Afro-Abkhazians
Photo of Afro-Abkhazian family from Caucasus.
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| 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.
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.
In 1927, the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, together with the Abkhaz writer Samson Chanba, visited the village of Adzyubzha and met elderly Africans there. Based on his visit and a comparison of his observations with the published data, he felt that the Ethiopian version of the origin of the Abkhazians of African descent is true.
There are a number of folk legends that might be based partly on true events. According to one of them, which is mentioned in the memorandum of Ivan Isakov to Nikita Khrushchev, an Ottoman ship wrecked near the Abkhazian coast during a storm, with slaves who were brought up for sale, and the current Abkhazians of African descent are the descendants of survivors from the ship, who founded the colony in Abkhazia. This legend, however, does not explain how such a ship could have entered the waters of the Black Sea, which is so far from major shipping lanes of the slave trade of that time.
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Wikipedia