Theme: Architecture
The Chora Church was part of a monastery complex in Constantinople, an exemplar of the 14th-century Palaeologian Renaissance. After the Ottoman conquest, it was transformed into the Kakhrie-dzhami mosque.
A city of Golden Horde, circa 13th-14th centuries, which played a major role in the trade between Idel-Ural, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea region, but was sacked by Tim in 1395. An important archeological find on the Kuma River, the ruins include buildings, public baths, water pipes and workshops; it minted its own coins, 1311. Ibn Battuta described it: I then set out for the city of al-Māchar, a large town, one of the finest of the cities of the Turks, on a great river, and possessed of gardens and fruits in abundance.
A Genoese fortress, on the northern Black Sea littoral. The complex of fortifications in this area dates 6th-16th centuries.
This Scythian kurgan was stumbled upon by the Voronezh Infantry detachment quarrying rock for building in 1830. Known as Царский курган, or the Royal Kurgan, it was one of the most important examples of architecture, mixing a Scythian exterior with a Greek interior. The great size of the tomb led to the assumption that someone of stature had found his place of eternal peace, as Anton Ashik, another who excavated it in the 1830s, romanticized the kurgan. Unfortunately, the kurgan was not well guarded and much of the wealth was looted.
An Orientalist and one of the first Russian archeologists to excavate in Samarkand and other points in Central Asia, Nikolai Ivanovich was one of the most productive and among the most familiar. In addition to Central Asia, he excavated in the Kuban region between the Black Sea and the Caucasus, and excavated the Maikop culture, a major find. He lectured at the Petersburg Archeological Institute, served on the IAK, and published widely. His best-known work was “Mosques of Central Asia” (1905).
One of the original members of the IMAO, Tikhonravov met Alexei Uvarov in the 1850s, when he was on the Vladimir Statistical Committee and the provincial governor assigned him to work with the archeologist. Later, he excavated with Savelev in other districts of his native province. Tikhonravov never moved away from Vladimir, but used his position on the statistical committee to conduct and publish significant archeological information from the region.