Crimean Legend - Fountain of Tears in Bakhchisarai

Khan Krym-Girey was a severe and fierce man; nobody was spared by him. He never felt sorry for anybody. He ascended his throne having gone through heaps of dead bodies. Power and glory replaced everything for him - love, tenderness and even money. Khan Krym-Girey was said to have no heart in his chest. But one day the khan found himself in the twilight of his years; he had grown old, his heart had weakened and, suddenly, love came into it.

It turned out that a little girl-slave had been brought to the khan's harem. Her name was Dilara.

Dilara did not want to warm the khan with her tenderness and love, but the khan loved her more and more regardless. For the first time in his life the khan felt that his heart could suffer, ache and rejoice.

Dilara could not live long in captivity. She faded away like a fragile flower robbed of sunshine.

When a beloved person is dying, the heart weeps blood. The khan understood how hard a heart could ache.

Then the khan called the craftsman Omer and told him:

- Make it so that the stone can carry my grief through the centuries and can weep as a man's heart weeps.

Omer listened and thought for a long time: how could he make a human tear from stone? At last he told the khan:

- If your heart has wept, the stone will weep too. And all people will learn what man's tears can be...

And Omer engraved the petals of a flower on the marble slab. There was a human eye in the middle of the flower, and from that flower a heavy man's tear was to fall onto the stone's breast, to keep burning it for centuries. The tear was to well up in the eye and roll from one cup to another as if down cheeks and over a breast.

Omer also engraved a snail, the symbol of doubt. He knew that the khan's soul had been gnawed by doubts: what did he need his life for - joy and sadness, love and hatred, evil and good?

Until now the fountain has been crying and crying all day and night long...

"The Fountain of Tears" was built by order of Khan Krym-Girey in 1764. It is an original architectural monument, extolled by the great Russian poet A. S. Pushkin.

Crimea is temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. For now it is not a place for tourism.