Chechens
According to popular tradition, the Russian term Chechency (Чеченцы) comes from central Chechnya, which had several important villages and towns named after the word Chechen.
The villages and towns named Chechan were always situated in the Chechan-are ("Chechen flatlands or plains") located in contemporary central Chechnya.
[29][30] The name "Chechens" is an exoethnonym that entered the Georgian and Western European ethnonymic tradition through the Russian language in the 18th century.
Outside Russia, countries with significant diaspora populations are Kazakhstan, Turkey and Arab states (especially Jordan and Iraq).
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 residence in a mountainous region, later called "Dzurdzuketia" after him, established a strong state in the fourth and third centuries BC.
We believe they have been besieging it for twelve years and they (the Alans) put up courageous resistance and killed many Tatars, including many noble ones.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:[58] The next year, with the onset of summer, the enemy hordes came again to destroy the highlanders.
Tired of the long years of hard struggle, the Chechens, believing the assurances of mercy by the enemy, descended from the mountain, but the Mongol-Tatars treacherously killed the majority, and the rest were taken into slavery.
They managed to escape and leave Mount Dakuoh after 12 years of siege.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.
[59] 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.
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.
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.
[64] Angered by Chechen raids, Yermolov resorted to a brutal policy of "scorched earth" and deportations; he also founded the fort of Grozny (now the capital of Chechnya) in 1818.
In 1944, all Chechens, together with several other peoples of the Caucasus, were ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to be deported en masse to the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs; and their republic and nation were abolished.
[66][69][70] Though "rehabilitated" in 1956 and allowed to return the next year, the survivors lost economic resources and civil rights and, under both Soviet and post-Soviet governments, they have been the objects of both official and unofficial discrimination and discriminatory public discourse.
[66][71] Chechen attempts to regain independence in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union led to the first and the second war with the new Russian state, starting in 1994.
Traditionally, linguists attributed both Ingush and Batsbi to the Chechen language (as its dialects) before the endoethnonym Vainakh appeared at the beginning of the 20th century.
Chechens in the diaspora often speak the language of the country they live in (English, French, German, Arabic, Polish, Georgian, Turkish, etc.).
However, this relationship is not a close one: the Nakho-Dagestani family is of comparable or greater time-depth than Indo-European, meaning Chechens are only as linguistically related to Avars or Dargins as the French are to the Russians or Iranians.
Other notable haplogroups that consistently appeared at high frequencies included J1 (20.9%), L (7.0%), G2 (5.5%), R1a (3.9%), Q-M242 (3%) and R1b-M269 (1.8%, but much higher in Chechnya itself as opposed to Dagestani or Ingushetian Chechens).
Tall, brunette, slender, with sharp features and a quick, determined look, he amazes with his mobility, agility, dexterity.
In addition to sparse written record from the Middle Ages, Chechens traditionally remember history through the illesh, a collection of epic poems and stories.
Chechens are accustomed to democratic ways, their social structure being firmly based on equality, pluralism and deference to individuality.
The teips are based more on land and one-side lineage than on blood (as exogamy is prevalent and encouraged), and are bonded together to form the Chechen nation.
According to Chechen philosopher Apty Bisultanov, ruining an ant-hill or hunting Caucasian goats during their mating season was considered extremely sinful.
[104] The glasnost era Chechen independence movement Bart (unity) originated as a simple environmentalist organization in the republic's capital of Grozny.
A radicalized remnant of the armed Chechen separatist movement has become dominated by Salafis (popularly known in Russia as Wahhabis and present in Chechnya in small numbers since the 1990s), mostly abandoning nationalism in favor of Pan-Islamism and merging with several other regional Islamic insurgencies to form the Caucasus Emirate.
At the same time, Chechnya under Moscow-backed authoritarian rule of Ramzan Kadyrov has undergone its own controversial counter-campaign of Islamization of the republic, with the government and the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Chechen Republic actively promoting and enforcing their own version of a so-called "traditional Islam", including introducing elements of Sharia that replaced Russian official laws.
