Ai-Vasilsky treasure

The collection included 61 silver coins and 8 items ^[4] .

Coins

The coin part of the treasure was:

• 43 aspra from Kafa , the Genoese colony in Crimea, with the coat of arms of Genoa and the Latin inscription on the obverse , tamga and the Arabic inscription on the reverse ^[2] ;
• 5 coins of Juchi origin (referring to the fragments of the Golden Horde that arose as a result of its decay by the middle of the 15th century):
  • 4 dirhams of the founder of the Crimean Khanate Haji Girey (he died in 1466, began minting his own coins in 1441-1442);
  • 1 dirham of the khan of the Great Horde of Mahmoud , minted in Uvek . The fact of minting a coin in Uvek during the era of the Great Horde indicates that the city did not cease to exist after its ruin by Tamerlan in 1395, as is often believed ^[5] . Mahmoud became a khan, probably in 1459, after the death of Kichi-Muhammad ’s father, in 1465 he was defeated by Haji Girey and retained his influence only in Haji Tarkhan , becoming virtually the first Astrakhan khan . In the Big Horde, the younger brother of Mahmoud Ahmad finally established himself. Thus, the year 1465 is the latest date of minting the coin by Khan Mahmud;
• information about 13 coins was not preserved ^[1] .

Items

The ware part of the treasure was ^{[6] [7]} :

• copper dish (lost);
• a fragment of a silver chain of wire in the form of double eight-shaped weaves. This chain is similar to the chain from the sacristy of the Banya Monastery (near the town of Priboy , Serbia ), which also has a wooden Athos cross in silver at the beginning of the 16th century ^[8] ;
• silver bowl with 19 symmetrical impressions;
• 3 silver rings with a shred (rim) decorated with concentric circles ^[2] ;
• 2 silver pectoral crosses with three-bladed finishes ^[9] .

Bowl

The bowl is made of forged silver leaf, has an embossed rosette consisting of a central circle-core and 6 circles-petals, enclosed in a medallion formed by 6 large and 6 small circles. Similar ai-basil chalices were discovered in 1897 near the village of Ulu-Uzen on the southern coast of Crimea and in 1890 in a burial mound near the aul Makhchesk in Digoria (now the Republic of North Ossetia ) ^[10] . Another similar bowl is kept at the Sadberk-Khanum Museum in Istanbul . This bowl has the tamga of Sultan Suleiman I (reigned in 1520-1566) ^[11] .

Assumptions ^[12] were put forward about the expansion of the range of distribution of Ai-Vasilsky-type bowls - due to the search for their similarity with the bowls found during excavations in Staraya Ryazan in 1888 ^[13] (this bowl belonged to Sasanian and ancient Russian objects at different times, it was noted its similarity with Italian products of the XIV century) and in the village “Ostyatsky Zywiec 4” in Priobye , near Surgut ( Khorasan bronze bowl of the VIII-IX centuries). Comparisons were made based on the similarity of size and decor. Both the first and second assumptions are disputed in the scientific community ^[14] .

Rings

• Signet with custom (rim) filled with blue paste;
• Signet with an oval shield decorated with a double S-shaped palmette . A similar ornament is characteristic for a series of rings of the 14th century, for example, for the wide famous golden ring of Queen Theodora belonging to Theodora Smilets , the daughter of the Bulgarian king Smilz and the wife of the Serbian king Stefan Uros III Decansky . The ring was discovered in 1915 in the monastery of Banska , where the queen was buried, and is now in the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade . A similar silver and black ring is also available at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University ^[15] ;
• Signet with a silver handle and a shield of gold ducat of the Venetian Doge Tomaso Mocenigo (reigned in 1414-1423). The coin is soldered to the bow with an obverse. Thus, on the back of the ring (that is, on the reverse of the coin) there is an image of Christ in mandorla with the Latin motto “Sit tibi Christe datus, quem tu regis iste ducatus” (“This is the duchy, to which you rule, Christ is dedicated to you”) ^[16] . Such imitation could serve the purpose of emphasizing the identification of the local Genoese with their Italian metropolis ^[17] .

Crosses

On one side of the crosses (on the front of the first and on the back of the second) is the Virgin Hodegetria with a baby, although with some reference to the iconographic type of Tenderness ^[11] , on the other side (respectively, on the back of the first and on the front of the second) - Crucifix , and in the Catholic tradition . Crosses are gilded , have ears and “tears” at the three-bladed ends. Floral and geometric patterns of crosses are made using the technique of engraving and free stamping.

A similar cross was found at the end of the 20th century during excavations of the monastery complex near Alushta ^[18] . Analogies of the pattern elements of the Alushta and Ay-Vasil crosses can be traced in the jewelry of objects from the Belorechensky burial ground of the XIV-XV centuries ^[19] ( Belorechensky district of the Krasnodar Territory ), in the procession north-Italian crosses of the XIV century (the church of the monastery of San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna ) , in a silver cup of the late XIV - early XV century from the sacristy of the Pskov-Pechersky monastery ^[14] .

At the same time, in some details of the Crucifixion and the decoration of three-lobed finishes (palmetto-shaped floral ornament), other researchers see references to the Byzantine craft tradition of the Paleologians during the 13th - early 15th centuries, finding analogies, although not close, to jewelry, encolpions and Reliquaries , in the monasteries of Athos, in southern Italy . The ornament of the crosses can be compared with the ornament of the aforementioned ring with palmette, characteristic of the 14th century ^[11] .

The loss of coins and treasure from the village of Ai-Vasil from circulation occurred within the middle of ^[2] or the second third of the 15th century, probably around 1465 ^[14] . The Ai-Vasilsky find is characterized as a treasure of short accumulation, made in connection with the growth of political instability in the region caused by the emergence of a new dangerous player - the Crimean Khanate ^[20] . The value of the Ai-Vasilsky treasure can be considered at least in the framework of two, in many ways contradicting each other, points of view.

According to the first of them, a sufficiently high level of skill in the manufacture of unique items from the treasure (primarily crosses) does not allow us to talk about the localization of their production in Crimea. However, on the one hand, the Byzantine influence (palmettki in the ornament) can be traced, on the other hand, there is a certain similarity with products manufactured in Italy and the Balkans. In this regard, in particular, the Ai-Vasil bowl is also attributed to the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, as are some other treasures, as well as, first of all, thin-walled shallow, with a floral pattern, silver analogues of such a bowl of the XIV century from museums in Serbia and Italy. Finally, some Middle Eastern bowl prototypes from the Ai-Vasilsky treasure should be considered. Thus, the islands of the Aegean archipelago can be called the place of creation of things from the collection found in the settlement of Ai-Vasil. The treasure testifies to the various historical and cultural ties of medieval Yalita (Yalta) with the Italian colonies of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Mongolian world (coins) ^[12] . Allegations of the Byzantine influence appearing in objects from the treasure, about the Aegean region as the center of production of such things and in general about the impossibility of their manufacture in Crimea are criticized ^[14] .

In the framework of the second point of view, it is not the Yalta-Yalita relations (Jalita, from the Greek “Yialos” - the coast) that is not independent in the XIV-XV centuries (unlike, for example, the XII century, when even an Arab geographer wrote about Polovtsian Jalita Idrisi , who lived in Sicily ), and the characteristics of the economic, social and cultural life of the Captainy of Gothia - the Genoese military-administrative formation, uniting the colonies of the southern coast of Crimea. In this regard, the Ai-Vasilsky treasure is called unique among the coin and clothing treasures of the Crimea and the entire Northern Black Sea Region , since this is the only treasure where European household items prevail.

Pectoral crosses testify, perhaps, that the treasure belonged to the village priest of the local Catholic parish . At the same time, Ai-Vasil is a Greek village, in connection with which it can be assumed that attempts were made to Catholic propaganda among local Orthodox . The fact of the discovery of the pectoral cross near Alushta, similar to the Ay-Basil crosses, allows us to speak quite definitely about the local craft tradition. The presence of similarities with Crimean crosses in the decor of things from the Caucasian burial grounds, in the decor of the church cup reinforces this statement, and also testifies to the popularity of Crimean artisans. Finds of similar bowls also speak of relations with the Caucasus (which, however, does not allow making unambiguous conclusions about the place of their production and rather serves as evidence of the activity of shopping centers in the East Caucasus and Ciscaucasia ) ^[21] .

• Zalesskaya V.N. Treasure from Ai-Vasil: On the Historical and Cultural Relations of Medieval Yalita (Rus.) // Antiquity and the Middle Ages. - Simferopol , 1995. - Vol. 27. Byzantium and medieval Crimea . - S. 98-101 .
• Kramarovsky M.G. Treasure from Ai-Vasil: Crimea, captain of Gothia, second third of the 15th century (Russian) // Hermitage Readings in Memory of B. B. Piotrovsky . - St. Petersburg , 1995.
• Kramarovsky M.G. Latin Latin and the Golden Horde Crimea. Latin ring finds and seals in the Northern Black Sea region. Treasure from Ai-Vasil (Russian) // Evglevsky A.V. (Ed.) Steppes of Europe in the Middle Ages: Collection of scientific articles. - Donetsk : Donetsk State University , 2000. - T. 1 . - S. 245-263 . - ISBN 966-7277-95-X .