From Antiquity to the Present Day: A History of the City of Gagra, by Denis Gopia

Zapiski kraeveda. Istoricheskiy zhurnal. Vypusk No. 1, pp. 110–115
Notes of a Local Historian: Historical Journal, Issue No. 1, pp. 110–115

By Denis K. Gopia
City of Sukhum, Republic of Abkhazia
Historian–Medievalist

Translated by AbkhazWorld

Abstract

This article examines the history of the city of Gagra from antiquity to the present day. It also discusses the structures built during the periods of the Russian Empire and Soviet rule, and offers an interpretation of the city’s toponymy.

Keywords: Gagra, history, toponymy, Lesser and Greater Abkhazia, Novorossiysk.

Gagra is one of the oldest cities in the Caucasus. It is located in north-western Abkhazia, in the Gagra District, and serves as its administrative centre.

The city lies at the foot of the Gagra Range. Today, it is a very well-known resort town, but the history of Gagra extends back more than two thousand years. As early as the first century CE, the territory of Abkhazia was divided among three small kingdoms known as Apsilia, Abazgia, and Sanigia,[1] with the city of Gagra located within the territory of Sanigia.

All three kingdoms formed part of the Roman Empire; at that time the city was called ‘Nitica’ (Nitika) by the Romans.[2] In the first–second centuries CE, the Roman Empire built a series of small fortresses along the Black Sea–Caucasian coast, including one on the territory of present-day Gagra. In what is now the old part of the city, one can still see the remains of this Roman fortress, which today is known as ‘Abaata’ (from Abkhaz, “the place of the fortress”).

Inside this fortress, in the sixth century, the Abkhaz erected a church. The nineteenth-century archaeologist and researcher Dubois de Montpereux wrote the following about it:

‘A square space, also surrounded by a wall of which almost no trace survives, adjoined the northern side of this fortification. On this side stood a church built of massive blocks, like the towers, the walls and the vaults. The church of the earliest period shows what is most primitive and simple: nothing but a completely vaulted nave, semicircular choirs to the east, a vestibule or pronaos to the west, and two very rough porticoes on the sides. No decoration at all. The Russians turned it into a guardhouse and a powder magazine.’[3]

In the eighth century, the city would become part of the Abkhazian Kingdom (Apsua ahra), whose centre was in the city of Anakopia (now New Athos) and later in Kutaisi (now in western Georgia).

By the late thirteenth century, the geopolitical situation in the Black Sea basin changed dramatically, and this inevitably affected Gagra as well. As is known, in 1204 the Crusaders captured the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople. As Judith Herrin notes:

‘…after the capture of the city, when the Crusaders began to divide up the empire, Venice demanded the largest portion for itself.’[4]

After the creation of the Latin Empire, the Venetians gained the opportunity to establish commercial factories both in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea. However, this period did not last long, and already in 1261 the Byzantine Greeks — with the help of the Republic of Genoa — liberated Constantinople from the Crusaders and Venetians, signing with Genoa the Treaty of Nymphaeum. In return for their assistance, Genoa received extensive commercial privileges throughout the Black Sea basin.

Five years after the restoration of Constantinople, in 1266, Khan Oran-Timur, who had been granted the Crimea by his uncle, the Golden Horde khan Mengu-Timur, permitted the Genoese to establish a trading factory and colony in Caffa, on the site of ancient Theodosia, on the condition that they:

‘…pay him duties on the import and export of goods, whilst granting all merchants the right to buy and sell here goods brought from elsewhere.’[5]

Thus, the Officium Gazarie was formed, a Genoese administrative-commercial network seeking monopoly over trade across the Black Sea region. Abkhazia and the entire north-western Caucasus also came under Genoese influence. In Abkhazia they established several trading bases, including one in Gagra.

It was during this Genoese period that the city first appears on medieval portolan charts under the name ‘Cacari’ (Kakari). This toponym has Abkhaz roots. As the linguist V. A. Chirikba points out:

‘The form Cacara represents a reflection of the original full-vowel variant of the Abkhaz toponym Ga-ky-ra, “the place that closes the shore” (Kvarchia 2006: 142), more precisely, “that which secures the coastline”.’[6]

Interestingly, on the map of Nicolo Pasqualini from 1408 (or 1448), the toponym appears as Cacarj Uucassia, that is, ‘Gagra Abkhazia’.

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