Ep. 4 — Adyghe or Circassian? The Story Behind a Nation's Name

They call themselves Adyghe. The world calls them Circassian. So where did that second name come from, and why did it stick? In this episode we follow a single word across three thousand years of records, through Greek Kerket and Zikh, Arab and Ottoman Jarkas, Russian Cherkess, and the European Circassian, and we look at the competing explanations offered by Interiano, the Encyclopedia of Islam, Noah al Murtuqi and the Circassian historians who pushed back. We also come right up to the present, to the 2010 conference in Cherkessk where Adyghe Khase organisations from Adygea, Kabardino Balkaria and Karachay Cherkessia proposed uniting into a single republic called Greater Circassia. Names are never only names, and this one carries a nation's argument with history.Support the show