Hemshin people


The Hemshin people, also known as Hemshinli or Hamshenis or Homshetsi, are an ethnographic group of Armenians who mostly practice Sunni Islam after their conversion from Christianity in the beginning of the 18th century and are affiliated with the Hemşin and Çamlıhemşin districts in the province of Rize, Turkey.
They are Armenian in origin, and were originally Christians and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, but evolved into a distinct community over the centuries and converted to Sunni Islam after the conquest of the region by the Ottomans during the second half of the 15th century. In Turkey, Hemshin people do not speak the Homshetsi dialect apart from the "Eastern Hamsheni" group living in provinces of Artvin and Sakarya and their mother tongue is now Turkish.
For centuries, the ongoing migration from the geographically isolated highlands to lowlands made the Hemshin people settle in the areas near Trabzon, Artvin and in the Western part of the Black Sea coast. Thus, a significant Hamsheni population formed in those areas.

History

Genetic origin

The origins of the Hemshin people has remained a subject of debate among scholars. The main two purported homelands of the Hemshin have been Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia. A 2011 genetic survey based on the Y-chromosomal markers of the Hemshin indicated the central part of the historical Armenian highlands as a plausible place of origin for the Hamsheni population.

History until the Ottoman conquest

The region of Hemshin is located on the coast of the Black sea, in the highlands of Rize Province. According to historical accounts, Armenians first settled in that region in the end of 8th century. While escaping Arab persecutions, about 12,000 Armenians led by Prince Shapuh Amatuni and his son Hamam moved to Pontos, ruled by the Byzantine Empire. Robert H. Hewsen shows the region where today's Hemşin is located to be populated by a people with different designations throughout the ancient and early medieval history. He indicates thereby that some designations may have alternative forms and partially presents the names used with question marks. In summary from 13th century to 6th century BC Colchians, 550 to 330 BC Colchians and Macrones, 180 BC to 14 AD Lazoi, in the Arsacid Period Heniochi, Machelones, Heptakometians, Mossynoeci as well as Sanni, Drilae and Macrones are mentioned.
The Hemşin region is shown as part of Colchis, Tzanica and Chaldia. The specific location of Hemşin is indicated as Tambur/Hamamašen as a fort and town for the first time in the map covering the period 654–750.
Those two names are included in the History of Taron by John Mamikonean in a short passage about a war between the ruler of Tambur, Hamam, and his maternal uncle the Georgian Prince, which resulted in the destruction of the town to be rebuilt by Hamam and be named after him, namely Hamamshen.
This event is declared by Mamikonian to have taken place in early seventh century. Hamamashen became Hamshen over time. Simonian who conveys this story reports also that the date given by the author may be wrong.
Two other Armenian chronicles Ghewond and Stepanos Asoghik of Taron, report in short passages in their histories about a migration from Armenia/Oshakan led by prince Shapuh Amatuni and his son Hamam. Ghewond conveys this immigration to be to avoid heavy taxes imposed on Armenians by the Arab rulers. The Amatuni lords are offered fertile land to settle down by the Byzantine Emperor, after they crossed the Çoruh. This migration is dated to be after 789 by Ghewond and as 750 by Stephen Asoghik of Taron.
Benninghaus specifies "Tambur" as the destination of the migration led by Hamam and his father Shapuh Amaduni and says that they have seemingly met people there who were already Christians, possibly Greeks. Redgate informs about possible symbolism used in the Ghewond's history and possible garbling in Mamikonian's history, and cautions not to take everything at face value. Hachikian states "There is no clue as to where Tambur, the legendary capital of Hamshen, was located. The only certain thing about it is that it clearly belonged to a much earlier time - if it existed at all". He also mentions in the footnote the name similarity between Tambur and a yayla known as Tahpur or Tagpur, in the heights of Kaptanpasa. Simonian states that Tambur is probably in the vicinity of Varoşkale.
Image:Elevit hemşinliler hemshin.jpg|right|250px|thumb|Traditional Hemshin bagpipe, Çamlıhemşin, Rize, Turkey.
A description of "Haynsen" in the Kingdom of Georgia, its inhabitants and history is contained in La Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient by Hayton of Corycus, written around 1307, translated into English in 1520, and later reproduced in the travellers' tales of Samuel Purchas published in 1614. Purchas uses the term "Hamsem" to designate the region and concludes that this is the place of the original Cimmerian gloom of Homer's Odyssey. The translation of He'tum's related passage to modern English uses the term Hamshen. Hayton describes the region to be "miraculous and strange place" unbelievable unless seen by one's own eyes, dark and without roads. Signs of human settlement are that "People in those parts say that one frequently hears the sounds of men bellowing, of cocks crowing, of horses neighing in the forest," Those people are described by Hayton, leaning upon Georgian and Armenian Histories, to be the descendants of the men of the "wicked" Iranian Emperor Shaworeos who had chased and harassed Christian people. The referenced translation suggests this Emperor could be Shapur II.
Simonian considers the so described difficulty in access not to imply total isolation. On the contrary, he reports, Hamshen served sometimes as a transit route between the coastal regions and the Armenian Highlands.
In his analysis of the literary and non-literary sources from the 8th through the 19th centuries, combined with excursions into Hamšēn during the 1980s to identify the surviving Armenian architecture, Dr. Robert W. Edwards has defined the geographical perimeters of that region and assessed the historical impact of its extreme isolation.
Sources of the ruling powers in the region, are silent about Hemshin; until the conquest by the Ottomans. It is deduced that Hemşin has been governed by local lords under the umbrella of the greater regional powers changing by the time namely the Bagratid Armenian kingdom, the Byzantine Empire, its successor the Empire of Trebizond, the Kingdom of Georgia, the Kara Koyunlu and Ak Koyunlu Turkmen Confederations until it was annexed by the Ottoman Empire which collapsed as a result of the World War I and gave birth to the Republic of Turkey.
The Ottoman conquest of Hemshin occurred sometime in the 1480s: an Ottoman register dated around 1486 calls it Hemshin and mentions it as being an Ottoman possession.

Turkish dominance and division

influence was firmly established in the region after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, after which the Seljuk Turks and other Turkish tribes gained a strong foothold in Central Anatolia and Western Armenian Highlands, often referred to as Eastern Anatolia, bringing the local population in contact with the religion of Islam. In the 15th century, the region of Hamshen was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the Turkish rule, two most important developments are human migrations and conversions. Most sources agree that prior to Ottoman era majority of the residents of Hemshin were Christian and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The details and the accompanying circumstances for the migrations and the conversions during the Ottoman era are not clearly known or documented.
As a result of those developments, distinctive communities with the same generic name have also appeared in the vicinity of Hopa, Turkey as well as in the Caucasus. Those three communities are almost oblivious to one another's existence.
  • The Hemshinli of Hemshin proper are Turkish-speaking Sunni Muslims who mostly live in the counties of Çamlıhemşin, Çayeli, İkizdere, Pazar and Hemşin in Turkey's Rize Province.
  • The Hopa Hemshinli are Sunni Muslims and mostly live in the Hopa and Borçka counties of Turkey's Artvin Province. In addition to Turkish, they also speak a dialect of western Armenian they call "Homshetsma" or "Hemşince" in Turkish.
  • Homshentsik are Christians who live in Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. They speak Homshetsma as well. There are also some Muslim Hamshentsi living in Georgia and Krasnodar and some Hamshentsi elements amongst the Meskhetian Turks.

    Demographics

Two major developments in the Hemshin region during the Ottoman era: Islamization and population movements. Islam may have begun to spread prior to the Ottoman rule, but it did not become the general religion before the end of the 16th century. A number of population movements also happened during the Ottoman era. Even though detailed information regarding the nature of these movements is missing, in summary:
  • Some Hemshinli who were members of the Armenian Orthodox Church emigrated to other countries on the eastern Black Sea during the early centuries of Ottoman rule;
  • Some Muslim Hemshinli migrated to western Anatolia and the Caucasus as a result of the Russo-Turkish wars and related hardships during the 19th century;
  • Some immigration into the area occurred during Ottoman rule.
The present community of Hemshinli is exclusively Muslim and Turkish speaking. This goes for the people living in Hemshin or people maintaining links to the area and living elsewhere in Turkey.
A distinct community settled about 50 km east of Hemşin in villages around Hopa and Borçka also call themselves "Hemşinli". They are often referred to as the "Hopa Hemşinli". Professor of Linguistics Bert Vaux at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee refers to this group as the "Eastern Hamshenis". Hemşinli and Hopa Hemşinli are separated not only by geography but also by language and some features of culture. The two groups are almost oblivious to one another's existence. Simonian reports various theories regarding the appearance of the Hopa Hemshinli group. Those theories relate to whether the groups migrated from Hemshin or they were settled by the Ottoman authorities, whether the migration/settlement was in the early 16th or late 17th centuries, and whether the migration took place in one step or two waves. The Hopa Hemşinli are exclusively Muslim as well.
Simonian reports that there is a controversy regarding whether they arrived in the Hopa region as Muslims or converted to Islam after arrival.
The Hopa Hemşinli speak a language called "Hemşince" or as well as Turkish. Recent studies by Hovann Simonian suggest that this language is an archaic dialect of Armenian subject to influence from Turkish and Laz. Vaux also reports that "Hemşince" has been subject to influence from Turkish to a much greater extent than other Armenian dialects. Hemşince and Armenian are largely mutually unintelligible.
In addition to these two groups there are people speaking Hemşince / Homshetsma in the countries of the former USSR whose ancestors probably originated from Hemşin and/or Hopa Hemşin in course of the various population movements to the Caucasus. Many of the Muslim Hemşince speakers in the former USSR were deported from the Adjara area of Georgia during the Stalin era to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Since 1989, a considerable number of these deportees have moved to Krasnodar Krai since 1989, along with the Meskhetian Turks.