Giorgio Interiano (fl. 15th century) was a Genovese traveler, historian and ethnographer. His travelogue La vita: & sito de Zichi, chiamiti ciarcassi: historia notabile [1] was among the first European accounts of the life and customs of the Circassian people.
Little is known about Interiano's personal life. He served as the governor of Corsica in 1496. He also lived in Naples and traveled throughout Asia before finally settling in Venice, where he became friends with many influential citizens of the city, whose connections would prove beneficial for his career as a travel writer. [2]
The poet Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) called Interiano, with whom he had worked for a number of years, "magnus naturalium rerum investigator," [3] or "learned seeker into recondite matter." [4]
Interiano was the author of one of the first Europe descriptions of Circassia, a book called La vita: & sito de Zichi, chiamiti ciarcassi: historia notabile. It was published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1502, though it probably describes events that occurred in the second half of the 14th century. [3] The book was uncharacteristic of the works usually printed by Manutius, but Interiano's friendship with Jacopo Sannazaro, a famed poet of the time, may have influenced Manutius to accept and publish it anyway. [5]
Interiano's account is considered to be more "learned" than other travelogues of the time, [4] though it is still fits into the Orientalist idiom, the texts of which tend to focus on the exotic and savage character of all natives of Asia. For example, Interiano claimed that it was the custom of Circassian princes to hunt animals "and even people." [6] Circassian priests, he wrote, were "ignorant, illiterate men performing the Greek ritual without any knowledge of the language," and "nobles never entered a church until they were sixty years of age, because, as they lived by rapine, they were deemed to desecrate the sacred edifices." [4]
In spite of the more colorful aspects of the account, Interiano was still a dedicated ethnographer and detailed many important Circassian customs, including their distinct burial ritual of disemboweling men of high rank who had died and seating them outdoors on a tall pile of timber, a custom also described by Herodotus in his account of Scythian funerals. [7]
The book was reprinted several times in Europe and in Russia. In 1830, M.V. Semenov published the text in the first volume of his Library of the foreign writers of Russia. [8]
Francesco Crifò / Wolfgang Schweickard, «Vita et Sito de Zychi» di Giorgio Interiano. Trascrizione e commento dell'editio princeps del 1502, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 130 (2014), 160-178.
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Circassia was a country and historical region in the North Caucasus along the northeast shore of the Black Sea. It was destroyed and devastated after the Russian-Circassian war (1763–1864) as 90% of the Circassian people were either massacred or exiled from the region in the Circassian genocide.
The Circassians, Cherkess or Adyghe, are a Northwest Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia, most of whom were exiled to Turkey and the Middle East where the majority of them live today during the Circassian genocide in the aftermath of the Russo-Circassian War.
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The Circassian diaspora refers to the resettlement of the Circassian population, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. From 1763 to 1864, the Circassians fought against the Russian Empire in the Russian-Circassian War, finally succumbing to a scorched-earth campaign initiated in 1862 under General Nicholai Yevdokimov. Afterwards, large numbers of Circassians were exiled and deported to the Ottoman Empire and other nearby regions; others were resettled in Russia far from their home territories. Circassians live in more than fifty countries, besides the Republic of Adygea. Total population estimates differ: according to some sources, some two million live in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq; other sources have between one and four million in Turkey alone.
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The Adyghe Xabze or Circassian Xabze is the worldview, moral code and life doctrine of the Circassian people, a nation native to historical Circassia. According to Circassian customs, a Circassian must always live according to a set of unwritten rules defined by the Xabze. Some of the main rules of Adyghe Xabze include extra respect shown for elders and females, the ban on marrying non-Circassians, as well as the importance of truthfullness, honor and valor. In regions where Circassians live, Xabze rules can only be altered by the local Adyghe Xase usually led by a Thamade. Xabze is often paired with Circassian nationalism.
Urbano Dalle Fosse, better known as Urbano Bolzanio, was an Italian humanist and Hellenist.
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