BIKHAKHANIM:

By: Herman Rosenthal

Reigning princess of the Taman peninsula, Crimea. She was married in 1419 to the Genoese Jew Simeone de Guizolfi, who through this marriage became possessor of that country, where one of his heirs, Zacharias de Guizolfi, was still reigning in 1482. The Russian historian F. K. Brun, in "Trudy Pervavo Archeologickeskavo Syezda v Moskvye," 1869, ii. 386, suggests that the name of the princess might not have been "Bikhakhanim," but "Bikhakhatun," and that, if so, she was the daughter of the Georgian prince Bek II. (d. 1391), the ruler of Samtzke and Clarzhet (Brosset, "Hist. de la Géorgie," ii. 206). See Guizolfi, Zachariah de.

H. R.