Around the Black Sea / Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania

by William Eleroy Curtis

There are many Jews in this part of the Crimea, whose ancestors came there eight centuries before the Christian era. They are of the Karaim sect and follow the Mosaic laws strictly. They are supposed to have many old manuscripts of priceless value, but the Russian government has never been able to secure any of them for the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, although repeated attempts have been made. The museums at St. Petersburg have collections of great value and interest illustrating the arts, industries, habits, and customs of the early occupants of the Crimean peninsula. There are also many interesting ethnological and archæological examples in a pretty little museum at Odessa; but only a few of the ruins of ancient cities have ever been excavated and many tumuli remain unexplored. It is a popular impression that the manuscripts carried from Jerusalem at the time of the captivity and brought to the Crimea shortly after, are numerous and of the greatest value, but the rabbis pretend to know nothing of them.

The Karaims in the Crimea have enjoyed full rights and privileges as citizens of Russia since 1802 and have never suffered from the restrictions and persecutions of their race elsewhere. They live in a suburb of Baghtchasarai, from choice and not from compulsion. The name means “the stronghold of Israel,” and it has been the headquarters of the community for 2,500 years. From this stronghold the sons of Karaim have scattered over the peninsula and along the northern coast of the Black Sea in pursuit of trade, and like most of their brethren, they are industrious, energetic, and successful competitors in every business in which they engage.

Their synagogue stands upon a hill called Mount Zion, their cemetery is in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where thousands of tombstones bear Hebrew inscriptions. The most ancient epitaph that can be deciphered commends the virtues and piety of a rabbi, Moses Levi, who died “in the year 726 after the exile,” which is the same as the year 30 A.D. Another marks the grave of “Zadok, son of Moses the Levite, who died 4,000 years after the creation, and 785 years after the exile,” which was 89 A.D.

There are many Karaims in southern Russia, and more in Egypt and Turkey. They are found in larger or smaller numbers everywhere along the coast of the Mediterranean. They adapt themselves very readily to their surroundings. In the Crimea they speak the Tartar language; in Odessa they speak Russian; in Athens they speak Greek, and in Egypt their language is the Arabic.

The market place of Baghtchasarai is one of the most interesting places in the Crimea. The display of fruits and vegetables makes the observer hungry. It also gives an unusually good opportunity to study ethnology, for representatives of the most ancient races in the world, which have exhausted themselves or have been exterminated elsewhere, may be found engaged in ordinary avocations, unconscious of the fact that, counting generations of ancestors, they are entitled to the distinction of being the aristocracy of the earth. The Jews, the Cimmerians, the Milesians, the Scythians, the Tauri, families in the Crimea, have pedigrees that run back farther than human history.

The habitations of European seashore resorts are very much alike, and consist of solid rows of masonry packed as closely as possible, with large windows fronting the water. The ground floors are always occupied by a series of gayly decorated show windows, with small shops behind them, restaurants, cafés, flower stalls, and confectioners. On the opposite side of the street there is always a sea wall, with a heavy stone balustrade, protecting a cement promenade, from which piers at intervals extend over the water and to the bath houses that are clustered on the beach. All the life and all the ardour of those who come for health or pleasure are expended upon this thoroughfare, which is crowded from ten to eleven o’clock in the morning until midnight, and the restaurants, tea pavilions and cafés are always filled with people eating and drinking and having what they consider a good time.

Yalta, which is considered the Newport of Russia, the most fashionable resort for both winter and summer in that great empire, resembles, in the way I have described, those of France and Spain, Italy and England, but here nature has also offered irresistible inducements for the rich people to build villas upon the slopes of the mountains that rise in the background, leaving a belt of about a mile wide to be thus occupied. There is a Greek church, with five gilded domes, numerous hotels and handsome residences belonging to grand dukes, princes and other dignitaries; rich merchants and manufacturers. They are mostly of very ornate architecture, built of rough brick or stone, covered with white stucco and embellished with elaborate mouldings over the windows and doors and along the cornices and the balconies. Some of them are painted, and, in two or three cases, the owners have their coats of arms displayed in brilliant colours on the walls.

One of the most attractive villas is that of the emir of Bokhara, a political protegé of the Russian government. He goes there every winter and sometimes in the summer, also, for he is glad to get away from home as often as the Russian government will permit him. His villa is a fine specimen of Saracenic architecture. He has a farm back in the hills, also, but seldom goes there.

The hotels are very comfortable, large rooms well furnished, good meals well served, and, during the summer months, the tables are placed on the lawn, a practice which the managers of the hotels at our summer resorts at home might adopt to the comfort of their patrons, instead of feeding them in hot, close dining-rooms, blazing with light. In the heat of midsummer a dinner will be relished a great deal more if it is served on a lawn under the shade of a tree in the soft twilight, than in a superheated dining-room. The charges are high, quite as high as they are at any of our fashionable resorts, but that is to be expected. European hotel people have discovered to their profit that tourists will pay whatever is asked, and there are no more ten-franc-a-day stopping places on the continent.

The bath houses are not so large nor so good as in America, and comparatively few people bathe. The women are afraid of spoiling their complexions and the men find more sport in other diversions.