Palace of the Emir of Bukhara (Дворец Эмира Бухарского) (Yalta)

 Palace of the Emir of Bukhara Yalta

 

Descriptin of Palave of the Emir of Bukhara

Emir of Bukhara Khanate Seyd Abdul Ahat Khan (color picture is original and was made in 1911)
 
Palace of the Emir of Bukhara was built in Yalta between 1907 and 1911 under design of architect N. Tarasov. Its first owner Emir (ruler) of Bukhara Khanate (Russian protectorate) Seyd Abdul Ahat Khan. Emir became famous for issuing many progressive laws for his Khanate including abolishing executions, torture and slavery. Seyd Abdul Ahat Khan loved Yalta and spent almost every summer in his palace. In fact he was chosen as a honorary citizen of Yalta.
 
The palace was known as Dilkiso, which in Turkic language means "enchanting" or "captivating". Palace of the Emir of Bukhara was constructed from Kerch stone and consists of two stories. After Russian Revolution of 1917 it was nationalized and turned into Oriental Museum. During World War II palace along with much of Yalta was badly damaged by fire. After the war Palace of the Emir of Bukhara was restored and today it houses a resort of the Black Sea Military Fleet known as "Yalta".

 

The palace of the Emir of Bukhara, built in 1907-1911 by N. Tarasov's design, is located in Yalta on the territory of the Yalta sanatorium.

Seyid Abdulahad Khan (1859-1910) - ruler of the Bukhara Emirate, a state that existed from the middle of the 18th century to 1920, occupying part of modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Until 1868 the state was independent, and in 1868 it became a protectorate of the Russian Empire. Now all three Central Asian countries consider themselves to be his heirs.

The Bukhara emirate was ruled by the Mantyg dynasty. These rulers have always been oriented towards Russia in their policy, exchanged embassies and maintained friendly relations. But in the middle of the 19th century, the Bukhara Emirate tried to compete with the Russian Empire for control over Central Asia: the Bukharians invaded the Fergana Valley, which already belonged to Russia, and took Kokand. Russia responded, and after several battles, the Bukhara Emirate became a protectorate of Russia. The most interesting thing is that the treaty on protectorate was drawn up and implemented, but Russia never officially certified it, fearing to spoil relations with England.

It was the father of Emir Seyid Abdulahad Khan, Muzaffar, who was the ruler who first unleashed a war with Russia, and then lost it.

Seyid Abdulahad Khan was his fifth son from his beloved Shamshat, who managed to rise from slaves to wife, thanks to her beauty and intelligence. After the death of his father, Seyid Abdulahad Khan became the ruler of the state with all the ceremonies laid down in the emirate. He performed a prayer in the mausoleum of Sheikh Bahauddin, who in Bukhara is revered as the second saint after Muhammad, and then was raised on a white camel mat - this is the eastern analogue of the European coronation.

He became a progressive and kind ruler: he abolished torture and limited executions, developed international trade and mining of copper and iron, and established orders. And he preferred to maintain good relations with Russia. He traveled a lot around the country, sent his son to study in the capital. He was an honorary member of the Muslim charitable society in St. Petersburg. In many ways, his merits contributed to the fact that the Cathedral Mosque finally appeared in the capital of Russia: he himself donated for it, and organized fundraising among the Bukhara merchants. The emir also preferred to rest in Russia - on the Sour waters of the Caucasus or in the Crimea.

Palace history
In 1898, the emir acquired a plot of land in Yalta for the construction of a summer palace. Construction began in 1907 and was completed in 1911. Almost simultaneously with this, Seyid Abdulahad Khan was building himself a palace in Zheleznovodsk and another one near Bukhara. He had a lot of money - only in the state bank of Russia more than twenty million rubles were stored on his personal account, so he built luxurious housing.

The construction was entrusted to Nikolai Georgievich Tarasov, a Yalta city architect. According to his projects, several elegant mansions for the nobility, the Yalta city theater, and the summer residence of the Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich in Kurpaty were built. But this palace became its most grandiose building.

The palace was built in the "neo-Moorish" style, the most fashionable in the Crimea in the 19th-20th centuries. This style is guided by classical Spanish patterns: oriental ornaments, characteristic forms of arched windows and columns, domes, courtyards with fountains ... Yusupov's palace in Koreiz was built in this style, and much earlier - Vorontsov's palace in Alupka.

The palace of Seyid Abdulahad Khan is a classic example of the style. It is built of "Kerch stone" - a local porous golden shell rock and is decorated with rich carvings, numerous porticoes, columns, balconies and balustrades. The interior decoration of the palace, unfortunately, is almost not preserved, but most likely, it was the richest - to match the external. A park was laid out in front of the palace.

The emir himself did not have time to see the palace in all its glory, although he called it "Dilkiso" - "captivating". He rested in Yalta in another place - on the slope of Mount Mogabi not far from the Uchan-Su waterfall. Here N. Tarasov in 1905-1909 built another small two-story palace pavilion. Now it houses the main building of the sanatorium "Uzbekistan".

The emir donated a lot for the improvement of his beloved city, built a hospital for the poor here (and named it Alekseevskaya, in honor of the young Tsarevich) and a women's gymnasium. He became an honorary citizen of Yalta. According to contemporaries, the khan was friends with Count Felix Yusupov, the father of the future murderer of Rasputin, and the owner of another grandiose Moorish palace in Koreiz.

 

In 1910, Seyid Abdulahad Khan dies and leaves all his possessions to his heir, Seyid Alim Khan. The heir visited Yalta in his youth, studied in St. Petersburg, knew languages ​​well. He served in the Russian army, in the Tersk Cossack army - and rose to the rank of major general. Having become the main emirate, he continued the traditions of his father: with his first decree, he tried to limit corruption among Bukhara officials. Seyid Alim Khan forbade them to take bribes and use the state treasury for personal purposes.

Several more times before 1917, he managed to arrive at his Yalta palace, but in 1917 he was forced to flee the country and died in exile. The fate of his descendants is tragic: he was able to take almost his entire family to Afghanistan, except for his three younger sons. At first they wanted to shoot the children, but nevertheless they kept them alive and took them to Moscow. The former emir negotiated with the authorities for a long time, trying to get them released to him, but permission was never obtained. Two of his sons were repressed in the thirties, and one survived safely until the eighties, taught at the Kuibyshev Military Academy, only carefully concealing his origin even from his relatives ..

Oriental museum
After the revolution, the palace was, of course, nationalized. On March 25, 1921, the so-called Oriental Museum was opened here. Poet Maximilian Voloshin stands at the origins of the museum - it was he who was authorized to collect and nationalize cultural values ​​in Crimea. M. Voloshin contributed to the opening of a rich exposition here.

The basis of the collection, in addition to antiquities from the palace itself, was the collection of the Crimean-Caucasian Mountain Club. It also received a collection of various weapons, which was collected for many years by the State Chancellor A. Gorchakov, the same one who once studied at the Lyceum with A. Pushkin. Two thousand items of archaeological significance were nationalized from the Ai-Todor estate - this was a personal collection led. Prince Alexander Mikhailovich.

A huge number of valuables in 1921 were exported from the Crimea abroad, and quite officially: there were special expert commissions that collected and sold valuables. But everything that remained in Russia was taken to this museum. It had four departments - Bukhara, Persian, Arab and Crimean Tatar. The richest collections of oriental carpets and weapons occupied special places. The Oriental Museum was housed in the building until the Great Patriotic War. Valuables from the Crimean palaces continued to come here - for example, in 1925 things from the Yusupov Palace moved. The museum organized expeditions to Crimean villages in search of new ethnographic and folklore material, collected handwritten Arabic books.

In 1927, a terrible earthquake happened in Crimea. The walls of the palace cracked, furnaces cracked, many fragile exhibits were broken: porcelain vases, screens, glass cabinet doors, knick-knacks, decorative lanterns. Persian and Bukhara carpets had to be cleaned of plaster. In total, over eleven thousand rubles were spent on repairs.

But another Yalta museum (folk art) suffered even more, did not open for a long time, and part of its collections got here: Anatolian and Japanese collections. After renovation, new halls were opened in the Oriental Museum. And part of the collection of carpets, on the contrary, was sold abroad in 1932.

By the mid-thirties, it turned out that it was impossible to simply engage in science in the Soviet state. The Turkic scholar Yakub Kemal, who was director of the museum for many years, was accused of bourgeois nationalism and conducting subversive counter-revolutionary work. As a former member of the Kurultai (that is, a representative of the nobility and separatist) he was dismissed from his post. On July 10, 1934, Yakub Kemal was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. He died in prison in 1939.

Before the war, due to the threat of occupation, part of the museum collection was taken to Uralsk. In the first months of the war, the museum with the remaining exhibits burned down - it was set on fire so as not to give it to the Germans. As a result, some of the things were preserved by the museum staff, some - for example, the collection of Japanese vases and oriental carpets - still went to the invaders. The Germans took out some things, and some simply destroyed.

After the war, the ruined museum was never able to restore its work. The remains of the exhibits went to other museums, and here a sanatorium of the Black Sea Fleet was opened.

As part of the sanatorium
In our time, this territory is occupied by the military sanatorium "Yalta". The Emir's palace is now considered "Building number 8". It houses the sanatorium library, aromatherapy rooms and service rooms. Stucco molding, ceiling paintings, parquet in several rooms have been preserved from the original decoration. Visitors to the sanatorium have access to a balcony with a view of the city.

The entrance to the territory of the sanatorium and inside the building is limited.