Afro-Abkhazians

Afro-Abkhazians
Afro-Abkhazian family, circa 1912
Afro-Abkhazian family, c. 1912.
Total population
Unknown
Regions with significant populations
possibly Adzyubzha
Languages
Abkhaz

Afro-Abkhazians (Abkhaz: Аԥсуа негрцәа, romanized: Aṕsua negrcəa) are a small sub-ethnic group of people of African descent in Abkhazia,[a] who historically lived in Adzyubzha and other villages of Abzhua Abkhazia, although they have most likely been completely assimilated into the greater ethnicities of the area.

History

Origin

E. Lavrov in 1913 first proposed that Afro-Abkhazians originated in 5th-century BC Colchis. Ancient sources including Herodotus and Jerome described Colchians as having dark skin, "wooly" hair, and an African origin. Patrick English investigated this hypothesis further in 1959, citing ancient accounts of the region as well as anthropological and linguistic evidence.[1][2]

Another origin hypothesis, which is more prevalent,[3] is that the Afro-Abkhaz were brought to Abkhazia through the Ottoman slave trade in the 17th or 18th centuries, having been purchased by Abkhazian royals.[4][5][6] When the Ottomans withdrew from the region in the 19th century, those African slaves remaining in Abkhazia were freed.[3]

Legends

There are a few Afro-Abkhaz legends surrounding their origin. One legend affirms the idea that the Afro-Abkhazians were brought to Abkhazia through the Ottoman slave trade, stating that they were slaves who crashed off the coast of Ankara and Kodar who were later sold, rescued and sent free to establish a colony.[7] There are other variations of this legend, including one that states that they were slaves who were purchased by a princess of the rulers of the area, the House of Shervashidze, and then were later brought to Abkhazia.[7]

Shaaban Abash, an Afro-Abkhazian soldier of the Circassian cavalry regiment during World War I

19th-century and beyond

By the 19th century, Afro-Abkhazians had been mostly assimilated into the local Abkhaz population and were not viewed as a diaspora community.[8] They were therefore not recognized as a distinct community by Soviet authorities.[9] Remaining Afro-Abkhaz villagers, who were impoverished and isolated, may have been subject to deportation to elsewhere in the Soviet Union.[10]

Historically, the few scattered African communities in the Black Sea region were geographically isolated and unknown by the broader public.[11] Beginning in 1913 with an article by Russian researcher and naturalist V. P. Vradii in the Tbilisi newspaper Kavkaz, the presence of African communities in Abkhazia was repeatedly reported on in Russian newspapers. Their origin and numbers were a subject of public debate in Russian media.[12] In 1923, Soviet journalist Zinaida Richter visited an African village near Sukhumi and reported on her expedition in the Moscow newspaper Izvestia. Western periodicals also covered the subject in 1925 and 1931, when anthropologist B. Adler publicized his research in The New York Times, in which he described small Black settlements whose inhabitants were of relatively unmixed ancestry.[13]

Soviet anthropologists took interest in the Afro-Abkhaz in the 1960s and produced several studies, although by this time the group was more dispersed and assimilated.[13] In 1973 journalist Slava Tynes reported that there were still Afro-Abkhazian communities in villages like Adzyubzha, and noted their positive relationship with non-Black Abkhaz locals.[6][14]

The descendants of the Afro-Abkhaz mostly live in Abzhua Abkhazia (Ochamchira district), in the villages Adzyubzha, Chlou, Ilori, Kyndyg, Tamishi, Tkhyna and Reka.[15]

During the Siege of Tkvarcheli operation in the 1992–1993 Abkhazian war, Georgian troops destroyed three villages that had major Afro-Abkhazian communities: Adzyubzha, Kyndyg, and Tamishi.[16]

Culture

Afro-Abkhazians have been recognized by other Abkhazians as being ethnically Abkhaz, as they have been culturally assimilated into the greater regional ethnicity, and speak the Abkhaz language.[6][9][17] In 1913, V. P. Vradii exposited that the Afro-Abkhaz were mostly Muslim and spoke Abkhaz.[13]

In the 1970s, Fazil Iskander wrote about Afro-Abkhazians and their relationships with indigenous Abkhaz,[18] which further popularized the subject.[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The political status of Abkhazia is disputed. Having unilaterally declared independence from Georgia in 1992, Abkhazia is formally recognised as an independent state by 4 UN member states (three other states previously recognised it but then withdrew their recognition), while the remainder of the international community recognizes it as de jure Georgian territory. Georgia continues to claim the area as its own territory, designating it as Russian-occupied territory.

References

  1. ↑ English 1959 discussed in Fikes & Lemon 2002, p. 501
  2. ↑ Blakely 1986, pp. 9–10
  3. 1 2 Blakely 1986, p. 9
  4. ↑ Fikes & Lemon 2002, pp. 500–501, 505
  5. ↑ Tynes, Slava (30 January 1973). "When Did Africans Get To Soviet Union?". Baltimore Afro-American. p. 6.
  6. 1 2 3 Tynes, Slava (10 February 1973). "Many Africans Came To The Soviet Union During Turkish Rule". Baltimore Afro-American. p. 6.
  7. 1 2 "Негры в Кодорском ущелье" [Negroes in the Kodori Valley]. www.istrodina.com (in Russian). Homeland. Archived from the original on 2020-07-29. Retrieved 2026-07-15. (Broken on the Wayback Machine but archived successfully on archive.ph){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  8. 1 2 Bogdanov 2009, p. 98
  9. 1 2 Fikes & Lemon 2002, p. 511
  10. ↑ Fikes & Lemon 2002, pp. 512–513
  11. ↑ Blakely 1986, pp. 5–6
  12. ↑ Fikes & Lemon 2002, p. 505
  13. 1 2 3 Blakely 1986, p. 8
  14. ↑ Tynes, Slava (17 February 1973). "Skin Color Creates No Barrier To Africans In The Soviet Union". Baltimore Afro-American. p. 6.
  15. ↑ Маан, О. В. (2006). Абжуа: историко-этнологические очерки Очамчирского района Абхазии [Abzhua: Historical and Ethnological Essays of the Ochamchira District of Abkhazia] (in Russian). Сухум: Абхазский институт гуманитарных исследований им. Д. И. Гулиа.
  16. ↑ Colarusso 1995, p. 81
  17. ↑ Costello 2015, pp. 45–46
  18. ↑ Rayfield, Donald (1998). "Sandro of Chegem". In Cornwell, Neil (ed.). Reference Guide to Russian Literature. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. pp. 398–399. ISBN 9781884964107.

Bibliography

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