Chechens

• 1. Introduction

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  Marsha oylla, the word Chechens use to greet one another, translates literally as "enter in freedom." That a word for freedom in Chechen also encompasses notions of peace and prosperity is not coincidental. The Chechens are the largest ethnic group in the North Caucasus and call themselves Nokhchiy. Outsiders learned to call them something else, a name that entered European languages through Russian in the 18th century. They have inhabited the highlands of the North Caucasus since prehistory. Organized into clans and confederations, they have outlasted every empire that tried to dissolve them. What gave the Chechen clan system such resilience? What happened in the 13th century on a mountain called Dakuoh, and what does that story still tell us? And what single Soviet action in 1944 came closer than anything else to erasing them from the map?

• 2. A Name From the Inside

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  The word "Chechen" first appears in Russian sources in the late 16th century as "Chachana," naming a land owned by a prince called Shikh Murza. Long before that Russian encounter, the Chechens traced the name to the plains of central Chechnya. A cluster of villages bore the word: Chechan, Nana-Checha (meaning "Mother Checha"), and Yokkh Chechen ("Greater Chechena"). Linguists trace the root to the Nakh word che, meaning "inside," combined with the suffix -cha(n). Chechen can thus be read as "inside territory," a geographic label turned into a people's name.

  The name the Chechens use for themselves is Nokhchiy, or Nakhchiy in the highland dialects. The oldest surviving written mention appears in a 1310 record by the Georgian Patriarch Cyril Donauri. He listed the "People of Nakhche" alongside Tushetians, Avars, and many other North Caucasian nations. That reference predates the Russian use of "Chachana" by nearly three centuries. The term Nokhchiy breaks down as nakh ("people") joined to cho ("territory" or "room"). This gives another reading of the same inside-territory concept, though through a completely different etymological path.

  Some 19th-century researchers grouped Chechens and Ingush together under the single label "Chechens." Modern scholarship replaced that usage with the term Vainakh, which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Chechen manuscripts in Arabic from the early 1820s name Nakhchuvan, near today's Kagizman in Turkey, as the claimed homeland of all Nakhchiy.

• 3. Before the Empires

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  Archaeological evidence places Chechen ancestors in the North Caucasus as far back as 3000 BC. Separate evidence suggests a migration from the Fertile Crescent around 10,000-8,000 BC. The Chechens are one of only three surviving Nakh peoples; the others are the Ingush and the Bats. Some scholars believe these three groups are the remnants of a once much larger family of peoples who settled the Caucasus in antiquity.

  The Georgian Chronicles tell of a mythic division of territory after the death of Targamos, a figure known in the Bible as Togarmah. One of his sons, Kavkasos, received the central Caucasus. His descendant, Durdzuk, settled in a mountainous region later named Dzurdzuketia after him. The state of Durdzuketi is recorded in sources from the 4th century BC. Armenian chronicles from the first millennium BC note that the Durdzuks defeated the Scythians and rose as a significant power in the region.

  To the west of Dzurdzuketia lay the Malkh Kingdom, which maintained ties to the Greek kingdom of Bosporus on the Black Sea coast. According to tradition, Adermalkh, the chief of the Malkh state, married the daughter of the Bosporan king in 480 BCE. The Malkhi tukkhum, one of the Chechen clan confederations, traces its name to that ancient western kingdom. The teip Zurzakoy, whose name echoes the ethnonym Dzurdzuk, still lives in the Itum-Kale region of Chechnya today.

• 4. The Twelve-Year Mountain

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  The Mongol invasions of the 13th century devastated the lowlands of Chechnya. The Italian missionary Giovanni da Pian del Carpine traveled among the Mongols in the mid-13th century. He recorded an astonishing siege then underway in the land of the Alans: the Mongols, he wrote, had besieged "one mountain" for twelve years, and the defenders had killed many Tatars, "including many noble ones."

  The Russian historian A. I. Krasnov connected that account to two Chechen folktales he recorded in 1967. Both told of an old hunter named Idig who defended Dakuoh mountain for twelve years against the Mongol-Tatars. He held the mountain with a small group of companions. In the folktale, the enemy eventually offered mercy. The Chechens who believed the offer came down from the mountain; the Mongols killed most of them and enslaved the rest. Idig and the few who refused to trust the nomads held their position and eventually escaped after the full twelve years of siege. Krasnov also reported finding arrowheads and spears from the 13th century near the site.

  Tamerlane's invasions, in the 14th century, struck an already battered people. The Chechen kingdom of Simsir was an ally of the Golden Horde and actively opposed Tamerlane. Its leader, Khour Ela, supported Khan Tokhtamysh during the Battle of the Terek River. Chechen states were destroyed in that conflict, yet the Chechens are counted among the rare peoples who resisted the Mongols not once but twice. The illesh, the Chechen tradition of epic poetry and oral history, preserved these battles for generations after the written records were lost.

• 5. Conquest and Exile

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  Russia began pushing southward into the Caucasus as early as the 16th century, bringing it into increasing conflict with Chechen clans. The conflict escalated in the late 18th century when Sheikh Mansur led a major Chechen resistance movement. Full-scale Russian conquest of the North Caucasus followed in the Caucasian War of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

  Much of that campaign was led by General Yermolov, who described the Chechens as "a bold and dangerous people." Enraged by Chechen raids, Yermolov deployed scorched-earth tactics and mass deportations. In 1818, he founded the fort of Grozny, now the capital of Chechnya, as a tool of pacification. Chechen resistance reached its peak under Imam Shamil, a leader from Dagestan who organized the mountain peoples against Russian rule. The Chechens were ultimately defeated in 1861, after decades of warfare that cost most of their entire population.

  Chechen rebellions against Russian and Soviet power continued in waves: in 1865-66, in 1877, during the Russian Civil War, and during World War II. In 1944, Soviet security chief Lavrentiy Beria carried out Stalin's order to deport all Chechens to the Kazakh and Kirghiz Soviet republics. The Chechen republic was abolished and historical records severely damaged. At least one quarter, and perhaps half, of all Chechens died in the process. The Soviet government formally "rehabilitated" the Chechens in 1956 and allowed them to return the following year. The returnees found their economic resources stripped and their civil rights curtailed. Two wars for independence followed the fall of the Soviet Union, the first beginning in 1994. Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees later settled across the European Union and beyond.

• 6. Clan and Code

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  Chechen society is organized around roughly 130 teips, the clan units at the center of social life. Teips are grouped into larger confederations called tukkhums. Both are based more on territory and single-line descent than on pure blood relation; exogamy is encouraged, meaning marriage typically occurs outside the clan. Each teip is further subdivided into gar (branches) and gars into nekye, the patronymic family units. The governing body of this structure was the Mehk-Khel, or National Council, which held the power to appoint the Mehk-Da, the ruler of the nation.

  The social code that holds these structures together is called nokhchallah, a word built from Nokhchuo (meaning "Chechen"). It covers moral conduct, generosity, and the protection of women's honor. The code of customary law is known as adat. A traditional Chechen saying holds that the members of society, like its teips, are ideally "free and equal like wolves." The epic hero Turpalo-Nokhchuo, meaning "Chechen Hero," represents the mythic origin of the entire nation.

  The Mehk-Khel appointed several leaders during the turbulent early modern period, among them Aldaman Gheza, Tinavin-Visa, and Zok-K'ant. Gheza's military leadership during the 1650s and 1670s kept Chechnya largely clear of the major empires pressing from all sides. More recent memory preserved Zelimkhan, who robbed from Russian oppressors to feed Chechen children, a figure often compared to Robin Hood. The Chechen philosopher Apty Bisultanov observed that ruining an ant-hill was considered extremely sinful. Hunting Caucasian goats during their mating season carried the same prohibition. The glasnost-era Chechen independence movement Bart, whose name means "unity," started life as a simple environmentalist organization in Grozny.

• 7. Faith Old and New

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  The Day of the Goddess Tusholi and the Day of the Thunderer Sela were among the ceremonies the Chechens observed before Islam arrived. Their code of honor, called quonahalla, also belongs to this pre-Islamic tradition. Rain rites and a ceremony marking the first day of plowing rounded out the religious calendar.

  Islam reached the Chechens gradually, with a presence recorded from the 14th century, though the older pagan religion remained strong until the 19th century. The faith that took root was Sunni Islam, predominantly the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, which has remained the most practiced. About half of all Chechens belong to Sufi brotherhoods known as tariqah. Two Sufi orders spread through the North Caucasus: the Naqshbandiyya and the Qadiriyya. The Naqshbandiyya took strongest hold in Dagestan and eastern Chechnya, while the Qadiriyya drew most of its following in western Chechnya and Ingushetia.

  By the late 2000s, two new religious trends had complicated the picture. A radicalized remnant of the armed separatist movement was dominated by Salafis. They largely abandoned Chechen nationalism for Pan-Islamism and merged with regional insurgencies to form the Caucasus Emirate. At the same time, the Moscow-backed government of Ramzan Kadyrov pursued its own campaign of Islamization. The Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the Chechen Republic promoted what officials called "traditional Islam." This included elements of Sharia that replaced certain Russian civil laws. Chechens in Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq are mostly descendants of families expelled during the Caucasus War. Their faith traditions traveled with them, taking root in communities now more than 150 years old.