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Published Works and Archival Documents on the Circassian Genocide

Author

Amjad Jaimoukha

Document Type

Book

Classification

Secondary Sources

Publisher

Palgrave

Location

New York

Year

2001

Language

English

Amjad Jaimoukha's The Circassians: A Handbook is the most comprehensive single-volume reference work on Circassian history, culture, and society. Published by Palgrave as part of the "Peoples of the Caucasus" series, the volume spans eighteen chapters covering topics from prehistoric archaeology and the Russian-Circassian War to language policy, social structure, folklore, music, literature, and the diaspora. The author, a Circassian of Jordanian origin, draws on an exceptionally broad multilingual bibliography — encompassing sources in Russian, Arabic, French, German, and English — supported by footnotes and a forty-page bibliography, giving the work the apparatus of a scholarly reference volume.


For genocide documentation purposes, the historical chapters are of particular significance. Jaimoukha systematically addresses the Russian invasion and the mass expulsion of 1864, situating them within the longer arc of imperial expansion and explicitly framing the destruction of Circassian civilization as the defining catastrophe of the nation's modern history. The book also provides detailed coverage of the Circassian diaspora, its formation, geographic distribution, and political significance as well as of Soviet-era policies that further suppressed Circassian national identity. These sections offer both narrative synthesis and bibliographic guidance toward primary and secondary sources.


The Circassians: A Handbook functions as an indispensable reference baseline. Its coverage of pre-war Circassian civilization, customary law (Xabze), the caste system, religious syncretism, oral literature, material culture, provides essential context for understanding what was destroyed in 1864, making it directly relevant to legal and historical arguments about the scope and intent of the genocide. 

The Circassians: A Handbook

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