Crimean Karaites and Krymchaks (Turkic-speaking Rabbanites) are most interesting among sub-ethnic groups still present in the area. There is a lot of legends on their origins (especially concerning Karaites) appeared mostly during the last two centuries. Many of these legends were based on the epigraphic sources of the Karaite cemeteries. The largest of them is situated near the cave town of Chufut Qaleh, close to Bakhchisaray city. It is called Josafath valley (as well as the necropolis near the Old City of Jerusalem).

 

Since late 18th century Chufut-Qaleh used to draw attention of many travelers. It was an outstanding Karaite collector of antiquities Abraham Firkowicz (1787 – 1874) who started regular investigations of the cemetery. As early as the autumn of the year 1839, after general-governor of Novorossia M.S. Vorontsov demanded information on the origins of Crimean Karaites, the local community sent Firkowicz and a young Karaite scholar Shlomo Beym to the first archaeographic expedition across the Crimea. Firkowicz suggested discovering proofs to the history of Karaites in ancient manuscripts which could be preserved in the genizot of Karaite and Rabbanite synagogues and at the old cemeteries of Chufut-Qaleh, Mangup, Theodosia and Eupatoria.

During the expedition they found 51 manuscripts and fragments and made copies of 58 tombstones inscriptions of Chufut-Qaleh and Mangup cemeteries. The most ancient tomb found Firkowicz dated to 640 C. E. According to him, one of the tombs was that of Isaak Sangari (8th cent. C. E.) who, according to the later Jewish tradition, converted the Khazarian Khagan to Judaism. The name of Sangari appeared first in Nahmanides’ commentary on the book Kuzari by the great Jewish poet and philosopher Jehuda ha-Levi. A lot of manuscripts discovered by Firkowicz had colophons which contain information on the life of the Karaite communities during the first millennium of C. E.

In 1840, the materials were delivered by Firkowicz to the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities. It was at the same time that first doubts raised on the reliability of tombstones inscriptions copies made by Firkowicz. R. Shlomo Rappoport suggested that the inscription of Sangari was forged. In order to remove doubts Bezalel Stern, a célèbre man of Jewish Enlightment and director of Jewish school, was sent by the Odessa Society to the Crimea. He found copies by Firkowicz correct and discovered 7 more inscriptions dated by him to 598 – 1509, among them the stone with the inscription “Sangarit” (according to Stern, it was the name of Isaak Sangari’s wife).

Firkowicz continued his research. In 1840 -1841 he visited North Caucasus where he discovered many ancient manuscripts including the famous Majalis Document – a long colophon on a Biblical manuscript discovered in Majalis village near Derbent. This document became a corner stone of the concept by Firkowicz which was proved by other colophons on the manuscripts and epitaphs found by him. According to Firkowicz, Crimean Karaites’ ancestors settled in the Crimea more than 500 years before C.E. and, therefore, they were not responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Due to the concept by Firkowicz, Russian Karaites in his lifetime were granted equal rights as other subjects of Russian Empire.

The concept reached wide audience via works by Russian authors of the 1840s. In 1843, the article was published in the Journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the title The Karaite Jews written by the Journal’s editor A. Nadezhdin (according to the witness of A. Kunik) and based upon the stuff provided by B. Stern. The author after examining Firkowicz’s findings came to a conclusion that “the Crimean Karaites and, therefore, the Karaites of Lithuania, Volhynia, and Galicia, who are descended from them, are offspring of that branch of the Jews who separated from their brothers in ancient times, even before the Babylonian Exile, and penetrated the territories of today's Russia from the depths of Central Asia.”.

In 1846, a young Orientalist V. Grigoryev showed doubt on Jewish origins of Crimean Karaites. He suggested that “they were not Jews but descendants of those Turkic Khazars who, as we know, practiced the Law of Moses and held the Crimea in 8 – 11 cent.” It should be noticed that the story of the Khazar conversion to Judaism was considered legendary till 1820s when Arabic sources were published which proved in undisputable way Judaism of Khazars, henceforth romantic enthusiasm of Grigoryev in such circumstances could be understandable.

In 1843, Firkowicz worked on the cemetery of the cave town Mangup where he copied 66 epitaphs, the most ancient of them was dated by him to 871 C. E. In 1844 and in 1846 he continued exploration of the Josaphat valley necropolis, and in 1847, accompanied by his son-in-law Gabriel Firkowicz, he created the cemetery map, which was divided it into “quarters”, and copied 703 epitaphs. He estimated the total number of tombstones as 6967, that fits the calculations made in 2004 – 2005.

In 1845, E. Pinner first published Firkowicz’s finds. In 1849 – 1850 Firkowicz visited Caucasus for the second time, and three years later he brought to St Petersburg around 700 tombstones inscriptions copies, and almost 150 manuscripts. In 1856 he offered his collection to the Imperial Public Library. On March 7th, 1862, the committee appointed by the Academy of Sciences submitted a report on value and original character of the collection, though doubt was thrown upon several colophons. On the 5th of October 1862, the library purchased from Firkowicz around 1500 manuscripts, 754 tombstones inscriptions copies and 10 actual epitaphs sawed out by Firkowicz from the tombstones of the Josaphat valley. (Unfortunately, these inscriptions disappeared probably in 1941 during evacuation of the Hermitage collections, where they were seen four years before the war.) In 1863, the stuff sent by Firkowicz to the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities was delivered to the Public Library.

The majority of scholars who examined at that time the first Firkowicz’s collection confided absolutely in his finds. It would be enough to mention Adolf Neubauer and Daniel Chwolsson, a professor of St Petersburg University who issued in 1866 the book Eighteen Jewish Tombstones Inscriptions from the Crimea. The research by Chwolsson, who examined some of the epitaphs discovered by Firkowicz and found them authentic, convinced even skeptics.

After having sold his collection 76 years-old Firkowicz traveled across the Middle East during 1.5 years. Since September 1863 till March 1865 he visited Turkey, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and collected there thousands of manuscripts. Most valuable among them were manuscripts from the genizah of Cairo Karaite synagogue and almost 1300 Samaritan manuscripts purchased by the Public Library in 1870. Firkowicz was occupied with sorting out all these stuff till the end of his life (they were purchased by the Library from the collector’s descendants together with his personal archives in 1876). The second Firkowicz’s collection contains nearly 12 thousands manuscripts and text fragments.

After coming back to Russia Firkowicz settled in Chufut-Qaleh where he sorted out his immense collections and continued investigations on the cemetery.

In 1872, he issued in Vilna a book entitled Sefer avne zikkaron livne Israel. The Collection of Jewish tombstones inscriptions of the Crimean Peninsula collected by Karaite Scholar Abraham Firkowicz. Besides the account of his travels, the author included in the book 769 epitaphs, among them 564 from Chufut-Qaleh (the ancient dated by Firkowicz to the 6th year C.E.), 72 from Mangup (since 866 C.E.), 28 from Kaffa (since 1076 C.E.), 5 from Solkhat (since 910 C.E.), 100 from Eupatoria (since 1593 C.E.).

Abraham Firkowicz died on June 30, 1874 and he was buried in Chufut-Qaleh at the ancient Josaphat valley cemetery.
After Firkowicz's death an intense polemic began about his legacy. The main participants were two major Russian Hebraists – Daniel Chwolsson (1819-1911) and Abraham Harkavy (1839-1919).

Chwolson was born into a poor Jewish family in Vilna. He graduated from the University of Breslau and, in 1854, after he converted to Russian Orthodoxy, was offered the opportunity to head the department of Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldean languages of the Oriental department at the St. Petersburg University. He was the first qualified Hebraist who had the opportunity to examine the materials collected by Firkowicz. In contrast to his colleague, Harkavy remained an Orthodox Jew all his life, and in the Russian Empire it could hardly promote his career opportunities. For example, when he applied for a position at the St. Petersburg University in 1870, he was rejected (an additional reason was apparently a negative evaluation by Chwolsson of Harkavy's master's dissertation). Harkavy then began working at the Imperial Public Library where, for half a century, he was, in effect, the curator of the Firkowicz Collection. From that point on, there was a long and overt hostility between the two scholars, which cast a shadow on their entire future polemics.

Almost immediately after Firkowicz's death, Harkavy was sent to the Crimea, along with the German Semitologist G. Strack, to evaluate the manuscripts of the Second Firkowicz Collection, which Firkowicz's heirs were offering to sell to the Public Library. After several months, the two scholars published a catalogue of the Biblical manuscripts from the Firkowicz collection: many of the colophons of the manuscripts were revealed to be forged by Firkowicz in an attempt to prove that the ancestors of the Crimean Karaites had separated from the Jews before the birth of Jesus. A year later, Harkavy published a new work, where he affirmed that not only the colophons, but all the tombstone inscriptions, dated before 1240, were forged. In a number of articles Harkavy also critically analyzed specific documents from the Firkowicz’s collection. Simultaneously with Harkavy's work, in publications by Kunik, Strack, and Efraim Deinard Firkowicz was accused of various kinds of forgery and falsification. However, these scholars attributed much of the responsibility for convincing the public of the authenticity of Firkowicz's finds to Chwolsson.

The latter, whose reputation in the scholarly world was severely damaged, decided to defend himself. He made two (in 1878 and 1881) extensive expeditions to the cemetery in Chufut-Qaleh and after that published a large monograph in which, with hardly any analysis of the manuscripts collected by Firkowicz, he focused on tombstone inscriptions from the Josaphat Valley. In addition to the inscriptions discovered by Firkowicz, Chwolsson found another forty epitaphs, the oldest of which he dated as between 240 and 613. In regard to the epitaphs collected by Firkowicz, Chwolsson revised his original ideas and admitted that a number of the texts had been falsified indeed. However, Chwolsson still considered many of the ancient epigraphs to be genuine, and rejected the manifold evidence adduced by Harkavy, Strack, and Kunik.

The polemics between Chwolsson and Harkavy (which sometimes went behind the boundaries of the academic dispute), though never finished, influenced the academic community with began to treat all Firkowicz finds with suspicion.

The activities of Firkowicz encouraged Russian Hebrew and Jewish studies during more than 150 years. The polemics about authenticity of his finds, nevertheless, continued. On the one hand, dubious materials from his collections sometimes are using in academic (and not only academic) polemics. On the other hand, the invaluable manuscripts in some cases are treated with suspicion a priori, just because they were found by Firkowicz.

For East European Karaites Firkowicz theories became vitally important. In the 19th century they supported Kataites’ successful struggle for equal rights in the Russian Empire, but in the 20th their consequences became even more vital. For Firkowicz himself the Karaites undoubtedly were Jews, but the next generations of Karaite national movement, first and foremost, Seraya Shapshal (1873 – 1961), relying upon the theories by Firkowicz, Grigoryev, etc., elaborated the concept that East European Karaites are not Jews, but the descendants of the Khazars, who allegedly had been converted into the Karaite form of Judaism. This theory finally saved the Karaites: most of them were not exterminated during the Shoah.
After the events of 1917, the studies of Firkowicz’ collections as well as the investigation of Crimean cemeteries were halted for a number of decades. Their work restarted only in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Episodic attempts of research at the cemeteries of Chufut-Qaleh and Mangup were made by M. Elizrova, N. Babalikashvili, E. Meshcherskaia, A. Khosroev, N. Kashovskaia, and M. Makushkin.

A new stage of Chufut-Qaleh cemetery investigations began in 1997, when the joint Israeli-Russian expedition was organized by Ben-Zvi Institute. In the following decade several small expeditions were held where Israeli, Russian, and Ukrainian scholars participated.

In 1998, the author of the present article discovered in Firkowicz's personal archives drafts of book Avnei Zikkaron by Firkowicz dated back to the late 1840s. The comparison of the drafts with the printed version of the book and the epitaphs preserved at the cemetery, showed evidently how the alteration of inscriptions was made (in particular, in the drafts there is a large number of altered inscriptions that were not included in the final, printed version of the book, and were found after Firkowicz's death by Chwolsson and Babalikashvili).

The results of the expeditions held in the 1990s were presented in the collective monograph written by a group of Israeli, Russian, and Ukrainian scholars (Dan Shapira, Artem Fedorchuk, Golda Achiezer, Michael Ezer, Michael Kizilov, Boris Khaimovich) The Tombstones of the Cemetery of the Karaite Jews in Chufut-Qaleh (the Crimea), which was edited by Dan Shapira and published in September, 2008, by Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in The East in cooperation with the International Center for Jewish Education and Field Studies and the Center for the Integration of the Oriental Jewish Heritage of the Ministry of Education of Israel. The book deals with a wide spectrum of issues related to the Chufut-Qaleh necropolis.

However, the final solution of the issues of the correct inscriptions dating and the extent of epitaphs changes made by Firkowicz could not be given until the total documentation of Chufut-Qaleh and Mangup cemeteries is finished. This task has been fulfilled by a group of scholars organized by the International Center for Jewish Education and Field Studies, who carried out between 2004 and 2008 several epigraphic expeditions to the Crimea, funded by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and other foundations and organizations. During these expeditions the documentation of the relatively small Mangup cemetery was finished (the basic work was done by Natalia Kashovskaya since 1990), and the complete documentation of Chufut-Qaleh cemetery was made. The catalogues of both cemeteries are presently being prepared for publication.

During several years since its creation, the Center held a series of expeditions in the Crimea, field schools, and seminars. Among them the Fall (October, 2004, October, 2005, October, 2006) and Spring (March, 2005, April, 2006) field schools for high school students, entitled “Jews and Surrounding World: Ethno-cultural Contacts; expedition for Moscow high school students (May, 2005); summer field schools in Jewish Studies (August, 2005, July-August, 2006, July, 2007, July, 2008); student seminars held in cooperation with the Jewish Agency and Hillel (August, 2005, August and October, 2006, October, 2007), the field schools for Taglit students (July, 2006, July, 2007). One of the most interesting programs was the field seminar for Jewish school teachers and artists, organized in cooperation with the New Jewish School Pedagogical club and initiated by its director, the late Zakhar Rokhlin (1979 – 2009).

During all these programs the educational tasks were combined with the academic ones, i.e. with documentation of cemeteries (beside Chufut-Qaleh and Mangup, the smaller cemeteries of Eupatoria and Sebastopol were documented), as well as with archaeological and ethnological research.

In 2004 – 2005 a group led by Ivan Yurchenko, the director of Halycz Museum of Karaite History and Culture, made the complete topographic and partial photographic survey of Chufut-Qaleh necropolis. During the other expeditions of the Center all the inscriptions were cleaned, photographed and wrote down, the oldest of them were measured. Most of the expeditions were combined with the field schools and student seminars, where the experienced scholars and students taught the newcomers to describe the epitaphs (some of newcomers late joined the working team). For university and high school students it was a priceless experience of contact with Jewish culture. A possibility to participate in the work on description and salvation of the monuments definitely influenced for strengthening Jewish identity of the youngsters.

Between the expeditions a huge work on deciphering of the epitaphs text was made. In 2007 the interface of the electronic catalogue was created, by now it is filled up, and the editorial work on the text is close to an end.

The catalogue includes the electronic map of the necropolis, divided to squares. Each monument on the map, which bears the epitaph, is connected with all the information about it: original text, translation, text in Firkowicz’s catalogue (if relevant), names, nicknames, patronymics, dates, eulogies, geographical names, mentioned in the epitaph, as well as the photographs, in some cases – measures of the tombstone, etc. There is also a complete plate of the architectural forms (in that respect the necropolis is also unique among all Jewish cemeteries of the world). The catalogue is supplied by the system of advanced search which permits to systematize the epitaphs according to many parameters, as well as in chronological and topographic order.

The total number of tombstones is approximately 7,000, almost 3,400 of them have epitaphs. Unfortunately, the cemetery is rapidly deteriorating. The oldest survived epitaphs date back to 1364 (the monument of Manush, the daughter of Shabbetai) and to 1387 (only the lower part of it has been preserved; including the altered date; a comparison with Avnei Zikkaron and the plan of the cemetery made by Firkowicz in mid 19th century lead us to assume that this inscription is probably that of Sarah, daughter of Abraham). The inscriptions on other monuments of the 14th century can no longer be read due to the poor condition, although some of them can be identified on the basis of Firkowicz’s map. 25 epitaphs of the 15th century and 63 from the 16th century has been preservedi. From every of the next centuries (17th, 18th, and 19th) 800 – 1000 epitaphs survived; several hundred inscriptions could not be dated exactly because of poor conditions. The most recent burials at the cemetery took place in the mid 20th century.

All 27 survived tombstone inscriptions of the 14th – 15th centuries (8 of them were preserved only in copies made by Firkowicz and Chwolsson in place of epitaphs that had been sawed off) appear in Firkowich's Avney Zikkaron (however, he dated 23 of them to much earlier periods). Out of the 564 inscriptions in Avney Zikkaron, more than 400 have survived. About 200 epitaphs were forged including 130 altered by transformation the letter ה in the date into ת, so an inscription becomes 600 years “older”. In other cases the dates were changed either by adding dotes above the letters in the chronostichs, or by adding words and phrases. In most cases changes of this kind can be discerned by the naked eye.

For an example, let us take the epitaph of Hanukkah, the son of Mordechai, who was buried in the year 5237 from the Creation, i. e. 1477 C. E. Changing the letter ה into ת transforms the date to 637 from the Creation (according to the defective calculation, i. e. without millennium), but since 5637 corresponds to the year 1877 C.E., which had not yet arrived at the time that his book was published, Firkowicz dated the inscription to 877. In the final version of the book Firkowicz dated it, as he did with many other early epitaphs, even earlier (to 726), calculating this date according to the ancient Crimean era, which allegedly was in use in the Crimea in the first millennium C. E., being 151 year longer than the regular era from the Creation of the World.

Firkowicz proves the existence of this mythical “era” with the help of the epitaph of Esther, daughter of Shelomo (real date – 1476). In the printed version of Firkowicz’s book, it has two dates: one according to the ancient Crimean era (it’s designated as the era from the Creation), and the other according to the so called Matharchean (allegedly, this era was used by the Jews living in the city of Matarcha, on the Taman Peninsula in Russia, and was equal to the regular era from the Creation.) But neither in the drafts of the Avnei Zikkaron, nor at the copy made by Firkowicz on the tombstone after the original inscription was sawed off, we can’t find any traces of the Matharchean era, and this is the undisputable prove that the “Ancient Crimean” era was invented by Firkowicz.

As for the other era, allegedly used in the epitaphs, the era from our exile (according to Firkowics, from the Samaritan exile, which he dated to 696 B.C.E.), out of the five epigraphs in which this term appears in Avnei Zikkaron, only one copy is preserved, made on the place of the sowed tombstone inscription of Buqi, son of Isaak Kohen, allegedly the most ancient epitaph at the cemetery (702 from our exile, i.e., according to Firkowicz, 6 C.E.) But, analyzing Firkowicz’s drafts, we can see that the epitaph of Buki was changed several time. In the draft of the only inscription which allegedly had the double dating (Joseph, son of Elia; according to Firkowicz, 369 C.E.), the date from our exile is absent, and there is only the date from the Creation of the World. Thus, we come to conclusion that the era from our exile in reality never existed.

In some epitaphs the date is indicated not in a linear manner but by the chronostichs, most commonly by Biblical excerpts, some letters of which are marked (usually by dots above the letters). The date is found by combining the numerical values of the marked letters. In a number of cases Firkowicz added additional dots to the chronostich in order to alter the date by several centuries. For example, in the epitaph of Abraham, the son of Simkhah, he put an additional dot over the letter ש so that the date “moved backwards” from 1573 to 873.

Sometimes Firkowicz did not make changes in the date itself but simply, in cases when the date was indicated according to the defective calculation, changed the millennium in the book. For example, the epitaph of Jacob, the son of Josef, who died in 1535 (the text indicates the year 295 from the Creation of the world) is dated by Firkowicz to 535.

Occasionally, Firkowicz required a more inventive correction of the text to change the date. Unfortunately, the majority of inscriptions which allegedly belong to the fifth millennium and where the date is indicated in words or letters have not been preserved. However, a number of the examples show how the dates were altered. For example, in the 1430 epitaph of Mordechai, the son of Daniel the letter ה (signifying 5000), is transformed by the alteration of its lower vertical part into the two-letter combination דל (signifying 4000).

Very seldom Firkowicz seems to chisel completely new tombstone inscriptions, especially short ones. These, for example, were the cases with the famous epitaphs of “Isaak Sangari” (the original inscription was sawed off), “Sangarit”, and, most likely, with the epitaph of Buqi, the son of Itshak Kohen. Several epitaphs published in Avney Zikkaron apparently did not exist in the cemetery but appeared either in the book or in the drafts.

 

Henceforth, the analysis of the whole amount of survived epitaphs from Chufut-Qaleh cemetery lets finally solve the issue of the real dates of this monument of great historical value. The same point could relate to smaller in size Mangup cemetery, where 222 out of one thousand tombstones have epitaphs dated back to the mid-15th – the late 18th cent. Several dozens of them were made 600 years “older” by Firkovicz who turned the letter ה into ת.

 

Investigations of numerous colophons from Firkovicz manuscripts collection conducted in the last years have also proved that several dozens of them were either modified or composed by the collector himself. For example, review of the Majalis Document shows that the author was aware of Russian literature on the subject of the first half of the 19th century. At the same time, accusation of forging manuscripts themselves against Firkovicz could be considered groundless (with one possible exception which is mentioning Mangup in the so-called long version of the letter of Khazarian king Joseph discovered by Firkovicz during his trip to the Middle East in 1863 – 1865).

 

As the material of Chufut-Qaleh epitaphs is now available for scholars, it made possible to finish the “Firkovicz affair” which existed for about 150 years, and to establish the real time when Karaite communities appeared in Crimea (mid-14th century in Chufut-Qaleh, and mid-15th century in Mangup). Working on this data gives scholars a unique opportunity to study the life of Crimean Karaites in details during 500 years and to clarify various aspects of history and culture not only of other Karaite communities, but of East European Jewry as well.

Documentation methods invented for Chufut-Qaleh electronic catalogue could be used for cataloging other Jewish cemeteries. For the last 20 years, a lot of materials of Jewish cemeteries of Ukraine has been collected, but up till now but a little part of it is used by scholars. It’s understandable since handling collected stuff is hard and routine work.

 

Nowadays we face a unique situation, i. e., we have a team of experts, detailed methods of documenting semiteries, and technical possibility to do such work. Unfortunately, Jewish cemeteries get destroyed terribly fast, and scrupulous description of everything which is still present is the only way to save these unique monuments of the Jewish culture for the generations to come.


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