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The Gazi Mansur Tekiya in Bakhchisaray, Crimea

Sufism in Eastern Europe

Ethnographic fieldwork in the Crimea, Ukraine. October 2013 | Conducted within the framework of the research project ‘The Visual and Material Culture of Sufism in Central and Southeastern Europe’ | Outcome: 1 peer-reviewed article [forthcoming]

The site of the Gazy Mansur Tekiya with surrounding cemetery and sacred well is located on the southeastern outskirts of the town of Bakhchisaray in the Maryam Dere valley. Nothing remains of the tekke (or tekiya, a building where Sufi activities, such as teaching, rituals, and worship, take place) itself, which is believed to have been constructed in the first half of the 16th century, at about the same time as the Khan’s Mosque and Palace in Bakhchisaray. The 17th-century Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi, who visited the tekke in 1666–67, recorded that it was built next to the tombs of three Sufi saints: Gazy Mansur Sultan, Shah Halil, and Shah Ramazan. In his travelogue he marvels at the “magnificent mausoleum” that was constructed above Gazy Mansur’s tomb – of this, too, no trace remains. Once an important place of pilgrimage that attracted pilgrims from all three monotheistic religions, the Gazy Mansur Tekiya with its sacred tombs and healing water remains, above all, a site of shared memory.