Circassian

The Circassians, or Adyghe, are indigenous to the Black Sea coast and Kuban basin. Missions made them Christians between the third and fifth centuries; later they were drawn into Alania and Georgian orbits. Called Kassogs, they were driven behind the Kuban by Mongol raids from 1223 and later Golden Horde and Timurid attacks; Timur sacked their lands in 1395.

Circassian mamluks seized Egypt in 1382, founding the Burji dynasty ruling until 1517. Inal the Great united the tribes and created Kabardia in 1434, pushing the Crimean Tatars beyond the Kuban; his sons split the inheritance after 1453.

Sufi preachers and the Russian threat spread Sunni Islam, general by the eighteenth century. The Kabardians shattered a Crimean invasion at Kanzhal in 1708, and the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade recognized Kabardia's independence. From Peter I's time Russian forts crept down the Terek and Kuban, opening a long mountain war of resistance.