This Blessed Land: Crimea and the Crimean Tatars

A virtual island in the Black Sea, Crimea is connected to the European continent by only a narrow sliver of land. For centuries it was part of the Ottoman and Russian empires, then the Soviet Union, and today independent Ukraine. But its history goes back even farther, as is evident from a landscape filled with the remnants of cultures and peoples: classical Greeks, Goths, Byzantines, Mongols, imperial Russians, and, most importantly, Crimean Tatars.