The Nakh peoples are a group of North Caucasian peoples identified by their use of the Nakh languages and other cultural similarities. These are chiefly the ethnic Chechen (including the Chechen sub-ethnos, the Kists, in Georgia), Ingush and Bats peoples of the North Caucasus, including closely related minor or historical groups.
"Nakh peoples" and "Vainakh peoples" are two terms that were coined by Soviet ethnographers such as the Russian linguist Nikolai Yakovlev and Ingush ethnographer Zaurbek Malsagov. The reasoning behind the creation of these terms was to unite the closely related nations of Chechen and Ingush into one term. The terms "Vainakh" (our people) and "Nakh" (people) were first used as a term to unite two peoples in 1928. It was subsequently popularized by other Soviet authors, poets, and historians such as Mamakaev and Volkova in their research. According to the historian Victor Schnirelmann, the terms "Vainakh" and "Nakh" were introduced more actively during the period from the 1960s through the 1980s.
The first documented collective term used to refer to Nakh peoples in general "Kists" was introduced by Johann Anton Güldenstädt in the 1770s. Julius von Klaproth believed the term Kists only applied to the Kistin society of Ingushetia, and instead used the Tatar term "Mizdschegi" to refer to Nakh peoples. The term Nakhchiy (in the form of Natschkha, Nakhchui and Nacha) at the end of the 18th and beginning of 19th centuries was mentioned as the name (i.e. exonym) that Ingush gave to the Chechens and not as the self-name of Ingush. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the term was used by some Russian officers, historians and linguists for both the Chechen and Ingush nations (and sometimes for Batsbi, notably by Peter von Uslar). Today, the term is in its modern lowland version of "Nokhchi" and is only used by Chechens and Pankisi Kists. In 1859, Adolf Berge was the second one to use this term for both Chechens and Ingush.
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Khevsureti (Georgian: ხევსურეთი, a land of valleys) is a historical-ethnographic region in eastern Georgia. They are the branch of Kartvelian (Georgian) people located along both the northern (Pirikita khevsureti, Georgian: პირიქითა ხევსურეთი) and southern (Piraketa khevsureti, Georgian: პირაქეთა ხევსურეთი) slopes of the Great Caucasus Mountains. Comprising the small river valleys of the Migmakhevi, Shatili, Arkhoti and the Aragvi, the province borders with Ingushetia and Chechnya and is included in the present-day Dusheti Municipality, Mtskheta-Mtianeti region.
The Orstkhoy, historically commonly known under their exonyms: Karabulaks, Balsu, Baloy, are a historical ethnoterritorial society among the Chechen and Ingush peoples. Their homeland is in the upper reaches of the Assa and Fortanga rivers in the historical region of Orstkhoy-Mokhk (the Sernovodsky District and the border part of the Achkhoy-Martanovsky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia, as well as most of the Sunzhensky District of Ingushetia).
The Kists (ქისტები, kist'ebi; Kistoj, Kisti, Nokhcho/Nakhcho; Phengisxuoj) are a Chechen subethnic group in Georgia. They primarily live in the Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti, where there are approximately 9,000 Kist people. The modern Kists are not to be confused with the historical term Kists, an ethnonym of Georgian origin, which was used to refer to the Nakh peoples in the Middle Ages. Currently there are six Kist villages in Pankisi: Duisi, Dzibakhevi, Jokolo, Shua Khalatsani, Omalo (different from the village of Omalo in Tusheti), and Birkiani.