Cave monastery Kachi Kalyon, Crimea

Kachi-Kalyon is a medieval cave monastery in Crimea. It is located in the Bakhchisaray district between the villages of Predushchelnoye and Bashtanovka on the northern bank of the Kacha River. People have been using the rock overhangs of the Kachin Canyon for housing for more than a thousand years, so it is problematic to name the founding date of Kachi-Kalyon. It is believed that a more or less distinct settlement appeared here in the 6th century AD. And at first it was purely secular. Only from the 8th century in Kachi-Kalyon the monastery complex began to grow and develop.

The meaning of the name "Kachi-Kalyon" is not known for certain. Traditionally it is translated as “ship of the crusade” (supposedly because of the characteristic shape of the rock), but there is no sufficient evidence for this.

The basis of the economy of early Kachi-Kalon was wine production. The nomadic pastoralists who inhabited the Black Sea steppes did not produce wine themselves, but they willingly consumed it and were willing to pay for it. And the residents of the Kachi Valley sought to satisfy the demand that was so profitable for them and pressed wine in incredible quantities. In the 13th century, the Tatars came to Crimea. At first these were temporary raids, but gradually they settled down. And in 1313 a turning point occurred - the Tatars converted to Islam. The Koran forbids drinking wine. Sales fell sharply, and the need for huge vineyards disappeared. Many of the wine presses in Kachi-Kalon were converted for other purposes.

At the time of its maximum flourishing, i.e. in the 15th century, the Kachi Kalyon monastery was home to 200 monks (which is a lot). This can be determined by the number of cave cells. The cells were single. In general, the architecture of the monastery is multi-tiered - on the ground floor there were wine presses, utility rooms, and cattle pens. The living quarters were located higher - from the second to the fifth floor. There were no window openings, and archaeologists did not find any glass fragments. Presumably, light penetrated into the cave dwellings through the windows in the wooden doors covered with a bull's bladder.

They burned it in the cave monastery with smoke-free charcoal, burning it on ceramic braziers. The ashes from these braziers were thrown down onto the slope for centuries. Alkaline ash mixed with the local acidic soil formed a very fertile layer on which vineyards grew well. Wild and crushed, the monastery grapes still climb in the bushes under the slopes of Kachi-Kalon. There were even experiments on crossing it with modern varieties to develop resistance to phylloxera.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the appearance of the monastery was radically different from the present one. Grottoes and caves were not visible - they were hidden under numerous wooden outbuildings and platforms. It was from such canopies, as from scaffolding, that work was carried out to hollow out the upper caves and cells. In 1475, Crimea was captured by the Turks. The monastery resisted and was burned and since then has never been fully restored. Subsequently, monastic life began again in the Fourth Grotto. Due to the fact that the Turks drove many of the valley's inhabitants to Constantinople, the monastery lost a significant part of its parishioners (and profits) and, as a result, fell into disrepair.

The Turks freed the cave monastery from taxes, satisfied with the teaching that all power is from God and also with the idea of ​​​​non-resistance to evil through violence. But even this did little to help the weakening monastery. Then the monks began to establish connections with the Moscow kingdom. As a result, Kachi-Kalyon, like the Assumption Monastery in Bakhchisarai and many other Orthodox monasteries, received church protection, i.e. assistance from the treasury. In exchange, the monks provided the Moscow Tsar with first-hand information about what was happening in the Crimean Khanate.

The Russian-Turkish War lasted from 1769 to 1774. At some point, a 30,000-strong expeditionary force led by Prince Dolgoruky found itself in Crimea. Under pressure from circumstances, Khan changed his political orientation from pro-Turkish to pro-Russian. Crimea was declared independent from Turkey. However, in practice everything was not so simple.

In 1778, in order to undermine the economy of the Crimean Khanate, Russia organized the resettlement of Christians from Crimea to the Azov region. The fact is that in Crimea only non-Christians paid taxes and the loss of Christians would have resulted in the emptying of the Khan’s treasury. The Crimean Metropolitan Ignatius was bribed (he belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople) and he gave the command to the priests to preach the exodus to united Russia. The peasants were promised transport (Syvorov drove up the carts) and 7 rubles of aid per person. The Metropolitan received more than 7,000 rubles. Together with the peasants, the monks also left Kachi-Kalyon. For some time the monastery was left unattended and many church frescoes and other Christian symbols were destroyed by Muslims.

The last of the khans of the Girey dynasty was so unpopular among the people (for his European way of life) that he ultimately abdicated power in 1783 in favor of Catherine the Second, but this did not save him. During a pilgrimage to Mecca, Khan Shahin Giray was strangled by the Turks. The Tatars, not wanting to live under the rule of the Orthodox queen, fled from Crimea to the Turks. Christians, as you remember, were evicted even earlier. Crimea is depopulated. Then an order was issued to populate the empty lands with retired soldiers and widows. After the decree of the Synod on the restoration of places of worship in Kachi-Kalyon, the tiny Anastasievskaya Kinovia operated - only 4 monks, subordinate to the Assumption Monastery in Bakhchisarai.

When Soviet power came, the Assumption and Kosmo-Demyansky monasteries, which prayed for Wrangel’s victory, were declared enemies of the people in their entirety and exiled to Solovki. And for some reason they forgot about the Anastasievskaya Kinovia. They only realized it in 1932 when they suddenly discovered living monks under their noses. They urgently convened a meeting of state farm workers and unanimously voted to evict the monks. The monastery was closed, the stone structures were dismantled, and the building materials were taken to the cowsheds. And the land was transferred to the Bakhchisarai Museum-Reserve. Thus began the fourth life of Kachi-Kalyon - the life of a museum object.

Source of St. Anastasia.

Anastasia lived in Ancient Rome at the very end of the 3rd century AD. She was a rich Christian. Together with her maid, dressed in beggar's rags, she walked through the casemates where Christians were imprisoned and helped them - she fed them, treated them, and, if possible, redeemed them for freedom. She died in 304. Subsequently she was canonized as the holy pattern-maker (deliverer from bonds). It is believed that Anastasia is able to loosen not only the real chains of prisoners and slaves, but also the bonds of an unhappy marriage, as well as the bonds of a difficult pregnancy, i.e. helps to give birth safely. Therefore, in the 18th century, next to Anastasia’s spring there was a bed on which local women came to give birth.

For a long time, wild cherries grew in the Fourth Grotto, below the spring. The tree also led a monastic lifestyle - it bloomed every year, but did not bear fruit. Now the old cherry tree has dried up and the abbot of the monastery, Father Dorofei, ordered two cherry seedlings to be planted in the grotto. They started. Over the past years, the flow of the Anastasia spring has decreased significantly - below the main bowl there is no stream, only barely wet soil. And at one time there was a large font there and water flowed from the spring into the font, where those who wanted to be healed took baths. Now, due to the influx of pilgrims, tourists and others who want to refresh themselves in the holy water, as well as due to the drying out of the spring, the water in the bowl has become unsuitable for drinking or bathing.

A significant part of this text is a retelling of the author’s excursion of archaeologist Alexei Ivanovich Ivanov, which we heard on August 22, 2009.

Kachi-Kalyon on the map

You can get to Kachi-Kalyon by bus from Bakhchisarai going to Sinapnoye. Ask the driver to stop near the spring at the end of the village of Predushchelnoye, then you can get water, but you will have to walk a little forward. Or you can go a little further - near the path to the monastery.

You can also get to Kachi-Kalyon by joining our hikes Cave cities of Crimea and Bakhchisarai-Yalta.

On the map below I marked the approximate outline of the settlement and monastery of Kachi-Kalyon, the main objects of the complex and the path to them from the Bakhchisaray-Sinapnoe highway.