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Guria (გურია) is a region ( mkhare) in Georgia, in the western part of the country, bordered by the eastern end of the Black Sea. The region has a population of 104,338 (2023), Population of Georgia with Ozurgeti as the regional capital.
Guria is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude.
The toponym "Guria" is first attested in the c. 800 Georgian chronicle of Pseudo-Juansher.Rapp, Stephen H. (2003), Studies In Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts, p. 427. Peeters Bvba, .
Guria first appears c. 1352 as a fief of the house of Vardanidze-Dadiani; and after 1463 it became a sovereign principality independent of the Kingdom of Georgia under a branch of that house, known thereafter by the name of Gurieli. The principality, comprising modern Guria and much of Adjara with the city of Batumi, was subsequently reduced in size and devastated in a series of conflicts with the Ottoman Empire. A Russian Empire protectorate was established by the treaty concluded on June 19, 1810 between Mamia V Gurieli and the empire, and in 1829, during the regency for the last prince, the Gurieli David Gurieli, the principality was annexed by Russia.Walter Yust (ed., 1952), The Encyclopædia Britannica - A new survey of universal knowledge. Volume 14, p. 6.
There were uprisings against Russian rule in 1819 and again in 1841. In 1840, Guria was made a county ( uyezd) and renamed Ozurgeti, after one of its main towns. In 1846, it was transferred to the new Kutais Governorate. By 1904, the population was just under 100,000, occupying an area of approximately of mountains and swampy valleys, covered by corn fields, vineyards, and some tea plantations. It was the most ethnically homogenous of Georgian areas, with the peasantry and lesser rural nobility making up almost the entire population, with a high level of literacy and a relatively high degree of economic self-satisfaction. The peasant protest movement, which originated in 1902 and culminated in an open insurrection against the government during the Russian Revolution of 1905, was the most effective and organized peasant movement in the empire. The peasants’ self-government, the so-called Gurian Republic, survived into 1906, when it was crushed and Guria devastated by the Cossack punitive expedition.Stephen F. Jones (2005), Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917, pp. 131-2. Harvard University Press, . The region was a native powerbase of the Georgian Social Democratic (Menshevik) Party which dominated the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921. Guria was a scene of guerrilla resistance to the militarily imposed Soviet Union rule early in the 1920s. Under the Soviet government, Guria was an agrarian area divided into three administrative districts. In 1995, the Georgian government decreed the creation of the region ( mkhare) of Guria, restoring the province's historical name to official usage.
The Orthodox churches of Likhauri and Shemokmedi are the main historical buildings in the province.
The linguistic evidence for the above hypothesis is the [[Megrelian]] word for “heart” – “guri” (Georgian: “guli”).
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