Abkhazia in the Pre-Ottoman Era, by Roin Agrba

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.

At the close of the twelfth century, the territory of present-day Abkhazia formed part of the Abkhazian Kingdom, divided into three distinct administrative units. The southern portion of Abkhazia — roughly corresponding to parts of the Ochamchira and Gal districts — belonged to the Eristavi of Bedia. The northern part of the present-day Ochamchira district, together with the territories of the Gulrypsh and Sukhum districts, constituted the Voivodeship of Tskhum. Further to the north-west, stretching as far as Nikopsia, lay the Eristavi of Abkhazia proper.[1] Under Queen Tamar (1184–1213), however, the existing system of administrative-territorial divisions appears to have been reorganised. The author of the History and Eulogy of the Monarchs attests that in the early twelfth century the following administrative-territorial units existed: Svaneti, Racha, Takveri, Tskhum, Argveti, and Odishi.[2] Z.V. Anchabadze writes that the merger of the Eristavates of Tskhum and Abkhazia into a single administrative unit was presumably guided by the ethnic principle, since both territories were predominantly inhabited by Abkhazians.[3] Nevertheless, an anonymous Georgian chronographer of the fourteenth century, who described the century-long period of Mongol rule in Kartli and Kakheti, recounts how Lasha-Giorgi — the heir of Queen Tamar — "hunted in Tskhum and Abkhazia and administered affairs there." According to this source, the two eristavates of Tskhum and Abkhazia had not been merged into a single administrative unit.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the socio-political order of the Abkhazian Kingdom (the "Kingdom of the Abkhazians and Kartvelians") was undergoing a profound crisis. Once the central authority had fulfilled its historical role, as Z.V. Anchabadze observes, it came to be regarded as superfluous by a significant portion of the ruling class.[4] The eristavis, in their drive to secure political immunity, not only withheld support from the centralising measures of the royal power but actively obstructed their implementation. In this way, the central authority began to lose its principal social base.[5]

The first Mongol reconnaissance force entered Kartli in 1220 but was defeated and compelled to withdraw from the Transcaucasus.[6] In 1225, Kartli and Kakheti were invaded by the armies of Jalal ad-Din, the Khwarazmian ruler who had been driven from his own country by the Mongols. Jalal ad-Din prevailed and laid waste to several regions of Armenia and eastern Georgia.[7] Two years later he invaded Kartli once more, but on this occasion the central power, in the person of Rusudan (1222–1245), resolved to summon all her subjects to resist the enemy. According to the chronicler, forces from Kartli, Javakheti, Meskhet, Tao, Mingrelia, Abkhazia, and Jiketi took the field against him.[8] At the Battle of Bolnisi, Jalal's swift advance caught the coalition off guard and they were routed. It was only in 1230 that Jalal was finally compelled to abandon Kartli.

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See also:

+ Abkhazia in Ottoman Historiography, by Roin Agrba

+ Sukhum and the Abkhazians in the Light of 16th Century Ottoman Documents, by Habat Şogan

+ The Caucasian language material in Evliya Çelebi's “Travel book” A Revision, by Jost Gippert