renamed Levkopol after the ancient Greek name of Leukopolis (White City), this never gained popularity, perhaps because the town already styled a name from antiquity. History The town was probably the site of an earlier Khazar fortress before the Mongol conquest of the Crimea in mid-1238. The Mongols under Batu Khan fortified the town and thereafter it became a capital of the Crimean Yurt (Crimean province of the Golden Horde) and a home for the Emir of Crimea. Before the 1270s, Qrim had been a village surrounding a fort at best, but by the early 14th century it had grown into a prosperous city. Kaykaus II was given Qrim as a fief in c. 1265. Tatar coins were struck in Qrim from 1287/8 (AH 686) and in the same year, an Egyptian architect was sent there to build a mosque to be named after the Egyptian sultan. From that period remain the Ozbek Han Mosque, built in 1314 by Uzbeg Khan, and the ruins of a madrassa built in 1332. The town prospered during the 14th century, but it was completely destroyed during the civil unrest under Mengli Girai in the later 15th century. Qrim seems to have retained its position as capital of the newly established Crimean Khanate for some years, as coins struck here are dated to as late as 1517 (AH 923), after which point in 1532 the capital of the Ottoman vassal state was moved to Bakhchisaray, and the city declined into relative obscurity. After the Russian conquest of the Crimean Khanate in the 1770s, the city of Staryi Krym was given the Greek name of Leukopolis (Lewkopol), but this name never entered common usage. In 1863, the town had a population of 1,085, of which 43.4% were Armenian Christian, 42.8% were Eastern Orthodox, 13.1% were Muslim, and 0.7% were Protestant. In the late 19th century, the inhabitants were mostly employed in gardening, tobacco cultivation and farming. Staryi Krym was the city where the famous Russian writer Alexander Grin lived and died, and now has a museum dedicated to him. The city is home to an important cardiac sanatorium, formerly run by notable heart surgeon Nikolai Amosov. During World War II, the German occupiers operated a Sicherheitsdienst prison in the town. Ecclesiastical history As Phulli, it was one of the bishoprics in the Roman client-state, later province, of the Bosporan Kingdom, where no imperial metropolis was