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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Israpil SAMPIEV
D.Sc. (Political Science), Professor, Head, Chair of Sociology and Political Science, Ingush State University (Republic of Ingushetia, Nazran, the Russian Federation).
THE AKKINTSY OF THE DARIAL AND ARMKHI GORGES: DISMANTLING OF A MYTH
Abstract
The author poses himself the task of exposing several historical and ethno-political myths about the ethnographic group of Akkintsy who allegedly lived in the Darial and Armkhi gorges in the 16th century
and earlier. He relies on scientifically substantiated information to disprove the old historical and ethnographic delusions and concludes that this historical phantom should be evicted from academic Caucasian studies.
KEYWORDS: the mountainous part of Ingushetia, the Akkintsy, the Aukhovtsy, ethnic history, historical myth, an analysis of documents and folklore.
Introduction
The more or less generally accepted idea that the Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy) originated from the Darial Gorge and its adjacent areas found its way into the collective monograph Istoria Ingushetii
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(History of Ingushetia): "... some of the Ingush (Akkhiy, Fyappiy, and others) left the Kurtatinskoe, Koban, and Sanibanskoe gorges, the territories later occupied by Iranian-speaking Ossets."1 The same publication goes on to say, "There was a special closeness between the people living in the Armkhi Gorge known as the Fyappiy... and the Akkintsy traced in later written sources and ethno-genetic legends of the Ingush and Akkintsy."2 The thesis remains dangling in mid-air—no written sources speak of the "special closeness" between the Fyappintsy and Akkintsy and no "ethnoge-netic legends" (there is only one Akkin legend) offer information about their kinship. Moreover, the legend was misinterpreted in the part related to the localization of the Akkintsy in the 16th century. Russian and local historiography, however, relies on folklore sources to write that in the 16th century the Akkintsy lived in the Darial and Armkhi gorges (despite its frequent and perfunctory use, the Jeyrakh Gorge as a substitution for the above is wrong), as well as in several adjacent districts.
I have posed myself the task of analyzing the available written and folklore sources that certain authors use when talking of the Darial and Armkhi gorges as the home country of the Akkintsy. This is important, first because the historical objectivity and factual reliability of what is being said on the subject demand verification. Second, a scientific analysis of this issue is just as important, since it serves as the foundation of a great number of ethnohistorical and ethnopolitical myths constructed by a group of "hardworking" pseudo-historians (obviously well organized and lavishly funded) who rubberstamp falsifications of the Ingush' ethnic history in the media and especially on the Internet. Wittingly or unwittingly, some of the Ingush authors "play into their hands," so closer attention to the few available historical sources is the only remedy. I will not go into the details of the so-called historical discoveries related to the region's ancient and medieval history, or of the geopolitical reminiscences based on them lest to draw more (and unearned) attention to them. I will destroy them and their pseudohistorical foundation by going into the details of two sides of the same subject—the Akkintsy in the Darial Gorge and the Akkintsy in the Armkhi Gorge.
The Akkintsy and the Darial Gorge: Is There Any Connection Between Them?
Are there scientifically substantiated sources and reliable scholarly works to justify the statement that the Akkintsy lived in the Darial Gorge? A detailed analysis has provided an answer—there are no scientific systematized studies of the issue and, therefore, there is no substantiation. There are three apologies for the arguments, which rely on very dubious evidence of the presence of the Akkintsy in the area or their possession of it.
■ The first argument rests on the story of an anonymous Chechen quoted by Bashir Dalgat in his "Pervobytnaia religia chechentsev" (The Primitive Religion of the Chechens) that appeared in the third issue of Terskiy sbornik (Terek Collection) with a reference to an earlier publication in the Terskiy vestnik newspaper in 1870 and, later, in the Sbornik svedeniy o Terskoy oblasti (Collected Information about the Terek Region). In 1974, it was published and commented on by Natalya Volkova; everything else is mere interpretations of this oral source.
■ The second argument, likewise, relies on folklore sources, that is, a specific interpretation of scattered bits and pieces of recorded folklore that basically boil down to the conclusion that the aldars (princes) Dudarovs from Lars were Akkintsy by origin.
1 Istoria Ingushetii, OOO Tetrograph Publishers, Magas, 2011, p. 15.
2 Ibid., p. 152.
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■ The third argument, which passes for a document, is nothing more than a reproduction and straightforward interpretation of the letter Sultan Murza from Lars (the Darial Gorge) wrote to the Moscow czar published in 1889 by S.A. Belokurov in the first issue of his book Snoshenia Rossii s Kavkazom (Relationship between Russia and the Caucasus).
Let us have a closer look at the three arguments.
The first argument: a story told by an unknown Chechen that appeared in Terskiy vestnik in 1870 and was quoted by Bashir Dalgat in the third issue of Terskiy sbornik published as a Supplement to The 1894 Terskiy Calendar runs as follows: "Old Chechen men say that there are mountains closer to Bashlam, from which the rivers Assa, Fortanga, and Gekhi flow. They are the Aki-lam mountains populated now, or populated in the past in the time of our ancestors, by 'lam-kristy' (mountain Christians). This is our cradle and the cradle of all other Chechen clans."3
The problems began when the name of the Bashlam mountain was arbitrarily reproduced in later Russian-language publications as Kazbek. Here is what we find in Natalya Volkova's commentaries: "Another legend, which I recorded in 1971 among the Eastern Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy), also speaks of the movement of some of the Vainakhs from the west to the east. 'In the past the Akkintsy who left Shami,' says the legend, 'settled under the Kazbek mountain, but being at daggers drawn with the Batsavi-guiji, they had to leave this locality for a place called Glula, which, according to the storyteller, one of the Akkintsy from the village of Boni-yurt, was situated on the upper reaches of the Armkhi or Assa rivers. Under Kalmyk pressure, they left Glula (compare with Guloykhi, the right tributary of River Assa) and settled on the Michik River. Attacked by Kalmyks (Glalmakkhoy), they moved into the mountains to the Yamansu River, where they built their settlements."4 Here the local name Bashlam was replaced with Russian Kazbek for no reason.
Earlier, the name of the mountain Bashlam, from which the Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy) had begun their exodus, was translated as Kazbek in disregard of what was said in these short legends. This error, probably "put into circulation" by translators, traveled from one publication to another and misled many researchers, who relied on well-known experts in Caucasian studies. Vladimir Boguslavskiy, for example, has written: "Until the 16th century, the Akkintsy lived in the basin of River Gekhi, yet we can suppose that earlier they lived to the west of the Gekhi in the area of the Darial Gorge."5 The author is treading carefully and uses the verb "suppose" when writing about the Akkintsy's possible presence in the area of the Darial Gorge.
The legend quoted by Dalgat mentions Bashlam (the name of the mountain had been written down in this form and was diligently reproduced); close to it there are the mountains from which the rivers Assa, Fortanga, and Gekhi flow. Nobody, however, paid attention to the geographical fact that neither the Assa, nor Fortranga, nor Gekhi start at the mountains close to Kazbek: the upper and middle reaches of the Assa are separated from the Darial Gorge by at least 40 km; the Fortanga by over 50 km, and the Gekhi by over 60 km; the distance between the Darial Gorge and their lower reaches is even greater. One finds it very strange that the author who spoke about these rivers said nothing about the famous Terek, which runs down from the Kazbek mountain. Any of the later researchers should have been alerted by this omission and thus saved from hasty conclusions—Kazbek and Terek (the Darial Gorge) are intimately connected.
The legend points to the place of the Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy) exodus as Aki-lam and says that these mountains are the cradle of the Akkintsy and also of other Chechen clans. According to ethno-
3 Terskiy sbornik 1893—Terskiy sbornik. Prilozhenie k Terskomu kalendariu na 1894. Issue 3, published by the Terek Regional Statistical Committee; ed. by Committee Secretary G. Vertepov, Book Two, Print shop of the Terek Regional Board, Vladikavkaz, 1893, p. 45.
4 N.G. Volkova, Etnicheskiy sostav naseleniia Severnogo Kavkaza v XVIII-nachale XIX veka, Nauka Publishers, Main Editorial Department of Oriental Literature, Moscow, 1974, p. 143.
5 V.V. Boguslavskiy, Slavianskaia entsiklopedia, XVII vek, in 2 vols., Vol. 2, Olma Press, OAO PF Krasny proletary, Moscow, 2004, p. 68.
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genetic legends, the Chechens consider Nashakh to be the place of their origin. This is the Galanchozh Gorge, the nearby areas of which were known as Aki-lam. The gorge and Kazbek are separated by at least 60 km as the crow flies. On the other hand, the rivers mentioned above start not far from the Galanchozh Gorge.
The legend published by Volkova says that, after leaving Shami, the Akkintsy settled under Kazbek. The name of the Bashlam mountain was erroneously taken for Kazbek, probably because there is a very similar place name—Bashloam—by which the Ingush call Kazbek. The error might go back to the informers—the Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy) probably took the Ingush name for Kazbek for Bashlam in the Aki-lam area. These very similar names stirred vague reminiscences, hence the replacement. Meanwhile, more than a century ago the reminiscences were less vague, which explains why Chechen U. Laudaev had no problems with identifying in the stories of the informers the area they had left (in his time it was part of the Argun District): "The Aukhovtsy are called Akkiy because when living in the Argun District they belonged to the Akkiy family. The poor land on which these people lived forced half of this family to move to Aukh, where the Kumyks and Russians called them Aukhovtsy; on the other hand, they preserved the old name Akkiy, as originating from Akki which they had taken from the Chechens."6 Ekaterina Kusheva, one of the best experts in the history of the Aukhovtsy, pointed out: "The Akkintsy are believed to have originated from the mountainous Vainakh society of Akkha, which late 18th-19th-century sources localized on the upper reaches of the Gekhi and Fortanga, the right tributaries of the River Sunzha."7
In his Toponimia Checheno-Ingushetii (Toponymics of Checheno-Ingushetia), Akhmad Suley-manov specified the location of the Akkha society, the landmarks and its borders with neighboring societies: "The AKKHA (Akkhiy). In the south, the Chechen society Akkha bordered on Key-Mokhk, in the north on Yalkhara, in the east on Galayn-Chozh, and in the west on Merja. The ethnonym is probably based on 'akkhe (+vakhar), which meant hunting, to hunt, or people who hunted for a living. The Akkintsy are divided into lam-akkhiy and arenan-akkhiy (Karabulaks and Akkintsy-Aukhovtsy), but there was no direct kinship between them. These societies emerged independently of one another, in different climatic and other conditions. The Akkha society described here lived near the source of the Osu-khi, the left tributary of the Gekhi."8 The place where the mountain Akkintsy lived (Akki-lam) was well-known—it had nothing to do with the Darial and Armkhi gorges.
The fact that in the past the geographical names were confused is confirmed by a TV program showed in Grozny in 1991 when a Chechen (a muhajir descendant), who came from Turkey, said that his ancestors had gone to Turkey from a place near the Bashlam mountain. The slightly disappointed anchorman asked: Does this mean that you came from the upper reaches of the Terek, that is, from among the Ingush? The guest specifies that his family had been living near the river that flowed into the upper reaches of the Argun. This left the anchorman baffled—he had never heard of a mountain of that name (Bashlam) in Chechnia.
The Bashlam mountain in mountainous Chechnia will be identified below. The legend says that their far from friendly relations with Batsavi-gurji forced the Akkintsy to move to G1ula, which, according to the narrator, was situated on the upper reaches of the Armkhi or Assa rivers. The Batsavi-gurji (that is, the Tsova-Tushins, Batsoy in the Ingush language) did not live anywhere close to Kazbek; they lived and are living to the east of Kazbek, from which they are separated by the territories of the Pkhovtsy (Khevsurs and Pshavs), Mtiuls, and Mokhevtses. Natalya Volkova drew our attention to the fact that the territory itself was situated near Guloi-khi, in the eastern part
6 U. Laudaev, "Chechenskoe plemia," in: Sbornik svedeniy o kavkazskikh gortsakh, Issue 6, Section 1, Part 3, Tiflis,
1872.
7 E.N. Kusheva, Russko-chechenskie otnosheniia: vtoraiapolovinaXVI-XVII v., Vostochnaia literatura, Moscow, 1997,
p. 261.
8 A.S. Suleymanov, Toponimia Checheno-Ingushetii, Part II, 1. Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo, Grozny, 1978, p. 115.
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of mountainous Ingushetia, relatively close to the Galanchozh Gorge, that is, close to Aki-lam and the upper reaches of River Assa, and separated from the Darial Gorge and Kazbek by several dozen kilometers.
The source of the Armkhi River is situated far from Glula, while the narrator seems to be unsure of its location—either on the upper reaches of the Armkhi or the Assa rivers. It seems that he received information about the Armkhi from members of the Vappi ethnographic group who lived among the Aukhovtsy. He also knew that the Armkhi and the Assa were situated somewhere in Ingushetia, but was vague about their exact location. This was accepted because the Akkintsy (Aukhovtsy) and also part of the academic community connected the place of exodus of Akkintsy to Aukh with the Ingush. In 1891, I. Omelchenko pointed out: "The origins of the Cossacks mountain dwellers who were part of the Terek-Kizliar Army are closely connected with the history of the emergence and settlement of the Terki town founded in 1588. The Ingush of the Akko tribe were among the first to settle there; Russian documents call them 'Okonchen,' who founded the so-called 'Okonchen quarter'."9 Later, Professor Anatoly Genko pointed, among other things, to well-known Ingush specifics in the speech of the Akkintsy-Aukhovtsy from the villages of Chanka-yurt, Akbulat-yurt, Kara-su, Golayty, and Bilt-aul. Legends explain these specifics by the relatively recent Ingush origins of these peoples.10 Here we are not interested in the Akkintsy's ethnic roots; what is more important is their knowledge of the Ingush rivers. The Vappintsy could reach Aukh not only from the Armkhi Gorge; more likely they came from the piedmont where they had lived before the joint Russian-Kabarda-Nogay march of 1562 that drove some of the Vappintsy to the mountains11; the others moved to Aukh, where they sought protection of Shamkhalate of Tarki.
Even the basic knowledge of local geography and folklore is enough to recognize the Bashlam mountain in the legend recorded by Bashir Dalgat to become sure that it was not Kazbek. It was another mountain, the name of which was close to the Ingush name for Kazbek (Bashloam), which explains the mistranslations that buried, in the course of time, the original name (Bashlam). It, however, survived in the legends of Akkintsy-Aukhovtsy and also in Chechen folklore. To dot the i's, I will cite here three more extracts from Aukh legends, which will help us locate the Bashlam mountain.
The collection of Chechen folk poems (illis) quotes an illi about Malsak of Nesarkhoy and Sadula, son of Betak, in which a certain Chechen complains to Imam Shamil: "O, Just Shamil, my life is bitter and the cause of this is frightening. Malsak of Nesarkhoy appeared with his band; you can see their white tents everywhere. They steal out cattle day and night; they deflower our beautiful virgins. Malsak of Nesarkhoy dropped on us like a sand slide and is suppressing us. We are pleading with you—drive Malsak from the Chekhkara land (footnote 23 in the original text.—I.S.) or take us with you beyond Bashlam (footnote 24.—I.S.) o, imam, o, Shamil."12
Footnote 23 clarifies: the Chekhkara land (Chekhkari, Chekhkara—a valley in the piedmont area of Chechnia in the vicinity of Starye Atagi village). Footnote 24 says: "Bashlam is a mountain range which separated the Chechen lands from the Avars."13 Here is real Bashlam (wrongly called Kazbek) and its clear geographic localization, which has nothing in common with Kazbek and the Darial Gorge. The same illi mentions the Bashlam mountain once more. After defeating Malsak, Sadula said to the imam: "I return you, Shamil, brave Avars and you should go back to your land beyond Bashlam.. ,"14
9 I. Omelchenko, Terskoe kazachestvo, Vladikavkaz, 1891, p. 69.
10 See: A.N. Genko, Iz kulturnogo proshlogo ingushey. Zapisi kollegii vostokovedov pri Aziatskom muzee Akademii nauk, Vol. V, Leningrad, 1930, p. 684.
11 See: Istoria Ingushetii, p. 152.
12 Illi. Chechen Folk Poetry (illi, uzamash), Compiled by I.B. Munaev, FGUP IPK Groznenskiy rabochy, Grozny, 2011, p. 125 (in Russian).
13 Ibid., p. 125.
14 Ibid., p. 129.
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Here is another fact taken from Chechen folklore. In a small book called Shutki Chory i Aliger-eya (Jokes by Chora and Aligerey), the wit Chora15 mocks a group of female dhikrists going from Chinkh to Ertin—to repay your dhikr, "I, as the man you have appointed in all sincerity, will give the reward to the Bashlam mountain, the mountain of the Sonakhois that is found lower (than Bashlam.— Ed.) and to the mountain of the Khakkois, situated lower still.. ,"16 He is speaking about the mountains Bashlam, the highest of them, the mountain of the Sonakhois (they are one of the Melkhin teips), and the lowest of them, the mountain of the Khakkois (a teip from Shatoy).17 These mountains are found in one and the same place situated higher than Aki-lam and to the south of it. They are enumerated from the south to the north, which means that Bashlam is the highest mountain in this part of the Caucasian Range (probably the mountain now called Tebulos-Mta (if this is true, then the original Bashlam was replaced with a Georgian name). I think, however, that this name was applied not to one mountain, but to the snow-covered mountain range in this part of the Caucasus.
Finally, there is irrefutable documentary evidence of a topographer, Johann Blaramberg, who in 1834 wrote down in his notebook: "Other Kistins (as distinct from 'closer Kists', that is, the Fappi.—I.S.) live in the Caucasian mountains among the Akkintsy, Khevsurs, Lezghians, and Avars on both sides of the River Argun and on the slopes of Kori-lam, Bashlam, Shatoy-lam, Kachunt, and Gakhko."18 The mountains are situated close to one another and are separated from the Darial Gorge by at least 60 km and from the Armkhi Gorge by 40 kilometers.
This needs no further clarification, since the above disproves the first argument about the exodus of the Akkintsy from the Darial Gorge close to Kazbek.
Let us investigate the second argument, which relies on scattered folklore information about the Dudarovs from Lars as ethnic Akkintsy. First, folklore texts about the movements of Dudar, head of the Dudarovs, contradict Natalia Volkova's concept borrowed by the authors of Istoria Ingushetii, who wrote about the gradual movement of the Akkintsy from the west to the east (if we agree that they started from the Kazbek area) and the concepts supported by Chechen pseudo-historians who armed themselves with this argument. The legends, on the other hand, say that Dudar was moving in the opposite direction—from the east to the west. We cannot exclude the possibility that he finally reached Lars in the Darial Gorge and that he was the forefather of the Ossetian and Ingush Dudarovs. This version calls for further verification. We have to establish here whether Dudar was an ethnic Akkin.
So far, an answer to this question, as well as to the question about the Akkintsy in the Darial Gorge, the Armkhi, Kistin, Sanniban, and some other gorges, are sought for in folklore since no more or less careful scientific investigation has been carried out so far. All conclusions rely on arbitrary interpretation of tiny and unrelated legends or, rather, on the starting point of the Dudarovs and several other families and are, therefore, as bold as unsubstantiated. Scientifically substantiated conclusions call for methodologically correct analysis, which will reveal that the geographic names were confused. To disprove the second argument let us look into Dudar's allegedly Akkin ethnic roots. The thesis that his descendants among the Ingush and Ossets belong to the Akkintsy and Chechens does not hold water and is not discussed here.
What arguments did the pseudo-historians use to fit Dudar and his descendants among the Akkintsy? They relied on the Russian-language copy of the Ingush legend "Pereseleniia Dudara" (Re-
15 Chora is the Chechen analogy of Nasreddin, a Central Asian hero of numerous adventures. In the 1970s, the play Shutki Chory (Chora's Jokes) was extremely popular in Grozny; A. Deniev (Sutarbi), People's Artist of the Chechen-Ingush A.S.S.R., played the central role (see: [http://www.kino-teatr.ru/teatr/acter/rn/sov/18636/bio/]).
16 Shutki Chory i Aligireya, Grozny, 1969, p. 22.
17 See: Natalya Volkova wrote about them: "Today the Khakkoi teip lives in Shatoy; there are about 100 households in all" (Archives of the Institute of Ethnography (AIE), rec. gr. 7, f. 27, sheet 183. Materials of the 1971 expedition).
18 J. Blaramberg, Istoricheskoe, topograficheskoe, statisticheskoe, etnograficheskoe i voennoe opisanie Kavkaza, Nadyrshin Publishing House, 2005, p. 329.
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settlements of Dudar). It should be noted that there is not a single legend about Dudar among the Akkintsy, to whom he allegedly belonged! The legend says: "It is commonly believed that Dudar was born in the village of Kiy or Aki."19 This is what the Russian version says. The legend, however, was told and written down in Ingush; it was also published in the same language in the Anthology of Ingush Folklore: "Вахарца KxcnxcM xbceenc ffydcp: flyKKxmcp дуeцанох ffydcp cbKKxcMKc Kuu xxme mpmcpc xbcecbunce ."20 The correct translation runs as follows: "Most narrators of folk legends believe that Dudar was born in the Kiy village in the direction of the Akkintsy." It should be said that in the Ingush version, the word "cbKKxcrnKc " begins with a small letter; this means that it was not the name of a village but rather an indication of direction: "in the direction of the Akkintsy." This word should be written in Ingush as "cbKKxcMKcxbcpc, " the way Zaurbek Malsagov wrote it in his time.21 The Ingush version has no words "or Aki" present in the Russian text, probably because the translator was either careless or deliberately replaced Kiy with Aki (this is repeated throughout the entire text, as I will demonstrate below in the section dealing with the Akkintsy in the Armkhi Gorge). The fact of replacement is confirmed by the texts in Ingush and in Russian (which contains the notorious "or Aki") published in the Anthology of Ingush Folklore.22
There is another fragment of the translation of the second legend published by Leonid Semenov. "According to legend, Dudarov was a relative of the family of Akievs who lived in the Kiy village (information by Matiev)."23 Malsagov wrote down this information in Ingush: "ffydcpc-Kbomuu dc cbKKxcMKcxbcpc xceennce. Bomcm doncw xmnce U3 Оcки-нbcкcнцc, Kuu 6cxmc. " 24 His version invites a translation very different from that published by Leonid Semenov: "The ancestor of the Dudarovs came from the direction of the Akkintsy (from the east.—I.S.). He was brother of the Okiev family from Kiy (he was their family brother.—I.S.)." In the Russian translation, the Okievs (the family name derived from the personal name Ok) became the Akievs, which is a different name. Ok and his father Oki can be seen in the teip tree of Kiy, which means that Dudar belonged to the Kiyrkho (or Key) and not to the Akkintsy.
The next legend offers a clear statement: "Dudar originated from the village of Kiy."25 The Anthology contains the original Ingush text, "ffydcp Me Kuuxxmc mpmcpc xbcecbuuc xunnce" and its adequate Russian translation.26 In other words, Dudar, hero of Ingush legends, who had found himself after all his movements in the village of Lars in the Darial Gorge and later became an Osset feudal lord, descended from the Kiy teip and did not belong to the Akkintsy. This buries the second argument.
The third argument relies on a literal interpretation of those parts of the "Stateyny spisok (Diary) of Prince S. Zvenigorodskiy and State Official T. Antonov," which deal with their talks in the town of Terskiy in August 1589. The document says in part: ".and Saltan Murza was saying, I heard from peasants and my brother Shikh Murza of Okut that the Kabardinian princes had made obeisance to your czar; I also want to serve him until death like my brother Shikh Murza of Okut served and take part together with the military commanders of the czar and Kabardinian princes in marches against those who disobey the czar. I vow my allegiance and will accompany you to the Georgian lands and will send my son or brother to the town of Terskiy with you when you go from the Georgian lands.
19 L.P. Semenov, Arkheologicheskie i etnograficheskie razyskania v Ingushetii v 1925-1932 godakh, Grozny, 1963,
p. 70.
20 Anthology of Ingush Folklore, Vol. 8, Ingush Legends, Issue 2, Nalchik, 2010, p. 33 (with parallel Ingush and Russian
texts).
21 See: Z.K. Malsagov, Selected Works, El-Fa, Nalchik, 1998, p. 395 (in Ingush).
22 See: Ibid., pp. 33-34.
23 L.P. Semenov, op. cit., p. 24.
24 Z.K. Malsagov, op. cit.
25 L.P. Semenov, op. cit.; Folklore of the Chechens and Ingush, Compiled by I.A. Dakhkilgov, A.O. Malsagov, Chech-eno-ingushskoe knizhnoe izdatelstvo, Grozny, 1986, p. 33 (in Russian).
26 See: Anthology ofIngush Folklore, Vol. 8, Ingush Legends, Issue 2, p. 33.
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"And when you reach your czar tell him that I want to serve him and ask him to give me a grant charter, according to which I will serve his state, like the one he sent to my brother Shikh Murza of Okut."27
The fact that Saltan Murza called Shikh Murza of Okut his "brother" led or, rather, misled certain researchers to the conclusion that Usharom Murza, father of Shikh Murza, was also the father of Saltan Murza and that they were both "Okuts." IstoriaIngushetii said without a shred of doubt: "When Shikh Murza received the deed from the Russian czar and his gifts, his brother Saltan Murza, the head of the aul Lars in the Darial Gorge, also applied to the czar with a request to make him a Russian subject."28 One feudal lord called another a brother—it was a common practice of that time; even kings at war with each other used this term. The words, "I heard from peasants and my brother Shikh Murza of Okut," were intended as confirmation of his status as higher than that of the peasants and equal to that of Shikh Murza.
Ekaterina Kusheva paid attention to this fact and, to avoid primitive conclusions, wrote: "Let me remind you that the "Stateyny spisok of Prince S. Zvenigorodskiy" called Saltan Murza brother of Shikh Murza of Okot. If this means kinship between the two feudal lords, we can presume that Saltan Murza had Vainakh roots."29 The author treaded cautiously when writing of their kinship; she did not contemplate the possibility that they were brothers born from the same father, which suggested that Saltan Murza had Vainakh roots. The Ingush roots of Saltan Murza and the Lars population of that period have been confirmed in numerous historical works30 and do not need further confirmation in the form of "blood kinship." It seems that Kusheva interpreted the term "brother" as a brotherhood of feudal lords.
It seems that the above convinced the authors of Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza (History of the North Caucasian Peoples) that late in the 16th century, Saltan, who called himself brother of Shikh Murza, was murza of the aul Lars in the Darial Gorge. He "called himself' brother, but was not his brother. There is no objective evidence that they were brothers. The quoted text testifies to the fact that Shikh Murza and Saltan Murza were not relatives, since the latter wrote: "I also want to serve him until death like my brother Shikh Murza of Okut served and take part, along with the military commanders of the czar and Kabardinian princes, in the marches against those who disobey the czar. I vow my allegiance and will accompany you to the Georgian lands and will send my son or brother to the town of Terskiy with you."31 If Shikh Murza was his brother there would have been no need to offer one more brother or a son as a pledge of loyalty. This makes it absolutely clear that they were brothers by the fact of being feudal lords.
This destroys the third argument in favor of the Akkintsy in the Darial Gorge thesis. By way of preliminary summing up, we can say that the Akkintsy (mountainous Akkintsy and Akkintsy-Auk-hovtsy) had nothing to do with Kazbek and the Darial Gorge.
The Akkintsy in the Armkhi Gorge: Fact or Fake?
Let's take a closer look at the statement that the Akkintsy left a trace in the Armkhi Gorge; it is based on two arguments: (1) the Akkin origins of the people living in the Falkhan aul and (2) the
27 S.A. Belokurov, Snoshenia Rossii s Kavkazom, 1889, Issue 1, 1578-1613, pp. 127-154; G.L. Bondarevskiy, Dokumentalnaia istoria obrazovania mnogonatsionalnogo gosudarstva Rossiskogo, Moscow, 1998, p. 214.
28 Istoria Ingushetii, p. 15.
29 E.N. Kusheva, op. cit., p. 274.
30 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza s dreneyshikh vremen do kontsaXVIII veka, Moscow, 1988, pp. 295, 347348; N.G. Volkova, Etnicheskiy sostav naselenia Severnogo Kavkaza., p. 143; L.P. Semenov, op. cit., p. 27.
31 Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 295.
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identical place names in the Armkhi Gorge (the Kistin community or the Fappi shakhar) and among the Akkintsy. They should be discussed one by one.
The first so-called argument relies on folklore, or the only piece of information which said that people from the Falkhan aul originated from Akki supplied by Alikhan Murzabekov and published by Leonid Semenov.32 It was there that Kiy was replaced with Akki. As a direct ancestor of the founders of the aul Falkhan and a member of the Falkhanoi teip, I can rely on the clan legends of the elders, which said that "the Falkhans, who bravely fought with swords," originated from Kiy. On the other hand, it remains to be established which of the two Kiys was meant—there was an aul and a locality of this name in the Assa Gorge33 and in Kiy-Mokhk (they might be genetically close). This deserves special investigation; here we can be rest assured that the Falkhans did not originate from the Ak-kintsy and that the contemporary Key people have nothing in common with them. The haplogroup of indigenous Falkhanois (Dzarakhovs and Sampievs) is J2 (M172), while the haplogroup of the Akkintsy from Galanchozh is J1 (M267); the Key people who live in Kiy have a L3 (M20) haplogroup.34 This means that the shameless statements, which litter Russian historical websites, of Chechen pseudo-historians who insist that the aul Falkhan was allegedly founded by the Akkintsy (Chechens) from Galanchozh are nothing but an ethnopolitical fake.
In the legends about Dudar, the translators on whom Semenov relied replaced Kiy with Aki. It should be said that this developed into a fairly consistent trend in the Ingush folklore and historical studies for no objective reasons. This is illustrated by the fairly careless treatment of terms in the Ingush sources that mislead academics who either do not know the Ingush language or are not experts in this particular issue. Shukri Dakhkilgov's Proiskhozhdenie ingushskikh familiy35 (The Origins of Ingush Family Names) is, so far, the only ethnographic work dealing with the subject, the numerous pseudo-historical works on the same subject are left outside the scope of my article. The compiler of a collection of Dakhkilgov's works has written that "some of the respondents might offer incorrect information, which means that mistakes are inevitable. Aware of this, Shukri Dakhkilgov invited the readers to offer corrections and additions."36 The work, however, contains errors of a different nature caused by the author's uncritical approach to ethnographic information.
The content-analysis of Shukri Dakhkilgov's collection of Ingush family names shows that only fourteen out of the total 819 belonged, according to the author, to people from Akki. A more detailed investigation reveals that out of these fourteen families only three lived from time immemorial in the mountainous part of Ingushetia in the auls complete with towers and burial vaults: one in the Kistin community (Falkhans), one in the Tsorin (Chanievs from Pyaling), and one in the Kistin and later in Tsorin communities (Dudarovs). The other eleven families whom the author counted among the Ak-kintsy lived in the valley auls and were not Akkintsy. More information about them below; here we will look at the mountainous areas.
I have already exposed as false the thesis that the Dudarovs were Akkintsy who moved across the mountainous areas of Ingushetia and settled in the Darial Gorge; likewise, I have demonstrated that the Falkhans have nothing to do with the Akkintsy. From that it follows that the families that lived in the auls founded by people from Falkhan are unrelated to the Akkintsy. According to Bashir Dalgat, Falkhan, together with Erzi, was the oldest in the Metskhal (Kistin) community37 and, according to what the elders had to say, "all the auls of the Metskhal commu-
32 See: L.P. Semenov, op. cit., p. 67.
33 See: D.Yu. Chakhkiev, Drevnosti gornoy Ingushetii, Vol. 1, Nazran, 2003, pp. 114-115; A.S. Suleymanov, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
34 For more details, see: [https://www.familytreedna.com/public/nakhdna/default.aspx?section=yresults], 19 September,
2014.
35 See: Sh.E. Dakhkilgov, Proiskhozhdenie ingushskikh familiy, Kniga Publishers, Grozny, 1991.
36 Sh.E. Dakhkilgov, Stranitsy istorii Ingushetii, El-Fa, Nalchik, 2005, p. 8.
37 See: B.K. Dalgat, Rodovoy byt i obychnoe pravo Chechentsev i Ingushey. Issledovania i materialy 1892-1894 gg, IMLI RAN, Moscow, 2008, p. 68.
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nity (there were over 20 of them) originated from the people from Falkhan, which makes them more or less close relatives."38
Professor Evgeny Krupnov, who followed V. Khristianovich, relied on genealogies of people from Falkhan and Shuan to conclude that these Ingush clan groups go back no less than 600 to 800 years. Falkhan, together with Targim, Egikal, and Khamkhi, has been recognized as one of the oldest Ingush auls and the cradle of Ingush culture.39 The legends date these four and some other auls to the time of Georgian Queen Tamar (12th century),40 which means that the people from Falkhan were unrelated to the Akkintsy.
Let us look at the genealogy of the Chanievs from Pyaling (even though they lived in the Tsorin mountain community, not in the Armkhi basin). According to Chaniev's family legends written down by Leonid Semenov, their predecessor moved to Ingushetia from Kiy; according to information supplied by Red Partisan Chaniev in 1932, eleven generations had changed since that time.41 This means that the resettlement took place 500-600 years ago. Dakhkilgov wrote in his work about the Ingush family names: "Chanievs—patronymics Polonkhoy, originated from Akki, from the Kiy aul."42 This happened because the author identified Akki with Kiy. He deliberately counted the Chanievs among the Akkintsy by identifying Kiy as Akki. An analysis of his works reveals that not only several Ingush names and not only people from the auls of the Kiy community, but also members of other mountain societies were deliberately identified as Akkintsy. In the same way, the translator, as well as his predecessors and followers, deliberately substituted Akki for Kiy in the legends about Dudar and the Falkhans. In the work quoted above, Shukri Dakhkilgov counted the following peoples among the Akkintsy (without a shred of evidence): the Dakievs (Dokievs) from the Dokinche aul in mountainous Ingushetia situated along the Assa; the Dudurovs (Dudarovs) and their relatives from Kiy; the Yalk-horoevs (Elkharoevs) and Jakoevs from the Yalkhoroy community; the Kievs from Kiy, the Medovs from Kiy, the Nashkhoevs from the Nashakh community, etc.
The above suggests that the author either did not know or totally ignored the nomenclature of the mountainous communities as unacceptable. Meanwhile, it is presented in great detail, albeit with certain shortcomings, in Suleymanov's Toponimia Checheno-Ingushetii. Shukri Dakhkilgov wrongly related the following communities (ethnographic groups) to the Akkintsy:
NASHKHA (Nashkhoy), the ethic society that bordered on the aul Peshkha in the east, T1erla in the south, Galay and Yalkhara in the west, and a valley in the north. It occupied the territory between the Gekhi and Roshni rivers and consisted of two conventional parts inherited from the past—T1ekh-ia Nashkha and Sekhia Nashkha, that is, Nashkha on the other side and Nashkha on this side, the southern and northern Nashkha.43
YALKHARA (Yalkharoy), an ethnic group that lived for a long time between Merja in the west, Nashkha and Galay in the east, Akkhiy in the south, and and Shalaji in the north; the local people considered the Basarcha-Yalkhara aul to be their spiritual and political center.44
KEY (key), an ethnic society that bordered in the east on the T1 erla aul, in the west on the Ingush aul of Gula, in the northwest on the aul of Akkha, and in the north on Galay.45
These societies, which had their own territories and borders and lived in several auls, were not Akkintsy, who, likewise, had their territories and borders.
8 Ibid., p. 150.
9 See: E.I. Krupnov, Srednevekovaia Ingushetia, 2nd edition, Serdalo Publishers, Magas, 2008, p. 65.
0 See: Ibid., p. 62.
1 See: L.P. Semenov, op. cit., p. 116.
2 Sh.E. Dakhkilgov, Proiskhozhdenie ingushskikh familiy, p. 53.
3 See: A.S. Suleymanov, op. cit., p. 145.
4 See: Ibid., p. 105.
5 See: L.P. Semenov, op. cit., p. 21.
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AKKHA (Akkhiy), an ethnic community that bordered in the south on Key-Mokhk, in the north on Yalkhara, in the east on Galayn-Chozh, and in the west on Merja. The ethnonym is probably derived from akkhe (+ vakhar)—hunt, hunting, or people who lived by hunting. The Akkintsy were divided into Lam-akkhiy and Arenan-akkhiy (Karabulaks and Akkintsy-Aukhovtsy), but they were not relatives. These societies appeared independently of each other in different climatic and other conditions. The Akkha society lived near the source of the Osu-Khi, the left tributary of the Gekhi.46
The informers themselves were confused, a fact obvious to serious researchers. Natalya Volko-va specifically pointed out: "the Ingush confuse the Chechens with the mountainous Akkintsy. They consider Yalkhoroy and also Maysta and Malkhista to be Akkin areas. This error is explained by the territorial closeness between the Akkintsy and Orstkhoitsy and created a certain confusion of tribal affiliation of the people living in certain parts along the Gekhi and Fortanga. Some of the Galgaevs describe the Tsechoevs as Akkintsy. The Tsechoevs sometimes relate the Tsechiakhk, Merjoi, and Yalkhoroy teips to the Akkintsy. Sometimes Chechens, believe that they (Akkintsy.—I.S.) lived there permanently and for a long time."47
Historians should be aware of this confusion and assess the information in view of the factors related to this issue. In any case, no scholar has the right to present as true facts based only on a shaky foundation of information supplied by people who can be wrong, confused, forgetful, or even deliberate distorters of historical or ethnographic data. It is absolutely unacceptable to interpret at will or cheat with terms because of political or tribal considerations.
The first argument about the Akkintsy origins of the people living in the Falkhan aul has been refuted: the Akkintsy never lived in Falkhan, in the Armkhi Gorge, or in the Galgay and Tsorin mountainous communities.
The second argument in favor of the Akkintsy in the Armkhi Gorge rests on identical toponym-ics in the Armkhi Gorge (the Kistin community—Fappi shakhar) and the Akkintsy community. It relies on what Volkova wrote in one of her books: "There are probably other facts that confirm the movement of the Akkintsy from the west to the east. The aul of Kerbite was known in the Jerakh Gorge next to the village of Erzi, the people of which believed that they originated from Kerbite, and also in the mountains in the Akkin society. There was the village of Ozmi in Akki, which in the 19th century was situated on the lower reaches of the Armkhi."48
Let us first clarify the Kerbite and Ozmi place names that allegedly existed in the Armkhi Gorge and in the Akkin society. There are places of these names in the Armkhi Gorge, however their correct pronunciation is somewhat different. The former is К1ермете derived from к1ер—hawk and мете— place; the latter comes from Эзми, the place where reed grows.49
An analysis of local micro-toponymics demonstrates that these names were absent from the Akkin society.
There were the following more or less similar toponymics:
Kkhierietla (Kkhierieta) was at a crossroads, 4 km to the southeast of Akkha. The name is derived from the word Kkhiera, stone (on the stone),50 which means that the etymology of the two compared toponymics is different.
The Orzume-kkhalla (Orzumie-kkhyalla), Orzume (?) settlement, is found at the crossroads of the village of Akkha. Akhura-Mazda—the names of gods of evil and good. These images penetrat-
46 See: A.S. Suleymanov, op. cit., p. 115.
47 N.G. Volkova, Etnonimy i plemennye nazvaniia Severnogo Kavkaza, Nauka Publishers, Main Editorial Department of Oriental Literature, Moscow, 1973, p. 172.
48 N.G. Volkova, Etnicheskiy sostav naselenia Severnogo Kavkaza..., p. 143.
49 Information supplied by Ph.D. in Philology S. Patiev, born in the Armkhi Gorge, an expert in the Ingush names of mountainous places.
50 See: A.S. Suleymanov, op. cit., p. 116.
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ed into Greek culture as Ormuzd; many centuries later they returned to the Vainakhs in the form of Ormuz, Orzumie."51 This etymology has nothing in common with Ezmi (Ozmi).
The above has proved beyond doubt that there were no identical toponymics in the Armkhi Gorge (the Kistin community) and Akkin society, which kills the second thesis speaking about Akkin traces in the Armkhi Gorge as unfounded.
Conclusion
A critical analysis of the available written and folklore sources that certain authors have used to insist that the Akkintsy originated from the Darial and Armkhi Gorge has proven that:
— The Akkintsy never lived in these gorges;
—Dudar, a hero of Ingush legends who found himself, after long travels along the Darial in the village of Lars where he became an Ossetian feudal lord, was not an Akkin;
—An analysis of the "Stateyny spisok of Prince S. Zvenigorodskiy and State Official T. An-tonov" which is, in fact, a diary of their talks in the Terskiy town in August 1589, gives us no reason to insist that Saltan Murza from the medieval Ingush village of Lars was the brother of Shikh Murza of Okot and son of Usharom Murza; this means that he did not belong to the Akkintsy;
—Those talking about the Akkin origins of the people who lived in Falkhan and other auls of the Kistin society are wrong. What is more, there were no people of Akkin origins in the gorge of the Armkhi or in the Galgaev and Tsorin mountainous communities;
—It is not correct to say that there are identical place names in the Armkhi Gorge and in the Akkin society (they can prove nothing at all anyway).
To sum up, the constructs about the Akkintsy in the Darial and Armkhi Gorge can be best described as false and should, therefore, be removed from the body of Caucasian studies. I am convinced that this analysis can be used as a pattern to denounce other historical and ethnopolitical myths.
1 Ibid., p. 117.
