Circassians people

The ethnic group, who also self-identify as the Adyghe, come from the North Caucasus region and the northeast shore of the Black Sea. It's an area in the southwest of Russia. It was the German physiologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach who first came up with the idea of the ‘Caucasian race’, which he named after the geographical area in which the Circassians lived before their ethnic cleansing.

They're predominantly Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school. Today, only a minority of Circassians live in their divided ancestral homeland, mainly in three republics of the Russian Federation (Kabardino Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and Adygheya). The majority of Circassians were forced to flee their homeland in 1864, following the 19th century Russian conquest of the Caucasus and have never been able to return.

Many hundreds of thousands were killed or deported to the neighboring Ottoman Empire, where most settled in Turkey, and others made their way to the Balkans and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Circassians were warlike people. Grown men were expected to carry arms, and boys trained to be warriors. Familial ties were not strongly encouraged; parents fostered their children to other adults rather than raising them themselves.

Circassians now live in almost 40 different countries including Turkey, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the United States and several European countries.
Circassians people