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Taman Peninsula

A map of the Taman peninsula, c. 1870. The Temryuk Bay is shown at the centre, and the Taman Bay is at the bottom left.

The Taman Peninsula is a peninsula in the present-day Krasnodar Krai of Russia. It is bounded on the north by the Sea of Azov, on the west by the Strait of Kerch and on the south by the Black Sea. In ancient times the Pontic Greek colonies of Germonassa and Phanagoria were located on the peninsula, as was the later city of Tmutarakan.

The peninsula was settled by Maeotae and Sindi from ancient times. In the classical period it became part of the Bosporan kingdom; its inhabitants included Sarmatians, Greeks, Anatolian settlers from Pontus, and Jews. In the 4th century CE the area fell to the Huns; it was later the capital of Great Bulgaria and fell to the Khazars in the mid-7th century. Following the breakup of the Khazar Khaganate in c. 969, the peninsula was part of a Khazar Jewish successor state under a ruler named David. By the late 980s it was largely in the possession of the Kievan Rus and the Russian Principality of Tumutarakan before falling to the Kipchaks c. 1100. The Mongols seized the area in 1239 and it became a possession of Genoa, along with Gazaria in Crimea, in 1419. Taman]]

For most of the 15th century the peninsula was ruled on behalf of Gazaria by the Guizolfi (Ghisolfi) family, founded by the Genoese Jew Simeone de Guizolfi. The rulership of the region by Jewish consuls, commissioners or princes has sparked much debate over the extent to which Khazar Judaism survived in southern Russia during this period. Ultimately, the Taman Peninsula was seized by the Khanate of Crimea in 1483 and by the Ottoman Empire in 1783. In 1791, during the Second Russo-Turkish War, it passed into the control of the Russian Empire. Russians went back it to Ottomans in 1792. It finally passed to Russians in 1828.

For much of the succeeding century, the area was sparsely populated. The largest settlement was a Cossack town (later a stanitsa) of Taman, succeeded by the port town of Temryuk in modern times. Mikhail Lermontov describes the town in his novel, "A Hero of Our Time". The peninsula contains small mud volcanoes and deposits of natural gas and petroleum.

The Taman Peninsula was occupied by the Germans in 1942 and taken back by the Red Army in 1943. The story of the motion picture Cross of Iron revolves around conflicts that arise within the leadership of a Wehrmacht regiment during the German retreat from the Taman Peninsula.