Antsukhi and Antsukhians in the History of Georgia

This article reviews the role played by the Antsukhians in the history of Georgia, who were the indigenous people of the Antsukhi community, who is one of the historical-ethnographic regions of Avaria. It is located in the southwestern part of Dagestan, one of the autonomous republics of the Russian Federation.
This community, as well as the Kapuch community, has had very close ties with Georgia for centuries, in particular, with the Kingdom of Kakheti, bordering on the east in the XV-XVIII centuries. Currently, Antsukhi region is part of Tliarati district, the administrative centre of which is Tliarata. Due to this, the Antsukhians (self-called as „анцукъал“), known as one of the sub-tribes of the Avar people, with a total number of more than 50,000 people, are also called „Tliarats”. Antsukhian speech belongs to the southern dialect of an Avar language.
This region, which was part of the Ghunib region during the Russian Empire, and from 1920 to the Soviet Federal Socialist Republic of Russia, was called the Antsukh-Kapuch region in 1921-1926. Several villages in the Tliarat district were later transferred to Tsunta district and Bzhti administrative unit, bordering it to the north-west. Antsukhians live mainly in the Tliarati and Tsunta districts. In the middle of the twentieth century, some of them moved to other settlements in Dagestan.
The above-mentioned regions of Dagestan border the eastern part of Georgia from the north, in particular, the Kakheti districts of Akhmeta (which includes the historical-ethnographic region of Tusheti), Telavi, Kvareli and Lagodekhi. Descendants of these Antsukhian and Kapuchian free people of Dagestan _ Avars still residing in Kvareli and Lagodekhi districts of Georgia, who had a dense community during the Soviet Union.
Antsukhi community and Antsukhians are frequently mentioned in the XIV-XVIII century Georgian and foreign historical sources as loyal subjects to the Bagrationi kings of Georgia, who always had close military-political and trade-economic ties with Georgia.
At the beginning of the XIX century, the East Georgian kingdom _ Kartli-Kakheti (Kartalino-Kakhetian Kingdom) became the victim of the expansionist policy of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, Antsukhians and Kapuchians did not cut ties with Georgia.