#dagestani

Başka Yok

(There's nothing else)

Female reader (turkish speaker) x Ikram Aliskerov

Warnings : None

sorry if there's any mistakes, english isn't my first language!

Yeah, I know. I should've been prepared for all of this but maybe it's too early. You know, getting married isn't a joke, it's like a big moment for a girl in her life. And yeah I was surprised when this moment happened in my life.

I knew that I would get married before everyone. I knew who my husband was before being with him. It's just that, when we finally reach the point, it's completely different. We did all. The engagement, the Nikkah, and today, it's the real wedding.

In front of the government, of our respective families, our friends and relatives.

I'm actually in stress. I will make my enter in a few minutes. It's not all the people who're here who makes me nervous but the man who's waiting for me in front of everyone.

Ikram Aliskerov.

I know this guy since a long time. But knowing him is a big thing, our parents are good friends so they decided that when we'll grow up we'll get married. Are we okay with this?

Do we even have a choice?

It was decided like this and we can't do anything even if we wanted to. It's now the moment for me to go in the front. He's here, in a black suit with a white shirt. He doesn't look happy or anything. He just looks tired. Tired of being here, tired to smile, tired to pretend that this marriage will be successful and just tired to sign papers to be with someone he barely knows and that he isn't in love with.

"I know pronounce you husband and wife" the mayor said. Ikram grabbed me by my shoulders, tightening his grip on me and put a kiss on my forehead.

Clapping, cheering, our mothers crying, letting tears of joy flow down their cheeks. If I would've been cheeky, I would've said "No need to do all of that, that's just a mascarade".

The road for the reception was really silent. Nobody wanted to say something. Probably because there's nothing to say..? He didn't even glance at me, and for my part, I was looking through the window, hopping that this day will end quickly.

The room was full of people, waiting for us, and not just for me like a few hours ago. "What a beautiful couple", "You guys are beautiful together", "Çok yakışıyorsunuz v'Allah" which means "You both suit each other well". Maybe, maybe not. I thought that it was obvious that love wasn't the principal subject of this union.

But being good liars makes it seem like it's real.

К примеру, о юноше с красивым лицом, идеальной фигурой и в отличной одежде, говорили: «От этого молодого человека нет пользы: у него не разодраны полы чухи от езды на коне, в ней не образовалась дыра от тяжести сабли, не протерлась чуха и от пистолета за поясом.»

Поэтому впечатлить девушку, имея только хорошие внешние данные, было задачей утопической. Ведь оценивали мужскую красоту совершенно по иным критериям.

_________________

Чуха, чоха — верхняя мужская одежда некоторых народов Кавказа, сшитая из сукна, напоминающая черкеску, но с широкими рукавами до локтя и со стоячим воротником.

[Ingush Grammar. Johanna Nichols. First Edition: March 2011. University of California Press. Series: UC Publications in Linguistics. Pages: 830. Trim Size: 7 x 10 inches.  Illustrations: 1 map. Paperback. ISBN: 9780520098770]

Readers of my book reviews cannot help but notice my interest in – nay, my fascination with – linguistics and languages.  I am no stranger to Professor Nichols’s work: I read her award-winning treatise Linguistic Diversity in Time and Space a few years ago and was captivated by her command of language reconstruction principles.   Recently, it came to my attention that there might (in principle) be a call for persons to assist in national security-related activities who are fluent in, or at least familiar with, the Northeast Caucasian languages, especially Chechen and Dagestani.  The language discussed here, Ingush, is a closely-related language with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility with Chechen, Dagestani and Baltsi.  Since I couldn’t find a suitable book from which to learn Chechen, I thought I’d check this tidy little volume out.

“Tidy” is not the correct word for this work.  It tips the scales at almost 800 pages.  However, it is an undeniable tour-de-force of scholarship in the documenting of a comparatively obscure language. Prof. Nichols herself acknowledges that this tome is the culmination of about 30 years of work with Ingush, at least ten of which were spent in the homeland of the language itself, a region now known as Ingushetia in southern Russia adjacent to the Republic of Georgia and Chechnya.

The Northeast Caucasian languages are a small primary language family spoken almost exclusively in the region between the Republic of Georgia and the north end of the Caspian Sea.  Significant cities in this region are Ongusht (whence the name Ingush), Groznyy (the capital of Chechnya) and Makhachkala (the capital of Dagestan).   Though these languages share many features with Georgian (known as Kartuli to its speakers) and the similarly-named Northwest Caucasian languages (examples are Abkhazi and Cherkessian), they are not, in fact, related to them in any meaningful way.  This may seem surprising when one looks at a map of the region.  The area covered by these three language groups (Georgian is part of its own tiny language family called the Kartulian languages) is fairly small.  However, the area is peppered with mountain ranges that have carved it up geographically to a point where very ancient steppe peoples had settled in individual valleys and had no direct contact with even neighboring valleys for centuries. Little wonder, then, that language families developed independently from a still-more-ancient proto-language (as yet unidentified or classified).

Ingush, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, was named after a prominent community in its sprachbund, or speaking area.  Ingush people do not use this term, referring to their language as vai mott (our language) or, if speaking to non-Ingush speakers, vai neaxa mott (our people’s language).  Given that the homeland for this language has at least three well-defined geographic zones (alpine highlands, piedmont, and plains), it is not surprising that various dialects of Ingush have emerged.  All of these dialects are highly mutually intelligible, far from any objective criteria that would categorize them as distinct languages in their own right.

Nichols herself, in the introductory material, lists Ingush as one of the most morphologically complex languages in her experience, outstripping even daunting native American languages like Lakhota (a Siouan language of the northern Great Plains) and Halkomelem (a Salishan language from the Pacific Northwest in the USA).  Ingush has unusually large inventories of elements (phonemes, etc.), a high degree of inflectional synthesis in the verb (this is similar to some native American languages, especially the Athapaskan group) and a variety of categories of words, many of which do not have an analogue in English or any Indo-European language.  She comments that this might go some way toward explaining why this book took 30 years to produce!

Since the volume is so detailed, I will simply summarize my observations of its style and completeness.  I confess that I haven’t actually read the entire volume – I’ve probably read about 150 pages, or nearly 20% of it all told – but I have dipped into it in various places along its length to see what it was all about.  It is impossible for me to imagine that Prof Nichols missed anything; every conceivable component of Ingush seems to be covered here.  The book has 35 major sections, any one of which is worthy of at least a semester-long course of study (for the subject itself, not necessarily for Ingush per se).  Her writing tone and style strike an admirable balance between being very scholarly (it certainly is that) and yet being profoundly informative to a non-specialist like myself who is also not a trained linguist.

The best affirmation I can make of this book is that it is quite possibly the best template for any field linguist to follow when documenting and characterizing a language.  This is certainly true for someone working with an Endangered language, of which there are literally thousands still being spoken (some just barely) in the world today.  The level of commitment Prof Nichols has brought to bear on this work seems nothing short of miraculous.

This is definitely not a book for just anyone.  Like attempting to read all of Proust in the original French while not actually speaking French, a true appreciation of this book requires enormous patience and strong memory skills.  Prof Nichols refers to sections back and forth across the book, of necessity since linguistic elements do not exist in a vacuum.  That said, to truly appreciate the scope and even grandeur of this volume will command great mental agility and focus.  For anyone who is up to the challenge, I say, “Good luck – and enjoy!”  Even if you never speak Ingush or travel to that part of the world, this book will teach you something useful, edifying, and mind-expanding.

[Photo credits with thanks to : Book cover ©  2011 University of California Press / Portrait © 2012 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin]

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

28 September 2022

Kumyk Girl from Dagestan, European Russia

Starting from the 7th century local populations native to Dagestan were influenced by waves of Turkic-speaking nomads; first the Khazars, then later Kipchak and Oghuz tribes. The Khazar Khaganate played a significant role in this process, introducing Turkic language and cultural elements to the North Caucasus. Mixture and assimilation between natives and Turkic people led to the formation of the Kumyks.

Eventually, the Kumyks played a central political/cultural role in the region, especially through powerful feudal states such as the Shamkhalate of Tarki. The Shamkhals, Kumyk rulers, were influential figures who engaged in diplomacy and conflict with the Ottoman and Persian empires, and later with Russia. During the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 18th centuries, the Kumyks found themselves divided, some aligned with the empire, while others supported resistance movements like that of Imam Shamil.

As some of the earliest Muslims in the North Caucasus, the Kumyks were instrumental in spreading Islam throughout Dagestan and beyond, and for centuries, the Kumyk language served as a lingua franca in the region.

Islam in Dagestan spready unevenly, shaped by geography, history, and social context. In the northern lowlands, where the Kumyks lived, Islamic influence arrived relatively early, through trade routes and contact with neighboring Muslim powers in around the 14th century. Additionally, in the southern regions of Dagestan, Islam had an even earlier presence, dating back to the 8th century, although widespread conversion unfolded more gradually over time. By contrast, many of Dagestan’s highland communities, such as the Avars, Dargins, and Chechens, converted much later, between the 17th and 19th centuries, primarily through the work of Sufi brotherhoods and itinerant missionaries. These historical differences have had a lasting impact on the region’s varying levels of religiosity.

In the south, where Islam has existed the longest, the religion evolved into an extremely syncretic and less hierarchical form, blending Sufi teachings with a heavy focus on local folk traditions. This led to a more secular and moderate religious identity among groups like the Lezgins and Tabasarans, particularly in the post-Soviet era. In contrast, among northern/central highland groups such as the Avars, Dargins, and Chechens, Islam became deeply tied to anti-imperialist resistance and social discipline (although also heavily syncretic due to mixing in pre-Abrahamic folk beliefs). This is especially during the time of Imam Shamil; a key leader of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. His interpretation of Sufism emphasized obedience, moral rigor, and armed jihad in defense of the community and Islamic values - unlike the Sufism of the south which looked more similar to the liberal, tolerant, non-militant image of Sufism prominent in the west. As a result, these groups tend to display stronger religious commitment even today, and in the post-Soviet period, they were more susceptible to foreign religious influences, particularly Salafism promoted by Saudi Arabia and militants coming from the Gulf during civil unrest in the region in the 90s.

A Tsez (Didoi) Couple from Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia

"The Didoys, or Didoi, are an ethnic group [related to] Avars, one of the native peoples of the Caucasus, and are part of the Avar-Ando-Tsez group of peoples. The Didoys are a small indigenous people of southwestern Dagestan. The self-name of the people is Tsezi, which means "eagles" in translation.

Neighboring peoples and Avars call them Tsuntal, Georgians call them Zida. Usually, the peoples of Dagestan do not distinguish between the Didoys and Avars. These two peoples have become closer in the course of their history, they have similarities in genetic relationships, language, family life, everyday life, spiritual and material culture."