SIMFEROPOL, November 13. /TASS/. Simferopol archaeologists have started excavation works on the territory where, according to their assessments, the medieval palace of Sultan Qalga, the second person after the khan in the hierarchy of the Crimean Khanate, may be located, Director of Crimea’s Institute of Archaeology Vadim Maikov told TASS on Monday.

"We already found a fragment of medieval pipeline that led to the palace. That is, our assumptions of the existence of a medieval occupation layer on the [excavation] site have been fully confirmed," Maikov said.

Some media outlets reported on Monday that a khan’s palace had already been discovered in Simferopol on this site, but Maikov believes such statements are premature.

"It is too early [to speak of a discovery of the khan palace] yet. No one knows now whether there is anything left from the palace or not. We don’t know it either. If we are lucky enough, we’ll find the foundation [of the palace,] but only with great luck," Maikov said.

The ancient palace

The head of the institute said that, according to writings that survived up to the present day, Sultan Qalga’s palace is located on the site where a piece of medieval pipeline had been discovered.

"There is a description of this palace: It consisted of numerous facilities, but we have no picture of it and can only guess what it looked like and which facilities it consisted of. It is mentioned that after Crimea’s accession to the Russian Empire, the palace was dismantled. A beer brewery had appeared in its place in the post WWII era that was abandoned in the 1980s, so the situation is complicated [for excavation work]. There must be facilities built in the 20th, 19th and late 18th centuries here. There may be some traces of ancient medieval treasures left there," Maikov supposed.

The qalga was the title for the second person after a khan in the Crimean Khanate hierarchy, he said. The position was established in 1486. A khan appointed a qalga after his succession to the throne and customarily chose one of his relatives.

The Crimean Khanate was a feudal state formation that appeared on Crimea’s territory after the dissolution of the Golden Horde and existed from 1441 to 1783.