History of Arkhyz

Today the name “Arkhyz” on a map of Karachay-Cherkessia is associated first and foremost with the ski resort, yet the village itself has existed for just over a century. The valley of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk, in which it lies, has been settled for far longer. Over more than a thousand years, this place has seen the rise and disappearance of the quarters of an Alanian city, an eparchial center with Byzantine churches, an aul of Karachay resettlers, and a scientific town with one of the largest telescopes in the world. The history of Arkhyz reads in layers — from early medieval Alania to a year-round resort.

The valley before the village: the Alanian 10th century

Long before the modern aul appeared in the upper reaches of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk, a large city stood 25 km downstream. Today archaeologists call it the Nizhny Arkhyz hillfort, and historians recognize it as one of the key centers of Western Alania in the 10th–12th centuries. Across an area of 100 hectares, in its best years, several thousand people lived here: peasants, artisans, priests, and warriors. Some researchers identify this site with the legendary Maghas — the capital of the Alans mentioned by the Arab geographer Al-Masudi. And although there is no definitive proof of this version, the scale and significance of the settlement are undisputed.

It was precisely then, at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries, that the Alans accepted Christianity from Byzantium. The baptism of the king of Alania around 916, with the active participation of the Constantinople patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, turned a pagan confederation into a Christian state, and the Bolshoy Zelenchuk basin into its spiritual center. Here arose the Alanian eparchy, one of the oldest on the territory of the future Russia, whose cathedra was located precisely in the Nizhny Arkhyz hillfort.

The Zelenchuk churches

From that era, three churches have survived to our day — the Northern, Middle, and Southern Zelenchuk churches. All of them were built in the 10th century in the Byzantine cross-in-square tradition, from hewn sandstone, with proportions classical for the Byzantine East.

The largest of them is the Northern Church: a three-nave basilica about 25 meters long, which, in all likelihood, served as the eparchy’s cathedral. The Middle Church is smaller, and the Southern — the most miniature — became the only one where services were practically never interrupted: in the 19th century it was restored and consecrated in the name of the prophet Elijah.

These buildings are the oldest stone Christian churches on the territory of modern Russia; they are older than both the Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir and Saint Sophia of Kiev.

In addition to the churches, archaeologists have uncovered on the hillfort’s territory a rectangular street layout, remnants of residential quarters, burial grounds, pre-Christian sanctuaries, and traces of blacksmith and pottery workshops. A branch of the transcontinental Silk Road passed through the valley, linking the Caspian region with Black Sea ports. Trade fed the city and nourished its ties with Byzantium.

Decline: the era of the Mongol conquests

The flourishing of Western Alania was cut short in the 13th century. Although the first Mongol invasion affected the mountain regions only indirectly, Batu’s campaigns in the 1230s, and later the devastating campaigns of Timur at the end of the 14th century, dealt the state a crushing blow. Fortifications in the foothills and on the plains were destroyed, and society itself was bled dry. Archaeological data indicates that life at the Bolshoy Zelenchuk hillfort lingered on until the second half of the 14th century: part of the population moved higher into the mountains, others perished or were assimilated with incoming tribes. By the 15th century, life around the Zelenchuk churches had practically frozen: the sacred buildings lost their roofs and were gradually overgrown by forest.

For several centuries the upper reaches of the valley turned into summer pastures and hunting grounds. There were no permanent settlements here for a long time, but nomadic herders climbed up here every summer with their flocks. From the 15th–16th centuries, in the foothills and on the plains, the presence of the Karachays became ever more noticeable — a Turkic-speaking people who formed in the upper reaches of the Kuban as a result of the mixing of descendants of the Alans, Kipchaks, and other steppe peoples. It was they who eventually became the rightful masters of the valley.

Russian subjecthood and the 19th century

According to Russian chronicles, in 1557 an embassy of Circassian and Caucasian princes was received in Moscow, which marked the transition of the peoples of the future Karachay-Cherkessia under the patronage of Russia. However, the actual integration of the region stretched over centuries: the 18th and first half of the 19th century passed under the sign of the exhausting Caucasian Wars. Only in 1828, after a series of military expeditions, did Karachay finally become part of the Russian Empire.

From that moment, the upper reaches of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk came into the field of view of the imperial administration. In 1837, a Russian expedition under the command of Grigory Zass, surveying the valley, drew attention to the ancient abandoned churches. Later, in 1889, the Alexander-Athos Zelenchuk Monastery for men was opened here: the monastery was founded by monks from Mount Athos led by Hieromonk Seraphim. By that time the Southern Church had been restored and consecrated in the name of the prophet Elijah — it became the only one of the three Zelenchuk churches where liturgical life resumed.

The monastery actively developed its infrastructure: roads, farmyards, and apiaries were built, which became the first large-scale arrival of secular and ecclesiastical culture in this region in many centuries. After 1918 the monastery was closed, and its buildings were transferred to agricultural needs and, later, to sanatorium and resort use.

1922: the birth of the village

The modern village of Arkhyz, located in the upper reaches of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk valley at the confluence of the Psysh, Kizgych, Arkhyz, and Sofia rivers, arose only in the Soviet period. In 1922, resettlers from the Karachay auls of Uchkulan and Khurzuk settled here, founding a new aul. The origin of the name still causes debate: some link it to the Karachay phrase “beautiful girl,” others to the more prosaic “arkhy iez” (“beyond the old trail”), which pointed to ancient paths passing through the valley. The first streets of the village hugged the right bank of the Arkhyz River and gradually spread out from the old road leading to the mountain passes.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Arkhyz remained a quiet mountain aul, where life was built on subsistence farming: cattle breeding, haymaking in the high-mountain meadows, hunting, and logging. In 1943, during the deportation of the Karachay people to Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the village, like the entire republic, was emptied. Houses partially fell into disrepair, livestock was driven away, and the gorge again became almost deserted. Revival began only after 1957, when the Karachays were allowed to return to their homeland. The residents rebuilt their houses, and many ancestral plots found new owners.

Science in the mountains: the 1966 observatory

The real turning point in the valley’s fate came in the second half of the 1960s. In June 1966, the USSR Academy of Sciences founded the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in the Zelenchuksky District. The site was chosen for its transparent mountain sky, low light pollution, and stable air. Two facilities were built for observations, each of which had no analogues in the world at the time of its launch. On the slope of Mount Pastukhova, at an altitude of 2,100 meters, the Large Altazimuth Telescope (BTA) was installed with a primary mirror 6 meters in diameter. Twenty kilometers below, near the stanitsa of Zelenchukskaya, the RATAN-600 radio telescope, 600 meters in diameter, was deployed. Both complexes came into operation in 1975–1977.

Around the observatory grew the scientific settlement of Nizhny Arkhyz (Bukovo) — the very one where the ancient 10th-century churches stand. This is a rare neighborhood: in one village live the staff of the country’s largest astrophysical observatory, and behind the fence of the museum-reserve, a 15-minute walk away, Alanian sanctuaries still stand.

The Face of Christ, late 1990s

In May 1999, the brothers Sergey and Anatoly Varchenko, who were vacationing in Arkhyz, noticed on a cliff on the right bank of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk, opposite the Middle Zelenchuk Church, the image of a man’s face. Later it was studied by staff of the Nizhny Arkhyz museum-reserve and is associated with the iconography of the “Savior Not Made by Hands.” The image became known as the “Arkhyz Face.”

The dating of the image continues to be debated: some researchers attribute it to the Alanian era of the 10th–11th centuries, others to a later time when Orthodox monks lived here. The discovery returned to Arkhyz the status of a historical center of Russian Orthodoxy and noticeably increased the flow of pilgrims.

The 21st century: the resort

In the 20th century, in the upper reaches of the Bolshoy Zelenchuk there was a small tourist base, alpinist gatherings took place, and Pioneer camps stood, but there was no real resort infrastructure. Changes began in the late 2000s. In 2010, the territory to the west of the old village became part of the federal project “Resorts of the North Caucasus” and was designated as the site for a new ski complex.

Already in 2013 the “Romantik” tourist village opened with its first lifts, and after it, on the opposite slope, “Lunnaya Polyana” grew up. By the 2020s the resort had turned into a year-round center of attraction: in winter, 20 kilometers of trails are conquered here, in summer people set off for the Sofia Waterfalls and the Dukka Lakes, and in spring and autumn they go on jeep tours and to the ancient churches.

At the same time, old Arkhyz has retained its charm: it is still a cozy mountain aul with a population of 850 people, low-rise houses, vegetable gardens, and the smell of khychins from the cafés. The resort zone is separated from the village by a 25-kilometer stretch of road, and such a neighborhood has proven fortunate. The life of local residents has not dissolved into the tourist flow, and the historical layers — Alanian, monastic, Soviet scientific, and modern resort — harmoniously coexist along the riverbed.