Bakla cave city description and photos - Crimea: Bakhchisarai (Topic)

Bakla cave city description and photos - Crimea: Bakhchisarai. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photos and a map showing the nearest significant objects.

Photo and description

The unique medieval cave town of Bakla is 18 km away. from Simferopol near the village of Skalistoye. This is a fortress in the rocks, with the remains of a citadel, an underground passage and a whole system of caves for various purposes, carved into a limestone rock.

Devil's Cave

The southern slopes of the Crimean Mountains are composed of soft limestone , which is subject to destruction and weathering, forms natural caves and shelters. It is easy to enlarge the room or expand the cave here - that's why people settled here for a long time.

Not far from the medieval city is the so-called Devil's cave - Shaitan-Koba . Neanderthals lived here 300 thousand years ago. This small four-meter grotto was their home.

A cultural layer has been excavated, consisting of the remains of animal bones and flint tools, and the hearth on which food was prepared. Primitive people hunted mainly for saigas and wild donkeys. Mammoths were also found then - their bones were also found, but they were far from the main part of the diet.

Cave city

The word" Bakla "itself comes from the Turkic" baklak "- an eggplant for water, a vessel. There really are many "vessels" carved into the rock, only they were intended not for liquid, but for grain . But what the local population called the city, we do not know, the name "Bakla" is of late origin. This is what the inhabitants of the surrounding Tatar villages called these rocks in the 17th-19th centuries. Another version of the origin of the name is from the Turkic word "beans": the cave excavations are similar in shape to beans.

The city arose in the most protected place - a sheer cliff covered it on both sides, and a cliff on the third. The exact dating of the origin of the settlement here has not yet been established. Some of the buildings and burials belong to the 3rd-4th centuries, and in the 5th century there was already a fully-fledged fortified city.

The local population, according to archaeological data, were Goths and Alans . The Alans are a Sarmatian nomadic tribe that came to Crimea in the 1st-2nd centuries. The first tribes of the Goths appeared in the Crimea later - in the 3rd century AD. e. and mixed with the Alans, forming a separate ethnic group, which is now called the Crimean Goths. " They occupied the mountainous areas of the peninsula. For the V century, that is, at the time of Bakla's heyday, the Crimean Goths were already Christians, subordinate to Byzantium and were mainly engaged in agriculture. They spoke their own dialect, close to the Germanic languages - the last traces of this ancient dialect were traced in the Crimea until the 18th century.

This city became the most northern outpost of the huge Byzantine Empire . In the IV century, an invasion of the Huns swept across the Crimea, but in these places archaeologists did not find any traces of the battles of that time - apparently, the war did not get here. And in the V-VI centuries, the Byzantines confidently oust the Huns from the Black Sea region. They build their fortresses on the site of the former ancient Greek cities - for example, in Chersonesus , in Alushta . But they are interested not only in coastal areas, fortifications also appear in the mountains - the so-called "long walls", blocking mountain passes and crossings. The city of Buckla became the northernmost part of this fortification system. The fortress was small. It was intended not so much to resist a large army, but to shelter the local population from danger and alert the central regions of Crimea about the attack.

The area of the ancient settlement is about a hectare . Bakla was built like an ordinary medieval city: with a strong fortified citadel, a settlement and numerous outbuildings around the citadel. At the earliest time, primarily wine was produced here - most of all open buildings associated with wine production. Cisterns, sedimentation tanks and wine storage were cut right in the rock. In the rock that covered the city the fortifications themselves were created. In the event of an attack, the city could be defended from the caves. Niches for lamps were found in the caves, the builders created stairs and a whole system of passages through hatches and corridors.

The Citadel was a rectangle, two hundred meters wide and sixty in length, and was composed of limestone slabs. There are traces of two towers on the edges of the cliff. On one of them there was a combat platform from which it was possible to fire at the surroundings. The most interesting object is an underground passage-tunnel carved into the rock, which led from the fortress to the city .

The fortress was fighting. She suffered greatly from one of the attacks in the 6th-7th centuries. Traces of destruction and restoration have been found. It was fortified in 841 under Emperor Theophilus , in connection with the increasing attacks of the Khazars: a new line of walls appeared, and the gap of half a meter between them was filled with mortar. The fortress was rebuilt again in the 11th century. It was about the life of the fortress at this time that we know best.

There was a fairly dense urban development of two-storey houses for three or four rooms, which were separated by streets and alleys. The remains of pottery production and many granaries were found. Crimea was the granary of Byzantium and Bakla was a large center of grain trade . One of the granaries has 109 large tanks carved into limestone and two more cellars - and this is only one, and many of them have been found near the city.

Temples of the city

As many as eight temples of the XI-XIII centuries have been found in the city . Inside the citadel itself there is a chapel and graves next to it. The rulers of the city were buried here. A complex of two structures was found in the rocks above the city: a temple on the lower tier above the burial ground and a chapel above it, carved into the rock. A long and very low corridor led into it. There are both ordinary and cave burials there - and it is unclear which of them appeared earlier.

In another rock there are remains of a monastery with a system of cells and preserved drawings on the walls . Several more churches were located on the plateau under the city.

There are so many temples that, according to one version, this was the seat of the bishop Khazar Kaganate - the legendary city of Fulla . We know the name of this city from written sources, but the exact location is still a mystery. Perhaps it was here, although there are more than a dozen versions of the location of the city. If this version is correct, then Saint Cyril, one of the founders of Slavic writing, has been here. True, the legend says that he found pagans who worshiped an oak in the city of Fulla, and in his time Christians already lived here. But there were no such pagans anywhere in Crimea, so the legend is most likely mistaken.

The entire XIII century Crimea is under attack by Tatar-Mongols . In 1299 the peninsula was completely conquered by Khan Nogai and became part of the Golden Horde . Likely, this was the final point for the city of Bakly. From this time on, it falls into desolation. In the XIV century, no one lives here anymore. New settlements in the district appear already in the 16th century and Crimean Tatars live in them - by that time there was nothing left of the Gothic population.

In Soviet times, short archaeological surveys were carried out here by the staff of the Bakhchisarai Museum, who investigated all Crimean cave cities. In 1929-30. a Neanderthal site was found in the Devil's Cave. And the first full-fledged research of Buckla herself began in 1961. Archaeological expeditions worked here for 20 years, until 1981. Archeologists D.L. Talis and V.E. Rudakov worked here. In the late 70s, the archaeological expedition was led by the historian Vladislav Yurochkin.

Durnoy Yar Balka and Skalistinsky burial ground

As in many places in Crimea, ancient burials around Bakla were mercilessly plundered. One of the largest necropolises in Europe is located on the Durnoy Yar gully, near the city . The burials date back to the 6th-9th centuries. According to them, you can establish the ethnic composition of the then population. The Alan tribes brought rock burials-crypts with them. Gothic elements in burials can be set according to typical utensils and decorations. But, to our great regret, a catastrophe occurred for historical science: when in the 1980s research was stopped due to insufficient funding, the necropolis was almost completely dug up and plundered by "black archaeologists". Up to 90% of the ancient burials were lost. At the moment, the entire gully is pitted with pits and underground passages.

Another burial ground - a little earlier - was fully explored. It was dug up in 1959-60. archaeologist E. V. Weymarn . It has nearly 800 burials. Many utensils and decorations were found here. The date of the penetration of Christianity here is clearly determined by these graves. Crosses and other symbols appear only in the 6th century.

Several things from the Skalistinsky burial ground can now be seen in the Bakhchisarai Museum. These are brooches, dishes, jewelry, several crosses and belt buckles.

A new stage of excavation at Bakly fell on 2003-2005, but at the moment there is no scientific research carried out there, and the remains of ancient buildings and burials are still the prey of robbers. For example, in 2013, a group of "black archaeologists" was detained here. They dug up graves in Durnaya Balka and what they thought was valuable were sold, and everything else was simply thrown away as unnecessary.

Interesting facts

Bakla is considered a mystical place among the local population. The rocks around it have animal forms and animal names - for example, the Sphinx and the Serpent rocks.

The geological layers here are so interesting and diverse that geological students come here to practice from year to year. Bakla is considered not only a historical, but also a natural monument.

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Topic: Bakla cave city description and photos - Crimea: Bakhchisarai.