Chechnya

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**Chechnya** (Russian: *Чечня́*, IPA: [*tɕɪtɕˈnʲa*]; Chechen: *Нохчийчоь*, romanized: *Noxçiyçö*), officially the **Chechen Democratic Federal Republic**, is a country situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, bordering the Caspian Sea. The country occupies the regions of the *Chechen Republic*, the *Republic of Ingushetia*, and parts of the *Republic of Dagestan*, and shares land borders with Georgia from the South-West, Russia from the North and West, and Azerbaijan from the South.

## History

### a. Prehistory

Traces of human settlement dating back to 40,000 BCE were found near Lake Kezanoi. Cave paintings, artifacts, and other archaeological evidence indicate continuous habitation for some 8,000 years. People living in these settlements used tools, fire, and clothing made of animal skins.

The Caucasian Epipaleolithic and early Caucasian Neolithic era saw the introduction of agriculture, irrigation, and the domestication of animals in the region. Settlements near Ali-Yurt and Magas, discovered in modern times, revealed tools made out of stone: stone axes, polished stones, stone knives, stones with holes drilled in them, clay dishes etc. Settlements made out of clay bricks were discovered in the plains. In the mountains there were settlements made from stone and surrounded by walls; some of them dated back to 8000 BC. This period also saw the appearance of the wheel (3000 BCE), horseback riding, metal works (copper, gold, silver, iron), dishes, armor, daggers, knives and arrow tips in the region. The artifacts were found near Nasare-Cort, Muzhichi, Ja-E-Bortz (alternatively known as Surkha-khi), Abbey-Gove (also known as Nazran or Nasare).

### b. Pre-Imperial Era

In the 14th and 15th centuries, there was frequent warfare between the Chechens, Tamerlan and Tokhtamysh, culminating in the Battle of the Terek River. The Chechen tribes built fortresses, castles, and defensive walls, protecting the mountains from the invaders. Part of the lowland tribes were occupied by Mongols. However, during the mid-14th CE a strong Chechen kingdom called Simsir emerged under Khour Ela, a Chechen king that led the Chechen politics and wars. He was in charge of an army of Chechens against the rogue warlord Mamai and defeated him in the Battle of Tatar-tup in 1362. The kingdom of Simsir met its end during the Timurid invasion of the Caucasus, when Khour Ela allied himself with the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River. Timur sought to punish the highlanders for their allegiance to Tokhtamysh and as a consequence invaded Simsir in 1395.

The 16th CE saw the first Russian involvement in the Caucasus. In 1558, Temryuk of Kabarda sent his emissaries to Moscow requesting help from Ivan the Terrible against the Vainakh tribes. Ivan the Terrible married Temryuk's daughter Maria Temryukovna. An alliance was formed to gain the ground in the central Caucasus for the expanding Tsardom of Russia against stubborn Vainakh defenders. Chechnya was a nation in the Northern Caucasus that fought against foreign rule continually since the 15th CE. Several Chechen leaders such as the 17th CE Mehk-Da Aldaman Gheza led the Chechen politics and fought off encroachments of foreign powers. He defended the borders of Chechnya from invasions of Kabardinians and Avars during the Battle of Khachara in 1667. The Chechens converted over the next few centuries to Sunni Islam, as Islam was associated with resistance to Russian encroachment.

### c. Imperial Rule

Peter the Great first sought to increase Russia's political influence in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea at the expense of Safavid Persia when he launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723. Notable in Chechen history, this particular Russo-Persian War marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Vainakh. Russian forces succeeded in taking much of the Caucasian territories from Iran for several years.

As the Russians took control of the Caspian corridor and moved into Persian-ruled Dagestan, Peter's forces ran into mountain tribes. Peter sent a cavalry force to subdue them, but the Chechens routed them. In 1732, after Russia already ceded back most of the Caucasus to Persia, now led by Nader Shah, following the Treaty of Resht, Russian troops clashed again with Chechens in a village called Chechen-aul along the Argun River. The Russians were defeated again and withdrew, but this battle is responsible for the apocryphal story about how the Nokchi came to be known as "Chechens"-the people ostensibly named for the place the battle had taken place. The name Chechen was however already used since as early as 1692.

Under intermittent Persian rule since 1555, in 1783 the eastern Georgians of Kartl-Kakheti led by Erekle II and Russia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk. According to this treaty, Kartl-Kakheti received protection from Russia, and Georgia abjured any dependence on Iran. In order to increase its influence in the Caucasus and to secure communications with Kartli and other Christian regions of the Transcaucasia which it considered useful in its wars against Persia and Turkey, the Russian Empire began conquering the Northern Caucasus mountains. The Russian Empire used Christianity to justify its conquests, allowing Islam to spread widely because it positioned itself as the religion of liberation from tsardom, which viewed Nakh tribes as "bandits". The rebellion was led by Mansur Ushurma, a Chechen Naqshbandi (Sufi) sheikh—with wavering military support from other North Caucasian tribes. Mansur hoped to establish a Transcaucasus Islamic state under sharia law. He was unable to fully achieve this because in the course of the war he was betrayed by the Ottomans, handed over to Russians, and executed in 1794.

## Geography

Chechnya falls into three physical regions from South to North. In the South is the Greater Caucasus, the crest line of which forms the country’s southern boundary. The highest peak is Mount Tebulosmta (14,741 feet [4,493 metres]), and the area’s chief river is the Argun, a tributary of the Sunzha. The second region is the foreland, consisting of the broad valleys of the Terek and Sunzha rivers, which cross Chechnya from the west to the east, where they unite. Third, in the North, are the level, rolling plains of the Nogay Steppe.

The great variety of relief is reflected in the soil and vegetation cover. The Nogay Steppe is largely semidesert, with sagebrush vegetation and wide areas of sand dunes. This gives way toward the South and South-West, near the Terek River, to feather-grass steppe on black earth and chestnut soils. Steppe also occupies the Terek and Sunzha valleys. Up to 6,500 feet (2,000 metres) the mountain slopes are densely covered by forests of beech, hornbeam, and oak, above which are coniferous forests, then alpine meadows, and finally bare rock, snow, and ice. The climate varies but is, in general, continental.

## Economy

The backbone of the economy has been petroleum, and drilling was mainly undertaken in the Sunzha River valley between Grozny and Gudermes. Petroleum refining was concentrated in Grozny, and pipelines ran to the Caspian Sea (East) at Makhachkala and to the Black Sea (West) at Tuapse. Natural gas is also found in the area. Agriculture is largely concentrated in the Terek and Sunzha valleys. Transportation is mainly by rail, following the Terek and Sunzha valleys and linking with Astrakhan and Baku on the Caspian Sea and with Tuapse and Rostov on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Motor roads join Grozny to other centres within and outside the republic.

## Demographics

### a. Ethnicity

Chechnya's main ethnic group is the Chechens, with minorities of Russians and Ingush. The Chechens and the Ingush are both Muslim and are two of the many Caucasian mountain peoples whose language belongs to the Nakh group. The Chechens are one of the oldest indigenous ethnic groups of the Caucasus. They belong to the Caucasian-Balkan type of the Europeoid race.

### b. Religion

#### Islam

Islam is the predominant religion in Chechnya, practiced by 95% of those polled in Grozny in 2010. Most of the population follows either the Shafi'i or the Hanafi schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). The Shafi'i school of jurisprudence has a long tradition among the Chechens, and thus it remains the most practiced. Many Chechens are also Sufis, of either the Qadiri or Naqshbandi orders.

Following the end of the Soviet Union, there has been an Islamic revival in Chechnya, and in 2011 it was estimated that there were 465 mosques, including the Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque in Grozny accommodating 10,000 worshippers, as well 31 madrasas, including an Islamic university named Kunta-haji and a Center of Islamic Medicine in Grozny which is the largest such institution in Europe.

#### Christianity

From the 11th to 13th CE (i.e. before Mongol invasions of Durdzuketia), there was a mission of Georgian Orthodox missionaries to the Nakh peoples. Their success was limited, though a couple of highland teips did convert (conversion was largely by teip). However, during the Mongol invasions, these Christianized teips gradually reverted to paganism, perhaps due to the loss of trans-Caucasian contacts as the Georgians fought the Mongols and briefly fell under their dominion.

The once-strong Russian minority in Chechnya, mostly Terek Cossacks and estimated as numbering approximately 25,000 in 2012, are predominantly Russian Orthodox, although currently only one church exists in Grozny. In August 2011, Archbishop Zosima of Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala performed the first mass baptism ceremony in the history of the Chechen Republic in the Terek River of Naursky District in which 35 citizens of Naursky and Shelkovsky districts were converted to Orthodoxy. As of 2020, there are eight Orthodox churches in Chechnya, the largest is the temple of the Archangel Michael in Grozny.