A letter by Abraham Firkovitch to General-Governor M.S. Vorotsov dating from (9) 21 of February 1849 as a new source on the contacts between Karaites and Russian imperial administration

Abstract

This paper consist of a commented publication of a letter written by Jewish Karaite traveler, archeologist and intellectual Abraham Firkovitch to Mikhail Vorontsov, the Russian General-Governor Caucasus (1844–1854), Novorossiya and Bessarabia (1823–1844). The text of this letter is written by the hand of Alexander Tarkhov, a student of Moscow University, who was Firkovitch’ companion during his travels to Caucasus in 1849–1850. It contains the descriptions of Firkovitch’s epigraphic findings, including the texts of two forged tombstone inscriptions of Tchufut-Cale. One of them mentions a certain Eliyahu, who died (according to Firkovitch) during the Genoese siege of the town in 1259, actually before the beginning of the real Genoese settlement in Crimea.

The paper demonstrates why the problem of the relations between Crimean Karaites and Genoese was so important for Firkovitch. The author of this paper argues that both Vorontsov and Firkovitch remembered the story of French marshal A.Marmont’s visit to Karaite synagogue of Gözlev (Eupatoria) in 1838, when the leaders of Crimean Karaite community in vain tried to prove that their ancestor have come to the Peninsula “before the Genoese”.