Adjarians
ethnographic group of Georgians
The Adjarians (Georgian: აჭარლები, romanized: ach'arlebi), are an ethnographic group of Georgians indigenous to Adjara in southwestern Georgia. Adjarian settlements are also found in the Georgian provinces of Guria, Kvemo Kartli, and Kakheti, as well as in several areas of neighbouring Turkey.
Under the lengthy Ottoman rule, which actively favored Muslims over Christians, many Adjarians converted to Islam; however, most of them have since reverted back to Christianity following their reunification with the Georgian mainland. Despite an extended period under Turkish rule, Adjarians have kept the Georgian language (with their own dialect) and traditions. In the 1926 census, Adjarians were categorised as a distinct ethnic group. In the 1939 census, they were included in the same category as Georgians. Since Georgian independence, most Adjarians consider themselves Georgians, but some segments of the Georgian society continue to view Muslim Adjarians as second-class "Turkicized" Georgians.
History
Adjarians, like other ethnographic groups of Georgians, have historically followed Christianity. However, in the course of the 200 years of Ottoman rule, which pursued discriminatory policies against Christians, Adjarians gradually converted to Islam. The nobility converted first.
“Adjarians” enters the record as ethnographic group of Georgians. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Adjarians, ethnographic and group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26291. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adjarians” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.