page_title: History of Batumi
section_title: Ottoman control
hierarchical_section_title: History of Batumi / Ottoman control
caption_attribution_description: English: Turkish navy frigate in the port of Batoum during the Crimean War. Victorian engraving c.1854.
context_page_description: Batumi is the capital city of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia, located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
  The history of Batumi is inextricably bound with that of Adjara. Founded on the site of the Hellenic colony of Bathys, it was a small fortified town in the medieval kingdom of Georgia. In the 17th century, Batumi was conquered by the Ottoman Empire which relinquished its control of the town to the Russian Empire in 1878. It was under the Russian rule that Batumi became a major port city on the crossroads of Eurasia. After the successive Ottoman and British occupations at the end of World War I, Batumi and its region passed to the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1920. After the Sovietization of Georgia in 1921, Adjara was granted the status of an autonomous republic and Batumi became its capital. Along with Poti, Batumi is one of Georgia's most important ports. It is also an important cultural and political center.
context_section_description: After the fragmentation of the Kingdom of Georgia in the late 15th century, the town and district of Batumi passed to the Georgian noble house of Gurieli, Princes of Guria. In the reign of Kakhaber II Gurieli (1469–1483), the Ottomans occupied Batumi, but did not hold it. They returned in force a century later after the decisive defeat which they inflicted on the combined army of Georgian rulers at Sokhoista in 1545. Batumi was reclaimed, first by the prince Rostom Gurieli in 1564, who lost it soon afterwards, and again in 1609 by Mamia II Gurieli. However, the Ottoman naval blockade imposed on the western Georgian coast forced Mamia II into surrendering Batumi and Adjara to the Ottoman control in the treaty of 13 December 1614.
  Under the Ottoman government, the city was known as "Batoum" and was made a center of a sanjak that stretched from the Chrorokhi-Adjaristskali basin to Tsikhis-Dziri to the north of the city. With the Ottoman conquest the Islamization of the region, hitherto Christian, began and would be completed by the end of the 18th century. The Georgian geographer Prince Vakhushti (1696–1757) describes Batoum as a town with an excellent citadel, while the French consul Adrien Dupré, who visited the area in 1807, reports it being a large village with the population of 2,000 living in the houses scattered along the bay and in the nearby forests. Batoum had an active port, which was also a big center of the Caucasian slave-trade.
  During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, the Russian imperial general Dmitri Osten-Sacken made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate to Batoum by the valley of the Ajaris-Tskali, but he only reached Khulo, far east of Batoum. During the following two decades, the Ottoman government consolidated their hold of the Batoum area by eliminating the power of the Khimshiashvili, a local family of Muslim Georgian beys.
  In 1863, the Ottoman government decided to make Batoum a principal town of the Lazistan province and began the construction of a new town to north-west of the extant harbor. A new fort Burun-Tabiya was also built at the cape of Batoum. By 1872, Batum had the population of around 5,000. It was ruled by a chief administrator, mutasarrıf, who was directly subordinated to the governor-general (wali) of Trabzon. The town was a home to the Italian, Russian, and Persian consulates and an increasingly lively trading center. Yet, it was a typical Asian town, with scattered houses and muddy streets.
  In spite of the tight Ottoman control, the Russian interest toward Batoum did not fade. In 1876, a thorough reconnaissance of the area was made by a Georgian scholar and colonel in the Russian service, Prince Giorgi Kazbegi, who left the only general account of the region available at that time. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the Ottomans had Batoum heavily fortified and successfully resisted the Russian amphibious attempts at capturing the town. However, an eventual defeat in the war forced the Sublime Porte to cede Batoum and Adjara, among other territories, to the Russian Empire in the Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878. This clause was confirmed, following dramatic negotiations, by the final act of the Congress of Berlin in July 1878. In exchange for acquiescing in a Russian acquisition of Batoum, the British Foreign Secretary Marquess of Salisbury persuaded the Russian diplomats to declare Batoum a free port, fortifications, naval arsenal, or naval station being forbidden.
caption: An Ottoman navy frigate in the port of Batum during the Crimean War. c. 1854
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