Doukas's Insight: Circassians and Abkhazians in Timur's Conquest
Timur included Circassians and Abkhazians in his army, as reported by Byzantine historian Doukas.
Doukas (c. 1400 – after 1462), a Byzantine historian who flourished under Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor, reported in his work "History of Byzantium" that before the Battle of Ankara in 1402, the famous medieval commander Timur (Tamerlane) journeyed from Persia to the regions of the Don. There, he gathered the Scythians along with the Zykhians (Circassians) and Abasgians (Abkhazians).
Doukas writes ("Doukas, The Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks," translated by Harry J. Magoulias, Wayne State University Press, 1975, p.90):
"With the coming of Spring, lo, Temir-khan went from Persia to the regions of the Don and gathered the TauroScythians, Zykhians, and Abasgians. He demolished the fortresses of the Bosporos and then crossed to the regions of Armenia. He passed through Cappadocia with a large army, conscripting many Armenians, until he came to the region of Galatia, by which time he had an army as large as that of Xerxes of old."
Footnote 88: These terms are anachronisms for the peoples along the north and east littorals of the Black Sea. The Turko-Scythians refer to the Tatars; the Zykhoi (Zichi) are a tribe on the northeast coast of the Black Sea; and the Abasgoi are the inhabitants of the medieval kingdom of Abasgia, which extended within western Georgia along the Black Sea coast south of the Zykhoi.
Footnote 89: This refers to the Cimmerian Bosporos, known as the Crimean straits or the Kerch Strait.
The Battle of Ankara, (July 20, 1402), was a military confrontation in which the forces of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, "the Thunderbolt," victor at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, were defeated by those of the Central Asian ruler Timur (Tamerlane). This resulted in a humiliating defeat for Bayezid and the collapse of his empire.
Doukas, The Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks
translated by Harry J. Magoulias, Wayne State University Press, 1975
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