Karaite

Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem, environmentalists, urban planners, archaeologists and a small community from the Jewish Karaite sect had all lodged protests with the court in recent years.

They said the project would harm the holy city’s historic character, desecrate a Karaite cemetery, and impact the lives and businesses of local residents.

So in 1398, returning from a military campaign near the Black Sea, Vytautas brought with him a large number of Muslim Crimean Tatars and a small group of Karaite Jews to help defend Lithuanian territory.

The Avramoglus are members of Istanbul's tiny Karaite Jewish community of less than 100 people, who trace their roots in the city to the 12th century Byzantine era.

In Feodosia, mansions built in the late 19th Century by Karaite Jews - Jews of Turkic origin who were patronised by the imperial elite - were converted into sanatoria.