The old people told a story which they heard from their grandparents. There was a valley where there is the lake Ritsa now.

The text by Shalva Inal-ipa is taken from the book ‘Abkhazian Etiquette’.

© Oleg Shamba, 2010

Chapter One: Some Historical Roots of Traditional Abkhazian Household Culture

Abkhazian cuisine was shaped by the agricultural, climatic and economical factors of the area. Because the Abkhaz were mainly farmers and cattle-breeders, their basic dietary staples were corn, millet, and dairy products. In the past, wild game and edible plants growing in the wild were a significant part of the diet, but today they are rarely on the table.

History of Winemaking

The Abkhazian love affair with wine dates back centuries. Among the archeological discoveries that confirm this ancient wine culture are pitchers containing grape seeds that date back to 3000-2000 B.C. and a bronze statuette found in the 1950s in the Bombora settlement of the Gudauta region (a man holding a huge wine horn; scientists date the statue back to about the second millennium B.C.). A drawing of this statute is found on the label of the popular Apsny wine brand.

Proverbs and Sayings of the Caucasian Mountain Peoples

Compiled by Oleg Shamba 

Remember at least a word From the wise words of a sage, That it may not be lost. For even the splinter of a big tree Gives us warmth, when burning in a stove. K. Lomia (Translated from the Abkhazian).

[Translated from the German by Park McGinty]

History of Religions, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Feb., 1972), pp. 251-256.

The existence of shamans of the female sex among the Georgians has already been noticed earlier, not only by Caucasian and Russian but also by the Western scientists of religion.[1] In this paper I would like to point to the prominent position which was occupied by the shamaness among another Caucasian people, that is, the Abkhazians, located on the northwest coast of the Black Sea.

25 February 1998 - Keston News Service

From July to November 1997 the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences conducted field research in Abkhazia as part of project 97-01-18011 'National Communities in Abkhazia: the Current Situation' with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Fund. The aim of the project was to illustrate the particularities of the situation of the local population as a whole, as well as of all national communities living in Abkhazia in the post-Soviet period, during which the republic once again became an unrecognised state after the bitter Georgian-Abkhazian War of 1992-93, and its citizens became isolated from the rest of the world once Russia introduced 'special' conditions on the Russian-Abkhazian border in December 1994.

A survey of Abkhazia's population (1997 and 2003) shows Abkhaz people are highly religious. In 2003, 60% of the people surveyed considered themselves Christians, 16% Muslims, 8% atheists and unbelievers, 5% pagans, 3% devotees of an Abkhaz religion. Jehovah's Witnesses and Jews accounted for less than 1% each, and 6% thought it difficult to answer.