Boxes

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Box men, 1880s
Crate area in the Pankissi valley

The Kisten ( Chechen КистӀий , in the dialect КӀистий , Georgian ქისტები , Kistebi , Russian Кистинцы , Kistinzy ) are an ethnic minority in Georgia . She lives mainly in the Pankissi Valley in the administrative region of Kakheti . In 2004, according to official information, they numbered a total of 12,000, according to unofficial estimates 8,000 people, of whom about 6,000 lived in the Pankissi Valley. The majority of the boxes profess Sunni Islam. Today it is more common to classify the Kisten as a regional group of Chechens with their own dialect who migrated to the south .

history

The boxes belong to the Vainach peoples and are descended from Chechen and Ingush tribes who immigrated to the then uninhabited Pankissi Valley in the 1830s and 1870s. The resettlers from the north mostly came out of economic hardship, because of persecution in blood revenge or as religious refugees in the face of a wave of Islamization that swept from Dagestan to Chechnya. The first kist settlement was the village of Chorbalo. In 1873 there were 865 boxes in the Pankissi Valley, in 1901 there were 1,352, in 1979 around 6,000.

religion

First, the boxes professed Christianity . The governor of the Tianeti district, Prince Choloqashvili, had made his settlement permit conditional on the immigrants converting to Christianity. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that the majority of the boxes switched to Islam. Until a few years ago, non-Islamic boxes still lived in the village of Joqolo.

Language, culture

The boxes speak a language of the (Wei) nachischen family, which is also widespread in Chechnya . The language is almost only spoken, but not written, because it is not taught in regional schools, allegedly due to a lack of teachers.

Most women in cisterns do not smoke in public and only drink symbolically, if at all. If they are married, most of them wear a headscarf. The ethnic minority usually marry among themselves. Marriages with Georgians are rarely entered into, but do happen, especially with neighboring ethnic groups such as the Indian .

literature

  • Steffi Chotiwari-Jünger: The representation of the disputes between the Caucasian ethnic groups of the Chewsuren and Kisten in Georgian literature . In: Living and Conflict Area in the Caucasus. Großbarkau 1996, pp. 32-47.

Web links

Commons : boxes  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Sanikidze: Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Caucasian Region: “Global” and “Local” Islam in the Pankisi Gorge. (PDF; 315 kB) In: Tomohiko Uyama (Ed.): Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia. Slaviv Research Center 2007, p. 264