Plague in the North Caucasus and its Consequences
Plague is a scourge of humanity of past centuries. Its epidemics were worse than the attacks of barbarous nomadic hordes. In different historical periods, the plague destroyed so large number of the population that literally changed the ethnic composition of the population in the region of infection and steeply unfolded the political development of states. In history, plague epidemics are known in Egypt, Byzantium, medieval Europe, Russia and the countries of the Far East. However, little is known about how these epidemics affected states and peoples located on the periphery of these centers of world civilization. In this article it is proposed to pay attention to the North Caucasus. The plague also happened in these places, and sometimes its terrible harvest caused consequences of a serious nature in the entire Adyghe (Circassian) world.
The first reliable pandemic of the plague, known as Justiniana, arose in the 6th century in the heyday of the Eastern Roman Empire, under Emperor Justinian, who died from this very disease. The plague came from Egypt or Ethiopia. During the period from 532 to 580, it covered many countries through trade routes: first along the sea coasts, then into the depths of states bordering on the sea coast. The disease reached Constantinople, and further from this center spread to the northern, southern and eastern parts of Byzantium, and then spread to neighboring countries. In the Byzantine Empire, the epidemic reached its peak around 544, when up to 5,000 people died daily in Constantinople, and on some days the death rate reached 10,000 people. In all, more than half of the empire’s population — almost 100 million people — died, and another 25 million people in Europe, including England and Ireland. In the latter, a whole royal branch died out and Christianity was established for ever.
It is known that before the epidemic, the cooling of 535–536 occurred — the sharpest drop in the average annual temperature in the northern hemisphere over the past 2000 years. The suggested reason is a sharp decrease in the transparency of the atmosphere as a result of several large volcanic eruptions in the tropics or as a result of a collision with a large meteorite. The connection between the sharp cooling and the mutation of the plague pathogen that led to the pandemic of the bubonic plague has not been proved, but for the contemporaries of the events, an unexpected cold snap, plague, destructive earthquakes in the east of the Mediterranean and the Byzantine wars constituted one continuous series of disasters. The food shortage caused by the cold caused the need to purchase grain from Egypt and Ethiopia. With it came the plague.
Simultaneously with the epidemic of plague, Justinian led extensive wars in the Arab countries and the Caucasus with Iran, in North Africa and Italy with local states. In those years the invasion of the Avars began in the steppes of the Western Caspian and further — to the Northern Black Sea coast and Byzantium. At the same time, an alliance of tribes of the Turkic group was formed, the formation of the Turkic Kaganate, to which China was immediately forced to pay a large tribute. The raids of the Turks in the west reached the cities in the vicinity of the Kerch Strait. There was endless widespread bloodshed, hunger and cold, plague — it was infernal time.
It is known that under Justinian an active construction was conducted in the Crimea, Abkhazia and the Mzymta Valley with access to Arkhyz on the trade routes from China. With it, an active Christianization of the local population along these paths was carried out, fortresses and temples appeared. In the Crimea, Byzantium fought with the Huns. The Abkhazian tribes moved to the side of Iran and in their territories from 542 to 555 years there was a war between Byzantium and Iran, and tribes along the trade routes were also affected by this war. Local people everywhere rose up irritated by the Byzantine military. Strange as it may seem, they do not write about the plague here, although they indicate that it spreads north from Constantinople. This issue was poorly researched, but on all grounds it can be concluded that the North Caucasus and Crimea suffered the same fate. At least in the coastal part, where the military operations were going on.
The result of the plague for Byzantium was a sharp decrease in population, a failure in wars for the idea of restoring the Roman Empire and the transition from attack to defense from external enemies. The plague touched the Arabian Peninsula very weakly, which led to the active settlement of the deserted territories of the Middle East by the Arabs and the emergence of a new religion — Islam. On a wave of religious ascent, the Arabs managed to capture and colonize vast areas that the depopulated Byzantine Empire could not hold. Similar processes took place in the North Caucasus and Crimea — the affected territories subordinated or vassal empires seized the Khazars. Abkhazia has gained full independence for at least 2 centuries. Separate episodes of plague happened in the 7–8th centuries, but the Caucasus did not touch or we do not have information about it.
During the periods between world pandemics, large plague epidemics occurred on the territory of the North Caucasus and Ciscaucasia, the origin of which remains open to this day. The second pandemic, known as the “black death”, came in the 14th century (1348–1351). No state in Europe has avoided the invasion of infection, even Greenland. The plague opened a period of epidemics that have accompanied Europe for five centuries. During the second pandemic, which affected almost all countries of the world, around 40 million people died on the globe. Dirt, poverty, lack of basic hygienic skills and population crowding were the reasons for the unhindered spread of the disease. The plague “moved” with the speed of the horse — the main transport of that time. Probably, it also became a consequence of the cold climate. Its distribution came from Central Asia through the Great Silk Road, which passed through the territory of the North Caucasus.
The initial distribution area of the epidemic is best described in the Russian Resurrection Chronicle of 1346: “The same summer, the execution was from God to people under the eastern country to the city of Ornach (the mouth of the Don) and to Khavtoro-kan, and to Saray and Bezdezh (the Horde city in the interfluve of the Volga and the Don) and other hailstones in their countries; pestilence is strong against the Bessermen (Khivans) and the Tatars and Ormen (Armenians) and Obez (Abazins) and the Jews and Fryaz (inhabitants of the Italian colonies on the Black and Azov Seas) and the Cherkasy and all those living there “ there are the lower reaches of the Volga, the Northern Caspian, the Northern Caucasus, the Transcaucasus, the Black Sea and the Crimea.
The starting point for the spread of the epidemic in Europe was the Crimean port of Kaffa (Theodosia) belonging to the Genoese, which at that time was the most important junction on the way of goods from Asia to Europe. The fact that just in the year of the outbreak of the epidemic the city besieged the Mongolian army under the command of Khan Janibek, gave birth to the version that the outbreak of the plague was the result of the use some kind of biological weapons by the Tatars. Ostensibly the first to fall ill was the besieging, and then the khan ordered to cut the dead bodies to pieces and throw them over the wall with the help of catapults. After the siege, the Genoese carried a plague on their merchant ships throughout Europe. In the spring of 1347, the plague hit the Byzantine Empire, killing up to a third of the subjects of the empire and half the population of Constantinople. Among the dead was the heir of the emperor Andronik, burned out of the disease literally in a few hours, from dawn to noon.
In 1387 the Black Death completely destroyed the population of Smolensk. According to the chronicler, only 5–10 people remained alive who left the dead city and closed its gates. In Moscow, the plague took the entire family of Prince Simeon the Proud. In Pskov and Novgorod, too, an epidemic was raging. In Europe, people were massively killed and even England did not save the strait — about 60% of the population died there. The problem is that in the Caucasus we do not have any information, although it is obvious that the plague has seriously affected this region. The consequences were expressed in politics — the weakened forces of the Golden Horde and its Caucasian allies were unable to resist the invasion of Tamerlane’s forces. In 1395 Tamerlane defeated Tokhtamysh in the Battle of Terek and set up a rout throughout the North Caucasus. It was then that the Kabardians gradually began to move to the deserted lands of the Central part of the North Caucasus, inhabited before that by the remnants of the Alans and the Turks of the Golden Horde. The latter has not recovered. The Northern trading branch of the Silk Road disappeared. The colonies of the Genoese in the Crimea and Circassia were seriously affected, many of which never recovered. Perhaps it is to this period that the beginning of the gathering of Adygs (Circassians) by the legendary Prince Inal.
This was the last big plague epidemic, which had a global impact on the course of history. But the plague did not leave Circassia. Local epidemics continued to erupt. A strong epidemic swept through Kabarda in 1736–1737. Russian general Johann Blaramberg, for example, believed that the plague penetrated into the lands of Circassia from Turkey, which was often shaken by the most powerful epidemics of this disease and from where it repeatedly penetrated the European countries, including Russia. “Because of this trade, the plague that destroyed their children got into them, which inevitably caused a significant reduction in the population.” After this plague, Russian politics once again returned to Kabarda after more than 150 years of interruption.
Most strongly affected the Adyghe (Circassian) world is one of the epidemic, which lasted intermittently for almost 50 years in the region. The plague broke out in 1770, during the Russian-Turkish war in the Caucasus 1768–1774. It is known as the last major outbreak of the plague in Europe, which led to a plague riot in Moscow. The immediate reason for the Moscow uprising was the ban imposed by Moscow’s Archbishop Amvrosiy to hold prayers near the Bogolyubsky Icon of the Mother of God, located at the Barbara’s gate of China Town. Ambrose sought to prevent a mass gathering of people, which contributed to the spread of the plague. As a result of the ban, the crowd plundered the Chudov and the Donskoy monasteries, killed the archbishop, and then the quarantine outposts and houses of the nobility began to smash. About 100 people were killed, 313 rioters were arrested, four of whom were executed. The troops sent from the capital under the command of Count Grigory Orlov brought order to the city, and the commission on fighting the plague created by him helped to overcome the epidemic.
According to reports provided by Orlov in the State Council, from the outbreak of the epidemic until the end of November 1771 in Moscow, about 50,000 people died from the plague. These figures are confirmed by the data of the Moscow doctor Alexander Sudakov, who calls the figure of 56,907 people. In a letter to Catherine, the German publicist Friedrich Melchior Grimm, dated January 30, 1775, notes that more than 100,000 people died of plague in Moscow.
At the same time, it is known that the plague epidemic swept through the Caucasus. A lot of songs confirm this story. Sources say that “the number of princes used to be much higher than at present, which is explained by the enormous devastation that the plague has caused among these people.” On the basis of a few archival data, a number of major epidemics were established in 1706, 1760, 1790, during which the population of the auls located in the valleys of the Teberda, Jalankol, Kuban, and Cherek Bezengiysk became extinct. The plague of the 1770s finally dislodged from the historical arena the once powerful sub-ethnoses of the Adyg-Zhane, Adyg-Hatukay and Adyg-Hegayk, whose remains were assimilated by other sub-ethnoses. But the most striking result was the Adyghe (Circassian) revolution in the Circassia — an uprising of the people against the princes, which occurred in the late 1780s among the mountain Adygs-Shapsugs, Natukhays and Abadzekhs.
The uprising was also promoted by the spread of firearms among the population, which enabled the people to take revenge on princes and aristocrats for the offenses they inflicted. This situation resulted in a bloody civil war, the peak of which was the Battle of Bzyuk in 1796. On the other hand, there is an opinion that this plague seriously affected the number of the Little Horde of the Kuban Nogais, whom Suvorov so easily managed to conquer in subsequent years. Seriously thinned population of both banks of the Kuban opened the way to the settlement of the Zaporozhye Cossacks, who founded the city of Yekaterinodar.
In the Central Caucasus, outbreaks of plague were manifested in the city of Mozdok. Back in 1763, Russia built the Azov-Mozdoks cordon line, which very severely restricted the territory of free Kabardians. The mass of the population with their livestock was cut off from pasture land and locked in a foothill zone with a very limited land area. The plague did not fail to take advantage of population crowding. In 1808, there was unrest in Kabarda — peasants, exhausted with unbearable oppression, took up arms and destroyed or expelled most of their princes and nobles. In many ways they were helped by constant attacks by Russian troops on the auls within Circassia, related to the refusal of local residents to obey the demands of the Russian authorities. The feudal system, which prevailed until then, gave way to complete anarchy. The plague that followed this internal unrest has completed the liquidation of the nobility, which was so brilliant and powerful. Among a large number of survivors Kabardians gone to Adygs (Circassians) in Circassia or Chechnya. In connection with the widespread spread of the plague in 1810, all along the Black Sea (Bugazskaya) to the Caspian Sea (Kizlyar), along the Caucasian line of military fortifications, “quarantine yards” were created, designed to prevent the penetration of the “plague infection” deep into the territory of Russia. The epidemic spread among the Grebens and Terek Cossacks, and there were not enough troops to maintain the quarantine, they were engaged in military operations in Dagestan.
By 1810–1812, the epidemic had reduced the number of Kabardians by two-thirds, killing between 200,000 and 270,000 people according to various estimates. Many princes who were leading the struggle for independence lost their lives. Kabarda could not resist and was finally subdued by Russia in 1822 according to the plan of General Yermolov. According to estimates made in 1804, 30,000 families (no less than 5 people per family) lived in Great Kabarda, and 15,000 families in Minor Kabarda. In 1810–1812 the population became equal to no more than 30 thousand people, of whom 24 thousand live in the Great and 6 thousand — in Minor Kabarda. Of this number, not more than 3–4 thousand soldiers were exhibited, mainly riders — that is, a healthy male population. On this occasion, Russian generals noted with satisfaction that now depopulated Kabarda cannot fully use its terrible weapons — the swift blows of thousands of cavalry. These statements, as in the example above with Djanibek in Kerch, led to conspiracy theories on the deliberate using of infected blankets and clothing by Russian troops in Kabarda.
The epidemic of plague continued. In 1816–1817, it struck a large area of the modern Stavropol Territory, Karachay-Circassia and Kabardin-Balkaria republics. Then the plague raged in Gelendzhik and Pshad, brought by the Turks. People died out in whole auls. The consequences for Kabarda were extremely deplorable. In addition to the complete loss of independence, Adygs-Kabardins could not keep their native territories in Minor Kabarda and the mountainous terrain of Great Kabarda. Their places began to be actively occupied by Ossetians, Ingush, Chechens, Karachais and Balkars, who were less affected because of the small number and distance of their stay in remote mountains. The process of ethnic substitution continues to this day. Some epidemics erupted locally on the Black Sea coast, brought from Turkey. For example, General Velyaminov describes his campaign towards the Pshada Valley, where he ordered some auls to remain untouched, since they were infected with plague last year (1836). At the same time, the Adygs (Circassians) had a practice of burning their auls infected with plague and other deadly diseases. In the old place, as a rule, the auls were no longer rebuilt, and the terrain itself was not cultivated and was not used for a very long time.
Modern studies show that, in addition to external influence, the North Caucasian lands have their own constant sources of plague infection. Currently, there are five active natural foci of the plague in the North Caucasus (the Central Caucasian Highland, the Tersko-Sunzhensky, the Dagestan plains and foothills, the Caspian littoral and the East Caucasus Highlands), all of which are characterized by various epidemic and epizootic activities. In the listed outbreaks, with the exception of the Eastern Caucasus Alpine, the causative agent of the plague of the main subspecies Yersinia pestis subspecies pestis, virulent for humans, is circulating. Manifestations of activity occur cyclically, in the form of random cases or diffuse epizootics in rodent populations, sometimes involving random species of wild animals. The last local infection of the plague in the North Caucasus was recorded in 1951.
Read also:
- The rite of supporting the wounded from the Adyge (Circassians) — chapsch;
- Circassian Armenian (Circassgai);
- The Adventures of Agent 007 in Circassia (James Stanislaus Bell);
- Adigean, Circassian or Kabardin — a single ethnic group;
- Haji Ismail Berzeg — “Circassian Washington” from the Ubykh clan;
- Haji Dogomuko Kerenduko — the last “prince” of the Ubykhs.
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