Caucasian Greeks

Greek communities had settled in parts of the north Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Eastern Anatolia since well before the Christian and into the Byzantine era, especially as traders, Christian Orthodox scholars/clerics, refugees, or mercenaries who had backed the wrong side in the many civil wars and periods of political in-fighting in the Classical/Hellenistic and Late Roman/Byzantine periods. One notable example of such pre-modern Caucasus Greeks is the 7th-century Greek Bishop Cyrus of Alexandria, originally from Phasis in present-day Georgia. However, these Greek settlers in the Caucasus generally became assimilated into the indigenous population, and in particular that of Georgia, with whom Byzantine Greeks shared a common Christian Orthodox faith and heritage.

In the modern era the term Caucasus Greeks (modern Greek - Έλληνες του Καυκάσου' or more commonly 'Καυκάσιοι [Έλληνες]', modern Turkish 'Kafkas Rum', lit. 'Caucasus Eastern [i.e., Byzantine Greek] Romans') or, more rarely, Greeks of Trans-Caucasus and Russian Asia Minor is applied to all Pontic Greeks and Eastern Anatolia Greeks from the contemporary Russian north Caucasus, Georgia, and the former Russian Caucasus provinces of Batum Oblast' and Kars Oblast' (the so-called Russian Asia Minor), now in north-eastern Turkey and Adjara. The vast majority of these Greek communities date from the late Ottoman era, and are usually defined in modern Greek academic circles as 'Eastern Pontic [Greeks]' (modern Greek - ανατολικοι Πόντιοι, modern Turkish 'doğu Pontos Rum'), as well as 'Caucasus Greeks', while outside academic discourse they are sometimes defined somewhat pejoratively and inaccurately as 'Russo-Pontic [Greeks]' (modern Greek - Ρωσο-Πόντιοι). Nevertheless, in general terms Caucasus Greeks can be described as Russianized and pro-Russian empire Pontic Greeks in politics and culture and as Mountain Greeks in terms of lifestyle, since wherever they settled, whether in their original homelands in the Pontic Alps or Eastern Anatolia, or Georgia and the Lesser Caucasus they preferred and were most used to living in mountainous areas and especially highland plateaux. In broad terms, it can be said that the Caucasus Greeks' link with the South Caucasus is a direct consequence of the highland plateaux of the latter being seen and used by the Pontic Greeks as a natural refuge and rallying point whenever North-eastern Anatolia was overrun by Muslim Turks in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods.

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Wikipedia