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TheCrimean Goths were aGermanic-speaking people that lived in the lands around theBlack Sea, especiallyCrimea, between about the3rd and18th centuries. While the exact period when they ceased to exist as a distinct culture is unknown, they were the longest-lasting of the peoplesknown as Goths – a name applied to various tribes that may have had little or no connection to each other. Based on the limited historical and linguistic evidence, the Crimean Goths may have been connected to a precedingEast Germanic tribe called theGreuthungi and/or a tribe speaking aWest Germanic language.
Apart from textual reports of the existence of the Goths in Crimea, both first- and second-hand, from as early as 850,[1] numerous archaeological sites also exist, including the ruins of the former capital city of the Crimean Goths: Doros (present-dayMangup). Furthermore, numerous articles of jewellery, weaponry, shields, buttons, pins, and small personal artefacts on display in museums in Crimea and in theBritish Museum have led to a better understanding ofCrimean Gothia.
While most scholars believe that the Crimean Goths were originally anOstrogothic people,[2][3] others have suggested that they appear to have incorporated tribes speaking West Germanic (or evenNorth Germanic) languages.[4][better source needed]
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522–1592), aHoly Roman Empire envoy to the Ottoman Empire is one of the main sources on the Crimean Goths. In his Fourth Turkish letter, Busbecq reports that because the Crimean Gothic language does not strongly resemble the well-attestedGothic language, it is unclear whether it had its origins among the Gothsper se or a West Germanic people, such as theSaxons.
The existence of Goths in Crimea was first attested from around the 3rd century, when they were first reported.[citation needed]
According toHerwig Wolfram, followingJordanes, theOstrogoths had a huge kingdom north of the Black Sea in the 4th century,[5] which theHuns overwhelmed in the time of the Gothic kingErmanaric (orHermanric; i.e. "king of noblemen"[note 1]) when the Huns migrated to the Ukrainian steppe.
The Ostrogoths becamevassals of the Huns until the death ofAttila, when they revolted and regained independence. Like the Huns, the Goths in Crimea never regained their lost glory.
According toPeter Heather andMichael Kulikowski, the Ostrogoths did not even exist until the 5th century, when they emerged from other Gothic and non-Gothic groups.[6][7] Other Gothic groups may have settled in Crimea.[8]
In the late 5th century, the Ostrogothic-Roman rulerTheodoric the Great is known to have attempted, and failed, to recruit Crimean Goths to support his 488–493 war inItaly.[9][10]
During the late 5th and early 6th century, the Crimean Goths had to fight off hordes of Huns who were migrating back eastward after losing control of their European empire.[11]
Several inscriptions from the early 9th century found in a Crimea use the word "Goth" only as a personal name, not an ethnonym. However, that cannot necessarily be construed as evidence of a decline in use of the language, given the total absence of any early written records, from the Crimean Goths themselves.
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The Principality of Gothia orTheodoro was formed after theFourth Crusade out of parts of the Byzantinethema ofKlimata that were not occupied by theGenoese. Its population was a mixture ofGreeks, Crimean Goths,Alans,Bulgars,Kipchaks and other nations, which followedOrthodox Christianity. The principality's official language wasGreek. The territory was initially under the control ofTrebizond, and possibly part of its Crimean possessions, thePerateia.[citation needed]
Many Crimean Goths were Greek speakers and many non-Gothic Byzantine citizens were settled in the region called "Gothia" by the government inConstantinople. A Gothic principality around the stronghold ofDoros (modern Mangup), thePrincipality of Theodoro, continued to exist through various periods of vassalage to theByzantines,Khazars, Kipchaks,Mongols, Genoese and other empires until 1475, when it was finally incorporated in theKhanate of Crimea and theOttoman Empire. This is generally considered to be the fall of the Crimean Goths.[12]
The French bishopJean Germain [fr], writing in 1452, claims that themamluks (slave soldiers of Egypt) were "commonly Picts and Goths [Pictes et Gethes], Greek Christians, conquered by the tricks of the Genoese." The confused reference to thePicts, however, renders the accuracy of the passage questionable.[13]
By the mid-16th century, the existence of the Crimean Goths had become well-known to scholars in Western Europe. Many travellers visited Crimea and wrote about the Goths. One romantic report appears inJoachimus Cureus'sGentis Silesiae Annales (1571), in which he claims that, during a voyage in the Black Sea, his ship was forced ashore by storms. There, to his surprise, he found a man singing a song in which he used "German words". When he asked him where he was from, he answered "that his home was nearby and that his people were Goths".[14] Another visitor,Georgius Torquatus (d. 1575) stated that while they spoke their own language, the Crimean Goths normally used Greek, Tatar or Hungarian when dealing with outsiders.[14]
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq reported (1595) having had a conversation with two Goths inConstantinople. He also left the Gothic-Latin dictionary with about a hundred Germanic words that share some traits in common with the ancientGothic language.[citation needed] Busbecq described them as "a warlike people, who to this day inhabit many villages".[15]
In 1690,Engelbert Kaempfer stated:
The language spoke[n] in the Peninsula Crimea, or Taurica Chersonesus, in Asia, still retains many German words, brought thither, as is suppos'd by a colony of Goths, who went to settle there about 850 years after theDeluge. The late Mr. Busbeq, who had been Imperial Ambassador at the Ottoman Port, collected and publish'd a great number of these words in his fourth letter; and in my own travels through that Country I took notice of many more.[16]
The first report of the Crimean Goths appears in theVita ofSaint Cyril, Apostle to the Slavs, who went to Crimea to preach the gospel to the Khazars (c. 850). He lists "Goths" as people who read and praised the Christian God "in their own language".[17] In 1606,Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that the Goths of Crimea read both the Old and New Testaments "in the letters ofWulfila'salphabet".[18] These are the only two reports that refer to the existence of a written form of Crimean Gothic, but also confirm their Christian faith.
Gothic peoples originally practiced forms ofGothic paganism, in turn, a subset ofGermanic paganism, before nominally beingChristianised from the 4th to 6th centuries AD.[19] The Crimean Goths had converted fromArian toChalcedonian Christianity by the 6th century. In the 8th century,John of Gothia, an Orthodox bishop, led an unsuccessful revolt against Khazar overlordship. Following the split of Chalcedonian Christianity in the 11th century between the Roman and Orthodox branches, these peoples remained loyal toConstantinople as part of theEastern Orthodox Church.[citation needed]
The language of the Crimean Goths is poorly attested, with only 101 certain independent forms surviving, few of which are phrases, and a three-line song, which has never been conclusively translated. Possible loan words are still used inCrimean Tatar, though this too remains highly speculative.
In 2015, five Gothic graffiti inscriptions were found byAndrey Vinogradov, a Russian historian, on stone plates excavated inMangup in 1938, and deciphered by him and Maksim Korobov. The reading of these inscriptions was made difficult, because they were later overwritten by some Greek graffiti.[20][21]
There are numerous other sources referring to the existence of Goths in Crimea followingBusbecq's report, though none provide details of their language or customs. The last known record of the Goths in Crimea comes from theArchbishop of Mohilev,Stanisław Bohusz Siestrzeńcewicz c. 1780, who visited Crimea at the end of the 18th century, and noted the existence of people whose language and customs differed greatly from their neighbours and who he concluded must be "Goths".[22] Theeviction of Christians from the Crimea in 1778 might have secured the downfall.[23]
Though there are no further records of the language's existence since the late 18th century, communities of Germanic peoples with distinctly separate customs and physical features have been recorded living in Crimea, leading some to believe that the Gothic language may have survived as ahaussprache (home language) until as late as 1945.[24]
According to the Soviet ethnologist V. E. Vozgrin, theGoths interbred with theCrimean Tatars and converted to Islam. InThe Crimean Tatars: the diaspora experience and the forging of a nation byBrian Glyn Williams, he quotes Vozgrin as saying: "In all probability their descendants are theTatars of a series of villages in theCrimea who are sharply delineated from the inhabitants of neighboring villages by their tall height and other features characteristic of theScandinavians."
It is likely that the Goths had begun to speak Crimean Tatar and Crimean Greek from long before the arrival of Busbecq,[25] thus they may well have integrated into the wider population, as later visitors toMangup were unable to discover "any trace" of Gothic peoples.[26]
Almost no signs of the Crimean Goths exist today. It was claimed by theThird Reich and byAdolf Hitler that the Crimean Goths had survived long enough to interbreed with later German settlers in Crimea and that the German communities in Crimea constituted native peoples of that area. Hitler had intended to resettle German people in Crimea and rename numerous towns with their previous Crimean Gothic names. During the Nazi occupation of Crimea following itscapture in the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union,Sevastopol was changed to Theoderichshafen.[27] Hitler's ultimate goal for his planned "Gau Gothenland" ("Gothland" or "Gothia") was to replace the local population with "pure Germans" and turn Crimea into what he described as "the German Gibraltar" — a national foothold not contiguous to the rest of Germany, similar to howGibraltar was not contiguous to the rest of the United Kingdom — to be connected to Germany proper by anautobahn. The plan was postponed for the duration of the war, and it never went into effect due to theSoviet recapture of Crimea andNazi Germany's eventual demise. All ethnic Germans were thenexpelled from Soviet territories by 1950.[28]
Theodoric the Great wished the Crimean Goths to join his army on the march to Italy, but they declined with thanks.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)When I asked him about the nature and habits of these people, he gave the sort of replies that I expected. He said that the tribe was warlike and at the present day occupied numerous villages. [...] Their chief towns were Mancup and Scivarin.
