Circassians

A people from the Caucasus, speaking a NW Caucasian language, who are divided into Adyghians (Lower Circassians) and Kabardians (Upper Circassians). Most live in Russia, but there are also Circassian communities in Syria and Turkey, and small groups in Iraq, Jordan, and Israel. They are Sunni Muslims; most are farmers and pastoralists, hierarchically organized, with princes, nobles, and (until recently) also slaves.

Today a significant number of "Circassians" lives in diaspora, primarily due to the Muhajirism, an exodus of Muslim population from Caucasus since 1863 after the successful Russian invasion of the Caucasus.

More commonly it has referred to all the peoples of the Northwest Caucasus:

Adyghe ("Circassians" in the narrowest sense, inhabitants of Circassia, including Kabardin), Abkhaz (including Abazins), Ubykh (linguistically vanished),

to the exclusion of the eastern Chechens and the peoples of Dagestan.

The term's vagueness stems largely from the fact that the northern Caucasus was a remote and relatively unknown area for Westerners and Turks, who often did not distinguish carefully between similar groups living there.

Various communities of Caucasian origin living in the Middle East, notably Jordan and Syria, are known as Circassians, and a suburb of Damascus settled by these people is called Al-Tcharkassiyya.

During the French Mandate period in Syria, in the 1930s, some Circassians in the mostly Circassian town of Al-Quneitra tried to convince the French authorities to create a Circassian national home for them in the Golan Heights, but failed in their attempt. The objective was to group there large numbers of Circassians already living in Turkey and in various Middle Eastern countries.

Another small minority of Circassians lived since the late 1880's in Kosovo Polje, which was given mention by Noel Malcolm in his seminal work about that province, but they were repatriated to the Republic of Adygea, in Southern Russia in the late 1990's.

In Israel, there are also a few thousand Circassians, living mostly in Kfar-Kama and Reyhaniye.

Circassians (черкези) were introduced to the territory of modern Bulgaria during the Ottoman rule of the country, mostly in 1864–1865 to serve as bashi-bazouks. After 1878, when Bulgaria became a separate state, most Circassians fled from the country to Turkey fearing a Bulgarian retribution.

Around 1600, several emigrants from the Caucasus region, of somewhat noble blood, settled in the then Principality of Moldavia, and became under the name "Cerchez" (pronounced Cherkez in Romanian) one of its 72 boyar families.