Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Principality of Abkhazia
drawn on the map 1468–1578, 1612–1829
The Principality of Abkhazia (Georgian Apkhazetis samtavro) was a Georgian principality on the northeastern Black Sea coast, ruled by the Sharvashidze (Chachba) dynasty.
- Shown on the map
- 1468–1578, 1612–1829 (2 periods)
- Peak area
- 10k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The Principality of Abkhazia (Georgian Apkhazetis samtavro) was a Georgian principality on the northeastern Black Sea coast, ruled by the Sharvashidze (Chachba) dynasty. It emerged as a distinct samtavro (principality) from the collapse of the Georgian kingdom: at the reorganisation around 1490 its prince was elevated to mtavari and exempted from central obligations, nominally as a vassal of the Principality of Mingrelia (under the Dadiani) and thus of the Kingdom of Imereti—though this vassalage was largely symbolic, and Abkhazian and Mingrelian rulers frequently fought each other over borders. In the 1570s the Ottoman navy occupied the fort of Tskhumi (Sukhumi), turning it into Sukhum-Kale, and Abkhazia came under Ottoman influence and, slowly, Islam; the ruling Sharvashidze embraced Islam only in the later 18th century. Abkhazia later placed itself under Russian protection (1810) and was gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire, its autonomy abolished by 1864. Its history is entangled with the modern, highly contested politics of the region.
Common questions
- What was the Principality of Abkhazia?
- The Principality of Abkhazia (Georgian Apkhazetis samtavro) was a Georgian principality on the northeastern Black Sea coast, ruled by the Sharvashidze (Chachba) dynasty.
- When is the Principality of Abkhazia shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Principality of Abkhazia 1468–1578, 1612–1829, in 2 separate periods. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the Principality of Abkhazia?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Principality of Abkhazia covered about 10,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each beylik, khanate and principality as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and academic sources (the Baku Presidential Library on the Shirvanshahs, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Armenian Genocide) and the historiography of early Ottoman state formation (Wittek, Lindner, Kafadar, Lowry). The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Principality of Abkhazia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Abkhazia
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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