A place where now the village of Starosillia (formerly Salachik) is situated, has always attracted people by hidden location, coziness, tranquility and life-giving force of the valley land, availability of water and the protecting rocks from the plateau (in the form of large fish, as if swimming out of the undergrowth of mountain forests), like it is intended to shelter the villagers from uninvited guests.

Cave city Chufut-Calais is located on the plateau of the mountain ridge that dominates over the three deep valleys. Alano-Sarmatians are believed pioneered limestone cliff plateau in the IV century, and founded the fortress city there, later named Chufut-Calais (Jewish fortress).

However, there is another version of the creation of the city, or rather three cave-towns. At the end of the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian, around 550 year, Justinian took up the tasks of another type, namely the protection of the access to Khersones.

For this, by order of Emperor Byzantine engineers have developed fortresses Eski-Kerman, Mangup (Mangup-Calais) and Chufut-Calais. Fortresses were built and inhabited by the Alans and Goths. However, these data were not included in the treatise “On the buildings”. Other treatises were not written, and information about these events was identified only by archeology.

For centuries the fortress safely hid the civilian population of the surrounding valleys in the dangerous days of the regular invasions of new wave of militant nomads – the Huns, Magyars, Khazars, Pechenegs Polovechens …

Appreciating the castle and the valley at their true value, the first Crimean Khan Haji Giray arranged his fortified residence in the old part of the city in the middle of the XV century, and at the bottom, in Salachik, he built up a palace.

Constantly living in the palace, Khan could safely hide in a fortress in the dangerous moments of the period of hard struggle for the independence of Crimea from the Golden Horde. From the middle of the XVII century, when Khan left the fortress, the citadel was given to Karaites. This time the fortress gets the name of Calais, and then Chufut-Calais, which in translation from the Tatar language means Jewish fortress.

There was arranged the first printing house in the Crimea in 1731 on the territory of Chufut-Calais. Books were printed there in Hebrew and Karaite languages and were mainly of religious content.
Having received some benefits after including the Crimea into Russia, Karaites left the rocky plateau (the last inhabitants left the Chufut Calais in 1852), where living conditions were harsh, and moved to Bakhchisarai, Simferopol, Evpatoria. The city was deserted…

It is better to start getting to know the city with the east gate, defeating slope to the upper Iosofatova valley. This is a biblical name given in honor of Iosofatova Valley in Jerusalem by the Karaites, the cradle of the Jewish religion. There is seen a large swimming pool carved into the rock to the right from the gate in front of the fortress wall. There people used to collect rainwater for drinking and household needs of livestock.

There used to stay a windmill to the right from the hill. Behind it, on the road, there is an ancient Karaite cemetery hidden in the bushes of mountain forests. Above the rectangular doorway there is fixed a marble slab with roughly carved signs, which meaning is not solved yet. The gates are made of oak and upholstered with the forged iron. The doorway in the tower of the inner side of the bridge is blocked with the semicircular canted ashlar.

After passing the gate, you enter into a new, Karaite part of the city bounded by the eastern and middle defensive walls and impregnable rocky cliffs on the north and the south.
There is one main longitudinal street network in the city. It has adjoining roads from the north of the cross. There is remained a large stone house with a tiled roof on the south side of the main street. Here used to live A.S. Firkovich (1786-1874) until his death, a famous Karaite scholar, traveler, a connoisseur of antiquities, collected many old and Karaite Jewish books, manuscripts and gravestone inscriptions.

Due to a small area of the city and a large population (there used to live up to 4-5 thousand people in the end of the XVI century and there were more than 400 houses in Chufut Calais). The houses were built up almost back to back, mostly two-story, often in basements – with housing upstairs and household space below. The windows looked out into the courtyard, which was enclosed by a high fence with adjacent inside sheds and stalls for livestock. Traces of the former buildings have been partially remained in the ruins of neighborhoods.

The ten-meter wall crossing the plateau was 5 meters thick and had a gate in the middle. It was strengthened on the flanks of the towers and further protected with a cut ditch 4 meters wide and a up to 2 meters deep from the east side of the cliff. The trench was filled with rain and melt water flowing down the stone grooves, and was holding water until the level of bridge, hampering the rolling of battering guns.
At the northern edge of the cliff, where a large ditch was not brought, there was organized a wicket gate in the bend of the wall, carefully camouflaged with two small ditches. One could secretly penetrate through this gate into the small ditch and the cave with the tower, obviously built up over it. From this point the defenders could suddenly strike the precipitating from the flank and fireat the enemies, not allowing them to approach the wall.
There opens a public area of irregular shapes in the old town behind the middle gate.

There is there remained a stone on the cliff to the left side. On the right there is a mosque, erected in 1346 on the ruins of the Christian church, and then far away one can see the mausoleum Nenekedzhan Khanym.from this area take the beginning the three main streets: Burunchakskaya (North), Central and Kenasskaya, with a network of curves alleys between them. Street names are conditional. Name Kenasskoy was given by the two Karaite temples – Big and Small.

These were constructed at different times (in the XIV and XVIII centuries) at the southern precipice, and turned to the street by their entrances. This street leads to the small gate, artfully built up in the South defensive wall, in a zigzag form. The wall was built of rubble stone carefully polished. The gate is not visible from the valley.

Behind the southern wall there are towering cliffs with fighting caves cut into four tiers and interconnected. These caves, which in later times were used for household purposes, but mistakenly believed to be the main housing of the ancient highlanders in the XVIII-XIX centuries, Chufut-Calais was attached by the travellers to the cave cities.

With the background of ruins of the old city throws contrasts well-preserved mausoleum Janicke Khanum. Its monumental size dominates the height of the northern cliff Chufut-Calais. In the massive walls of the portal there are Seljuk niches with round columns and Arabesque semi-dome.

Pylon cornice at the foot arch is decorated with the same arabesques carved with stylized petals. Facial plane pylons are decorated with a border of geometric interlocking cylinders. Portal is put on a high pedestal, surrounded by the cornice.

A stone stairway of seven steps of the arch’s width leads to the entrance, where the bow-shaped aperture is raised to a height of several masonry, forming a high threshold, and is decorated with a rectangular shaped frame with carved inscriptions in Arabic script.

Inside there is a tombstone with an inscription in Arabic: “This tomb of Empress Janicke Khanum, daughter of the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh, who died the month of Ramadan 841 years.” The name of the khan’s daughter is surrounded by legends. According to one of them, a daughter, fleeing from the wrath of her father, who found his daughter with her lover there, threw herself into the abyss. Tha is why she is buried at the cliff …

North Janicke Khanum plateau drops off. Here from a dizzy height there opens a magnificent panorama of the Crimean mountains. In August 1988 there happened a sensational discovery in Chufut-Calais. Despite the lack of the natural outlets of underground water town appeared to have lived hundreds of years.

Drinking water was delivered from a nearby spring. Precipitation was used for the household needs. However, the legends, stories and books it is known that in times of siege, the water was taken from the hidden hydraulic system, details of which were military secrets.

Even when the fortress lost its defensive feature, the Karaites passed this mystery from generation to generation. They were choosing only the devoted people for this purpose. Based on the written and oral sources, cavers began searching. Theoretically, the water had to be found in the way of a geological fault in the area Pendzhere-Isar (“walls with the window”).

The work was focused here. A slight deepening of the growing tree at the edge of it appeared to be the strewn mouth of the well, which was exposed in August 1988. First, the blocks of rock and soil had been removing from the well by hands, and then with the help of mechanisms for 3 years. At the 25-meter depth the cavers found littered with stones side entrance, gently rising up.

Connection between the entrance and the well has formed a large room. On its walls, except for a trace of water once stood here, there are signs of soot, made by Karaite italics, rarely – Latin and Aramaic square script. Topographic mapping showed that the upper end of the gallery is located underneath the bottom of a weakly expressed on the surface holes.

After clearing the hopper it became possible to get into the cave from the opposite eastern end. It turned out that the gallery starts from the basement of the battle tower, which probably belonged to the first line of defense of the city-fortress. Archaeologists did not know about this line earlier. After clearing the cave there appeared a huge 108-meter gallery of up to 2 meters of height and a width of 2,5 meters in front of the explorers.

Selected areas of the body were covered with small stalactites. There were found engraved plan of the cave and human figurines on the walls. The junction of the vertical shaft and galleries have not yet been bottomed the well. At a depth of 27 meters, the well grows, and shows a stone spiral descent, which as far as clearance leads to extensive reservoir at a depth of 40 meters from the surface.

Once the water appeared from the large cracks in the walls of buildings, it was received into one of the baths at first, then through the drain pipe flowed into another stone tank, located just below the inlet well, and from there was taken to use. Now cracks silted, and water are practically not been forthcoming. On the walls of the lower rooms there were found niches for lamps and yet incomprehensible carved on the wall signs.

There are left fragments of the fence at the inner edge of the way. After the clearing of the lower part of the system from the clay and silt, the total depth of the well reached 45 meters (November 2002). Presumably, underground hydraulics could be created by Khazars or the Byzantines at the beginning of our era. This system could also have a religious significance, as well as it could have been a refuge.

This is indicated by the scale of the facilities and folk stories about the Crimean Karaites. When cleaning the area adjacent to the east to the gallery entrance, there was found a treasure in the kitchen ceramic pots at a depth of 40 cm from the surface. According to the preliminary examination carried out by staff of the Crimean branch of the Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, there were:

- Venetian gold coins – 29 pieces (1425-1430 Gg.)
- Gold dinar of the Egyptian sultans – 1 piece (1425-1430 Gg.)
- Silver coins – 4259 pieces (XIV-XV cc.)
- Coins of the Genoese Crimean engraving of the city Kafa
- Engraved coins “Khan” (Golden Horde’s khan named Uzbek)
- Dzhuchids’ dirhams
- Coin of the Crimean Khanate with the engraving of the city Kirk-Ep (Dzhuft-Calais).

This is the richest treasure of such coins found in the Crimean peninsula, as well as in Eastern Europe and the world at large. The treasure was handed to the Simferopol historic museum.

Symbols:
1. Mausoleum Dzhaanicke Khanym, daughter of Khan Tohtamish.
2. North slope of the plateau.
3. Kenasskaya street.
4. Middle / Srednyaya street.
5. Burunchakskaya street.
6. Complex of household caves. During the attack, they performed a defensive function.
7. It is believed that there was a cave monastery in the period before the Tatars.
8. Small South Gate of the Kucuk-Kapu.
9. Remains of the Khan’s palace, mosque and mint.
10. Small and Big kenasas – Karaites’ houses of worship.
11. South slope of the plateau.
12. Gates of the middle defensive wall – Orta-Kapu.
13. Farmstead of Solomon Baym (Cha-Boryu).
14. Rich mansion with the household caves Chaush-Kobasa (“Chief cave”).
15. Remains of the bath.
16. Big (Eastern) Gate – Bink-Kapu.
17. Double ditch. On the outer ditch the road leads to the valley Ashlama-Dere.
18. Road to the cemetery in the valley of Jehoshaphat.
19. Remains of the base of the palace, built up in 1897 for the reception of members of the imperial family.
20. Living estate of the XIX century, this used to belong to the Karaite historian A. Firkovich.
21. Entrance into the cave, connected with secret well.