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. 7–12. 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.

Translator’s note:

This chapter was first published as a separate brochure: S. Lakoba, Aslanbey: On the Question of Political Confrontation in Abkhazia in the First Third of the Nineteenth Century (Sukhum, 1999). It was subsequently incorporated into the present volume: Abkhazia after Two Empires. Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries: Essays (Abkhaziia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv.), pp. 17-16. Slavic Research Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 2004 (Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 5).

Lakoba, Stanislav. ‘Abkhazia and the Abkhazians: A Brief Historical Survey.’ In Abkhazia after Two Empires. Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries: Essays (Abkhaziia posle dvukh imperii. XIX–XXI vv.), pp. 9–16. Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 5. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2004.

Translator’s note:
This chapter was co-authored by Stanislav Lakoba (1953-2025) and the distinguished Caucasus archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleg Bgazhba (1941-2024).

Originally published in 2005, A Brief History of the Abkhazian Orthodox Church by Hieromonk Dorofey (Dbar), Candidate of Theological Sciences (now Archimandrite), offers a comprehensive overview of the Church’s development from apostolic times to the early twenty-first century. This English translation has been prepared by AbkhazWorld to make this important theological and historical study accessible to a wider readership.

Achugba, Temur A. “On the ‘Uprising’ and Deportation of the Abkhaz in 1877.” In Apsuattsara (Abkhaz Studies): Archaeology. History. Ethnology. Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia, D. I. Gulia Abkhazian Institute for Humanitarian Research. Sukhum: AbIGI, 2016, pp. 86–92.

In 1877, Abkhazia witnessed the final and most extensive stage of the mass expulsion of the Abkhaz to the Ottoman Empire. As a result, to the regions of historical Abkhazia previously emptied of their indigenous population, Sadz and Pskhu in 1864, Dal and Tsabal in 1867, were now added Guma, with the town of Sukhum, all coastal settlements, and the majority of the foothill villages. The ancient land of the Abkhaz was effectively laid waste.