 Historically, Azeris in Georgia have succeeded in preserving their ethnic identity and have not been touched by ethnic and/or linguistic assimilation processes observed among many other ethnic communities in the country.Natalia Volkova explained this by the large size of the community and its tendency to being restricted to a specific geographical area.The other reason was that unlike most of their neighbours, Azeris historically adhered to Islam, which weakened possibilities of intermarriage or any other type of close contact with people of other faiths.