In the middle of the 3rd century, the ancient Germanic tribe of Germans - Ostrogoths, Visigoths and later Gepids came to the Northern Black Sea region, destroying or subjugating the Sarmatians and pushing back the East Slavic union of the Antes, which settled after the victory of the Sarmatians in the forest-steppe of the Black Sea region.
Coming from the upper tributaries of the Vistula along the Dnieper and Bug, the Goths settled in the steppes near the Sea of Azov, subjugated the local Sarmatian tribe of Alans, and from there, together with the Alans, began to raid the Black Mary coast, Olbia, Tire, the Crimean peninsula, Greece, reaching through the Bosporus to Asia Minor. Another Germanic tribe, the Heruli, was captured and defeated at the mouth of the Don Tanais. In 251, the Goths invaded the lands of the Roman Empire and defeated the invincible Roman legions, led by Emperor Decius, who died in battle. Since 256, the Germanic Boran tribe, and later the Goths, passing from the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait, began to plunder cities on the Caucasian and southern coast of the Black Sea. The Bosporan kingdom fell under the rule of the Borans and the Goths and became their organizational and supply base,with which the Germans made their forays into the lands of the Roman Empire. In 257, the Goths captured Dacia, and in 267, the Ostrogoths reached Athens through the Bosporus Strait and plundered the great city.
By the 70s of the III century, the Goths had destroyed almost all the cities on the Taman Peninsula, including Gorrgippia, as well as Tyra and Olbia. Entering the Crimea from the north, the Goths destroyed all the Scythian settlements of the steppe Crimea, together with the Scythian Naples, and captured almost the entire Crimean peninsula, except for Chersonesus, in which the Roman garrison was located. Throughout the IV century, Chersonesos remained the maritime and strategic center of the Roman Empire in the Crimea. With the decline of trade, the Bosporan kingdom became depopulated and fell under Gothic control, but it still continued to exist.
The history of the Goths, written by Cassiodorus, mentioned by the Gothic historian of that time Jordan, has not reached our time. It is only known that the Goths managed to create a state with borders from the Tisza to the Don and from the Baltic Sea to the Danube. Visigoths settled at the mouth of the Danube, Gepids in Transylvania, and Ostrogoths between the Dniester and Don. By the middle of the 4th century, almost all of eastern Europe, the Volga region, the Dnieper region, the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region and the Crimea belonged to the Goths. The capital of the Ostrogoth state was "the city over the Dnieper" - "Danprstadir", mentioned in the Scandinavian sagas. Initially, the Goths did not have cavalry and they created it according to the Sarmatian model. The Goths elected their chiefs-kings at a tribal meeting. The Goths had good relations with the conquered Alans, and they made their forays together. The Goths entered the Crimean peninsula together with the Alans. Part of the Goths settled on the southern coast, southwestern Crimea and the Kerch Peninsula, destroying the last Scythian settlements. The area of their settlement on the peninsula received the name Crimean Gothia, and they themselves began to be called referee, apparently because of the Chatyr-Dag mountain, which has a frame-shaped table (in Greek - trapeze). In the Crimean mountains, the Goths built the fortress Doros, later known as the "cave city of Mangup". The Crimean Goths gradually began to transfer to the service of the Roman Empire, regularly receiving monetary rewards, apparently through Chersonesos. Then Christianity began to spread among them. Alans settled in the foothill Crimea. It is here that all the Alanian burial grounds of the 3rd - 4th centuries are located. Burials of the middle of the 3rd century in the Crimea are divided into four groups: general Sarmatian, Alanian, Gothic and not specifically associated with any people.
From the second half of the 3rd century, the local population of the Southwestern and Western Crimea began to move to the foothills of the Crimea and to the southern coast, away from dangerous neighbors. This process continued for almost a hundred years, until the end of the 4th century.
Bosporan Kingdom.
In the last decade of the 3rd century, the Bosporan kingdom, having gathered an army of nomadic tribes who lived in the Azov region, tried to seize the imperial lands in Asia Minor. By order of the Roman emperor, the troops of Chersonesos, from which the Roman military garrisons had previously been withdrawn, in 293 captured the capital of the Bosporus, which remained without serious protection, thanks to which the Romans were able to end the war that interfered with them. The Bosporus king Fofors ceded part of his lands to Chersonesos, the border of the Bosporus kingdom moved to Cimmerik. Emperor Diocletian freed Chersonesos from taxes and gave him great benefits. At the same time, the struggle of the old Greek, Roman and Sarmatian Boszor elite with the new tribal Gothic nobility began. The Bosporan king Fofors was a Sarmatian; on his coins, next to the image of the Roman emperor, his Sarmatian tamga-like sign was placed,as if talking about the independence of the Bosporus kingdom from the Roman Empire. The power of the Goths in the Bosporus especially increased in the late III - early IV centuries. There was a unification of the tribal aristocracy of the Goths, Alans and other tribes that came with the Goths to the Bosporus, with the local Sarmatian nobility. The main occupations of the ruling Bosporan elite were military campaigns, accompanied by plunder. During this period, there is a massive deterioration in the life of the local population. The burial grounds of the second half of the 3rd and 4th centuries, excavated on the territory of the Bosporus Kingdom, are very poor. In 322, the Chersonesus troops, together with the Roman legionaries on the Danube, participated in the defeat of some Black Sea nomads led by the former Bosporan king. There are two more Chersonesos-Bosporan wars, as a result of which the weakened Bosporan kingdom lost its lands to Kafa. In 336, the issue of Bosporan coins ceases. There are also military attacks on the Bosporan lands. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions the Bosporus embassy in 362 to the emperor Julian with a request to protect the kingdom for the payment of an annual tribute. The further history of the Bosporus of this period is almost never mentioned in ancient sources.
In 285, the Roman emperor Diocletian divided the empire into four parts. In 305, he renounced power and as a result of internecine struggle, Constantine gained power. In 330, on the shores of the Bosporus Strait, he founded "New Rome" - Constantinople, which became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, in 395, completely isolated from the Western Empire - Rome. After the death of Emperor Theodosius I in 395, Honorius began to rule the Western part of the empire, and Arcadius became the first emperor of the Eastern Empire. The empire, which received the name Byzantine, included the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Syria, Messapotamia, Palestine, Egypt - the Southeast Mediterranean.
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Chersonesos was directly under the jurisdiction of the prefecture of the East, and later - the Byzantine Empire, although initially it was not part of it. The Eastern Roman Empire, interested in the convenient strategic location of Chersonesos, which was an observation point of Byzantium in the Northern Black Sea region, constantly provided the city with political and material assistance, in particular, it supported its thousandth military garrison.
In the middle of the 4th century, as a result of twenty years of wars, the Ostrogoths created a huge state that included Eastern Europe and the Northern Black Sea region, the king of which was the Ostrogoths Germanarich. The activity of the Gothic bishop Ulfilah, who received this title in Constantinople, dates back to this time. He created the Gothic alphabet, in which he translated the Bible.
Sources recorded the conflict between a group of Gothic tribes led by Atanarich and the Byzantine emperor Valens in 365 - 369, which ended in peace.
The domination of the Goths was short-lived. In the second half of the IV century, numerous Mongolian-Turkic tribes - the Xiongnu, who received the name of the Huns in Europe - entered Europe from southern Siberia.
The first unification of the Hunnic tribes inhabiting the steppes from Hebei to Lake Barkul in Mongolia took place twelve centuries BC. Around the same time, the ancient Huns settled along the edges of the Gobi Desert, and by the 3rd century BC. e. The Huns lived from the Gobi Desert to South Siberia and were not a tribal union, but a tribe consisting of clans. By the II century BC, the so-called Hunnu state was founded by the talented and cruel leader Mode, who became king in 209, which had already conquered the entire steppe Manchuria by that time. Subsequently, the long-term Hunno-Chinese and internecine wars led to the fact that by the II century the Hunnic people split into four branches, one of which, the northern Huns, in 155 went to the lower Volga and the Urals, where, assimilating with the local Ugric tribes, they began their a campaign to Europe, merging into a new people - the Huns.
Huns in the Crimea.
In 350, the Huns appeared in the Ciscaucasia, by 370 they suppressed the resistance of the local Sarmatian tribes of the Alans and broke through the shallow Kerch Strait into the Northern Crimea, simultaneously destroying the Bosporus kingdom. Archaeological excavations indicate that at the end of the 4th century all settlements were completely destroyed on the Kerch and Taman peninsulas, and large cities were badly destroyed. Another state appeared on the lands of the Bosporus kingdom. Coming to Perekop, the Huns with the leader Balamber appeared in the rear of the army of the Goths, the allies of the Alans, who concentrated on the Don in anticipation of the Hunnish invasion. The Ostrogoths were defeated and the state of the semi-legendary Germanarich ceased to exist. The last attempt of the Ostrogoths to regain independence was the battle of the Ostrogoth troops led by the leader Vinitarius with the Huns on the lower Dnieper in 375,ending with the defeat of the Ostrogoths and the death of their leader. The northern Black Sea region began to belong to the Huns, until 412 the main headquarters of the Hunnic leaders was located in the Black Sea steppes. Near the village of Novo-Filipovka, Melitopol region, in the "cave of the sorcerer", a burial of the Hunnic period was discovered. Copper ingots, fragments of copper vessels, a blacksmith's tool, a stone anvil, copper shavings, iron handles of boilers, an arrow, and a mirror were found there. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: "the tribe of the Huns, about which the ancient monuments know little … lives behind the Meotian swamps near the Arctic Ocean and surpasses any measure of savagery."Near the village of Novo-Filipovka, Melitopol region, in the "sorcerer's cave", a burial of the Hunnic period was discovered. Copper ingots, fragments of copper vessels, a blacksmith's tool, a stone anvil, copper shavings, iron handles of boilers, an arrow, and a mirror were found there. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: "The tribe of the Huns, about which the ancient monuments know little … lives behind the Maeotian swamps near the Arctic Ocean and surpasses any measure of savagery."Near the village of Novo-Filipovka, Melitopol region, in the "cave of the sorcerer", a burial of the Hunnic period was discovered. Copper ingots, fragments of copper vessels, a blacksmith's tool, a stone anvil, copper shavings, iron handles of boilers, an arrow, and a mirror were found there. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: "the tribe of the Huns, about which the ancient monuments know little … lives behind the Meotian swamps near the Arctic Ocean and surpasses any measure of savagery."
Part of the Ostrogoths went to the Visigoths, part with the Huns further to Europe, part - in the possession of the Byzantine Empire. Most of the Goths went through the Kerch Strait to the mountainous Crimea and joined the Crimean Goths who have lived there since the second half of the 3rd century. The Goths, together with the Alans, in agreement with the Byzantines, settled to protect the Byzantine possessions in the Chersonesus region. During archaeological excavations near the villages of Skalisty and Luchisty, Gothic weapons and Alanian ceramics were discovered. It is reliably known that the Goths were spoken in the modernized language in Crimea until the 17th century.
Alanic tribes were the first to leave the Northern Black Sea region in 380 to the west, but not all - some of the Alans remained in the Crimea, and a large Alanic tribe had settled in the North Caucasus even before that. After a series of battles and unsuccessful interventions in the political life of Europe, in 418 the Alans were defeated by the Visigoths in Spain. The remnants of the Alans mixed with the Vandal tribes and left for North Africa in 427, having existed there for about a hundred years.
Then the Hunnic tribes moved to the west. By 420, most of the Huns roamed the middle Danube. Attila, nicknamed in Europe "the scourge of God", became their khan. He managed to unite the Huns into a mighty empire, dictating its will to peoples and states.
Battle of the Catalaunian Fields.
In 453, after the battle on the Catalaunian fields on the territory of modern France with the troops of the Romans, Visigoths and Franks and the death of their leader Attila, the Hunnic state collapsed. In 455, at the Battle of the Nedao River, the Huns, led by Attila's son Ellak, were finally defeated by the united Germanic tribes. Part of the Huns with Attila's son Dengizikh, after a series of battles, went to the lower reaches of the Danube, where they were defeated by the Byzantines. In 463, the ancestors of the Bulgarians defeated and drove out the Hun tribes that remained in southern Siberia. The remnants of the Huns went to the Volga and Altai, where they mixed with local tribes and assimilated. Part of the Hunnic tribes returned to the Northern Black Sea region and the Crimean peninsula, where they settled on the territory of the Bosporus kingdom destroyed by them and on the southern coast of Crimea to Chersonesos,squeezing out the Goths who lived there on the Taman Peninsula and in the southwestern Crimea. The Goth burials were found on the slope of the Chatyr-Dag mountain, near Kharax, near the Black River; a Hunnic burial was found in a burial mound near the village of Izobilnoye in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 464, the Byzantine emperor Justin sent his ambassador Patricius Probus to the Bosporus to the king of the Huns Ziligd with a proposal for joint military actions against Persia. At the end of the 5th century, the remnants of the Hunnic hordes were still wandering along the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. At the end of the 5th century, the remnants of the Hunnic hordes were still wandering along the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. At the end of the 5th century, the remnants of the Hunnic hordes were still wandering along the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region.
By the end of the IV century on the Crimean peninsula there were no longer any Greek colonies-policies, except for Chersonesos. The Greek city-states were plundered and destroyed by repeated Goto-Hunnic incursions.
Chersonesos was the main stronghold of the Byzantine Empire on the Crimean peninsula throughout the 5th and early 6th centuries. In connection with the increase in the presence of nomads in the Crimea, in 488 in Chersonesos, the Byzantines rebuilt the fortress walls destroyed by an earthquake, and there was a garrison of Byzantine troops in the city. There are very few written records of the 5th century concerning Crimea. It is known that the Byzantines called Chersonesos - Kherson, which performed intermediary trade functions to supply the young empire with bread and food exported from the Black Sea region and the steppe Crimea. Byzantine merchant ships were 25 meters long, seven wide, and had two decks. The Arab-style sails made it possible to quickly maneuver in the wind, and the ships did not need oars. Byzantine warships-dromons had a length of up to fifty meters and a width of seven and could develop high speed. The ships were equipped with a powerful ram, armed with catapults that threw incendiary shells weighing half a ton at a distance of up to a kilometer. The dromons carried flamethrowers-siphonophores, which flooded enemy ships with the famous "Greek fire", consisting of tar, sulfur and saltpeter, dissolved in oil and flaring up when in contact with water. The ships had a metal skin that protected them from enemy rams.dissolved in oil and flared up on contact with water. The ships had a metal skin that protected them from enemy rams.dissolved in oil and flared up on contact with water. The ships had a metal skin that protected them from enemy rams.
Ruins of Tauric Chersonesos.
In 527, Justinian I became the emperor of the Byzantine Empire, who dreamed of expanding the country to the former borders of the Roman Empire. His first known action in the Crimea was the seizure and restoration of the Bosporus kingdom, the territory of which was most convenient for observing the processes taking place in the Northern Black Sea region. In 529, Justinian II received the Hunnic prince Gord in Constantinople and appointed him to rule the Bosporus. Gord began by pouring statues of local deities into coins, for which he was killed by a rebellious population led by his brother Muager. Later, a descendant of one of the former kings Tiberius Julius Diuptun became the king of the Bosporus. The Byzantine allies, the Goths, settled in the Bosporus, under the command of the Euxinian comess Pontus John and the Goth officers Godila and Vaduria. Subsequently, the Bosporan Kingdom becomes the center of the Byzantine administrative district.
Tatar village Gurzuf.
By order of Justinian, a powerful defensive system was created on the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula, including several strongholds. The main points of defense were the fortresses built by the Byzantines Aluston (Alushta), Gorzuits (Gurzuf) and the fortified post in Simbolon (Balaklava). At the end of the 6th century, there was a Byzantine coastal fortification near Sudak. The Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote: “As for the cities of Bosporus and Kherson, which are coastal cities on the same bank of the Euxine Pontus behind the Meotid swamp, behind the Taurus and Tauro Scythians, and are on the edge of the Roman state, then, finding their walls in a completely destroyed state, Justinian made them remarkably beautiful and strong. He erected two fortifications there, the so-called Alusta and in Gorzuby. He especially fortified the Bosporus with walls;from ancient times this city became barbaric and was under the rule of the Huns; the emperor returned him to the rule of the Romans. Here, on this coast, there is a country called Dori, where Goths have lived since ancient times who did not follow Theodoric, who was heading for Italy. They voluntarily stayed here and in my time were still in alliance with the Romans, went on a campaign with them, when the Romans went to their enemies, whenever the emperor wanted it. They reach a population of up to three thousand fighters, they are excellent in military affairs, and in agriculture, which they do with their own hands, they are quite skillful; they are hospitable more than all people. The Dori area itself lies on a hill, but it is not rocky or dry, on the contrary, the land is very good and bears the best fruits. In this country, the emperor did not build any city anywhere,nor a fortress, since these people do not tolerate being imprisoned in any kind of walls, but most of all they loved to live always in the fields. Since it seemed that their terrain was easily accessible for the attack of enemies, the emperor fortified all the places where the enemies could enter with long walls and thus removed from the Goths anxiety about the invasion of their country by enemies.
In the western part of the Black Sea region, new newcomers were established during this period - a large tribal union of Turkic-speaking tribes - the Avars (in the Russian chronicles, obry), who formed the Avar Kaganate. The Var tribes and the descendants of the Sarmatians, the Chionites, who lived north of the Aral Sea, by 558 were defeated by the Türküts or Türks, a new people that arose during the assimilation of a small tribe of the “family of Prince Ashin” who left the territory of northern China and descended from the Huns of the Altai tribes. Having crossed the Volga, merged into a single people - the Avars, the Vars and the Khionites settled in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. By 565, the Avars expanded their territory to the Ciscaucasia, Don and Kuban, captured Pannonia and the Tissa valley, and made campaigns to Central Europe. The power of the Avars began to decline after an unsuccessful war for them with Byzantium in 626, and in the end the Avar Kaganate was defeated by the troops of Charlemagne in 796 and since 809 was his vassal. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Avars raided the Crimean peninsula, partially settling in the Crimea.
Following the Avars, the Türkic Turks settled in the northern Black Sea steppes, appearing in the mouth of the Kuban in the mid-70s of the 6th century. The Turks, like the Persians who fought with Byzantium at that time, wanted to establish control over the caravan road from China to the countries of Western Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe - the "Great Silk Road", to control the trade in silk, which was then worth its weight in gold. In 567, troops of the Turks led by Turksanth, passing through the Kerch Strait, captured the Bosporus fortress, which arose on the site of the former capital of the Bosporus kingdom of Panticapaeum. Having a foothold in the Crimea, in 581 the troops of the Turks tried to take Chersonesos, but they unexpectedly lifted the siege and left the Crimea - a civil war began in the Khaganate of the Turks, located on the territory of present-day Turkmenistan. In 590, the military commander of the Kherson province of Byzantium, duka stratilate Eupaterius, restored the power of Byzantium in the Bosporus.
The presence of the Huns in the Northern Black Sea region, which lasted for about a hundred years, was replaced by the Bulgarian - the tribes of the Turkic language group, at first subordinate to the Huns. The ancient ancestors of the Bulgarians Kuturgurs and Uturgurs in the 6th century lived in the lower reaches of the Dnieper, Don and in the Kuban basin, constantly at enmity with each other. By the middle of VII, these tribes united, forming the Bulgarian people. Kubrat, who united the Bulgarians, received the rank of patrician from the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and became an ally of Byzantium.
About 660 the Bulgarian horde of the son of Kubrat khan Asparukh, driven out by the Khazars from the steppes of the Ciscaucasia, settled in the Danube valley, expelling the local tribes from there. Bulgarians settled in the Northern Black Sea region west of the Dnieper. Subsequently, the Bulgarians were dispersed along the outskirts of the steppe by the Khazars. The main part of the Bulgarian tribes left the Northern Black Sea region to the Danube and Dniester, and the tribes of the ancient Russians began to enter the liberated steppes. Part of the Bulgarian tribes, led by another son of Kubrat, Batbai, fled to the Crimean peninsula and settled in the foothill and mountainous Crimea, gradually assimilating with the Greeks, Goths and Alans. In the central eastern Crimea, there are many Proto-Bulgarian settlements of the 7th century BC. In particular, burials with heraldic belt sets near the villages of Risovoye and Bogachevo are well studied.
In the 6th century, three kilometers from modern Bakhchisarai, one of the most famous "cave cities" of Crimea appeared, presumably built by the Alans and existed until the 19th century. In 1299, the city was plundered by the troops of the Temnik of the Golden Horde Nogai. At the end of the XIV century, the city was named Kyrk-Er and became the center of a small feudal principality. Before the construction of the new capital of the Crimean Khanate, Bakhchisarai, the "cave city" called Chufut-Kale was the main trade and craft center of this region of the Crimean peninsula. The city fell into decay only in the 19th century and was abandoned by its inhabitants.
Kyrk-Er.
In the same period, 18 kilometers from modern Bakhchisarai, another "cave city" arose, which got its name from the Crimean Tatars - Eski-Kermen. The city quickly became a large trade, handicraft and agricultural center, which was facilitated by its location on the road from the steppe Crimea to Chersonesos. In the VIII century it was destroyed by the Khazars, but later restored and existed until the XIII century, included in the principality of Theodoro, together with which it was destroyed by the horde of Nogai.
