Caucasus Sochi natives in Georgian imagination of alien

“I repeated to myself the name of my neighbor, Karaman Jikurauli. And I remembered a powerful, predatory animal, a panther, which we Georgians call “jiki”, “enormous in size, fierce like a tiger”. I also remembered that “jiki” is an ancient name for the Circassians, and that this same nickname is usually given to a cruel, relentless and cunning person.” © Mikhail Javakhishvili “Givi Shaduri”, 1928.

This brings up the issue of the presentation of the Circassian image in Georgian perceptions and the eternal marking of the population of the Sochi-Adler territory of Western Caucasus. It should be noted that “jiki” or “jigety” is the Georgian variant of the name for the “sadz”, who lived in the middle and lower valley of the Mzymta River until the mid-19th century. There is often a dispute among the Circassians and Abazins (Ashkharua) about their ethnic makeup, each considering them “ours”, or there is even a version of their Ubykh origin.

Map of ethnic boundaries in region of Sochi (Western Caucasus) right before 1864 year (before the exile of local populations to the Ottoman Empire by Russia)

Most likely, they were mixed parts of all three ethnic groups to some extent, and even linguistically were bilingual at a minimum. A vivid example of this is the last ruling prince of the Sochi aul, Aubla Ali Khan, who was an ally of both the Ubykhs and the Abkhazian prince Shervashidze. And also the notes of the scout Fyodor Tornau, who briefly visited that aul in the 1830s.

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