Bakhchisaray fountain: a typical water supply or a symbol of romanticism?

The Bakhchisarai Fountain, or, as it is also called,The Fountain of Tears was built in 1764 by the Persian architect Omer, who specializes in the construction of luxurious buildings for the powerful. It is difficult to say why the representative of Shiite Iran took up work for one of the Turkish satellites - the Crimean Khan. The fact is that the antagonism of Turkey and Iran (Persia) had not only political, but also ideological roots.

Господствующая в Иране шиитская ветвь Ислама had some theological differences from the Sunni, adopted in the Ottoman Empire and its allies and subjects. Having declared each other heretics, the two states waged endless wars from the beginning of the sixteenth century. However, since the forties of the eighteenth century a seventy-five-year truce came. Perhaps taking advantage of them, the famous Persian architect went to the Crimea and became a “guest worker”, having created a small miracle - the Bakhchisarai fountain.

Bakhchisarai, the current Crimean district center, in the pastwas the capital of the Crimean Khanate, which brought a lot of trouble to its northern neighbors - Russia, Ukraine and the Commonwealth. Krymchaks made raids on the lands of the Caucasus.

The residence of the Crimean Khan was in Bakhchisarai- a beautiful palace, already in our time listed in the list of cultural monuments of global importance. In an effort to embody their ideas of paradise on earth, Muslim architects created a “palace-garden” (as translated from the Crimean Tatar language the name of the city of Bakhchisarai). And the city itself owes its appearance to the beginning of the construction of the palace. When at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Crimean Khan was close to his then-rate, he decided to build a new one.

In the Khan's palace there are two fountains.One of them is called “golden” because of the golden cover of the ornament, which symbolizes the Garden of Eden. The second was called the “fountain of tears” because of the romantic legend Pushkin heard during his Crimean trip. According to legend, one of the khan's wives poisoned the other, to whom the lord of the Crimea was more supportive. Grieving over the loss, the khan ordered to build a "fountain of tears". Thanks to Pushkin’s talent, this story has been transformed throughout a well-known work describing the conflict between Georgian Zarema and Lithuanian Mary, which ended with the death of the latter.

"Fountain of tears" received a literary name"Bakhchisarai fountain" in the title of the poem. When Pushkin visited Bakhchisarai, he was a little over twenty, the most romantic age. Considering that Alexander Sergeevich was also a poet, that is, a doubly romantic, the story he heard could not fail to impress him, he could not help creating a poem about the Bakhchisarai fountain! Pushkin wrote this small piece for two years. He graduated in 1823, and in 1824 it saw the light.

Надо сказать, что в плане архитектуры The Bakhchisarai fountain is nothing original, structures of this type are widespread in the Muslim world. The famous painting by Karl Bryullov, written under the impression of the poem by Pushkin, gives an absolutely wrong idea about the appearance of the fountain, which in reality looks more like a typical water supply.

But that's the power of the master!No wonder the honorary title "the creator of the modern Russian literary language," according to most literary critics, was awarded Pushkin! The fountain of Bakhchisarai, thanks to the talent of a genius from an ordinary element of park architecture, became a symbol of romanticism.