Solkhat

Solkhat, also known as Qırım, stood at the meeting of the Crimean steppe and the mountains. It was the administrative centre of the Golden Horde in Crimea and a prosperous meeting place for merchants from the Black Sea and lands farther east. Its markets, caravanserais and religious buildings reflected a population that included Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as people with ties to Anatolia and Italy. The name Qırım came to be applied to the peninsula as a whole.

When Ibn Battuta visited Crimea in the 1330s, Solkhat was a major centre of the Horde. An inscription on the portal of a mosque names the reign of Özbeg Khan and the year 1314; a madrasa stood beside the mosque. The great political struggles of the later fourteenth century also touched the city, associated with the powerful emir Mamai. After the rise of the Crimean Khanate, the seat of the khans shifted westward toward Bakhchisaray, and Solkhat's former prominence declined.

Its buildings nevertheless preserved traces of the connections that had enriched the town. The carved mosque portal bears an inscription naming Abd al-Aziz ibn Ibrahim al-Arbili, whose family came from the region of Iraq. Its ornament also belongs to an artistic tradition found in Anatolia, a reminder of the routes by which craftsmen and ideas reached the Crimean interior.