The Chechens, historically also known as Kisti and Durdzuks, are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples native to the North Caucasus. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea with its outlets, the Bosporus and Dardanelles." They are the largest ethnic group in the region and refer to themselves as Nokhchiy. The vast majority of Chechens are Muslims and live in Chechnya, a republic within the Russian Federation.
The North Caucasus region has been invaded numerous times throughout history. Its isolated terrain and the strategic value outsiders have placed on the areas settled by Chechens has contributed much to the Chechen community ethos and helped shape its national character.
Chechen society is largely egalitarian and organized around tribal autonomous local clans, called teips, informally organized into loose confederations called tukkhums.
Etymology
Chechen According to popular tradition, the Russian term Chechency () comes from central Chechnya, which had several important villages and towns named after the word Chechen. These places include Chechan, Nana-Checha ('Mother Checha') and Yokkh Chechen ('Greater Chechena'). The name Chechen occurs in Russian sources in the late 16th century as "Chachana", which is mentioned as a land owned by the Chechen prince Shikh Murza. Its etymology is of Nakh origin and derives from the word che ('inside') attached to the suffix -cha(n); the word Chechen can thus be translated as 'inside territory'. The villages and towns named Chechan were always situated in the Chechen plains (Chechan-are) located in contemporary central Chechnya.
The name "Chechens" is an exoethnonym that entered the Georgian and Western European ethnonymic tradition through the Russian language in the 18th century.
From the middle of the 19th century to the first years of the Soviet state, some researchers grouped all Chechens and Ingush under the name "Chechens". In modern scholarship, another term is used for this community: the Vainakh.
Nokhchiy Although Chechan (Chechen) was a term used by Chechens to denote a certain geographic area (central Chechnya), Chechens called themselves Nakhchiy (highland dialects) or Nokhchiy (lowland dialects). The oldest mention of Nakhchiy occurred in 1310 by the Georgian Patriarch Cyril Donauri, who mentions the 'People of Nakhche' among Tushetians, Avars and many other Northeast Caucasian nations. The term Nakhchiy has also been connected to the city Nakhchivan and the nation of Nakhchamatyan (mentioned as one of the peoples of Sarmatia in the 7th-century Armenian work Ashkharhatsuyts) by many Soviet and modern historians, although the historian N. Volkova considers the latter connection unlikely and states that the term Nakhchmatyan could have been mistaken for the Iaxamatae, a tribe of Sarmatia mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography, who have no connection to the Chechen people. Chechen manuscripts in Arabic from the early 1820s do mention a certain Nakhchuvan (near modern-day Kağızman, Turkey) as the homeland of all Nakhchiy. The etymology of the term Nakhchiy can also be understood as a compound formed with nakh ('people') attached to chö ('territory, room').
Geography and diaspora
The Chechens are mainly inhabitants of Chechnya. There are also significant Chechen populations in other subdivisions of Russia, especially in Aukh (part of modern-day Dagestan), Ingushetia and Moscow.
Outside Russia, countries with significant diaspora populations are Kazakhstan, Turkey and Arab states (especially Jordan and Iraq). Those in Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan are mainly descendants of families who had to leave Chechnya during the Caucasus War, which led to the annexation of Chechnya by the Russian Empire in 1859, and the forcible transfer of Chechens from Terek Oblast to the Ottoman Empire in 1865. Those in Kazakhstan originate from the ethnic cleansing of the entire population carried out by Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria in 1944. Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees settled in the European Union and elsewhere as the result of the recent Chechen Wars, especially in the wave of emigration to the West after 2002.Chechnya's Exodus to Europe, North Caucasus Weekly Volume: 9 Issue: 3, The Jamestown Foundation, January 24, 2008
History
Prehistory and origin
The Chechens are one of the Nakh peoples, who have lived in the highlands of the North Caucasus region since prehistory. There is archeological evidence of historical continuity dating back to 3000 B.C. as well as evidence pointing to their ancestors' migration from the Fertile Crescent c. 10,000–8,000 B.C.
The discussion of their origins is intertwined with the discussion of the mysterious origins of Nakh peoples as a whole. The only three surviving Nakh peoples are Chechens, Ingush and Bats, but they are thought by some scholars to be the remnants of what was once a larger family of peoples.
They are thought to be descended from the original settlers of the Caucasus (North and/or South).
Antiquity
Ancestors of the modern Chechens and Ingush were known as Durdzuks. According to The Georgian Chronicles, before his death, Targamos [Togarmah] divided the country amongst his sons, with Kavkasos [Caucas] receiving the Central Caucasus. Kavkasos engendered the Chechen tribes, and his descendant, Durdzuk, who took up residence in a mountainous region, later called "Dzurdzuketia" after him, established a strong state in the fourth and third centuries BC. Among the Chechen teips, the teip Zurzakoy, consonant with the ethnonym Dzurdzuk, lives in the Itum-Kale region of Chechnya.
Georgian historian Giorgi Melikishvili posited that although there was evidence of Nakh settlement in the Southern Caucasus areas, this did not rule out the possibility that they also lived in the North Caucasus.Jaimoukha, Amjad. The Chechens: A Handbook. Page 24. "Also, the Georgian historian G. A. Melikishvili maintained that the formation of the Vainakh took place much earlier than the first century BC. Though evidence of Nakh settlement was found on the southern slopes of the Caucasus in the second and first millennia BC, he did not rule out the possibility of their residence in the northern and eastern regions of the Caucasus. It is traditionally accepted that the Vainakh have existed in the Caucasus, with their present territory as a nucleus of a larger domicile, for thousands of years, and that it was the ‘birthplace’ of their ethnos, to which the peoples who inhabited the Central Caucasus and the steppe lands all the way to the Volga in the northeast and the Caspian Sea to the east contributed."
The state of Durdzuketi has been recorded since the 4th century BC. The Armenian Chronicles mention that the Durdzuks defeated the Scythians and became a significant power in the region in the first millennium BC.
The Vainakh in the east had an affinity with Georgia, while the Malkh Kingdom of the west looked to the new Greek kingdom of Bosporus on the Black Sea coast (though it may have also had relations with Georgia). According to legend, Adermalkh, chief of the Malkh state, married the daughter of the Bosporan king in 480 BCE. Malkhi is one of the Chechen tukkhums.Крупнов Е. И. Древности Чечено-Ингушетии. — Изд-во Академии наук СССР, 1963. — с. 256Натаев Сайпуди Альвиевич. ПРОБЛЕМА ЭТНОТЕРРИТОРИАЛЬНОЙ СТРУКТУРЫ ЧЕЧНИ В XVIII–XIX ВВ. В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ.Марковин В. И. «В ущельях Аргуна и Фортанги». Москва, 1965 — с. 71Мамакаев М. «Чеченский тайп в период его разложения». Грозный, 1973.Шавхелишвили А. И. «Грузино-чечено-ингушские взаимоотношения». Тбилиси, 1992. — с.65, 72Пиотровский Б. Б. История народов Северного Кавказа с древнейших времен до конца XVIII в. — Наука, 1988. — с.239Н. Г. Волкова. Этнический состав населения Северного Кавказа в XVIII-начале XX века — Москва: Наука, 1974. — с.169
Medieval
During the Middle Ages, the lowland of Chechnya was dominated by the Khazars and then the Alans. Local culture was also subject to Georgian influence and some Chechens converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. With a presence dating back to the 14th century, Islam gradually spread among the Chechens, although the Chechens' own pagan religion was still strong until the 19th century. Society was organised along feudal lines. Chechnya was devastated by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century and those of Tamerlane in the 14th.Jaimoukha pp. 33–34Dunlop p.3 The Mongol invasions are well known in Chechen folktales which are often connected with military reports of Alan-Dzurdzuk wars against the Mongols.
According to the missionary Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, a part of the Alans had successfully resisted a Mongol siege on a mountain for 12 years:
This twelve-year-old siege is not found in any other report, however, the Russian historian A. I. Krasnov connected this battle with two Chechen folktales he recorded in 1967 that spoke of an old hunter named Idig who with his companions defended the Dakuoh mountain for 12 years against Tatar-Mongols. He also reported to have found several arrowheads and spears from the 13th century near the very mountain the battle took place at:
Tamerlane's late 14th-century invasions of the Caucasus were especially costly to the Chechen kingdom of Simsir which was an ally of the Golden Horde and anti-Timurid. Its leader Khour Ela supported Khan Tokhtamysh during the Battle of the Terek River. The Chechens bear the distinction of being one of the few peoples to successfully resist the Mongols and defend themselves against their invasions; not once, but twice, though this came at great cost to them, as their states were utterly destroyed. These events were key in the shaping of the Chechen nationhood and their martial-oriented and clan-based society.
Early modern period
The Caucasus was a major competing area for two neighboring rival empires: the Ottoman and Turco-Persian empires (Safavids, Afsharids, Qajars). Starting from 1555 and decisively from 1639 through the first half of the 19th century, the Caucasus was divided by these two powers, with the Ottomans prevailing in Western Georgia, while Persia kept the bulk of the Caucasus, namely Eastern Georgia, Southern Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. The Chechens, however, never really fell under the rule of either empire. As Russia expanded slowly southwards as early as the 16th century, clashes between Chechens and Russians became more frequent, and it became three empires competing for the region. During these turbulent times, the Chechens were organized into semi-independent clans that were loyal to the Mehk-Khel (National Council). The Mehk-Khel was in charge of appointing the Mehk-Da (ruler of the nation). Several of these appeared during the early modern period such as Aldaman Gheza, Tinavin-Visa, Zok-K'ant and others. The administration and military expeditions commanded by Aldaman Gheza during the 1650–1670s led to Chechnya being largely untouched by the major empires of the time. Alliances were concluded with local lords against Persian encroachment and battles were fought to stop Russian influence. One such battle was the Battle of Khachara between Gheza and the rival Avar Khanate that tried to exert influence on Chechnya. As Russia set off to increase its political influence in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea at the expense of Safavid Persia, Peter I launched the Russo-Persian War, in which Russia succeeded in taking much of the Caucasian territories for several years. The conflict notably marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Chechens. Sheikh Mansur led a major Chechen resistance movement in the late 18th century.