Hemshinli: The Forgotten Black Sea Armenians
Bert Vaux, Harvard University
1. Introduction to the history, language, and culture of the Hemshinli
If asked to identify the inheritors of the Black Sea coast region once inhabited by the Pontic
Greeks and the Trabzon and Artvin Armenians, many would correctly identify the Laz in Turkey
and the Abkhaz and other Caucasian tribes in Georgia and southern Russia. However, few know
of the existence of one of the most widespread and populous groups in this area, which has a
population of as many as several hundred thousand worldwide. This group, the hemshinli or
residents of Hamshen1, occupies a continuous area stretching from the Black Sea province of
Trabzon, Rize, anSamsun in north-central Turkey to southern Russia in the north. There are also
significant Hemshinli communities in the northwestern provinces of western Turkey, in various
cities in Central Asia, and amongst the guest workers in Germany.
One is immediately struck by two facts about the Hemshinli: they are originally
Armenian, and the Hemshinli in Turkey are Muslim.
The presence of these enigmatic Armenians in the Black Sea area raises many interesting
and difficult questions:
• Who exactly are the Hemshinli?
• When did they come into the area?
• Where did they come from?
• Why are they generally unknown to the outside world?
• What effect has Islamicization had on their language and culture?
In this paper I develop the beginnings of an answer to these questions, based on my fieldwork
with a number of young Hemshinli as well as some of their Christian counterparts in Abkhazia.
My primary Hemshinli informant is a young man in his twenties named "Cengiz"2, who was
born and raised in the village of Köprücü, located 5 kilometers from the Georgian border and
from the Black Sea coast in the Artvin province. On the other side of the border my main source
of information is a man of the same age named Avik Topchyan, whose family comes from the
town of Novyj Afon in Abkhazia.
1.1. Who are the Hemshinli?
There are three basic subgroups of Hemshinli:
Thanks to Hagop Hachikian, James Russell, and audiences at Columbia University (April
1996) and Southfield, Michigan (November 2000) for comments on earlier versions of this
paper. Throughout this paper I transcribe all Homshetsma forms in both (Western) Armenian
orthography and the native Homshetsma orthography, which is based on the Turkish system.
(For details of this system see Vaux 2001.)
1The term in their language is actually homße(n)…i homshe(n)tsi, plural homßen…iÏ
homshe(n)tsik; the Turkish term hemshinli technically refers only to Muslim Homshentsik. I use
hemshinli rather than homshentsik throughout this paper because it is better known outside of the
local community.
2 Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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20 sayfaa isa kiyez yes istuz kiyoğum
WHO CAN TURN THIS WRITING TO TURKISH