The Crimean mountain chain's role in Crimean history can thus be compared to that of the Caucasus range which has been described as a "preserve of nations". Myriad ancient tribes and ethnic groups have sought refuge in the Caucasus chain's inaccessible valleys and highland fastness and, in some areas of the Caucasus, every valley is inhabited by a different ethno-linguistic group.
For much of its history, this situation predominated in the Crimea as well. The thirteenth-century traveller to the Crimea, Friar William of Rubruck wrote of this area "There are lofty promontories along the sea coast from Kherson (Western Crimea) as far as the mouth of the Tanais (Sea of Azov), and between Kerson and Soldaia (Sudak) lie the Forty Settlements, of which nearly every one has its own dialect: the population includes many Goths, whose language is Germanic".4 While this source may have been referring to the mountain fortress known in Tatar as Kirk Yer (Forty Places), his description of the linguistic diversity of this region was certainly intentional. Much of this diversity came from the fact that nomadic tribes of the steppe were forced to flee into the south Crimean mountains by stronger nomadic groups in search of better pastures. Those who fled into the mountains, such as the Iranian Scythians, often blended with the region's older inhabitants.
Like many steppe alliances to come, the Scythians were defeated by a more powerful nomadic group pushing westward in search of grazing lands, the Sarmatians. The Iranian Sarmatians were in turn scattered by the Germanic Goths who were themselves routed by the seemingly invincible Huns. As was so often the case in the sanguinary struggles for the plains on the edge of Europe, the Huns propelled the defeated Gothic tribes westward where they poured over the weakened defences of the Roman empire and destroyed Roman power in the West.
A detached remnant of the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths), however, migrated southward into the mountains of the Crimea where they intermingled with the remnants of earlier Scythian and Sarmatian tribes (most notably the Sarmatian tribe known as the Alans) who had settled in this region after being forced off the steppe.5 From their mountain strongholds, such as Mangup in the south-western Crimea, the Crimean Goths dominated the southern Crimea (a land known in contemporary western sources as Gothia Maritime) for a millennium. While the masters of the Crimean plains changed at a bewildering rate (the Huns were followed by Turkic confederations such as the Kok Turks, Khazars, Black Bulgars, and finally the Kipchaks), the Gothic presence in the Crimean mountains remained constant