Fulls in the 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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Fulls in the Crimea **
     Also Ful, Fulla, Solhat from mongol. Staryi Krym.
     Fulls was the center of the Fulla diocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Fulls along with her diocese were placed in various locations. It was in Mangup, in Bakla, in Inkerman, in Nikita, in Kastropol, in the Old Crimea, in Simferopol.
     And the beginning of the standing of the diocese comes from the hill of Fuil, the name of which remains from the cimmerians.
     Chronicles and archaeological research do not give any definite information about where the city of Fulls might have been located.
     They have Fulls on the Tepsen hill near Koktebel. Here, archaeologists managed to unearth the foundation of a three-nave byzantine-type basilica, which was the largest in the Crimea.
     Local researchers believe that the Fulls were located near Feodosia, in the Old Crimea.
     They place Fulls in the cave cities of Chufut-Kale and Kyz-Kermen, which were previously called the capitals of the Principality of Feodoro.
     Berthier-Delagard and Jacobson believed that the Fulls were located in Chufut-Kala, near Bakhchisaray.
     Kulakovsky placed Fully on the site of Solkhat, whose Armenian name was Kazarat.
     Kropotkin was looking for Fulls on an ancient settlement of the late middle ages near the village of Planerskoe.
     According to the Constantinople gloss, published by De Boor in the 19th century, the diocese of Khotsir, which served the christian khazars in the Crimea, was located near Full and Kharasiu, where some Black water flowed. Apparently, this refers to the river of Karasu.
     There is an assumption that the Fulls were connected with Russian-Fulya or Russo-fil-kale, the ancient remains of which remained near the village of Beregovoe in the Yalta region.
     In Crimea, there is a hill Fuil, which is located between Ai-Todor and Alupka on the mountain Tepe-Kermen. Now there is the village of Balki, previously it was a large city. Here was the city of Ful, singular. It was a greek colony that originated here in the 5th century BC. Since the 2nd century before the New Era, the colony has been inhabited by a christian element. Starting from the 11th century, the muslim community began to strengthen, as a result of which the city was divided into 2 parts: christian and muslim, which is why the city was called Fulls, in the plural. It was also the seat of the Episcopacy of hotzirs in the diocese of Gotha.
     In the 4th century after the birth of Christ, according to eastern christian sources, the Fulls diocese appears in Fulls. Christian scholars refer to some sources which tell about the Bishopric Folls ohozyrs in the composition of the gothic diocese.
     It was the first diocese in Crimea. After Fulls, 4 more dioceses appeared in the Crimea.
     According to the chronicle data, Fulls diocese coexisted with Got diocese in the west and in the east it was bordered with the Sourozh diocese in Sugdea. The power of the Fulls diocese did not extend to the steppe regions, it was limited to the care of only the settled urban population.
     From its very beginning, the diocese of Fulls has been marked by the variability of its geography, borders, and names. The city of Fulls traveled after the diocese of Fulls, where there was a diocese, there were also Fulls. Hence its plural name in naming, as well as the geographical dispersion of the location.
     The city of Fulls begins to be mentioned from the middle of the 6th century after the birth of Christ. Menander the Protector wrote about it when, in 576, an Embassy delegation from Byzantium was sent to the Crimea, where the Turkic Khaganate ruled at that time, for negotiations, which stopped in the city of Ful, then still in the singular.
     Since the 7th century after the birth of Christ, the diocese of Fulls has been elevated to the level of an Archdiocese. But in the official collections of Constantinople, the Fulls church organization continues to be referred to as the Fulls diocese.
     Since the end of the 8th century, the city of Fulls was the administrative center of the khazars in the Crimea, there were already many christians here, and the khazar leadership in the Crimea did not object to the creation of a special Khotsir (Khazar) diocese, who focused on arriving here in large numbers of khazars.
     Jewish historiography notes that the karaite community, one of the jewish sects of khazar origin, settled in Crimea in the middle of the 8th century. Fulls became one of the cities where the karaites quickly settled in. Since the karaites lived in communities, they quickly capitalized on trade operations in their places of residence.
     In 784, John of Gotha, a saint who participated in the revolt against the khazars, was in Fulls. He was sheltered in the city by the diocese of Fulls.
     In the year 785, John, according to a command sent down to him from above, begins to heal novices who converted to Christianity.
     In 786, he manages to cure a small child of the local Khakan, the ruler of the Turkic Khagan under the Fulls diocese, of terrible ulcers. For this act, the Kagan allows John of Gotha to cross to Amastrida to the elderly Saint George, who was breathing incense. There, John heads the local diocese and dies in 788, 40 days after the Kagan.
     In the 9th century, the territory of the diocese of Fulls became so vast and undivided that it was attached to the diocese of Surozh in Sughdei.
     At the end of the 9th century, Cyril, then still Constantine, arrives in the Fulls Bishopric when he was returning to Korsun after the khazar dispute about the faith. It must be assumed that by the time of Constantine's arrival here, paganism with its worship of the old oak was again dominant in the Fulls. The christian community, deprived of its organization, gradually returned to the religion of its ancestors. In addition, many people came here to Fulls to avoid the oppression of the khazars, among whom the black bulgarians stood out.
     The jewish communities that then existed in almost all cities were closed, and their religion did not extend to the entire population of the cities.
     When Constantine arrived in Fulls, he taught a certain fulla people to worship the gospel instead of the oak tree, which the fulla pagans called Alexander. The oak was unusual, it fused with cherries, in Russia oaks usually grow together with birches. After Cyril's sermon, the men cut down their idol, gave it up to sorrow, and repented of their sins in the gospel.
     By the fulls people, some scholars understand the black bulgarians, the future founders of the cossacks.
     By the end of the 9th century, the urban population of Crimea was almost completely christianized, and only the peoples moving away from the khazars could be pagan. The most famous among them in the Crimea at that time were the black bulgarians. They spoke a language unknown to Cyril, although he was a well-known polyglot and knew the khazar language. The bulgarians spoke their own ugric language.
     In the life of Constantine the Philosopher, there is information that the tree cult was also among the huns of Northern Dagestan, where Constantine also performed feats, converting pagans to christianity.
     There is in one historical legend an indication of the veneration of trees in the Fulls, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus noted the veneration of the tree among the tribes who lived at the mouth of the Dnieper, from where the slavs of the Dnieper transferred this cult to the Fulls.
     It must be assumed that the sermons of Constantine and the conversion of the fulls people to сhristianity were expressed in the restoration of the Church organization here, which was decided to be called not Khotsir (Khazar), but Fulls, since the new Archdiocese was aimed at meeting the needs of local citizens, and not only the khazars. In addition, the khazars who arrived here, for a hundred years of the existence of the Khotsir diocese, ceased to feel like khazars, they called themselves the fulls people.
     At the beginning of the 10th century, the diocese of Fulls was ranked 36th in the list of dioceses of the Byzantine Church. After 20 years in the next list, it is already on the 48th place in importance for Constantinople.
     In the 11th century, the diocese of Fulls completely moved to Sugdeya. The chroniclers begin to locate the Fulls already in the area of Sugdeya, where the Fulls fortress appears.
     In the 13th century Fulls diocese merged with Sugdeyans diocese and is now Sugdo-Fulls Metropolitan. This may mean that both of these dioceses were located nearby. In this case, the city of Fulla of the 13th century should have been located east of Gothia, near Sugdeya-Sudak.
     At the end of the 15th century, Crimean Gothiya was subordinated to Ottoman Turkey. The Fulls, who followed their diocese to Sughdeya of Surozh in the 11th century, had already completely dissolved together with their fulls people in the Surozh population, the basis of which by that time was the seversky slavs, natives of Chernigov.
     Ottoman writers of that time casually noted a certain Fulls fortress in Surozh, where they found no one, and which, as unnecessary, was dismantled, and the stones were distributed to the local population.
     By the end of the 15th century, only the historical name of Fulls remained.
     By the early 16th century, the ancient parishes of the diocese Fulls, after the elimination Sogd, was reassigned to Cafu diocese. The new diocese received the name Cafo-Fulls metropolis.
     At the beginning of the 17th century, the Cafo-Fulls Metropolitan area became a diocese again.
     In 1678, the diocese of Cafo-Fulls was united with the diocese of Gothiya. After that, the diocese of Fulls is no longer mentioned in any church lists of active dioceses.
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