Gurzuvity in Crimea

Cities of Khazaria. Kromos Estatium
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     The khazar cities here include not only those cities that were built by the khazar architects, but also those that were built before the arrival of the khazars, were used by the khazars for their needs and tasks for a long time.
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Gurzuvity in Crimea **
     Also G-ruzin, Kursants, Gorsovium, Gurzuf. These are all names of different authors, rulers of the Crimea and in different epochs.
     The city is now associated with a settlement near the modern village of Gurzuf in the Crimea.
     This City in the Crimea, the Khazar King Joseph in the 10th century calls G-Ruzin in his letter to the Spanish jews.
     Cities are named differently. Some believe that the name Gor-zuf was given to the settlement by the local tribes of the taurians, goths and alans. For them, it meant Mountain Valley. Others derive the name of the city from the word of turkic origin «ur-zus», meaning bear. This naming is of later origin than the first.
     People have inhabited this place since ancient times. The first permanent residents on the settlement appeared in the middle of the 3rd Millennium before Christ.
     In the 7th century before the New Faith, the Taurus settled here, noted for the manufacture of rather complex black-burnished stucco ware.
     At the end of the 2nd century after the birth of Christ, jews appear here. They live in the community and engaged in trading activities. This community existed here until the late middle ages, then leaving the city, then returning again. Finally, they stayed here after visiting the Crimea in 1778 by Catherine The Great, who allowed jewish communities to settle in the Crimea, although in limited numbers.
     In the 4th century after the birth of Christ, the taurus leave this settlement, they were first replaced by the goths, and then by the byzantine greeks.
     Byzantium made a lot of efforts to keep the Crimea in its power, for this purpose, in the middle of the 6th century after the birth of Christ, they built two fortresses on the southern coast of the Crimea — Alusta and Gurzuvity, which were part of the system of mountain fortifications of the Crimea on the approaches to Chersonesus.
     In the 6th century, about the settlement Gurzuvity first wrote Procopius of Caesarea from the Byzantines. He reports that Justinian the First built in Gurzuvit castle Aluston. This fortress was an important Outpost in the south of the Crimea for the Byzantia, then for the Khazara, who called it G-ruzin, and then for the Genoese, who called the city Gruzui.
     The local population in the area Gurzuvity in the Early Middle ages was predominantly gothic and alanian. Starting from the 7th century, mixed tribes of slavs came here, who left a small cultural layer on the settlements near modern Gurzuf.
     The Suuk-Su burial grounds near Gurzuf, typical at that time in many places of the South-Western Crimea, give some idea of the initial stage of the city's formation.
     Artisans of the city worked on inlaid stone on buckles, made finger fibulas, colored glass, attributed by cultural experts to the local tradition, coming from the general culture of the Bosporus, mixing in the Crimea with the culture of nomadic pastoralists.
     Since 1474, the city and the valley were owned by the turks, while the inhabitants of the city did not lose their christian faith. However, during this time, the city lost its urban qualities and became an ordinary village, as it was named in 1783 in the decree of Catherine the Second.
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