Religion in Abkhazia
It is worthwhile to note that the equivalent of the term "pagan" in Abkhazian (as well as Russian) language, язычник yazychnik, means "ethnic" rather than "country dweller" like its Western counterpart.
The earliest accounts of the introduction of Christianity into the present-day Abkhazia date from the 1st century AD,[19] and from 325, when the bishop of Pityus (present day Pitsunda) participated in the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea.
In the following years, recently consecrated clerics from the neighbouring Russian Maykop Eparchy arrived in Abkhazia, who eventually came into conflict with Vissarion.
Through the mediation of Russian church officials, the two sides managed to reach a power-sharing agreement at Maikop in 2005, but this did not hold.
Throughout the 19th century Russo-Turkish wars, Abkhazian nobility was split along religious lines, with Christians being generally pro-Russian, and Muslims siding with the Ottomans against Russia.
[27] Russia's final victory in the area in the 1860s-1870s and two Abkhazian revolts forced most of Muslim Abkhaz to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire as Muhajirs in the 1870s.
Thousands of Abkhaz, known as muhajirun, fled Abkhazia for Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century after resisting the Russian conquest of the Caucasus.
Golitsyn reported to Konstantin Pobedonostsev, ober-procurator of the Holy Synod, in 1901 with alarm about a "massive movement of the Abkhaz to Islam" in Abkhazia, a matter "especially dangerous on a frontier that borders Muslim states".
[30] Daur Mutsba, a member of the local Muslim community, and his wife Karin Nersesyan were shot dead on 2 July 2007 by an unknown gunman in the yard of the house they rented in the centre of Sukhumi.
[31][32] Another murder took place on 17 August 2007 at around 13:00, when Khamzat Gitsba was killed in Gudauta along with Ufa resident Ruslan Assadulina.
The masked killer had shot the pair through a lowered back window of a Chrysler stolen a few days earlier, using a machine gun with suppressor.
[33][34][35] The death of Gitsba, who had fought against Georgians during the 1992-1993 war and who had been among the pro-Chechen hijackers of the Turkish passenger ship MV Avrasya in 1996, as well as other perceived anti-Muslim violence led to serious concerns by the Abkhaz Muslim community about their security.
[36] A similar incident took place in Gudauta on 8 October 2010, in which 34-year-old Arsaul Pilia was shot dead outside the mosque in a drive-by shooting.
The car involved, a Volkswagen Touareg discovered to be registered to a resident of Khimki, Moscow Oblast, was found burned about an hour later, outside the village of Achandara, near Gudauta.
