Architectonic Members from Indzhi-Bay Hatun Medrese in the Crimea

Abstract

This article uses the materials of archaeological researches of the monuments and iconographic sources to make a detailed analysis of some architectonic members the medrese in the town of Krym (Solkhat; now Staryi Krym, formerly Eski-Kyrym), which was built in 733 AH (=1332/33 AD) by the order from Indzhi-Bay Hatun, a daughter of Kyl-Burun Bay. The results of the research allow a reliable restoration of the original appearance of the entrances to the living rooms of the building. The doorways of the hujras belonged to the same type, with inconsiderable difference of dimensions at some places. Despite the clearly distinguished centre with the dominant monumental portal designating the longitudinal axis of the structure, the medrese’s main facade had an asymmetric composition. Its sides had different numbers and arrangement of windows and stone gutters. The design and shape of the openings which illuminated eastern hujras are reconstructed with reliability. The basic planes of the main facade were decorated with profiled protrusions that completely framed the wall around the perimeter, simultaneously highlighted the basement and contoured the window frames. The most problematic is a detailed reconstruction of the lost forms of the portal which general outline appears on M. M. Ivanov’s watercolours. So far there is no doubt concerning the solid profiled reglet which framed the portal on the outer side: it outlined the portal’s main surfaces by limiting them above and on the back side. The graphic reconstruction of the whole structure with its minor details depends, to a great extent, on the introduction into the scholarship of absolutely all architectural, structural and decorative members discovered in Staryi Krym and especially those excavated from the building in question.