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Circassians

Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian Peoples

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The Circassians are a Northwest Caucasian people indigenous to the region along Russia's Black Sea coast historically known as Circassia, speaking Adyghe and Kabardian, two closely related languages, and traditionally governed through a customary code of conduct and honor called Adyghe Khabze. Following Russia's prolonged conquest of the Caucasus, culminating in 1864, the great majority of Circassians were killed or expelled in events many scholars and, since 2011, Georgia's government have characterized as a genocide, with survivors resettled chiefly across the Ottoman Empire. As a result, a large Circassian diaspora lives today across Turkey, Jordan, Syria and other former Ottoman lands, considerably outnumbering those who remain in their Caucasus homeland within Russia's Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia republics.

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