History of Batumi - Ottoman Control

Ottoman Control

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 December 13, 1614 treaty.

Under the Ottoman government, the city became known as Batum and was made a center of the sanjak which stretched from the Chorokhi-Adjaris-Tskali confluence to Tsikhis-Dziri to the north of Batumi. 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 Batum as a town with an excellent citadel, while the French traveler 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. Batum had an active port, which was also a big center of the Caucasian slave-trade.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-9, the Russian general Dmitry Osten-Saken made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate to Batum by the valley of the Ajaris-Tskali, but he only reached Khulo, far east of Batum. During the following two decades, the Ottoman government consolidated their hold of the Batum area by eliminating the power of the Khimshiashvili, a local family of Muslim Georgian beys.

In 1863, the Ottoman government decided to make Batum 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 Batum. 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 Batum 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 1877-8, the Ottomans had Batum 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 Batum and Adjara, among other territories, to the Russian Empire in the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3, 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 Batum, the British Foreign Secretary Marquess of Salisbury persuaded the Russian diplomats to declare Batum a free port, fortifications, naval arsenal, or naval station being forbidden.