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.