CIRCASSIANS

Circassians: translation

Ethnic group. A rather vague term, “Circassian” is used to refer to a number of ethnically related Northwestern Caucasian peoples including theAdyghe,Kabardins,Cherkess, and, to a lesser extent, Abkhaz, the titular population of the breakaway Georgian republic ofAbkhazia. Once simply an exonym applied by the conquering Russians, it has become a self-identifying term for many non-Turkic,Muslimmuhajirs(Arabic: “emigrants”) who fled the North Caucasus during the 19th century.