Contemporary men and young woman in traditional costumes, 19th century|thumb|200px from the village of Gvileti|thumb|200px woman in traditional costume, 1881|thumb|upright=0.7 • Vainakh (Chechen-Ingush dialect continuum) • The
Chechen people are a
North Caucasian native ethnic group, they refer to themselves as
Nokhchiy (pronounced ). Their worldwide population is around 2 million, approximately 75% of which live in the Republic of
Chechnya, a
subdivision of the Russian Federation. Most Chechens are
Sunni Muslims of the
Shafi'i school. • The
Kist people are a Chechen sub-ethnos, belonging to Chechen
teips, living in
Georgia. They primarily live in the
Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of
Kakheti, where there are approximately 5,000 Kist people. Majority of Kists are
Sunni Muslim, however, there are still remaining small pockets of Christian Kists in Pankisi,
Tusheti and
Kakheti. • The
Ingush people are a North Caucasian native ethnic group of the
North Caucasus, mostly inhabiting the Russian republic of
Ingushetia. The
endonym they use for self-designation is
Ghalghai. The Ingush people are predominantly
Sunni Muslims and speak the
Ingush language, which, according to some authors, is mutually intelligible with
Chechen, despite popular misconceptions, and they are closely related. Their total population is estimated to be 1 million worldwide. • The
Orstkhoy are a historical ethnoterritorial
society (sub-group) among the Chechen and Ingush people. In the tradition of the Chechen ethno-hierarchy, it is considered one of the nine historical
Chechen tukkhums, in the
Ingush tradition as one of the seven historical
Ingush shahars. Many sources refer to them as one of the most militant Vainakh tribe. • The
Bats people or the
Batsbi are a small
Nakh-speaking community in
Georgia who are also known as the '''Ts'ova-Tush'
after the Ts’ova Gorge in the historic Georgian province of Tusheti (known to them as "Tsovata"), where they are believed to have settled after migrating from the North Caucasus in the 16th century. Their population is estimated to be ca.'' 3000. Unlike the other Nakh peoples the Bats people are overwhelmingly
Orthodox Christians.
Historical The following is a list of historical or prehistoric peoples who have been proposed as speakers of Nakh languages. ;
Sophene According to Georgian scholars I. A. Djavashvili and
Giorgi Melikishvili the
Urartuan state of
Supani was occupied by the ancient Nakh tribe Tzov, the state of which is called Tsobena in ancient Georgian historiography. Sophene was part of the kingdom of
Urartu from the 8th to 7th centuries BCE. After uniting the region with his kingdom in the early 8th century BCE, king
Argishtis I of Urartu resettled many of its inhabitants to his newly built city of
Erebuni. However, Djavashvili's and Melikishvili's theory is not widely accepted. ;
Gargareans Jaimoukha argued that the Vainakhs are descended from the
Gargarei, a mythological tribe who are mentioned in the
Geographica of
Strabo (1st century BCE) and in
Naturalis Historia of
Pliny the Elder (1st century CE). Strabo wrote that "... the
Amazons live close to Gargarei, on the northern foothills of the
Caucasus Mountains".
Gaius Plinius Secundus also localizes Gargarei as living north of the Caucasus, but calls them Gegar. Some scholars (P. K. Uslar, K. Miller, N. F. Yakovleff, E. I. Krupnoff, L. A. Elnickiy,
I. M. Diakonoff, V. N. Gamrekeli) supported the proposal that
Gargarei is an earlier form of the Vainakh ethnonym. Jaimoukha notes that "Gargarean" is one of many Nakh root words – gergara, meaning, in fact, "kindred" in proto-Nakh. If this is the case, it would make Gargarei virtually equivalent to the Georgian term
Dzurdzuk (referring to the lake Durdukka in the South Caucasus, where they are thought to have migrated from, as noted by Strabo, before intermixing with the local population) which they applied to a Nakh people who had migrated north across the mountains to settle in modern Chechnya and Ingushetia. Despite Jaimoukha's claims, Strabo suggests that the Gargareans were
Aeolian Greeks and locates their homeland
Gargara in
Troad, in the far west of modern Turkey. ;
Tsanars and
Tzanaria The Tsanars were a people of East-Central Northern Georgia, living in an area around modern
Khevi.
Tsanaria was their state, and it distinguished itself by the decisive role it and its people played in fending off the Arab invasion of Georgia. Their language is thought by many historians (including Vladimir Minorsky and Amjad Jaimoukha) to be Nakh, based on placenames, geographic location, and other such evidence. However, there is opposition to the theory that theirs was a Nakh language. Others claim they spoke a Sarmatian language like Ossetic. The Tsanars, too, eventually were assimilated within Georgiandom. ;
Ghlighvi Ghlighvi has been a historical name for the Ingush, deriving from their ethnonym
Ghalghaï. It was mentioned by
Vakhushti of Kartli in 1745, a Georgian noble. ;
Dvals and
Dvaleti The Dvals were a historic people living in modern-day South Ossetia and some nearby regions, as well as the southern parts of North Ossetia (South and West of the Gligvs, South and East of the Malkh). They integrated themselves into the Georgian kingdom and produced a number of fine Georgian calligraphers and historians. They also produced an Orthodox saint: Saint Nicholas of Dvaleti. The language of the
Dvals is thought to be Nakh by many historians, though there is a rival camp which argues for its status as a close relative of
Ossetic. Various evidence given to support the Nakh theory (Different scholars use different arguments.) includes the presence of Nakh placenames in former Dval territory, others believe that during the Middle Ages the population of Chechnya was known to the South Caucasian peoples under the name "Durdzuks" (or "Dzurdzuks"), and the population of Ingushetia under the names "Gligvi" The Georgian historian V. N. Gamrekeli claims that "Durdzuk" is definitely and, with all its references, uniformly localized, between Didoet-Dagestan in the east and the gorge of the Terek River, in the west. The Durdzuks constructed numerous kingdoms, notably Durdzuketi; and they were noted for their exceptionally fierce devotion to freedom and their ability to resist invaders, ranging from the Arabs to the Scythians to Turkic peoples to the Mongolian invaders. They seemed also to have been employed as mercenaries by various parties. They had a written language using Georgian script (It is not known whether they spoke that language however.), but most of these writings have been lost, with only a few pieces surviving. After the 14th-century Second Mongol Invasion of Durdzuketi and the destruction wrought by the two invasions (including, as Amjad Jaimoukha notes, the destruction of their memory of their past They were probably undone by Scythian invaders. A remnant of them may have been absorbed by the Vainakh, as their name can now be seen in the Chechen teip
Sadoy. ;
Khamekits The Khamekits were another ancient Nakh people of the North Caucasus who were farmers. They were also probably undone by Scythian invaders. A remnant of them may have been absorbed by the Vainakh, as their name may now be reflected in the Ingush teip
Khamki. == Ideology ==