War
The history of Abkhazia, a region in the South Caucasus, spans more than 5,000 years from its settlement by the Lower Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to its present status as a partially recognized state.
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Text from the Wikipedia article “Inal campaign to Abkhazia”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The history of Abkhazia, a region in the South Caucasus, spans more than 5,000 years from its settlement by the Lower Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to its present status as a partially recognized state.
Lower Paleolithic hunting-gathering encampments formed the first known settlements on the territory of modern-day Abkhazia. The earliest examples have been unearthed at the sites of Iashkhtva, Gumista, Kelasuri, and Ochamchire. Upper Paleolithic culture settled chiefly on the coastline. Mesolithic and Neolithic periods brought larger permanent settlements and marked the beginning of farming, animal husbandry, and the production of ceramics. The earliest artifacts of megalithic culture appeared in the early 3rd millennium BC and continued into the Bronze Age as the so-called dolmens of Abkhazia, typically consisting of four upright mass stones and a capstone, some of them weighing as much as 50 tonnes. A dolmen from the Eshera archaeological site is the best-studied prehistoric monument of this type. The Late Bronze Age saw the development of more advanced bronze implements and continued into the Iron Age as a part of the Colchian culture (c. 1200-600 BCE), which covered most of what is now western Georgia and part of northeastern Anatolia.
The written history of Abkhazia largely begins with the coming of the Milesian Greeks to the coastal Colchis in the 6th-5th centuries BC. They founded their maritime colonies along the eastern shore of the Black Sea, with Dioscurias being one of the most important centers of trade. This city, said to be so named for the Dioscuri, the twins Castor and Pollux of classical mythology, is presumed to have subsequently developed into the modern-day Sukhumi. Other notable colonies were Gyenos, Triglitis, and later Pityus, arguably near the modern-day coastal towns of Ochamchire, Gagra, and Pitsunda, respectively.
The peoples of the region were notable for their number and variety, as classical sources testify. Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny appreciate the multitude of languages spoken in Dioscurias and other towns. The mountainous terrain tended to separate and isolate local peoples from one another and encouraged the development of dozens of separate languages and dialects complicating the ethnic makeup of the region. Even the most well-informed contemporary authors are very confused when naming and locating these peoples and provide only very limited information about the geography and population of the hinterland. Furthermore, some classic ethnic names were presumably collective terms, and supposed considerable migrations also took place around the region. Various attempts have been made to identify these peoples with the ethnic terms employed by classical authors. Some scholars identify Pliny the Elder's Apsilae of the 1st century and Arrian's Abasgoi of the 2nd century with the probable proto-Abkhaz- and Abaza-speakers respectively, while others consider them proto-Kartvelian tribal designations. The identity and origin of other peoples (e.g., Heniochi, Sanigae) dwelling in the area is disputed. Archaeology has seldom been able to make strong connections between the remains of material culture and the opaque names of peoples mentioned by classical writers. Thus, controversies continue and a series of questions remain open.
The inhabitants of the region engaged in piracy, slave trade, and kidnapping people for ransom. Strabo described the habits of Achaei, Zygi, and Heniochi in his Geography as follows:
These people subsist by piracy. Their boats are slender, narrow, light, and capable of holding about five and twenty men, and rarely thirty. The Greeks call them camaræ. ... They equip fleets consisting of these camaræ, and being masters of the sea sometimes attack vessels of burden, or invade a territory, or even a city. Sometimes even those who occupy the Bosporus assist them, by furnishing places of shelter for their vessels, and supply them with provision and means for the disposal of their booty. When they return to their own country, not having places suitable for mooring their vessels, they put their camaræ on their shoulders, and carry them up into the forests, among which they live, and where they cultivate a poor soil. When the season arrives for navigation, they bring them down again to the coast. Their habits are the same even in a foreign country, for they are acquainted with wooded tracts, in which, after concealing their camaræ, they wander about on foot day and night, for the purpose of capturing the inhabitants and reducing them to slavery.
According to The Georgian Chronicles, the first inhabitants of what is now Abkhazia and the whole western Georgia were Egrosians, the descendants of Egros son of Togarmah, grandson of Japhet, son of Noah, who came from the land known as Arian-Kartli.
Along with the rest of Colchis, Abkhazia was conquered by Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus between c. 110 and 63 BC, then taken by the Roman commander Pompey and incorporated into the Roman Empire in AD 61. The Roman rule here was tenuous and according to Josephus a Roman garrison of 3,000 hoplites and a fleet of 40 vessels could only control the ports. The Greek settlements suffered from the wars, piracy, and attacks of local tribes (during one of them Dioskurias and Pityus were sacked in AD 50). Roman documents mention a regiment consisting of Abasgoi (Ala Prima Abasgorum) that served in Kharga Oasis in Egypt in the 4th century AD.
According to scholar Donald Rayfield, in the 2nd century AD, Kartvelian tribes populated the shores of Colchis up to Dioscurias (modern-day Sukhumi) and were subject to Roman rule, although they were hostile to the Romans. In Dioscurias, Sanigs (Svans) and Abazgs (Abkhaz) escaped Roman jurisdiction.
In the 3rd century AD, the Lazi tribe came to dominate most of Colchis, establishing the kingdom of Lazica, locally known as Egrisi. It was subordinate to Constantinople; its kings had to be confirmed by the emperor and it contributed to the imperial treasury. By the 5th century, according to Procopius, the kings of Lazica no longer paid taxes to the empire, appointed the dukes of Abkhaz and Svans without consultation and garrisoned Sebastopolis (modern-day Sukhumi). The endorsement of the rulers of Lazica by the emperor became a formality. Some locals served in the Roman army, Ala Prima Abasgorum which was stationed in Egypt.
Colchis was a scene of the protracted rivalry between the Eastern Roman/Byzantine and Sassanid empires, culminating in the Lazic War from 542 to 562. The war resulted in the decline of Lazica, and the Abasgi in their dense forests became autonomous under the Byzantine authority. During this era, the Byzantines built Sebastopolis in the region. The land of Abasgi, known to the Byzantines as Abasgia, was a prime source of eunuchs for the empire until Justinian I (527-565) forbid the castration of boys. The people were pagan and worshiped groves and trees until a mission sent by the emperor Justinian I around 550 converted the people to Christianity and built a church. However bishop Stratophiles of Pytius attended the Council of Nicaea as early as 325. Byzantines constructed defensive fortifications that may have partially survived to this day as the Kelasuri Wall.
As the Abasgi grew in relative strength, the name Abasgia came to denote a larger area populated by various ethnic groups including Mingrelian- and Svan-speaking South Caucasian tribes, and subordinated to the Byzantine-appointed princes (Greek: archon, Georgian: eristavi) who resided in Anacopia and were viewed as major champions of the empire's political and cultural influence in the western Caucasus. The Arabs entered the area in the 730s, but did not subdue it; about then the term Abkhazeti ("the land of the Abkhazians") first appeared in the Georgian annals, giving rise to the name Abkhazia, which is used today in most foreign languages. Through their dynastic intermarriages and alliance with other Georgian princes, the Abasgian dynasty acquired most of Lazica/Egrisi, and in the person of Leo established themselves as "kings of the Abkhazians" in the 780s, even though the title was not recognised by the emperor in Constantinople who continued to call him archon when sending a gold ring of investiture. Leo married his daughter to the Khazar khan thus securing the northern frontiers and helping counter the Byzantine influence. The capital of the kingdom was transferred to the Georgian city of Kutaisi. In order to eliminate the Byzantine religious influence, the dynasty subordinated the local dioceses to the Georgian Orthodox patriarchate of Mtskheta. The Abkhaz participated in the rebellion of Thomas the Slav against Byzantine in 821-823. While the Byzantines sent their fleet to the Black Sea ports several times in the 9th century, their ability to influence the events in the Abkhazia was limited by the internal strife and the fight against Bulgarians.
The kingdom is frequently referred to in modern historiography as the Egrisi-Abkhazian kingdom due to the fact that the new monarchy was viewed by contemporaries as a successor state of Egrisi and sometimes used the terms interchangeably. By this time the majority of the population of the kingdom was likely Georgian. The Abkhazian Kings probably used Georgian as the state language in spite of their Abkhaz origins.
The most prosperous period of the Abkhazian kingdom was between 850 and 950, when it dominated the whole western Georgia and claimed control even of the easternmost Georgian provinces. The terms "Abkhazia" and "Abkhazians" were used in a broad sense during this period – and for some while later – and covered, for all practical purposes, all the population of the kingdom regardless of their ethnicity. In 989, the Bagratid ruler Bagrat III came to power in Abkhazia which he inherited from his mother Gurandukht Anchabadze. In 1008 Bagrat inherited K'art'li from his father and united the kingdoms of Abkhazians and Iberians into a single Georgian feudal state.
This state reached the apex of its strength and prestige under the queen Tamar (1184–1213). On one occasion, a contemporary Georgian chronicler mentions a people called Apsars. This source explains the sobriquet 'Lasha' of Tamar's son and successor George IV as meaning "enlightenment" in the language of the Apsars. Some modern linguists link this nickname to the modern Abkhaz words a-lasha for "bright", identifying the Apsars with the possible ancestors of the modern-day Abkhaz.
According to the Georgian chronicles, the princely family of Shervashidze were the lords of a part of Abkhazia during the times of Queen Tamar. According to traditional accounts, they were an offshoot of the Shirvanshahs (hence allegedly comes their dynastic name meaning "sons of Shirvanese" in Georgian). The ascendancy of this dynasty (later known also as Chachba by the Abkhaz form of their surname) in Abkhazia would last until the Russian annexation in the 1860s. In the 1240s, Mongols divided Georgia into eight military-administrative sectors (dumans). The territory of contemporary Abkhazia formed part of the duman administered by Tsotne Dadiani.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Inal campaign to Abkhazia”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.