The Mosque in the Village of Sheikh-Koi (Davydovo) According to the Photographs from A. L. Rogach Personal Collection in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art

This article addresses the history of researches on the ruined mosque located on the outskirts of the village of Davydovo (Simferopol district, Republic of the Crimea). For the first time this monument called attention in the late 1920s, when a preliminary study was conducted under the supervision of B. N. Zasypkin, and Osman Akchokrakli translated the inscription placed above one of the entrances and showing the date of 1358, which later became the main argument (due to a large number of spoliae, probably erroneous) for a number of researchers to date the construction of the mosque. The main historiographic array of materials comprises of the works of Russian researchers V. P. Kirilko and S. G. Bocharov. They performed perfect architectural analysis of the now-lost cultural heritage site against the background of their field researches and archival materials. The analysis of photographs from the personal archive of the Soviet architect and restorer Aleksandr Lukich Rotach (1893–1990), now residing in the Central State Archives of Literature and Art (St Petersburg), allows a number of important clarifications. The photographs (15 total), mostly taken by B. N. Zasypkin and now introduced to the scholarship, document the exterior and interior of the monument. There are pictures of particular architectural fragments and details, among which the most important for historical and architectural interpretation are those of the minaret, portal, and mihrab. So far, the complex of photograph showing the mosque in the village of Sheikh-Koi from A. L. Rotach’s collection is the only collection of high-quality visual documents uncovering the state of the monument at the last stage of its existence.