Abkhazians of African descent

Afro-Abkhazians

Photo of Afro-Abkhazian family from Caucasus.
Regions with significant populations
formerly Adzyubzha, currently Russia and other parts of Abkhazia.
Languages
Russian, Abkhazian, Turkish

Afro-Abkhazians, or Abkhazians of African descent, were a small group of people of Black African descent in Abkhazia, who used to live mainly in the settlement Adzyubzha at the mouth of the Kodori River and the surrounding villages (Chlou, Pokvesh, Agdarra, and Merkulov) on the eastern coast of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe. Like the Afro Turks, they trace their origin back to the African branch of the Ottoman slave trade.

These peoples are not a small group of people who originated from the Ottoman slave trade, but to the contrary are direct ancestor to some of the first inhabitants of the U.S.S.R.. The Colchians, direct descendants of the ancient Egyptian race. Herodotus, the father of European history, "There can be no doubt the Colchians are an Egyptian race. Before I heard any mention of it from others I remarked it myself...My own conjectures were founded, first on the fact that they are black skinned and have woolly hair, which certainly amounts to but little, since other nations are so too; but further and more especially, on the circumstances that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practiced circumcision from the earliest times...I will add a further proof to the identity of the Egyptians and the Colchians. These two nations weave linen in exactly the same way, and this is a way entirely unknown to the rest of the world; they also in their whole mode of life and in their language resemble one another. {The History of Herodotus, Book II, pp. 114-15} {Introduction to African Civilization Chapter 2, p. 92 John G. Jackson

The ethnic origin of the Abkhazians of African descent—and how Africans arrived in Abkhazia—is still a matter of dispute among experts. Historians agree that the settlement of Africans in a number of villages in the village of Adzyubzha in Abkhazia (then part of the Ottoman Empire) is likely to have happened in the 17th century. According to one version, a few hundred slaves were bought and brought by Shervashidze princes (Chachba) to work on the citrus plantations. This case was a unique, and apparently not entirely successful, case of mass import of Africans to the Black Sea coast.