The Republic of Adygea implements a project to promote and sustain Circassian nationalism by establishing a nationalistic theme across all life aspects in the republic. The project started with spreading the symbols of the Maykop/ Kuban culture and is currently aiming to keep the recently excavated Circassian artefacts inside the republic and not to be moved to the Hermitage.
Within the same efforts, another project was launched to revive the Circassian Gardens. The fruit trees in the Circassian forests have always captured the attention of historians and travellers. The question had always been how the Circassians spectacularly tame nature and convert such forests into massive gardens of different fruit trees?!
The story behind ancient Circassian gardens:
The advancement in agriculture among Circassians was the tool they used to build these gardens. The “art of Circassian gardening” has become a term to refer to the highly advanced gardening techniques at that time. Sadly, most of these large gardens were sabotaged after the Russian invasion of the Circassian land. The lineament of these ancient gardens can hardly be seen nowadays.
European travellers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries described the highly equipped Circassian gardens and referred to the diversity of their fruits. They also described the tree grafting tradition that Circassians used, and their method to identify and select better breeds of berries. Despite being abandoned for a long time, some of these gardens are still available in good shape and producing fruits nowadays. Year after year, the Circassians converted the mountainous forests into what is known as “Forrest Gardens”.
The Russian academic Jokovsky (1888- 1975) dedicated many years of his life to studying Circassian gardening art. He concluded that Circassia is the motherland of all fruit types in Eurasia. Several travellers who visited Circassia noticed the destroyed gardens. During her visit to the Caucasus in 1886, the head of the Moscow Archaeology Association Countess Prascovia Avarova, noticed what she described bitterly as “the stretching of this sad scenery of arid areas, where we see abandoned Circassian gardens that now became part of wilderness”.
Vasily Poto, one of the prominent historians of the Russo- Circassian war indicated that all fields and foothills surrounding Circassian Villages were planted with fruit trees.
Under the eloquent subject: “The Circassian gardens are waiting for their owners”, the academic Michorin ( 1935- 2014) mentioned specifically in his article that “ old Circassian gardens created the impressive wealth of wild forests in fruits and berries in Aygheya which represents the most civilized human symbol in the Caucasus”.
The Circassian historian and researcher Sameer Khotiqwa explained the reason behind such an advancement in agriculture among the Circassians. In his two-volume book “Old Circassian Gardens” issued in 2005 he connected this advancement to the unique value of trees in the Circassian culture, especially in the Maykop Civilization. In Circassian mythology, the “Tree of Life” is an embodiment of the whole physical universe, starting from the components of the human body up to the components of the planet Earth.
Ancient Circassians believed that by building and nurturing these gardens, which ornamented their homeland for centuries, the human dream of returning to paradise would be achieved. This belief explains the worship of sacred groves, a religious practice that was widely spread in the ancient Caucasus.
These gardens provide what we now know as food security. Circassia, being a region under repeated invasions, with the lack of constant food sources had only one refuge for Circassians; its forests. The forests were the Circassian shelter in times of crises and disasters where they could hide and feed from the same wild trees they domesticated, grafted, and bred for many years.
It remains a wish that other republics would follow Aygheya’s steps in safeguarding the Circassian gardens. In Kabarday, the public park, which is one of the largest parks in the Russian Federation, is a part of the ancient “Hatukhshouqwa grove” currently Atajukin Garden, which has been mentioned several times in books like Ya Abramov’s “The Caucasian Circassians”.
Dr. Ali Kasht
Translated by Mesha Warq
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