Circassians

Overview

The Circassians are a people native to the northwestern Caucasus, east of the Black Sea. They call themselves Adyghe in their own language. Their communities developed across a mountainous homeland without establishing a single state. Although commonly described as twelve tribes, they also included additional subgroups. By the end of the eighteenth century, a shared Adyghe identity connected these communities. That identity survived conquest, expulsion and the dispersal of Circassians across the former Ottoman Empire.

The largest Circassian diaspora developed in Turkey. Other communities settled in Jordan, Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. Their histories differ by country, but their common point of departure was the nineteenth-century Russian conquest of their Caucasian homeland. In Israel, Kfar Kama in Lower Galilee and Rehaniya in Upper Galilee are the two surviving historic Circassian villages. In Jordan, Circassian settlers helped establish modern Amman.

Circassians in Israel are Sunni Muslims and retain an ethnic identity distinct from that of the country’s Arab Muslim population. They participate in Israel’s economic and national life while preserving their language and community institutions. Circassian men have served under compulsory Israel Defense Forces conscription since the community fought alongside Jews in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Religious affiliation, Israeli citizenship and Adyghe heritage form parts of the community’s present-day life.

Population figures depend on their date and scope. An older overview described approximately 3,000 Circassians in Israel; reporting in 2025 placed the community at about 5,000. An account of Rehaniya identified approximately 1,200 Israelis of Circassian descent there. These figures describe a small community whose two villages have remained visible centers of Circassian life through successive political periods.

Origins

The Circassian homeland lay in the northwestern Caucasus, along the eastern side of the Black Sea. Circassian settlement there preceded the formation of the modern states that later governed the region. Local communities maintained their own social and tribal structures. The conventional count of twelve tribes offers a broad description of that organization, while the existence of further subgroups shows its greater complexity. By the late eighteenth century, people belonging to these communities collectively identified as Adyghe.

Adyghe identity is ethnic and linguistic rather than a synonym for any religion or citizenship. Circassians in Israel speak Adyghe and are Sunni Muslims; their ancestors had converted from Christianity to Islam in the seventeenth century. Their later settlement under Ottoman rule and their incorporation into Israel did not erase their account of origins in the Caucasus. Language, family memory and the history of expulsion continue to connect descendants born far from the Black Sea with that homeland.

The Circassians’ history also belongs to the wider history of movement between the Caucasus and the Middle East. Ottoman authorities received refugees from the Russian conquest and settled them in different parts of the empire. Circassian families reached the Land of Israel during a period of wider migration. Following Muhammad Ali of Egypt’s conquest in 1831, thousands of Egyptians moved there; Jews, Circassians, Armenians, Europeans and others also arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each migration had its own causes and history.

The resulting diaspora placed people of shared Adyghe origin in different national settings. In Turkey, many descendants became part of the Turkish nation. In Jordan, Circassian settlement became closely tied to the growth of Amman and, later, to the Hashemite state. In Israel, village life in Galilee became a means of sustaining a distinct community. These different paths explain why Circassian identity cannot be reduced to one state or one form of participation in public life.

History

The Ottoman Empire settled Circassian refugees across its territories after their expulsion from the Caucasus. About one million survivors found refuge in Ottoman lands, including the Land of Israel. Settlements emerged on both sides of the Jordan River. Circassian settlers established the nucleus of modern Amman, turning the area into a lasting center of Circassian life in Jordan. Later generations entered the kingdom’s public institutions, while ceremonial Circassian guards became a visible part of its monarchy.

Three principal Circassian settlements were established in the Land of Israel. Kfar Kama and Rehaniya survived; a third settlement near Hadera was abandoned after a malaria outbreak. Kfar Kama was founded in 1878 in eastern Lower Galilee. Rehaniya developed in Upper Galilee. Their locations and the continuing presence of descendants make them enduring records of Ottoman-era migration as well as living Israeli communities.

Before Kfar Kama’s founding, Bedouin tribes exercised de facto control over much of eastern Lower Galilee. Ottoman authorities had tried to extend their rule there by settling migrants from Algiers and sending Kurdish battalions against Bedouin tribes. Circassian arrival changed the area’s pattern of settlement and helped pave the way for Jewish settlement roughly twenty years later. This sequence places Kfar Kama within the region’s changing nineteenth-century population rather than treating the village as an isolated foundation.

Circassian settlers brought construction, metalworking and woodworking skills to their new communities. They developed a mixed economy and built with methods familiar from their earlier settlements while adopting other materials and styles, including European Marseille roof tiles. Kfar Kama’s Old Village preserves a notable example of local construction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its closely placed houses reflect a defensive village arrangement in which buildings formed a wall around shared spaces, a pattern also associated with Circassian villages in the Caucasus.

During the late Ottoman and Mandatory periods, Kfar Kama became a regional center. Circassians built a modern mill in the Old Village. It drew Arab peasants, Bedouins, Jews and Circassians and served as a meeting place as well as an economic facility. The mill illustrates how a village founded by exiles became part of the daily exchange among eastern Lower Galilee’s communities.

Ottoman authorities also brought Circassians to the Golan Heights, part of the State of Israel and of the historic region of Bashan, most of which lies in Syria and is today occupied by Syria. In the 1880s, they settled Circassians there to fight Bedouin brigands. Circassian communities developed around places including Quneitra; residents of that area later fled or left during the conflicts of the twentieth century.

The diaspora extended into Iraq as well. Members of the Kavkaz community, encompassing Circassian, Chechen and Dagestani groups, lived in Iraqi provinces including Sulaymaniyah. Their presence reflects the broad geographic reach of migration from the Caucasus. The histories of these groups are related through displacement and resettlement, although each retains its own ethnic identity.

Persecution and survival

The Circassians resisted conquest by the Russian Empire for about a century. Russian imperial policy sought to annex the Caucasus and settle other populations there. The war’s final phase, from 1860–1864, brought a campaign of village destruction and ethnic cleansing against the Circassian population. Russian forces burned hundreds of villages. Most Circassians who survived the war were expelled from their homeland.

Expulsion transformed a people rooted in the northwestern Caucasus into a diaspora. Refugees entered Ottoman territory and established new homes around the Black Sea and across the Middle East. Their arrival in the Land of Israel, Jordan and the Golan Heights belonged to this larger displacement. The Ottoman state assigned settlers to places where it sought stronger control, while Circassian families faced the immediate work of building homes, farms and institutions after the loss of their earlier communities.

The end of the war in 1864 remains central to Circassian collective memory. Circassians in Kfar Kama and Rehaniya commemorate the destruction of villages, the deaths and the expulsion on 21 May. Memorial observance connects descendants in Israel with those in Turkey, Jordan and the Caucasus. It also places the community’s present life beside the history that brought its ancestors to Galilee.

Survival involved preserving identity under changing rule. Kfar Kama and Rehaniya endured the transition from Ottoman government to the Mandatory period and then to the State of Israel. Their continuity is especially significant because the settlement near Hadera did not survive. Historic buildings in Kfar Kama, the continued use of Adyghe and the transmission of family histories give physical and social form to that continuity.

In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Circassians fought alongside Jews. Circassian citizens subsequently undertook compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces. Military service became one part of their relationship with the state while their villages continued to sustain a separate cultural life. A 2001 assessment identified Circassian, Druze and non-Haredi Jewish citizens as groups then fulfilling military service obligations in full.

Religion and culture

Circassians in Israel follow Sunni Islam. Their religion does not make them Arab: their origin is Adyghe, and their historical and cultural background differs from that of Israel’s larger Muslim community. They have maintained a distinct ethnic identity without assimilating into either Jewish society or the wider Muslim community. At the same time, Circassian citizens participate in Israel’s economy, public life and national institutions.

Language remains a principal means of preserving that identity. Adyghe is spoken within families and villages, alongside the languages used in education, work and relations with neighboring communities. In Kfar Kama, signs display Adyghe, Hebrew and Arabic. Children study in Hebrew and receive Adyghe lessons, while families continue to use the ancestral language at home. Such practices pass on a connection to the Caucasus through ordinary village life.

The built environment also records Circassian cultural continuity. Kfar Kama’s Old Village retains a layout in which houses stand close together around shared spaces. Surviving buildings show techniques and materials associated with the community’s settlement period, including basalt construction and roof tiles adopted from European styles. Preservation of these streets and buildings gives residents and visitors access to the village’s late Ottoman history.

Community institutions have made this heritage public. Kfar Kama has a Circassian heritage center devoted to the history and material culture of its people. In 2022, the village received international recognition as a tourism village for its cultural resources and efforts to preserve local traditions. Recognition brought wider attention to a place that remains a residential community, with its heritage maintained by the people who live there.

Circassian identity also crosses borders. Families in Israel retain connections with descendants elsewhere, including Turkey and Jordan. Youth gatherings have brought participants from Israel, Turkey, Jordan and the Caucasus together. Such contact matters for a people whose dispersal placed large communities in different states and whose language and traditions must be transmitted across generations.

Present day

Kfar Kama and Rehaniya remain the centers of Circassian community life in Israel. Kfar Kama is in Lower Galilee; Rehaniya is in Upper Galilee. Both descend from the Ottoman-era settlement of refugees from the Caucasus. Their residents participate in Israeli society while maintaining Adyghe language, Sunni religious life and a distinct account of their people’s history. The community’s military service and cultural preservation are simultaneous features of its national life.

Israeli development policy has addressed Circassian communities alongside Druze communities. A policy assessment of plans approved in 2021 described a parallel five-year development plan for the two groups. Such measures concern the practical needs of established villages, including housing and local development. They also reflect the continued place of Circassians within Israel’s public institutions.

In Jordan, descendants of Ottoman-era settlers remain part of the population of Amman and other communities. Circassians contributed to the establishment of the modern capital and later served in the kingdom’s civic and security institutions. Their history there differs from that of Circassians in Israel, but both communities trace their settlement to the same nineteenth-century expulsion from the Caucasus.

Turkey contains a much larger population of descendants of migrants from the Black Sea basin, including Circassians. Millions of descendants of these migrant groups live in the country. Many Circassians assimilated into the Turkish nation as a common national identity developed among Muslim populations of the former Ottoman Empire. Circassian ancestry nevertheless remains part of Turkey’s social history and of the wider story of the Adyghe diaspora.

Across these countries, the Circassians’ history joins two enduring facts: their origin as an Adyghe people of the northwestern Caucasus and their dispersal after Russian imperial conquest. In Israel, the survival of Kfar Kama and Rehaniya gives that history a continuing local presence. Their residents preserve a distinct inheritance while taking part in the life of the state in which successive generations have been born.