Religious Beliefs of the Adyghe according to the Accounts of European Authors (Thirteenth to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century), by Roman Ostapenko

'First published in Russian in the journal 'Cultural Life of the South of Russia' ('Kulturnaya zhizn Yuga Rossii'), No. 3 (41), 2011, pp. 36 to 38; translated into English by CircassianWorld.'

Roman Ostapenko
Adyghe State University, General history, Post-Doc.

Based on the narrative texts of European authors, this article traces the evolution of the religious beliefs of the Adyghe over seven centuries, from the thirteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. Particular attention is given to the changing historical memory and spiritual world of the inhabitants of the north-western Caucasus, and above all to the Circassian people’s preservation of a relict Orthodoxy stripped of its ritual component.

Key words: beliefs of the Adyghe, Orthodoxy, paganism, Islam, religious syncretism.

From the sixth to the mid-fifteenth century, the dominant religion in Circassia was Orthodox Christianity, sustained by the Byzantine Empire. The Church preserves testimony to the labours of the holy ascetics with whom the Christianisation of the north-western Caucasus began: Andrew the First-Called, Simon the Canaanite, Matthew and Bartholomew. In the fortieth year from the Nativity of Christ they preached among the Alans, Abazgs and Zichs (Zikhi) [1]. The Apostle Andrew carried the teaching to the Adyghe tribes (the Kasogs), who, as many scholars note, refused Christianity on account of their rough temperament: ‘The Zichs are a harsh and coarse people, half unbelieving even now; they meant to kill Andrew, but seeing that he was poor, meek and led a strict life, they abandoned the intention’ [2].

After a time the territory again became the object of a Christian mission, though now unintentionally and by chance. The rulers of the Roman Empire fought bitterly against the new faith as it steadily gained ground, and one of the punishments imposed on the baptised was exile to the Greek settlements that lay here: Phanagoria, Tanais (at the mouth of the Don), Anaturos (on the Kuban), Phasis, Dioscurias and others. The teaching ‘could not but spread among the mountaineers of the North Caucasus, with whom the Greek colonies maintained active trade’ [3]. Once the religion became the state religion of the Byzantine Empire (the fourth century), its hold on the spiritual life of the population grew stronger along the Black Sea coast as well.

Christianity flourished among the Adyghe tribes in the sixth century, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great. The Adyghe accepted the faith without resistance, and many churches were raised in their land. In the words of the enlightener Shora Nogmov, ‘The name of Justinian stood in such honour among the Adyghe that, to confirm their word, the people would swear by the throne of Justinian. Through the mountaineers’ religious union with the Byzantine Empire, the Greek clergy, penetrating the Caucasus mountains, brought with them the pursuit of the arts and enlightenment’ [4].

Traces of this influence show in the accounts of the spiritual world of the Adyghe left by Europeans: travellers, scholars, missionaries, political agents and merchants. Until the mid-fifteenth century, all of them without exception called this people’s religion Orthodox Christianity and reported that the services were conducted by Greek priests. Such testimony appears in the Dominican Julian (’On the Journey to the Land of the Volga Hungarians’), who visited the North Caucasus in 1235; in the monk of the French order of Minorites, William of Rubruck (’The Journey to the Eastern Countries’), who was among the Circassians in 1253; and in the German traveller Johann Schiltberger (’Travels through Europe, Asia and Africa’), squire to the knight Leonhard Reichartinger, who spent several decades in Turkish and Tatar captivity [5].

With the fall of Byzantium, religious preferences began to shift, and a so-called syncretic dualism took shape: pagan cults were now practised alongside Orthodoxy. The coexistence of Christian and pagan rites is attested by the Genoese traveller Giorgio Interiano (’The Life and Country of the Zichs, Called Circassians’), who was among the Adyghe in 1502, and by the Polish diplomat Marcin Broniewski (’Description of Tartary’). A further weakening of faith in Christ appears in the narrative of the European missionary Arcangelo Lamberti, an Italian who visited the Caucasus in the early seventeenth century. The same was recorded by the prefect of Kaffa, Emiddio Dortelli d’Ascoli (’Description of the Black Sea and Tartary’), and by the Dominican monk Jean de Luca (’Description of the Perekop and Nogai Tatars, Circassians, Mingrelians and Georgians’), who was there in about 1625 [6].

The period of change in the spiritual world of the Adyghe that opened in the mid-seventeenth century, when Islam joined a Christianity and a paganism already reshaped by circumstance, was marked by a syncretic trialism. One of the first to note the entry of Islam into the Circassian world was the French dealer in precious stones Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (’The Six Voyages to Turkey, Persia and India’), who reached the North Caucasus in the course of his travels through Asia. His observations were confirmed by the German scholar and ‘ambassador of Holstein to Muscovy’ Adam Olearius (’Description of a Journey to Muscovy’), whose notes appeared in 1647 [7].

At the turn of the eighteenth century, Europeans who had been among the mountaineers struggled to define the religion of the Circassians, so intricate was the syncretic cult that flourished there; more and more often, foreign writers called the Adyghe unbelievers. This was the view of the Dutch subject Jan Struys (’Description of the Town of Terki’), who came to the Caucasus at the end of the seventeenth century in the company of Genoese merchants, and of the Dutch cartographer Nicolaes Witsen (’North and East Tartary’) [8], who compiled a description of the region.

In 1672 the French traveller Jean Chardin (’Journey to Persia and Other Eastern Countries’) concluded that the Circassians had ‘no religion at all, not even a pagan one’; his compatriot Ferrand (’Journey from the Crimea to Circassia’) added that, ‘for want of books and priests among the Circassians’, one could not tell what their faith was. Aubry de la Motraye took the same view in a book published in 1723 (’Travels through Europe, Asia and Africa’) [9].

The next observation belongs to the Scot Peter Henry Bruce (’Memoirs of a Journey through Germany, Russia, Tartary and the West Indies’), who entered Russian service and visited the Caucasus in the first quarter of the eighteenth century: ‘Here every tribe offers its sacrifices as it pleases’ [10].

The German officer in Russian service Johann Gustav Gerber, in a work entitled ‘Notes on the Peoples and Lands on the Western Shore of the Caspian Sea, between Astrakhan and the River Kura, and on Their Condition in 1728’, recorded the strengthening of Islam among the Adyghe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The French consul in the Crimea, Xaverio Glavani (’Description of Circassia’), wrote of the mountaineers: ‘They keep Saturday, Sunday and Friday, celebrate Easter with the Christians and Bayram with the Turks, and hold that all is well’ [11].

The notes titled ‘The Newest States of Kazan, Astrakhan, Georgia and Many Others’ stand apart from this general picture. That their author, the traveller Engelbert Kaempfer, who came to Russia with a Swedish embassy, describes the Adyghe chiefly as Christians of the Greek confession may be explained in two ways. Either Kaempfer drew on the works of predecessors who had visited the Circassians several centuries before, or, under Ivan the Terrible, the Adyghe did briefly return to the fold of the Orthodox Church.

From the second half of the eighteenth century, among the Adyghe tribes and the Kabardians above all, the standing of Islam grew under pressure from the Ottoman Empire and the Crimea. Throughout the century the Adyghe remained divided in their spiritual life: often some tribes kept certain elements of Christian worship while others professed Islam, but did so inconsistently, taking up one thing and casting off another. In these years the mountaineers of the north-western Caucasus had no religious hierarchy, Christian or Muslim. Among the European accounts that bear this out are the work of John Cook (’Travels and Voyages through the Russian Empire and Tartary’, 1736) and that of the French consul in the Crimea, Charles de Peyssonnel (’A Study of Trade on the Circassian and Abkhazian Coast of the Black Sea in 1750 to 1762’) [12]; the writings of the naturalist Johann Anton Güldenstädt, a Baltic German in Russian service (’Geographical and Statistical Description of Georgia and the Caucasus’), who was among the mountaineers during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774; and those of Professor Peter Simon Pallas (’Notes on Travels in the Southern Governorates of the Russian Empire’), who visited the Caucasus in 1793 to 1794 [13].

Even at the start of the nineteenth century, paradoxically, and despite the advance of Islam, the Christian ‘past’ still lived in the historical memory of the Adyghe. We find this in the Polish historian Jan Potocki (’Journey into the Astrakhan and Caucasian Steppes’), who left a religious description of the Adyghe tribes of the Ubykhs and Abazins; in the German academician Julius Heinrich Klaproth (’Travels through the Caucasus and Georgia’), who saw the Caucasus in 1807 to 1808; and in the merchant Raffaele Scassi (’Extract from a Memoir on the Affairs of Circassia’). They are joined by the French soldier Jacques-Victor-Édouard Taitbout de Marigny (’Journey to Circassia’), who served with the Russian army in the Caucasus in 1818; the Scot Robert Lyall (’Travels in Russia, the Crimea, the Caucasus and Georgia’), who lived among the Adyghe in 1822; the French traveller Jean-Charles de Besse (’Journey to the Crimea, the Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, Asia Minor and Constantinople’), who was in the Caucasus in 1829 to 1830; the German in Russian service Johann Blaramberg (’Historical, Topographical, Statistical, Ethnographical and Military Description of the Caucasus’); the French traveller Frédéric DuBois de Montpéreux (’Journey around the Caucasus, to the Circassians and Abkhazians, to Colchis, Georgia, Armenia and the Crimea’); the English agent James Bell, who lived among the Circassians from 1837 to 1840 and roused them to revolt against Russia (’Journal of a Residence in Circassia’); and Karl Koch (’Journey through Russia and into the Caucasian Lands’) [14]. The memoirs of Edmund Spencer speak of religious syncretism among the Adyghe in the nineteenth century: ‘The doctrine of Mahomet, however, has not struck deep roots among this people [...] it is so mingled with Christianity that it almost forms a separate religion’ [15].

In different historical periods, then, the spiritual preferences of the Adyghe shifted for two reasons: first, through the political and economic influence of neighbouring states; and second, through the tolerance characteristic of the Adyghe (the absence of any ‘religious immunity’) and their partial integration (a half-immersion into whatever religious structure was at hand). The proof and the outcome of this was the normative code of etiquette they worked out, Adyghe Khabze (the Circassian code of custom and etiquette), which in the religious sphere passed over into Adygaghe (’Circassian-ness’, the moral ideal). To this day most of the Adyghe hold themselves apart from any religious doctrine, replacing it with unifying factors of their own. The words of Aubry de la Motraye therefore still hold: ‘There is nothing more complicated than the Circassian religion’ [16].

1. Makary, Archbishop of Kharkov. ‘The History of Christianity in Rus’ before Prince Vladimir, Equal to the Apostles’. St Petersburg, 1868. P. 11.

2. Petrovsky S. V. ‘Apocryphal Tales of the Apostolic Preaching along the Black Sea Coast’ // ‘Notes of the Odessa Society of History and Antiquities’. Vol. 21. Odessa, 1898. P. 83; later reprinted in Kuznetsov V. A. ‘Christianity in the North Caucasus before the Fifteenth Century’. Vladikavkaz, 2002. P. 13; Dorofei, Hieromonk (Dbar). ‘The History of Christianity in Abkhazia in the First Millennium’. New Athos, 2005. Pp. 65 to 66.

3. ‘A Historical Note. On Christianity in the North Caucasus’ // ‘Stavropol Diocesan Gazette’. 1888. No. 18. P. 713.

4. Nogmov Sh. B. ‘The History of the Adyghe People’. Tiflis, 1861. P. 43.

5. ‘Adyghe, Balkars and Karachais in the Accounts of European Authors, Thirteenth to Nineteenth Centuries’. Nalchik, 1974. Pp. 32 to 33; 36; 38.

6. Ibid. Pp. 47; 54; 59; 67; 70 to 71.

7. Ibid. Pp. 76 to 79; 40.

8. Ibid. Pp. 102; 94.

9. Ibid. Pp. 104; 112; 141 to 142.

10. Ibid. Pp. 149 to 150.

11. Ibid. Pp. 154 to 155; 161 to 162.

12. Ibid. Pp. 176 to 177; ‘Materials for the History of the Circassian People’. Issue 2. Krasnodar, 1927. P. 21.

13. ‘Adyghe, Balkars and Karachais ...’ Pp. 207 to 208; 215, 218.

14. Ibid. Pp. 226; 239; 269; 319; 327; 339; 372 to 373; 450; 529; 625.

15. Spencer, Edmund. ‘Journey to Circassia’. Maikop, 1993. P. 106.

16. De la Motraye, Aubry. ‘Travels through Europe, Asia and Africa’ // ‘Adyghe, Balkars and Karachais ...’ Pp. 141 to 142.