page_title: History of Adjara
section_title: Adjara under Ottoman rule
hierarchical_section_title: History of Adjara / Adjara under Ottoman rule
caption_attribution_description: English: Camp Sefer Pasha, in Batum, 1855. A Victorian engraving.
context_page_description: The article refers to the history of Georgia's autonomous province of Adjara.
context_section_description: In 1547, the Ottomans raided the province and captured Batumi. Liberated by Prince Rostom Gurieli of Guria in 1564, the region fell under the Turkish rule again in 1582. In 1609, Prince Mamia Gurieli temporarily relieved Batumi. However, Guria lost the province to the Ottomans in 1614. The area was divided into two sandjaks and submitted to the Pasha of Childir (Akhaltsikhe). Part of Adjarians fled to other Georgian regions. Those who remained were converted to Islam. The Ottomans had little direct control of Adjara and local Muslim Georgian nobility, such as the Khimshiashvili, ruled as semi-autonomous beys until the Ottoman government's centralizing reforms tanzimat eliminated them and brought the region more closely within the empire by 1850. There was opposition to the tanzimat efforts from both nobility, who resented the loss of their privileges, and peasantry, who opposed newly allocated taxes and conscription in the regular Ottoman army. In the 1840s, the Porte had to commit significant forces from the neighboring pashaliks to suppress a rebellion staged by Kor-Hussein Bey (Khimshiashvili). Three times did Kor-Hussein Bey rise in revolt, in 1840, 1844, and 1846; each time he was defeated and eventually sent as a prisoner to Constantinople. Among the rebels was Hasan Hasbi, sent, in 1845, by the Caucasian Imam Shamil in Adjara to recruit volunteers for his struggle against the Russian encroachment in Dagestan. After the suppression of the Adjarian uprising, he managed to escape.
  During the Crimean War of 1853-1856 and Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, thousands of Adjarians were recruited in the Ottoman army. During the war of 1877–1878, Batum was defended by a 25,000-strong Ottoman army under Dervish-Pasha as well as the Ottoman warships cruising off the Black Sea coastline. The Russians dispatched the Kobuleti Detachment of 12,000 troops commanded by Lt.-Gen. Oklobzhio, but he made little progress throughout the conflict. He was able to dislodge the Turks from the Mukha-Estate heights on April 14, 1877, and entrenched there until November 15. The only attempt to advance made by Oklobzhio was thwarted by the Ottomans at the clashes at Tsikhisdziri and the Sameba hills on June 11–12. In November, the fall of Kars and retreat of Dervish Pasha's troops to Batum combined with the advance of General Komarov's Ardahan Detachment to Batum enabled Oklobzhio to reclaim the positions, but the attack on Tsikhisdziri on January 18, 1878, was a failure. Then the ceasefire followed, ending the Russian operations against Batum.
caption: An Ottoman military camp in Batum during the Crimean War in 1855.
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