Abasins
The Abasins , Abasiner or Abasen ( Abasin Абаза / Abasa ) are a people in the Caucasus and linguistically closely related to the Abkhazians and Circassians . They live mainly in Karachay-Cherkessia , where their language is also officially recognized as the regional official language. Another group lives in the Stavropol region and in Rajon Kislovodsk the republic of Adygea . In the 2010 census in Russia, 43,341 people said they were Abasins, 36,919 of them in the Karachay-Cherkessia republic (7.8% of the population). Almost half of the abasins there lived in the Abasinian Rajon , where they represent over 87% of the population.
There are other Abasin population groups and diaspora communities in other regions of Russia as well as in Turkey , Syria , Jordan , Egypt and Lebanon (estimated, but not certain: 11,000 people who still speak the language). Overall, there are more descendants of 19th century Abasin refugees in the Middle East than Abasins in Russia itself. However, a large number of them are now assimilated there and no longer speak the language of their ancestors. In Middle Eastern countries they are often equated with the linguistically related Abkhazians .
religion
Abasins are predominantly Sunni Muslims . As with all peoples of the North Caucasus , pre-Islamic traditions have been preserved. As in the entire north-western Caucasus, Islamization began under the influence of the Crimean Khanate in the 16th century, but the majority of the population did not convert until the 18th and 19th centuries. Century. Previously, the Abasins were Christians with syncretistic traditions .
language
The Abasin language, Abasin , belongs to the Northwest Caucasian or Adyge-Abkhaz language family . It has been written in Cyrillic characters since 1936. It is very close to Abkhazian and is largely mutually understandable. There are much greater differences to the Circassian dialects , for which there are two written languages today. The Abkhazian-Abasinian branch and the Circassian (Adygian) branch have probably been related to each other since the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC. Developed separately.
Abasin has two main dialects: Tapantic (Tapanta) and Ashkarish (also called Ashkar, Ashqar, Ashkaraua, Shkaraua), some Kaukasiologists see a third dialect of Besschar, but the others are considered a sub-dialect of Tapantic. Most Kaukasiologists assume that the presence of Abasin in the North Caucasus was the result of an emigration from Abkhazia . The Tapanta dialect, which is less similar to Abkhazia, was probably already in the 13th-14th centuries. Century arrived, the Ashkar dialect, which is still spoken in some villages of Abkhazia today, probably not until the 18th – 19th centuries. Century. A minority of researchers in Georgia believe in migration in the opposite direction from Abasinia to Abkhazia. Many researchers consider this unlikely, because numerous old Abkhaz lexemes refer to the sea and shipping and other very old loanwords in Abkhazia (at least since the Middle Ages, areas of Christianity, culture and agriculture) come from South Caucasian languages , which is one long proximity of the Abkhazians to Georgian groups and the Black Sea. Until the 19th century, in today's border region from West Abkhazia to Russian Sochi , the Sads dialect (Sads), which is only found in Turkey today, was spoken as "Sadsen", "Sads-Abasa". , "Sads-Abasinen", mostly "Sads-Abkhazians" were called, the historical name in the 18./19. Century is "Djiget", more rarely "Djigit". In terms of mutual intelligibility, this dialect is somewhat different from the other Abkhazian and Abasin dialects.
Today, Abasin is one of five official languages in the Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia . A large part of the Abasins live in the Abasin Rajon created in 2006 .
Settlement area before 1864
Until the end of the Caucasus War in 1864, the Abasin tribes - often called "Abasa" in literature at the time - did not settle in their present-day area, but in a more southerly, much larger settlement area higher in the mountains. With the arrival of the Ashkar dialect in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century, their settlement area gradually expanded, especially to the northeast. The Abasins shared the fate of the Western Circassians in the deportations at the end of the Caucasus War around 1864: Over 80% were resettled as muhajirs (refugees) in the Ottoman Empire at that time , and about 10% were resettled in flatter areas on the middle and lower Kuban. As a result, they now live in a more northerly and much smaller settlement area.
Historical tribes
The largest abasin tribe was the "Altykesek" tribe, who settled in the east and northeast, and the "Baskag" in the southeast. Both spoke the Tapanta dialect. The tribes of the Ashkaraua dialect were: to the west of the Tapantic tribes the "Baschilbaj (ew)", to the west of them the "Tam (ow)" and in the far west from north to south: the "Baraka (jew)", the "Bagi" and the "Tschagraj" (also called "Shachgirej"). The four Sadsian tribes, mostly counted among the Abkhazians, were: on the coast of today's Abkhazian-Russian border area the actual “Sads” / “Jiget” and in the northern mountains from east to west: the “Pschu” (around the place Pschu am upper Bsipi / Bsyb ), the "Aibga" (on the upper Psou ) and the "Achtschibsou" (on the upper reaches of the Msymta ).
Abasin literature
Talustan Tabulow (1879–1956) is considered to be the founder of Abasin literature. Abasin literature previously existed in Russian, in which some authors still write today. The Abasin literature is a mature literature, ie the authors express themselves in all literary genres such as poetry, prose and drama. Up to now around 33 books of Abasin literature have been translated into Russian, 2/3 of which are poetry and only five books are novels or short stories. The volume of short stories: “Abasinic Prose - Folklore, Stories, Novellas and Miniatures” with an afterword about the Abasins and their literature is published in German.
Well-known Abasins or personalities of Abasin origin
Well-known personalities of Abasin origin are the members of the extended Abasa family, mostly from the Egyptian governorate of Ash-Sharqiyya , who have been successful entrepreneurs and politicians in Egypt since the 19th century. Several important entrepreneurs, politicians (e.g. Amin Ahmed Mohamed Othman Abaza ), writers, actors (e.g. Rushdy Abaza ) and scientists (e.g. Mona Abaza ) come from the Abaza family. There are other personalities in the history of the Middle East with the name Abasa or who are considered to be of Abasin origin, but often no distinction was made between Abasins and Abkhazians.
References and comments
- ↑ Excel table 5, line 12 .
- ^ Results of the 2010 Russian Census , Excel table 7, line 492.
- ^ Georgij A. Klimov Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Hamburg 1994, p. 47
- ↑ cf. Information from ethnologue about the Abaza
- ^ Georgij A. Klimov Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Hamburg 1994, p. 48
- ^ Georgij A. Klimov Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Hamburg 1994, p. 83
- ^ Georgij A. Klimov: Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics. Hamburg 1994, p. 85
- ↑ On the distribution of Adyge-Abkhazian language forms in the West Caucasus in the middle of the 19th century, see this map of the Lingvarium project at Lomonossow University . Including 3b ... the Sadsian dialects and 3c ... the Abasin dialects.
- ↑ See this map by the Caucasus historian Artur Zuzijew (Russian) on the settlement areas of the ethnic groups in the Greater Caucasus 1774–83. Abasins: light purple area north of the uninhabited Caucasus ridge. The hatched areas and arrows show the expansion to the north and northeast, also compared to the map in this article. (The very well-founded historical atlas was also translated into English by Yale University Press in 2014 under the author's name Artur Tsutsiev.)
- ↑ All of them also drawn in the Russian-language map of Zuzijew.
- ^ Abasin prose - folklore, short stories, short stories and miniatures. Ludwigsburg 2014. 176 pp., ISBN 978-3-86356-088-1 , translation from Abasin by Pita Tschkala and Steffi Chotiwari-Jünger. With an afterword about the Abasins and their literature (pp. 159–167).
- ↑ This regional distinction was established from the outside in the 19th century and became official with the Soviet nationality policy. In the North Caucasus itself, obvious language differences were known, but had little identifying and political significance until the 19th century.
Web links
- The Karachay, the Circassian and the Abazine Report from the radio station "Voice of Russia"