Boris Denike’s Contribution to the Studies of the Crimean Tatar Architectural Heritage

This article presents a historiographical reconstruction of a little-known page in the heritage and biography of the art historian and orientalist Boris Petrovich Denike (1885–1941). The research uses the method of comparing the content of B. P. Denike’s article with the entries in his journal concerning the visits to the Crimea from 1905 to 1937. This approach allows the one to prove that the description of the monuments provided by B. P. Denike’s essay is the result of not only rethinking of the well-known current scholarship on the Crimean Tatar architecture, but also the scholar’s personal impressions of the monuments obtained during visits to the Crimea in different years. B. P. Denike managed to make a typological definition of the features of the Crimean Tatar architecture and to determine its place in the system of world architecture. In a brief essay of 1937, B. P. Denike revealed the synthetic nature of the Crimean Tatar architecture. According to B. P. Denike, the unique appearance of the structures belonging to the “cult” and “civil” architecture of the Crimean Tatars shaped in result of the synthesis of many styles. B. P. Denike managed to reveal the Crimean Tatar architecture’s unique perception of the architectural styles of the East and West, explainable by its genesis. Simultaneously, the reading of B. P. Denike’s biography in the context of the continual researches of the Crimean Tatar culture allows the one to compile a list of unexpected connections, intertwining the destinies of outstanding persons in the history of Crimea, such as archaeologist B. N. Zasypkin, archaeologist and ethnographer N. L. Ernst, art historian Ia. A. Tugenhol’d, Turkologist and Crimea researcher Ia. M. Kemal’, and museum worker G. Ia. Rosselevich. B. P. Denike’s forgotten article now returning to the academic circulation is of especial value, as the researcher described several monuments of the cultural heritage of the Crimean Tatars that did not survive.