A Monumental Inscription

In 1836, Governor General Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov commissioned the translation (into Russian) of the Arabic and Ottoman inscriptions at Bahcesaray as one of the first scholarly projects of the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities. The…

The vast majority of the inscriptions that absorbed the energies of the Odessa Society for over a decade were located within the grounds of the Khan Palace at Bakhchisaray.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the scholarly appetite for such scholarship was considerable. Small wonder. Sifting through dozens of pages of transcriptions and translations yields tantalizing insight into thepatronage practices, literary…

The tomb described in this inscription was no ordinary tomb. In fact, the burial place of Haci Giray Khan, who died in 1466 having founded the Giray dynasty, is one of precious few surviving examples of sixteenth century Crimean architecture. Its…