Ingush people

The Ingush (/ˈɪŋɡʊʃ/, Ingush: ГIалгIай, Ghalghaj, pronounced [ˈʁəlʁɑj]), are a Northeast Caucasian native ethnic group of the North Caucasus, mostly inhabiting their native Ingushetia, a federal republic of Russian Federation. The Ingush are predominantly Sunni Muslims and speak the Ingush language, a Northeast Caucasian language that is closely related to Chechen; the two form a dialect continuum.[3] The Ingush and Chechen peoples are collectively known as the Vainakh.

Ingush
ГIалгIай
Ghalghai
Ingush. Early 20th century.
Total population
± 500,000
Regions with significant populations
 Russia444,833 (2010)[1]
    Ingushetia385,537 (2010)[1]
    Chechnya1,296 (2010)[1]
    North Ossetia-Alania28 336 (2010)[1]
 Kazakhstan15 120 (2009)[2]
 Ukraine455
Languages
Ingush
Religion
Predominantly Sunni Islam (Shafii Madhhab)
Related ethnic groups
Chechens, Bats, Kists and other Northeast Caucasian peoples

Etymology

While popular folklore claims the endonym Ghalghaj comes from the word ghala (meaning tower/fortress, today city), historical development indicates it is a composition of the words kha and khal, which directly means three cities. Inhabitants of the 3 settlements Targim, Khamkhi and Egikal, who operated as one, started taking over surrounding Nakh areas and building the grounds of what would later turn into the modern Ingush nation.[4] This is supported by the first actual mention of the word in 1590, when the "mountain people Kolkan" attacked 2 Russian ambassadors in the Darial pass.[5]

History
Main article: Ingushetia

The ancestors of the Ingush people have been historically mentioned under many different names, such as Dzurdzuks, Kists or Ghlighvi, although none of them was used as an ethnonym. Kists, as they are called by the Georgians, or Mizschegis, as called by the Tatars, or Ingush, as their main tribe is called; is a group that consists of several tribes, specifically the Ingush, the Chechens, the Karabulak, and the Tuschen, which one does not yet know well enough, but has brought under one name for the sake of one mother tongue and for the sake of the neighborhood.[6] Johanna Nichols, a professor of Emerita of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Affiliate Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley argues that the Ingush were part of Proto-Chechen-Ingush that split into Ingush and Chechens in westerns highlands, each nation settling in their own place.[7]

The ancient Greek historian Strabo wrote about the Gelia, an unknown people in the Caucasus he thought to be of Scythian origin[8], which the American cartographer Joseph Hutchins Colton later used to label the Gelia in his map from 1856.[9]

According to Julius Klaproth, the Ingush people called themselves Lamur (mountaineers), and are also known as Gulgui or Halha. He divides them into seven tribes: the Tergimcha (Targimkhoy), Agi (Egakhoy), Cham-hoi-y (Khamkhoy), Charati, Zinkai bach, Ge-ula-wy and Wapi, but by the Russians and others they are di- vided into Great Ingushes and the Inner Ingushes. The former are also called Starye Inguschi, that is old Ingushes.[10]

The Ingush people were described in the book "The Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine" as follows[11]:

Architecture
Medieval complex of Ingush defense and watchtowers in Вӏо́внашке(Ing). It is a unique monument of Ingush architecture

The famous Soviet archaeologist and historian, professor E.I. Krupnov described the Ingush towers in his work «Medieval Ingushetia»[12]:

«Ingush battle towers are in the true sense the pinnacle of the architectural and constructional mastery of the ancient population of the region. Striking in their simplicity of form, monumentality and strict grace. For their time, the Ingush towers were a true miracle of human genius.»

Culture

The Ingush possess a varied culture of traditions, legends, epics, tales, songs, proverbs, and sayings. Music, songs and dance are particularly highly regarded. Popular musical instruments include the dachick-panderr (a kind of balalaika), kekhat ponder (accordion, generally played by girls), mirz ponder (a three-stringed violin), zurna (a type of oboe), tambourine, and drums.

Apparel and arms

Ingush men dress in the same fashion as the other Caucasians but their apparel and arms are of better quality. They alone of all their neighbours have retained the use of the shield. These shields are of wood, covered with leather, and strengthened with oval iron bands. Their short knotty spear is not only used for defence, but when the point is thrust into the ground the forks serve as a support for the gun, and thus enable them to take a surer aim. They fight most commonly on horseback, contrary to the practice of the mountaineers, and employ the shield with admirable dexterity.[13]

The women of the Kists and Ingushes are small, strong, and tolerably handsome; the girls, adorned with the glow of health, are very lively, inquisitive and merry creatures. Their hair in front is cut so short as to cover only half the forehead, over which they spread it with great care, making it adhere together with white- lead. That on the hinder part of the head they plait in several braids, which fall over the shoulders and down the back; but married women have it done up in two braids only, each being tied with a silk, woollen or cotton fillet, which is passed rouLLnd it so often that it is an inch thick near the head, and diminishes to the other extremity, which just reaches to the top of the shift, where both are tied together with a ribband. The rest of the headdress consists of a Tscherkessian hat, which looks very well before, and brass, copper or glass earrings. The shift is worked at the shoulders and breast, with silk, wool or yarn of different colours, to the depth of five inches. Over it they wear a jacket which reaches to the waist, and is fastened with a girdle, and under the shift long trousers. These trousers mark their condition: married women wear red, widows and old women blue, and young unmarried females white trousers, but all of them are neatly worked at the ankles in a variety of colours bordered with black. In winter, females of all classes wear boots, and in summer go barefoot.[13]

Dance

Their method of dancing is not to be met with among the other inhabitants of the Caucasus. A party sitting down in a large circle sing, and, accompanied by hautboys or bagpipes, challenge the youngest and ablest dancers to show their activity. Such as choose theni throw themselves into a variety of dangerous postures, and perform all sorts of antics, one after another. When all the dancers have taken their turn, amidst louid and general plaudits, they join hands, sing and dance in long files. They frequently form, with great dexterity, in one large circle, open and close again, and conclude with the same dangerous antics with which they began. That the fair sex may not be deprived of this diversion, they seek some blind musician with whom they may amuse themselves in some spot at a distance from the men, without violating the custom which enjoins them to conceal their persons from strangers of the other sex.[13]

Religion

The Ingush are predominantly Sunni Muslims of the Shāfi‘ī Madh'hab, with a Sufi background.[14]

Ingush genetics
Further information: Vainakh § Genetics, and Genetic history of the Caucasus

The Caucasus populations exhibit, on average, less variability than other populations for the eight Alu insertion poly-morphisms analysed here. The average heterozygosity is less than that for any other region of the world, with the exception of Sahul. Within the Caucasus, Ingushians have much lower levels of variability than any of the other populations. The Ingushians also showed unusual patterns of mtDNA variation when compared with other Caucasus populations (Nasidze and Stoneking, submitted), which indicates that some feature of the Ingushian population history, or of this particular sample of Ingushians, must be responsible for their different patterns of genetic variation at both mtDNA and the Alu insertion loci.[15][16]

— European Journal of Human Genetics, 2001

According to one test by Nasidze in 2003 (analyzed further in 2004), the Y-chromosome structure of the Ingush greatly resembled that of neighboring Caucasian populations (especially Chechens, their linguistic and cultural brethren).[17][18]

There has been only one notable study on the Ingush Y chromosome. These following statistics should not be regarded as final, as Nasidze's test had a notably low sample data for the Ingush. However, they do give an idea of the main haplogroups of the Ingush.

  • J2 – 89% of Ingush have the highest reported frequency of J2 which is associated with the Fertile Crescent.[19]
  • F* – (11% of Ingush)[18] This haplogroup was called "F*" by Nasidze. It may have actually been any haplogroup under F that was not under G, I, J2, or K; however, it is probably consists of haplotypes that are either under J1 (typical of the region, with very high frequencies in parts of Dagestan, as well as Arabia, albeit in a different subclade) or F3.
  • G – (27% of Ingush)[18] Typical of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus. The highest values were found among Georgians, Circassians and Ossetes. There was a noticeable difference in G between Ingush and Chechens (in J2 and F*, Ingush and Chechens have similar levels), possibly attributable to low samples that were all from the same town.

In the mtDNA, the Ingush formed a more clearly distinct population, with distance from other populations. The closest in an analysis by Nasidze were Chechens, Kabardins and Adyghe (Circassians), but these were all much closer to other populations than they were to the Ingush.[18]

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See also

References
  1. "Russian Census 2010: Population by ethnicity". Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  2. Агентство Республики Казахстан по статистике. Перепись 2009. Archived 2012-05-01 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Nichols, J. and Vagapov, A. D. (2004). Chechen-English and English-Chechen Dictionary, p. 4. RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-31594-8.
  4. Яковлев, Николай Феофанович. Ингуши.
  5. Кодзоев, Н. Д. Российские и иностранные исследователи. и путешественники XVI—XIX вв. об Ингушетии и ингушах.
  6. Rommel, Dietrich Christoph von (1808). Die Völker des Caucasus nach den Berichten der Reisebeschreiber (in German). m Verlage des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs.
  7. Nichols, Johanna (2004). "The Origin of the Chechen and Ingush: A Study in Alpine Linguistic and Ethnic Geography". Anthropological Linguistics. 46 (2): 129–155. ISSN 0003-5483.
  8. Strabo. The Geography of Strabo.
  9. J.H. Colton. "Gelia" Turkey In Asia And The Caucasian Provinces Of Russia. 1856.
  10. Klaproth, Julius von (1814). Travels in the Caucasus and Georgia: Performed in the Years 1807 and 1808, by Command of the Russian Government. Henry Colburn.
  11. The Christian examiner and Church of Ireland magazine. 1827.
  12. Крупнов Е.И. 1971.
  13. Howorth, Henry H. (1874). "The Westerly Drifting of Nomades, from the Fifth to the Nineteenth Century. Part X. The Alans or Lesghs". The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 3: 145–173. doi:10.2307/2841302. ISSN 0959-5295.
  14. Stefano Allievi; Jørgen S. Nielsen (2003). Muslim networks and transnational communities in and across Europe. 1.
  15. Ivane Nasidze; et al. (2001). "Alu insertion polymorphisms and the genetic structure of human populations from the Caucasus". European Journal of Human Genetics. 9 (4): 267–272. doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200615. PMID 11313770.
  16. Nasidze, I; Risch, GM; Robichaux, M; Sherry, ST; Batzer, MA; Stoneking, M (April 2001). "Alu insertion polymorphisms and the genetic structure of human populations from the Caucasus" (PDF). Eur. J. Hum. Genet. 9 (4): 267–72. doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200615. PMID 11313770.
  17. Nasidze I, Sarkisian T, Kerimov A, Stoneking M (March 2003). "Testing hypotheses of language replacement in the Caucasus: evidence from the Y-chromosome" (PDF). Human Genetics. 112 (3): 255–61. doi:10.1007/s00439-002-0874-4. PMID 12596050. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-27. Retrieved 2011-04-16.
  18. Nasidze, I.; Ling, E. Y. S.; Quinque, D.; et al. (2004). "Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome Variation in the Caucasus" (PDF). Annals of Human Genetics. 68 (3): 205–221. doi:10.1046/j.1529-8817.2004.00092.x. PMID 15180701. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-08.
  19. Oleg Balanovsky, Khadizhat Dibirova, Anna Dybo, Oleg Mudrak, Svetlana Frolova, Elvira Pocheshkhova, Marc Haber, Daniel Platt, Theodore Schurr, Wolfgang Haak, Marina Kuznetsova, Magomed Radzhabov, Olga Balaganskaya, Alexey Romanov, Tatiana Zakharova, David F. Soria Hernanz, Pierre Zalloua, Sergey Koshel, Merritt Ruhlen, Colin Renfrew, R. Spencer Wells, Chris Tyler-Smith, Elena Balanovska, and The Genographic Consortium Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus Region Mol. Biol. Evol. 2011 : msr126v1-msr126.
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