Temirgoy

The Temirgoy were one of the twelve great Circassian tribes, associated with the country between the Belaya and Laba rivers around Maykop. They are thought to have moved from the Black Sea coast to the western Caucasus in the fourteenth century.

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Boletoqo house established princely rule among the Temirgoy. In 1761 they joined the Bzhedugs and other tribes to defeat the Crimean khan’s army at Ust-Labinsk. In 1837 Russian officer Ivan Blaramberg described their fortified villages, protected by double rows of stakes filled with earth.