Abstract
The final process of consolidation as an ethnic group was completed when the nomadic Mongols conquered Crimea in the 1200s and their descendants converted to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, after intermixing with the peninsula’s original population. [...]in my visits to their former capital of Bakchesaray, the Garden Palace, located in a scenic gorge in the Crimean Mountains, I found Turkish-style imperial mosques and minarets, beautiful medieval marble fountains engraved with Arabic, and a palace evocative of a lost glory. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin decided to ethnically cleanse the peninsula’s remaining Tatar population during World War II after accusing them of being a race of Nazi collaborators.