenth century. It shows a scene of a feast, where all the characters are exaggeratedly young, courageous and equal in their positions at the feast. The most natural idea is that they must be members of an association of young men who were called the fityan (sg. fata – ‘young man’, ‘youth’) in the Near East. Since the ninth century the fityan clubs were called futuwwa (‘young-manliness, chivalry). The ideas and the rites of the fityan penetrated Asia Minor under Izz ad-Din Kaykawus I (1210–1219), who was caliph an-Nasir’s son-in-law.
The Seljuk tradition is also visible in the shape and decorations of two groups of rings. The first one comprises niello silver rings characterized by a stirrup-shaped outline with a flat diamond-shaped plate whose angles are decorated with fake settings without inlay. The second one is represented by a ring of goldish bronze dating back to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries.
Another group of findings is represented by the end plates of silver belt sets. Most of them were found in the barrows of Belorechinsk burial ground in Northern Caucasus. If we take into consideration the similarities between the decorations and the dragon-head motives of the end plates on one hand and those of the belt plate from Belorechinsk barrow, we’ll come to the conclusion that a new seam of artistic metalwork following the Seljuk tradition has been discovered not only in the Caucasus, but also in the Crimea. The fittings of Belorechinsk barrow no. 8 are among the most outstanding monuments of the kind. A similar belt set was discovered in 2005 in a male tomb in the central nave of the Mangup basilica (the Mountainous Crimea). The shooting belt (dated by Keldibek khan’s paiza at 1361) from the Simpheropol treasure belongs to the same group of findings. I believe that this golden belt set, as well as a number of other findings, could have been made in Solkhat. These belt sets were ordered by the elite of the Golden Horde (including those in Solkhat), and the Simpheropol treasure itself belonged to the ruler of Solkhat, Kutlugh Buga. Let me remind you that it was his mother, Injebek Khatun, who invited a building crew in the early 1330s to build the madrasa in Solkhat.
Thus, our findings from the South-Eastern Crimea and the Northern Caucasus mostly dating back to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries demonstrate that the Seljuk cultural and artistic traditions were kept in the towns and regions of the foothills of the Northern Caucasus. These traditions were brought by the Islamic diaspora from Anatolia during the period when the Seljukid state collapsed.
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