Last autumn, 22 young women aged from 17 to 25 years contested for the title of the most beautiful young woman among Circassians. Claimants to the crown of Miss Circassia came from Russia’s ...

The earliest groups of Circassians included ‘double refugees’, who were violently displaced from the Caucasus by the Russian military in the early 1860’s and from the Balkans in 1877–78.