The Eastern Border of Abkhazia in the Early Middle Ages: A Further Note, by Guram Gumba

Gumba, G. D. 'Once Again on the Eastern Border of Abkhazia in the Early Middle Ages', in Abkhazology: Archaeology. History. Ethnology, issue X. Sukhum: AbIGI, Dom Pechati, 2016, pp. 54 to 61.

Where did early mediaeval Abkhazia actually end? Guram Gumba returns to a long-running argument among Caucasus historians, reconciling the seemingly contradictory testimony of the Armenian Ashkharatsuyts with the Byzantine historians Procopius and Agathias to trace how the kingdom's eastern border moved from the Rioni in the fifth century to the Chorokh by the eighth.

Determining the ethnic and political borders of a people as they shifted through history matters a great deal for a comprehensive study of that people's past, since this is where the ethnic, political, demographic and social processes taking place within a country are most concentrated and most clearly visible. One might say that these borders serve as indicators of such processes, which is why questions of historical geography usually provoke lively discussion in the scholarly literature. The problem of establishing the ethnic and political borders of Abkhazia in antiquity and the Middle Ages is no exception, and it receives close attention in Abkhazian historiography.

Unfortunately, for want of properly Abkhazian written sources (if any survive, none has yet been found, though there is no doubt that Abkhazian written sources once existed, since an Old Georgian source attests to this), Abkhazian researchers are obliged to draw their information on the ancient and mediaeval ethnopolitical history of the Abkhazian people solely from foreign sources: Greco-Latin, Persian, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Turkish and others. Unfortunately, the information found in these foreign-language sources is usually incomplete, highly fragmentary and, as a rule, with rare exceptions, always subjective, since it reflects above all the interests of the state (or people) to which the author belonged. It is consequently rather difficult, relying on foreign written sources, to present an exhaustive and objective picture of the ancient and mediaeval history of Abkhazia. At the same time, a comparative analysis of several foreign-language sources, where these exist, together with the data of other related disciplines, makes it possible to come closer, more or less, to the truth on this or that problem of Abkhazian history.

Information on the eastern (or, more precisely, south-eastern) border of Abkhazia in the early mediaeval period has thus been preserved in Greco-Latin, Armenian and Georgian written sources. These testimonies have long since entered scholarly circulation and give rise to lively discussion in the literature. Despite this, however, the problem of Abkhazia's eastern borders in the early Middle Ages has not yet been resolved and remains open. The various points of view on this question have been voiced many times in the scholarly (and quasi-scholarly) literature and are well known, so I see no need to rehearse them again here. Let me note only that the range within which its location is placed in the modern historical-geographical literature runs from the river Kelasuri (near Sukhum) to the river Rioni.[1]

This question has also been addressed by me elsewhere, and a comparative analysis of the accounts in the Ashkharatsuyts ('The Armenian Geography of the Seventh Century'), together with Greco-Latin and Georgian sources, led me to the conclusion that in the fifth century Abkhazia's eastern border ran along the lower course of the river Rioni, from its mouth to the point where the river Tekhuri flows into it, then along the Tekhuri to the Egrisi ridge, from where it turned north-west along the Egrisi ridge to the river Ingur, then north to the main Caucasus range.[2] However, although the available material shows that Abkhazia's border in the fifth to seventh centuries ran precisely along this line, the Ashkharatsuyts contains a statement that the river Vishap (Dracon), which separated Abkhazia from Egr (Lazica), flows out of Alania. 'Alania' here does not mean the central region of the North Caucasus but the territory south of the main Caucasus range. In the 550s the Byzantines handed over the fortress of Bukhloon (modern Pakhulan), on the bank of the Ingur, to the Western Alan federation. According to Agathias of Myrina, this was done 'so that envoys of the more distant peoples, gathering there, might receive their subsidies, and so that whoever brought the money would no longer need to go around the foothills of the Caucasus mountains and travel to them in person'.[3] From this time the influence of the Western Alan federation extended over the territory south of the main Caucasus range as far as Bukhloon and the Egrisi ridge, which is why some sources, the Ashkharatsuyts among them, refer to this territory as 'Alania'. This state of affairs lasted from the middle of the sixth century until the eighth, when the Abkhazian king conquered this territory and incorporated it into Abkhazia. It follows that the source of the river Dracon, which formed the border between Abkhazia and Egr (Egeria), should lie at the foot of the main Caucasus range, whereas the source of the Tekhuri lies at the southern foot of the Egrisi ridge, which cast doubt on placing Abkhazia's south-eastern border along the river Tekhuri.

Not every surviving manuscript of the Ashkharatsuyts, however, contains the statement that the river Dracon flows out of Alania. In describing the borders of Egr (Egeria, Lazica), one reads that 'from the west the border of Egr runs along the river Dracon as far as the Caucasus mountains, [extending] to that spur of the range which separates it from Georgia'

«ի մտիցն Դռակոն զեւսղ մինչև ցԿավկաս լեառն և ցնորին բազուկ, որ բաժանէ ընդ նա եւ ընդ Վիրսն»:

[4]

In this passage the Armenian geographer, following Ptolemy, uses 'the Caucasus mountains' for the mountain chain running from west to east as far as the range that separates Egr (Lazica) from Georgia (Kartli), namely the Likhi ridge. The mountain chain running from the Ingur in the west and terminating in the east at the Likhi ridge is formed by the Egrisi and Racha ridges.[5] Correspondingly, the sources of the river Dracon in the Ashkharatsuyts lie in the foothills of the Egrisi or Racha ridge rather than the main Caucasus range, which is why the text of the source contains no statement that it flows out of Alania.

Moreover, in two manuscripts of the Ashkharatsuyts held in the library of the Mkhitarist Order on the island of San Lazzaro in Venice, the passage that interests us, after the statement that the river Dracon, separating Abkhazia from Egr (Egeria), flows out of Alania, is followed by an abbreviated marginal note: 'Movses Khorenatsi did not know this'.[6] To understand the significance of this note one must bear in mind that in the mediaeval period the Ashkharatsuyts was attributed to the 'father of Armenian history', Movses Khorenatsi, a fifth-century author. Most surviving copies of the work bear the title Ashkharatsuyts of Movses Khorenatsi (The Geography of Movses Khorenatsi), as an appendix to his fundamental work History of Armenia. Nevertheless, at the end of the nineteenth and in the twentieth century researchers called Movses Khorenatsi's authorship into question, and the Ashkharatsuyts came to be attributed to the noted seventh-century Armenian scholar Anania Shirakatsi. In 1877 K. P. Patkanov, a professor at St Petersburg University, published a Russian translation of an excerpt from the Ashkharatsuyts of Movses Khorenatsi under the title The Armenian Geography of the Seventh Century, which is how it became known to the Russian-speaking reader as a seventh-century work.[7]

It was later established, however, that the source also contains descriptions of earlier periods: firstly, the second half of the first millennium BC, and secondly, the third century AD to the first half of the fifth century, more precisely down to 428, that is, to the partition of Armenia between Sassanid Persia and the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium).[8]

Recently, however, B. A. Harutyunyan, a noted specialist in Armenian studies and in the Ashkharatsuyts, has convincingly demonstrated that the work was indeed created in the fifth century and that its author is indeed Movses Khorenatsi, and that in the seventh century it was revised, with new material added by Anania Shirakatsi.[9]

It appears that the copyists of the two manuscripts mentioned above, in which the marginal notes stating that Movses Khorenatsi did not know that the river Dracon flows out of Alania have survived, had at hand several copies of the Ashkharatsuyts, at least two, one of which went back to Movses Khorenatsi and lacked the statement that the river Dracon flows out of Alania. It follows that in the text of the Ashkharatsuyts of Movses Khorenatsi, dated to the fifth century, the only information originally given on the question that concerns us was that the river Dracon (Vishap) forms the border between Abkhazia and Egr, which removes any doubt as to the legitimacy of identifying the Ashkharatsuyts' river Dracon with the river Tekhuri and the lower course of the Rioni.

The Ashkharatsuyts' information on the borders between Abkhazia and Egr (Lazica) also sheds light on the well-known and, until now, puzzling contradictory statements of Procopius of Caesarea concerning the borders between Apsilia and Lazica. According to Procopius of Caesarea, the river Phasis rises in the Caucasus mountains and empties into the middle of the crescent-shaped bay of the Pontus, forming the boundary between the two continents there: the land to the left as one looks downstream is Asia, and the land to the right is called Europe. 'All the habitations of the Lazi are on the European side', he writes, while on the Asian side the Lazi hold no city, fortress or settlement of any consequence, except for Petra, which the Romans had built there earlier (emphasis added; wording follows Dewing's Loeb translation).

He goes on, in the same passage, to note that the Phasis empties into the far end of the crescent bay of the Euxine Pontus: at one end, on the Asian side, stood the city of Petra, while on the opposite shore, belonging to Europe, 'the territory is held by the Apsilii' (emphasis added; Dewing).[10]

As is evident, Procopius of Caesarea's testimony does indeed appear to contradict itself: in one place he writes that all the inhabited places of the Lazi lie on the side of the land belonging to Europe, that is, on the right bank of the Phasis (Rioni), yet a little further on he states that it is precisely on the right bank of the Phasis, belonging to Europe, that the territory of the Apsilians lies. If, however, one takes into account the Ashkharatsuyts' data on the border between Abkhazia and Egr (Lazica) along the river Tekhuri and the lower Rioni, Procopius' statements contain no contradiction at all and in fact reflect the real ethnopolitical map that once existed. In the first instance, where the Lazi are said to live on the right bank of the Phasis, the reference is to territory lying above the point where the Tekhuri flows into the Rioni, between the rivers Tekhuri and Kvirila. As is well known, Greco-Latin authors, Procopius of Caesarea among them, frequently mistook the river Kvirila, and after its confluence with the Rioni, the middle and lower course of the Rioni itself, for the Phasis. The rivers Glaukos and Hippos, which flow into the Phasis, were confused with the upper reaches of the Rioni and the Tskhenistskali.[11]

In this instance, then, Procopius of Caesarea uses 'Phasis' to mean the Kvirila, and places the principal settlements of the Lazi on its right bank, including also the right bank of the Phasis (Rioni) proper from the point where the Kvirila joins it down to where the Tekhuri flows in, which corresponds entirely to the historical realities of the late antique and early mediaeval periods as we now know them. In antiquity and the early Middle Ages the river Kvirila served as the border between Egr (Lazica) and Kartli (Georgia), and is called Egris-tskali in Old Georgian sources.[12] It was precisely the territory lying south of the Egrisi and Racha ridges, between the Kvirila (Phasis, Egris-tskali) and the Tekhuri, that constituted Egr (Egrevike) proper of the Ashkharatsuyts, the 'Inner Egrisi' of the Georgian sources and the Mocheresis of the Greco-Latin sources, where the Lazi lived.

Procopius of Caesarea's statement that the Apsilians lived on the right bank of the Phasis (Rioni), for its part, refers to the right bank of the lower Rioni, from the point where the Tekhuri flows into it down to the sea. In this way, Procopius of Caesarea's testimony, hitherto considered inexplicable, becomes intelligible and gains a logical clarity.

According to Movses Khorenatsi and Procopius of Caesarea, then, in the fifth and sixth centuries Abkhazia's south-eastern border ran along the lower course of the Rioni to the point where the river Tekhuri flows into it, then along the Tekhuri to the Egrisi ridge, along the Egrisi ridge to the river Ingur, from where it turned north along the left bank of the Ingur, along the Ingur's right tributary, the Nakra, to the Nakra pass on the main Caucasus range.

The written sources' account of the border between Abkhazia and Egr (Lazica) along this line is corroborated, admittedly, by earlier archaeological data. Burial grounds of the Apsilians dating to the second and third centuries AD have been found, for example, in the gorge of the river Khobi (the village of Chkhorotsku) and in the village of Lia in the Tsalenjikha district.[13]

As for the statement that the Dracon has its source in Alania, this is most likely attributable to Anania Shirakatsi (seventh century), who was reflecting the political situation as it had developed in the second half of the sixth and in the seventh century, following the Byzantines' transfer of the Misimian fortress of Bukhloon to the Western Alan federation. It is precisely to this period that the establishment of Western Alan tribal influence over the southern slopes of the main Caucasus range, as far as the fortress of Bukhloon and the Egrisi ridge, belongs. This could not have happened earlier, since the Western Alan federation did not yet exist, and after the seventh century the whole territory of western Transcaucasia formed part of the Abkhazian state and could naturally no longer be called Alania.

The question of the identity of the river Dracon that by this later period flowed out of Alania and marked the border of Abkhazia and Egr in the seventh century, however, remains open. To answer it one must look to the ethnic, socio-political and cultural processes under way in the late antique and early mediaeval periods, directed towards the unification of the Abkhazian lands. As a result of this natural internal development, a comparatively high level of material and spiritual culture was achieved for the time, one that led inexorably to the merging of Abkhazian ethnopolitical formations and the creation of a centralised Abkhazian state. From the scant sources available we know that the Abkhazians' struggle for independence and for the unification of the whole of Abkhazia took place amid the fiercest resistance from external powers, above all the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). Written sources have preserved for us only meagre echoes of that unequal, heroic struggle which the Abkhazians waged in the early Middle Ages for their independence against Byzantium and the Arab Caliphate.

The ongoing struggle for independence and for the unification of the Abkhazian lands around Abazgia, the political and cultural centre of the whole of Abkhazia, achieved considerable success by the seventh century. According to the Ashkharatsuyts, the Abazgians and the Apsilians already formed a single whole and lived in the country of the Abazgians, Psin (Apsny): '...the Apshils and the Abazgians [live] in the maritime country of the Abazgians, Psin'

«…ցԱպշիլն ծովեզերյան Աբազգվ աշխարհի, որ են Ասփշիլ եւ Աբազգ:»

[14]

Periods such as this, as is well known, tend to be accompanied not only by vigorous economic growth and rising political activity among an ever-larger population, but also by so-called demographic surges. Sources bear witness that in the sixth and seventh centuries Abkhazia was a densely populated country, and the growth in productive forces observed in this period contributed to further population growth,[15] which inevitably created the need, whether by peaceful or by military means, to bring new territories into use. It is therefore hard to doubt that in this period Abkhazia's territory was not shrinking but expanding. It appears that in the seventh century Abkhazia's border was pushed east from the river Tekhuri to the river Tskhenistskali, the source of which lies at the foot of the main Caucasus range, that is, in Alania. This state of affairs is reflected in Anania Shirakatsi's redaction of the Ashkharatsuyts.

In the fifth to seventh centuries, then, Abkhazia's eastern border ran along the lower course of the river Rioni, from its mouth to its confluence with the Tekhuri, from there along the Tekhuri to the Egrisi ridge, then along the crest of that ridge to the river Ingur, then along the left bank of the Ingur to its confluence with the river Nakra and along the Nakra to the main Caucasus range. By the seventh century Abkhazia's eastern border had been extended to the river Tskhenistskali, and in the eighth century, following the conquest and incorporation of the whole of the western South Caucasus into the Abkhazian state, to the Likhi (Surami) ridge and the river Chorokh.

Inal-ipa, Sh. D. Questions in the Ethnocultural History of the Abkhazians. Sukhumi, 1976, p. 397.

Caption: 'The eastern border of Abkhazia in the fifth century AD'

Legend: Border (broken line); Mountain ranges (solid line)

Regions and peoples: Abazgia, Misimians, Apsilia, Lazica, Svans, Digors, Duals, Racha, Argveti; the Pontic Sea (Black Sea)

Rivers: Psou, Bzyb, Kuban, Ingur, Tskhenistskali, Rioni, Tekhuri, Egris-tskali, Supsa, Gubazeuli, Kura, Chorokh

Mountain ranges: Egrisi ridge, Racha ridge, Likhi ridge, Moskhian ridge

Passes: Marukh, Klukhor, Nakra, Elbrus, Mamison

Caption: 'The eastern border of Abkhazia in the seventh century AD'

Legend: Border (broken line); Mountain ranges (solid line)

Regions and peoples: Abazgia, Misimians, Alania, Svans, Digors, Duals, Apsilia, Lazica, Racha, Argveti; the Pontic Sea (Black Sea)

Rivers: Psou, Bzyb, Kuban, Ingur, Gumista, Aalzga [low confidence — see below], Tekhuri, Tskhenistskali, Rioni, Egris-tskali, Supsa, Gubazeuli, Kura, Chorokh, Roki, and Dracon, which is marked twice on this map, once near the Egrisi ridge/Archaeopolis and again further east near the Tekhuri/Tskhenistskali confluence — a striking cartographic echo of the very identification problem Gumba spends much of the article working through.

Mountain ranges: Egrisi ridge (labelled 'Эгрийский хребет' on this map, a variant spelling — treated as the same Egrisi ridge), Racha ridge, Likhi ridge, Moskhian ridge

Passes: Marukh, Klukhor, Nakra, Elbrus, Mamison

Fortress: Bukhloon — marked near the Ingur/Archaeopolis area, corresponding directly to the Bukhloon (Pakhulan) fortress discussed at length in the body text.

Settlements and other points: Ldzaa, Pitsunda, Gudauta, Anakopia, Akua (labelled 'Акыуа' here, a minor spelling variant of the 'Акуа' on the first map — same place), Kuydry, Mount Khodzhal, Mount Akyba, Okum, [Guada — low confidence, possibly 'Gvada'], Ochamchira, Gal, Archaeopolis, Kutaisi, Shorapani, Nalchik, Baksan, Malka, Shkhara, Poti (labelled 'Пасис'), Petra, Apsaros, Khopa, Posh, Supsa

Endnotes

1. Nyushkov, V. A. 'Apsilians and Apsilia in the historiography of recent decades', in Scholarly Notes of the Centre for the Study of Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Volga-Urals Region, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1, Abkhazia. Moscow, 2013.
2. Gumba, G. D. 'On the origins of the historical conception of the eleventh-century Georgian historian Leonti Mroveli', in Abkhazology: History, Archaeology, Ethnology, issue II. Sukhum, 2003, p. 124; Gumba, G. D. 'On the question of identifying Juansher Juansheriani's river Egris-tskali', in Abkhazology: History, Archaeology, Ethnology, issue III. Sukhum, 2004, p. 88.
3. Agathias of Myrina, III, 15.
4. Ashkharatsuyts of Movses Khorenatsi. Venice, 1881, p. 26 (in Armenian).
5. See Gumba, G. D. 'The border of Asiatic Sarmatia with Colchis and Kartli (Iberia)', in The Caucasus: History, Culture, Traditions, Languages, proceedings of the international conference marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the D. I. Gulia Abkhazian Institute for Humanities Research, 28 to 31 May 2001. Sukhum, 2004.
6. Library of the Mkhitarist Order, Venice, manuscripts nos. 1024, 1289.
7. Patkanov, K. P. Movses Khorenatsi: The Armenian Geography of the Seventh Century AD. St Petersburg, 1877, pp. 5 to 12; also Patkanov, K. P. 'From a new copy of the Geography attributed to Movses Khorenatsi', in Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya, 1883, part 226, March, pp. 21 to 32.
8. Abramian, A. The Scholarly Works of the Seventh-Century Armenian Scholar Anania Shirakatsi. Yerevan, 1944 (in Armenian); Eremian, S. T. Armenia According to the Ashkharatsuyts. Yerevan, 1963 (in Armenian).
9. Harutyunyan, B. A. The Ashkharatsuyts and the Problem of the Four Armenias. Yerevan, 1997 (in Armenian); also Harutyunyan, B. A. The System of Administrative-Territorial Division of the Kingdom of Greater Armenia According to the Ashkharatsuyts. Yerevan, 2001 (in Armenian).
10. Procopius of Caesarea, Book VIII, 2.
11. Melikishvili, G. A. On the History of Ancient Georgia. Tbilisi, 1959, p. 75.
12. Gumba, G. D. 'On the question of identifying Juansher Juansheriani's river Egris-tskali', in Abkhazology, issue III. Sukhum, 2004.
13. Voronov, Yu. N. Scholarly Legacy, vol. I. Sukhum, 2006, p. 306.
14. Ashkharatsuyts of Movses Khorenatsi, p. 25.
15. Inal-ipa, Sh. D. Questions in the Ethnocultural History of the Abkhazians. Sukhumi, 1976, p. 397.