Merkheouli is a village in the Goulrypch (formerly selsoviet) district of Abkhazia, separatist republic of Georgia, northeast of the chief town in a foothill area on either side of the Matchala River. The village is on the road from Sukhumi to the Kodori Valley.

Merkheoul is the birthplace of Lavrenti Beria. Populationchange code

The census of 1886 has a population of 446 Orthodox, including about fifteen nobles, and 20 Muslims. Peasants and small officials from Mingrelia (including the father of Beria) and Russia began to settle there in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many Armenians also settled there after the first Armenian genocide of the Ottoman Empire. The last census of the USSR in 1989 gives a population of 3,339 inhabitants. The inhabitants of Mingrelian origin leave the place with the Georgian army after the inter-ethnic conflict of 1993.

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