Tatar Peasant Houses (Maison de Paysans Tatars) (Still Image)

Tatar Peasant Houses (Maison de Paysans Tatars)

Tatar peasant homes were often built into the sides of hills. Here a man and a small boy stand on a terrace looking into the distance.

Demidov trains his Orientalizing gaze on the interior and exterior of the "typical" Tatar home, describing the scent of aromatic herbs, the comforts of the divan, and the significance of the terrace, where the family would spend countless hours grinding flour, drying everything from fruit to laundry, and passing news through the open air. "The terrace is, in a word, the observatory - the watch tower of the family." From here one listens to the call of the ombashchi. This elevated ground is the Tatar's public - and at times even a political - space. (42)

Denis Auguste Marie Raffet (drawing from nature; lithography)

Anatolii Demidov, Album du Voyage dans la Russie méridionale et la Crimée, par la Hongrie, La Valachie et la Moldavie>, ed. Ernest Bourdin (Paris, 1838)

1837

Image courtesy of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

John Hay Library, Brown University

56 cm