Bakhchisarai
Bakhchisarai
(in Turkic, “garden palace,” from Persian [Turkic] bakhche, “little garden,” and sarai, “palace”), a city; center of Bakhchisarai Raion, Crimean Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. Located in the picturesque valley of the Churuksu River (a tributary of the Kacha), between the northern and central ridges of the Crimean Mountains, on the Simferopol’-Sevastopol’ highway. The city has a railroad station. Population, 15,000 (1969).
Bakhchisarai has an essential oil plant, a winery, a juice-extracting and canning plant, a dairy, a cement plant, a reinforced-concrete product plant, a woodworking plant, and a spinning factory. It also has a construction technicum. Bakhchisarai was founded in the early 16th century by Khan Mengli-Girei and was the capital of the Crimean Khanate until its incorporation into Russia in 1783. Architectural monuments in Bakhchisarai that are widely known are the complex of the former palace of the khan (16th century, rebuilt in 1787 after a fire, then repeatedly restored; now a historical and archaeological museum) with the Ambassador’s Gates executed by Aloisio Friazin the Younger; and numerous mausoleums and madrasas (14th—18th centuries). The Fountain of Tears (1764, by the master Omar), which has been the subject of poems by A. S. Pushkin and A. Mickiewicz, has been preserved. The ruins of Chufut-Kale, a medieval cave city and fortress, are outside the town. The Bakhchisarai Peace Treaty of 1681 between Russia and Turkey was signed in Bakhchisarai.