 Afro-Abkhazian family,c. 1912. | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Adzyubzha | |
| Languages | |
| Abkhaz |
Afro-Abkhazians are a small group of people of African descent inAbkhazia,[note 1] who historically lived in the village ofAdzyubzha at the mouth of theKodori River and the surrounding villages (Chlou, Pokvesh, Agdarra and Merkulov) on the eastern coast of theBlack Sea.
E. Lavrov in 1913 first proposed that Black Abkhazians originated in 5th-century BCColchis. Ancient sources includingHerodotus andJerome 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 Africans were first brought to Abkhazia through theOttoman slave trade in the 17th or 18th centuries, having been purchased by Abkhazian royals.[4] When the Ottomans withdrew from the region in the 19th century, those African slaves remaining in Abkhazia were freed.[3]
By the 19th century, Afro-Abkhazians had fully assimilated into the local Abkhaz population and were not viewed as adiaspora community.[5] They were therefore not recognized as a distinct community by Soviet authorities, who did not distinguish groups of people by skin color.[6] Black Abkhazian villagers, who were impoverished and isolated, may have been subject todeportation to elsewhere in the Soviet Union.[7]
During theSiege of Tkvarcheli operation in the1992–1993 war, Georgian troops destroyed the three villages which had Afro-Abkhazian communities: Adzyubzha, Kindigh, andTamsh.[8]
Historically, the few scattered African communities in the Black Sea region were geographically isolated and unknown by the broader public.[9] Beginning in 1913 with an article by V. P. Vradii in the Tbilisi newspaperKavkaz, the presence of Black communities in Abkhazia was repeatedly reported on in Russian newspapers. Their origin and numbers were the subject of public debate in Russian media.[10] In 1923, journalist Zinaida Richter visited a Black village near Sukhumi and reported on her expedition in the Moscow newspaperIzvestia. Foreign periodicals also covered the subject in 1925 and 1931, when anthropologist B. Adler publicized his research inThe New York Times, in which he described small Black settlements whose inhabitants were of relatively unmixed ancestry.[11]
Soviet anthropologists took interest in Black Abkhazians in the 1960s and produced several studies, although by this time the group was more dispersed and assimilated.[11]
Afro-Abkhazians are recognized by other Abkhazians as being ethnically Abkhaz, as they have culturally assimilated, and speak the Abkhaz language.[12][6] In 1913, V. P. Vradii found that they were mostly Muslim and spoke Abkhaz.[11]
Fazil Iskander wrote about Afro-Abkhazians and their relationships with indigenous Abkhaz,[13] which further popularized the subject.[5]
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| Secondary Afro-American diaspora |
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