Text Aizhan Khamit photo Aizhan Khamit, Shutterstock

The legend of the Argonauts, who travelled to the kingdom of Colchis to seek the Golden Fleece and the power and riches it bestowed upon its owner, is well known. Less well known is why the fleece was golden. To find out you should visit Batumi, the resort city on the Black Sea in Georgia.

Colchis, whose ruler possessed the magical Golden Fleece, was no mythical country, but located here in Georgia. The name Colchis comes from the collective name of the ancient Georgian tribes who lived in these lands. According to historians, to find the source of the legend of the Golden Fleece you only have to look at the gold-bearing rivers in the region and the different methods the local population used to extract the gold. The ancient Greek historian, Strabo, wrote, “Barbarians (the name the Greeks gave to all foreigners) collect gold with the use of perforated bowls lined with shaggy skins, which gave birth to the legend of the golden fleece.” The Colchians would submerge the lambskins in the river and trap the fine particles of gold in the wet fleece. It is possible that the Greeks also came

here to search for this precious metal. Batumi’s symbol is Medea, daughter of Aeetes, the king of Colchis. She was the one who helped the Argonauts, led by Jason, to capture the Golden Fleece. When the Greeks came here, they named the region ‘Bathus Limin’, meaning ‘deep harbour’. Later, during the Ottoman Empire, the city was called Bat and later renamed Batumi. The Greeks called the Black Sea ‘Pontos Euxeinos’, or ‘the friendly sea’.

Since those long-ago days, Georgia’s rich history has been mainly concerned with its struggle against predatory raids and the efforts to unify the country.

For many centuries, kingdoms and princedoms located in the lands of Georgia were independent; they were only unified into one state during the reign of King Bagrat III in 978.

Batumi, the centre of the autonomous republic of Adjara, has had many rulers: the Colchis, the Ottoman Empire and then the Russian Empire. Following three hundred years of rule by the Ottoman Empire, the majority of the population of Adjara converted to Islam. The small villages in Adjara’s mountainous regions still have small mosques. However, after the Russian-turkish war of 18771878, Adjara fell under the economic and religious influence of the Russian Empire. Many ethnic Georgians chose to return to Christianity and today you can still find plenty of families with a Muslim grandmother and a Christian grandfather. This is testament to the region’s freedom from xenophobia and intolerance.

Batumi’s population is multinational; the majority are Georgian, but there are Greek, Jewish and Armenian communities living here, as well as many other nationalities.

In 1878, Batumi acquired the status of a free port, which gave it the right to import and export foreign commodities without duty, which greatly promoted the growth of the city and developed its economy. Today’s Batumi, with its little streets and Italian squares, was shaped in the 19th century, when it was part of the Russian Empire. A visit by Tsar Alexander in 1888 was a powerful impetus for the city’s development. The construction of a cargo port and many other buildings in the city date back to his visit; the passenger port was built later.

Batumi has a few places that everyone who loves Russian literature should find time to visit. One is the so-called ‘Chekhov House’ on Melikishvili Street, with a plaque saying that Anton Pavlovich Chekov stayed here; this place was owned

by two sisters who became the prototypes for his play The Three Sisters. In 1921, Mikhail Bulgakov came to Batumi, as he planned to emigrate to Europe via Constantinople. He was very poor and this poverty affected both his morale and his physical condition. One day, Bulgakov was in the market in Batumi when he saw a very elegant young lady surrounded by officers. She was Margarita Arkhangelskaya, and her married name was Smirnova. It is believed that they had an affair and that Margarita supported him financially. It is also believed, by some, that the heroine of his novel The Master and Margarita was based on her. At that time, she was a rich and influential lady and he was poor and unknown. Another great Russian poet is connected to Batumi. Not far from the 6 May Park there is a house with a memorial plaque on its wall saying that in 1924, Sergey Yesenin lived there. In his famous series of poems, Persian Motifs, he wrote about a girl named Shagane. Shaandukht Ambartsumyan, who was an Armenian teacher at an elementary school and a neighbour of Yesenin, was his inspiration. Her friends called her Shagane; at the time she was a widow who had moved from Tbilisi to Batumi, where her fateful meeting with the poet took place. It could be said that almost every house in Batumi has a special story attached to it.

If you love mountains, Adjara offers a range of tours of the mountainous regions. You can visit the Makhuntseti waterfall and Queen Tamara arched bridge. Adjara has 17 of such bridges that date back to the 12th century and were built during the reign of Queen Tamara. They linked the different regions of Georgia to promote economic growth within the country. Her

era is known as Georgia’s Golden Age.

Adjara’s mountainous regions are very colourful. If you want to visit one of the local villages, head to Machakhela, a gorge that became famed for the skill of the local armourers. Four families lived and worked here and were renowned for the beautiful guns they produced. Because the residents of the gorge had such excellent weapons of their own production, the Ottoman Empire struggled to conquer them. The besieged people lived under a blockade for a long time, but this in no way diminished their fighting spirit as they survived on homemade foodstuffs and did not need communication with the outside world. Today there is a museum

in the gorge that displays the domestic life of local people. It is located in the former mosque built when the Ottomans finally took the gorge. This building is famous for the patterns adorning the walls that contain many hidden symbols: jugs of wine are skillfully interlaced with the ornamental pattern, crosses are hidden in flowers and you can even spot the Georgian coat of arms, currently depicted on the lari, the Georgian currency. It is said that the local population did not want to have the faith of their invaders imposed on them and this is how they protested. Interestingly, the museum also displays the Georgian cradle, the akvani, that looks exactly like the Kazakh one, the besik. Historians suggest that the akvani appeared here either during the Mongolian invasion, or when 40,000 Kypchak families were resettled in Georgia in the 11th century following the initiative of the Georgian king, David VI, also known as David the Builder.

Hours could pass discussing the rich and beautiful history of Georgia, so it would be better to come and see everything for yourself. The best time to visit Adjara and the Black sea is the beginning of autumn, called the ‘velvet’ season.