Naala Kaslandzia
A historian specialising in mediaeval Abkhazia. She graduated with distinction from Abkhaz State University and has served at both the Dmitri Gulia Abkhaz Institute for Humanitarian Studies and Abkhaz State University, where she is currently Associate Professor. She defended her candidate thesis in 2017 and her doctoral dissertation in 2024 on the women of the ruling elite of the Abkhazian Kingdom. A laureate of the Georgi Dzidzaria State Prize in Science, she is the author of more than forty-five scholarly publications.

Abkhazian Institute for Humanitarian Studies named after D. I. Gulia,
Apsuattsaara / Abkhazovedenie: Archaeology, History, Ethnology, vol. XI.
Sukhum: AbIGI, 2018, pp. 41–48.

‘The surge of interest in the “woman in history”, observed in contemporary medieval studies, is partly due to the growing prominence of social-cultural history, historical anthropology and the “history of mentalities”, which open up new horizons for perceiving and understanding the human person’.[1]

Mediaeval authors paid little attention to their female contemporaries. Women who were deemed worthy of mention in written sources generally appeared only in connection with significant political events. Naturally, such references concerned women of the highest social rank.

Ruslan Aguazhba is an Abkhaz historian and publicist known for his research on the Abkhaz diaspora and the modern history of Abkhazia. He graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow and later served in the Soviet Navy. From 1975 he worked in the Abkhaz State Museum and subsequently as a researcher at the Dmitri Gulia Abkhaz Institute for Humanities, specialising in source studies and the nineteenth–twentieth century history of Abkhazia, with a particular focus on the Abkhaz diaspora in Türkiye, Syria, Jordan, and Europe. Aguazhba played an active role in the national liberation movement and was involved in the activities of the organisation Aidgylara, established in 1988. He is the author and co-author of several works on Abkhaz history, diaspora studies, and folklore.

The History of Christianity in Abkhazia during the First Millennium, 

Chapter 1 | pp. 22-44

Translated by AbkhazWorld

Abkhazia is situated between the Main Caucasus Range and the south-eastern littoral of the Black Sea. It borders the Russian Federation along the River Psou in the north-west and Georgia along the River Ingur in the south-east. This is a small mountainous country whose indigenous inhabitants are the Abkhazians.

Before turning to the history of Abkhazia and the Abkhazians at the time of the emergence of Christianity, it is necessary to speak about the origin of the Abkhazians themselves.

The problem of the ethnogenesis of the Abkhazian people, as with that of any other people, is among the most complex issues within historical science. It has been addressed in the works of many scholars, and has received dedicated treatment in the writings of major Abkhazologists such as Z. V. Anchabadze, Sh. D. Inal-ipa and others (see [Anchabadze 1976; Inal-ipa 1976]).

Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Abkhazia
Proceedings of the Abkhaz State Museum, Issue VIII
Sukhum, 2023, pp. 95–108

Editor-in-Chief: A. I. Dzhopua
Editorial Board: G. D. Gumba, D. R. Tarkil, V. A. Nyushkov, I. T. Tsugba

Diana V. Akhba
Historian, ethnologist, archaeologist, and local historian; Senior Research Fellow at the Abkhaz State Museum.

Translated by AbkhazWorld

Among the agricultural branches of Abkhazia, viticulture has always occupied an important place. The country’s natural conditions, its humid subtropical climate, diverse relief, variation in altitude above sea level, and heterogeneity of soils, have all been conducive to this. The antiquity of the appearance of the grapevine in Abkhazia is attested by extensive archaeological, folkloric-linguistic, and ethnographic material, as well as written sources.

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.