The following is a translation of the opening chapter of Roin Agrba's Abkhazia and the Sublime Porte: Essays on the History of Abkhaz-Turkish Relations, 15th–18th Centuries (ed. Viacheslav Chirikba, Sukhum: Academia, 2025), pp. 13–40. The book examines the history of Abkhazia in the late medieval period, tracing how the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of Ottoman control over the Black Sea transformed the region's political and commercial life, and how these shifts bore upon the Abkhazian Principality and its relations with the Ottoman Empire. In this introductory chapter, the author surveys the Ottoman documentary and narrative sources, and the historians, geographers and travellers who produced them, that underpin the study of Abkhazia's past.

How a Menshevik republic that called itself free built an empire in miniature on the Black Sea coast, and why the documents have never let it forget.

The following is a translation of the opening chapter of Roin Agrba's Abkhazia and the Sublime Porte: Essays on the History of Abkhaz-Turkish Relations, 15th–18th Centuries (ed. Viacheslav Chirikba, Sukhum: Academia, 2025), pp. 7–12. The book examines the history of Abkhazia in the late medieval period, tracing how the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of Ottoman control over the Black Sea transformed the region's political and commercial life, and how these shifts bore upon the Abkhazian Principality and its relations with the Ottoman Empire. In this introductory chapter, the author surveys the Ottoman documentary and narrative sources, and the historians, geographers and travellers who produced them, that underpin the study of Abkhazia's past.

Translator’s note:

This chapter was first published as a separate brochure: S. Lakoba, Aslanbey: On the Question of Political Confrontation in Abkhazia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century (Sukhum, 1999). It was subsequently incorporated into the present volume: Abkhazia after Two Empires. Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries: Essays (Abkhaziia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv.), pp. 17-16. Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 2004 (Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 5).

Lakoba, Stanislav. ‘Abkhazia and the Abkhazians: A Brief Historical Survey.’ In Abkhazia after Two Empires. Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries: Essays (Abkhaziia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv.), pp. 9–16. Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 5. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2004.

Translator’s note:
This chapter was co-authored by Stanislav Lakoba (1953-2025) and the distinguished Caucasus archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleg Bgazhba (1941-2024).