Crimean Goths

Archaeological evidence of the Crimean Goths in Crimea

Crimean Goths were those Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and almost paradoxically, the longest-lasting of the Gothic communities. Their existence is well attested through the ages though the exact period when they ceased to exist as a distinct culture is unknown; as with the Goths in general, they may have been diffused with the surrounding peoples. In the Fourth Turkish letter by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, they are described as "a warlike people, who to this day inhabit many villages" though in the 5th century, Theodoric the Great failed to rouse Crimean Goths to support his war in Italy.^[1] At the time, it was customary to refer to a wide range of Germanic tribes as "Goths", so the exact ethnic origin of the Germanic peoples in the Crimea is a subject of debate.

Map of Gothia – territory of the Crimean Goths

Aside from textual reports of the existence of the Goths in Crimea, both first and second hand, from as early as 850,^[2] numerous archaeological examples also exist, including the ruins of the former capital city of the Crimean Goths: Doros, or Mangup as it is now known. On top of this, there are numerous articles of jewelry, weaponry, shields, buttons, pins, and small personal artifacts on display in museums in the Crimea and in the British Museum which have led to a better understanding of the Gothic Kingdom.

Definition

In the report made by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq of the Crimean Goths, he claims to not be able to determine whether the Germanic peoples of Crimea were Goths or Saxons, certainly the language cannot be directly linked to well attested Biblical Gothic language. Though most scholars agree the peoples must have been of Gothic origin ^[3][4] Though some others have maintained that the so called "Crimean Goths" were in fact West or even North Germanic tribes who settled in the Crimea, culturally and linguistically influenced by the Ostrogoths^[5]

Non Gothic Germanic remains have been found on the black sea from as early the 5th century. The Ostrogoths only migrated to the Crimea as early as the sixth century, meaning other Germanic groups, possibly Flemish or Saxons had inhabited the area before the Goths^{[citation needed]}.

History

Early

According to Herwig Wolfram, following Jordanes, the Ostrogoths had a huge kingdom north of the Black Sea in the 4th century,^[6] which the Huns overwhelmed in the time of the Gothic king Ermanaric (or Hermanric; i.e. "king of noblemen"^[7]) when the Huns migrated to the Russian steppe.

The modern day ruins of Mangup (Doros): Capital of the Crimean Goths.

The Ostrogoths became vassals of the Huns until the death of Attila, when they revolted and regained independence. Like the Huns, the Goths in the Crimea never regained their lost glory.

According to Peter Heather and Michael Kulikowski, the Ostrogoths did not even exist until the 5th century, having emerged from other Gothic and non-Gothic groups.^[8] Other Gothic groups may have settled in the Crimea.^[9] It has also been speculated that the Crimean Goths were in fact Saxons escaping Christian persecution from the west, or North Germanic tribes who migrated southwards. Either way, the existence of Goths in the Crimea is first testified from around the 3rd Century, following that they were well reported.

During the late fifth and early 6th century, the Crimean Goths had to fight off hordes of Huns who were migrating back eastward after losing control of their European empire.^[10] In the 5th century, Theodoric the Great tried to recruit Crimean Goths for his campaigns in Italy, but few showed interest in joining him.^[11]

Byzantium

Theodoro, Gothia Θεοδόρο, Γοτθία
Principality
←   ← 1204–1475 →
Crimea in the middle of the 15th century.   Theodoro shown in green .
Capital	Mangup (Doros, Theodoro)
Language(s)	Greek (official), also Crimean Gothic, Kipchak and others
Religion	Orthodox Christianity
Government	Monarchy
Prince
- 1475	Alexander of Theodoro
Historical era	Late Middle Ages
- Fourth Crusade	1204
- Ottoman conquest	1475

The Principality of Gothia or Theodoro formed after the Fourth Crusade out of parts of the Byzantine thema of Klimata which were not occupied by the Genoese. Its population was a mixture of Greeks, Crimean Goths, Alans, Bulgars, Kypchaks and other nations, which confessed Orthodox Christianity. The principality's official language was Greek. The territory was initially under the control of Trebizond, and possibly part of its Crimean possessions, the Perateia. Theodore II Gabras, a scion of the noble Gabras family (also called Chowra in Turkish) was appointed as the governor.

Many Crimean Goths were Greek speakers and many non-Gothic Byzantine citizens were settled in the region called "Gothia" by the government in Constantinople. A Gothic principality around the stronghold of Doros (modern Mangup), the Principality of Theodoro, continued to exist through various periods of vassalage to the Byzantines, Khazars, Kipchaks, Mongols, Genoese and other empires until 1475, when it was finally incorporated by the Khanate of Crimea and the Ottoman Empire.

The Gabras family soon refortified Doros, and named the new citadel St. Theodore (Greek: Άγιος Θεόδωρος), after its patron saint. This became the administrative center of the new principality, from which it took its name. The principality had peaceful relations with the Golden Horde to its north, paying an annual tribute as vassals, but was in constant strife with the Genoese colonies to the south over access to the coasts and the trade that went through the Crimean harbours. A narrow strip of the coastal land from Yamboli (Balaklava) in the west to Aluston (Alushta) in the east initially part of the principality soon fell under Genoese control. Local Greeks called this region Parathalassia (Greek: Παραθαλασσια - sea shore), while under Genoese rule it was known as Captainship of Gothia. After they had lost harbours on the southern coast Theodorites built a new port called Avlita at the mouth of the Chernaya River and fortified it with the fortress of Kalamita (modern Inkerman).

On 6 June 1475, the Ottoman commander Gedik Ahmet Pasha conquered Caffa and at the end of the year, after six months of besieging Mangup, the city fell to the assailants. While much of the rest of Crimea remained part of the Crimean Khanate, now an Ottoman vassal, the former lands of Theodoro and southern Crimea was administered directly by the Sublime Porte.

16th–19th century

By the 16th century, the existence of Goths in the Crimea had become well known to European Scholars. Many travelers visited the Crimea and wrote about the Goths. One romantic report appears in Joachimus Cureus' Gentis Silesiae Annales in which he claims that during a voyage in the Black Sea, his ship was forced ashore by storms. There, to his surprise, he found a man singing a song in which he used "German words" When he asked him where he was from, he answered "that his home was nearby and that his people were goths".^[12]

Several inscriptions from the early 9th century found in the area use the word "Goth" only as a personal name, not ethnonym. Meanwhile, some legends about a Gothic state in Crimea existed in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq reported having had a conversation with two Goths in Constantinople. He also left the Gothic-Latin dictionary with about a hundred Germanic words that share some traits in common with ancient Gothic language.

Following the report by Busbecq, numerous European travelers went to visit the Crimea, Torquatus visited the Crimea in the mid- to late 1500s in which he reported the existence of Goths who spoke their own language, but used Greek, Tartar and Hungarian in dealing with outsiders.^[13]

In 1690, Kampfer states:

The language spoke in the Peninsula Crimea, or Taurica Chersonesus, in Asia, still retains many German words, brought thither, as is suppos'd by a colony of Goths, who went to settle there about 850 years after the Deluge. The late Mr.Busbeq, who had been Imperial Ambassador at the Ottoman Port, collected and publish'd a great number of these words in his fourth letter; and in my own travels through that Country I took notice of many more^[14]

Religion

The first report of the Crimean Goths appears in the Vita of Saint Cyril, Apostle to the Slavs (Constantine the Philosopher) who went to Crimea to preach the gospel to the Khazars [c. 850]. He lists "Goths" as people who read and praised the Christian God "in their own language"^[15]. In 1606 Joseph-Juste Scaliger claimed that the Goths of Crimea read both the Old and New Testaments "in the letters of Wulfia's alphabet".^[16] These are the only two reports which refer to the existence of a written form of Crimean Gothic, but also confirm their Christian faith.

While initially Arian Christians like other Gothic peoples,^{[citation needed]} the Crimean Goths had fully integrated with the Trinitarian Roman Church by the 500's. Following the split of the Church, these peoples would remain loyal to Constantinople as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the 8th century John of Gothia, an Orthodox bishop, led an unsuccessful revolt against Khazar overlordship.

Language

For more information see Crimean Gothic Language

The language of the Crimean Goths is poorly attested with only 101 certain independent forms surviving, few of which are phrases, and a three line song, which has never been conclusively translated. Possible loan words are still used in Crimean Tartar though this to remains highly speculative.

Meaning	Crimean Gothic	Bible Gothic	German	Dutch	Icelandic	Swedish
Apple	Apel	(unattested)	Apfel	Appel	Epli	(vild-)apel, Äpple
Hand	Handa	Handus (f.)	Hand	Hand	Hönd	Hand
Sister	Schuuester	Swistar (f.)	Schwester	Zus(ter)	Systir	Syster
House	Hus	-hūs (n.)	Haus	Huis	Hús	Hus
Rain	Reghen	Rign (n.)	Regen	Regen	Regn	Regn
Sing	Singhen	Siggwan (vb.)	Singen	Zingen	Syngja	Sjunga
Go	Geen	Gaggan (vb.)	Gehen	Gaan	Ganga	Gå
Meaning	Crimean Gothic	Bible Gothic	German	Dutch	Icelandic	Swedish

Disappearance

There are numerous other sources referring to the existence of Goths in the Crimea following Busbeques report, though none providing details of their language or customs. The last known record of the Goths in Crimea comes from the Archbishop of Mohilev; Stanislas Sestrencewicz de bohusz circa 1780, who visited Crimea at the end of the 18th Century, and noted the existence of people whose language and customs differed greatly from their neighbors and who he concluded must be "Goths".^[17]

Despite no further records of the languages' existence since the late 18th century, communities of Germanic peoples with distinctly separate customs and physical features have been recorded living in the Crimea, leading some to believe that the Gothic language may have survived as a "haussprache" (home language) until as late as 1945.^[18]

According to the Soviet Ethnologist V.E. Vozgrin the Goths interbred with the Crimean Tartars and converted to Islam. In "The Crimean Tatars: the diaspora experience and the forging of a nation" By Brian Glyn Williams they quote Vozgrin as saying; 'In all probability their descendents are the tartars of a series of villages in the Crimea, who are sharply delineated from the inhabitants of neighboring villages by their tall height and other features characteristic of Scandinavians.

It is clear that the Goths had begun to speak Tartar and Crimean Greek from long before the arrival of Busbeque^[19] thus they may well have integrated into the wider population, as later visitors to Mangup were unable to discover "any trace" of Gothic peoples.^[20]

Legacy

Almost no signs of the Crimean Goths exist today. It was claimed by the Third Reich and by Adolf Hitler that the Crimean Goths had survived long enough to interbreed with later German settlers in Crimea, and that the German communities in Crimea constituted native peoples of that area. He had intended to re-settle German people to Crimea, and rename numerous towns with their previous Crimean Gothic names. During the Nazi occupation of Crimea, Sevastopol was changed to Theoderichshafen^[21] There was talk among Nazi official of building a superhighway between Berlin and the Crimea, turning Crimea into the German Gibraltar.

Of the 2 million inhabitants of the now Ukrainian Crimea, around 3,000 are of German ancestry. 

See also

Ancient Germanic culture portal

• Crimean Gothic
• List of Germanic tribes
• Gothiscandza
• Gutasaga
• Ostrogoths
• Scandza
• Visigoths
• Wielbark culture
• Chernyakhov culture
• Oium

Notes

1. ^ Wolfram 271-280.
2. ^ Vasilev 1936:114.
3. ^ Streitberg 1920:17.
4. ^ Siebs 1922-170-72.
5. ^ Schwarz 1951-162.
6. ^ Wolfram 78-263 passim.
7. ^ Here/Hari (army/noble) + mann/man + ric/rike (ruler))
8. ^ Heather, The Goths 52-55.
   Kulikowski 111.
9. ^ Heather, Goths in the Fourth Century 92 n. 87.
10. ^ Wolfram 261.
11. ^ Wolfram 271-280.
12. ^ Stearns 1971:7.
13. ^ Ibid.
14. ^ Kempfer,Kaempfer 1631:1716
15. ^ loewe 1896:114.
16. ^ Stearns 1971:16.
17. ^ Loewe (1869:200).
18. ^ Schwarz (1953:163-4).
19. ^ Stearns(1979:39-40).
20. ^ pallas(1801:363-364).
21. ^ Herwig Wolfram, Die Goten, 2001, S. 32.

Sources

• Heather, Peter. The Goths. Blackwell, 1998.
• Heather, Peter and John Matthews. Goths in the Fourth Century. Liverpool Univ. Press, 1991.
• Kulikowski, Michael, Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006.
• Vasiliev, Aleksandr A. The Goths in the Crimea. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936.
• Wolfram, Herwig (Thomas J. Dunlap, tr). History of the Goths. Univ. of California Press, 1988.

External links

• Brief history of Theodoro Principality (Mangup) ENG