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Traces of the Strong Devastating Earthquakes in the Hansaray and Its Vicinity, Bakhchysarai, Crimea

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Abstract—We study an ancient earthquake that significantly damaged the Hansaray (Khansarai) in Bakhchysarai, Crimea, at the end of the 17th century. However, to date, the traces of this catastrophic event can barely be found in the Khansarai walls. Our studies have shown that this is mainly due to the numerous repairs and restorations which have been continuously conducted at the monument. It is only due to the fact that one of the objects of the Hansaray (the “Eastern Building”) was plundered in 2013 that we were able to identify the internal structure of its walls and to reveal a clearly expressed seismogenic deformation of the brick arch which underwent a subsequent repair. In order to accurately date the seismic event, we carried out a search for the analogies, which revealed similar damage in the walls of the Eski-Durbe mausoleum, the monuments of the first palace of the Crimean khans in Salachik (Zincirli medrese and Haci Giray durbe mausoleum) and the Great Kenassa of the Chufut-Kale fortress. By comparing the chronology of the Eastern Structure and other monuments and the peculiarities of their seismic deformations, we correlated the damage of these structures to the Salachik earthquake of April 30, 1698, whose epicentral area was located in the West Crimean seismogenic zone and which had local intensity in the Bakhchysarai region Il = VIII–IX (on MSK-64 scale).

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Notes

  1. Duvar-kushak (Crimean Tatar) literally means belted wall. Duvar-kushak is a wall construction technology with laying wooden compensating beams inside the wall in order to increase earthquake resistance of building structures.

  2. Opus mixtum (Latin) literally means mixed work. Opus mixtum is a walling technology using a mortar of brick powder or ceramic chip (Crimean Tatar khorasan) with wall segments built of three-layer emplecton masonry alternating with rows of plinth (bricks).

  3. The Zyndzhirli Madrasah is constructed with a belt of one row of plinth bricks in the eastern, northern, and western walls of its courtyard, which is of course an example of the opus mixtum technique albeit in its reduced form.

  4. The extant Divan Hall.

  5. For simpler systematization of the earthquakes that caused seismic deformations in the walls of the buildings, here we conditionally refer to them as event 1, event 2, etc. Each individual monument has its own event 1 or event 2. These terms are only used in the context of the specific currently discussed object.

  6. In this paper, as the main working hypothesis we assume that the epicentral area of the Salachik earthquake was located in the Western Crimean seismic zone. At the same time, is it is not excluded that the earthquake could have originated in the Tarkhankut seismic zone, which is the alternative hypothesis. The ultimate choice requires new data.

  7. The earthquake whose traces were first described in the monuments of the palace complex in Salachik and which was correspondingly named a Salachik earthquake was dated based on the record in the Kadiasker books of the Mangup kadylyk. We note the extremely high relevance of the historical information contained in the corpus of this type of sources. The books present dry and impersonal bureaucratic registries of court decisions, and that is why the information contained in them is so important and exclusive from the historical standpoint. Unfortunately, these artifacts had long been beyond the focus of the specialists and only recently have they come to be fully involved in the relevant research (Rustemov, 2017, pp. 4, 10–12, 15–17). This explains why this event was not addressed in the special literature on the subject (Khapaev, 2008, p. 89–95).

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to Rustem Ruslanovich Eminov for providing archival data and rare photographs and for his valuable advices.

Funding

The work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under project no. 18-35-00521.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bakhchysarai Historical, Cultural and Archaeological Museum-Reserve, 98405, Bakhchysarai, Crimea, Russia

    D. A. Moisieiev

  2. Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, 123242, Moscow, Russia

    A. M. Korzhenkov, A. N. Ovsyuchenko, E. A. Rogozhin & A. S. Lar’kov

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  1. D. A. Moisieiev
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  2. A. M. Korzhenkov
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  3. A. N. Ovsyuchenko
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Correspondence to D. A. Moisieiev, A. M. Korzhenkov, A. N. Ovsyuchenko, E. A. Rogozhin or A. S. Lar’kov.

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Moisieiev, D.A., Korzhenkov, A.M., Ovsyuchenko, A.N. et al. Traces of the Strong Devastating Earthquakes in the Hansaray and Its Vicinity, Bakhchysarai, Crimea. Izv., Phys. Solid Earth 57, 529–546 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1069351321030095

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