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Mythologies of the Jumma Tribes

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  ‘Jumma’ is the collective name for the eleven tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh.  The Hill Tracts are rugged and steep, making it difficult to grow food.  To make best use of the land, the Jumma tribes practise a form of ‘shifting cultivation’, growing food in small parts of their territory, before moving on to another area and allowing the land to recover. This is known locally as ‘Jhum’ cultivating, the origin of the term ‘Jumma’. The Mru people live further away from the other Jumma peoples, on the hill-tops. They generally live in houses built on tall stilts. The Bangladesh government has long seen the Chittagong Hill Tracts as empty land onto which it can move poor Bengali settlers, with scant regard for the area’s Jumma inhabitants. In the last 65 years, the Jummas have gone from being practically the sole inhabitants of the Hill Tracts to now being outnumbered by settlers. As well as being displaced by the settlers, who are given the best land, ...
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Mythologies of the Godoberi Tribe

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The  Godoberi  are one of the  Andi-Dido peoples  of  Dagestan . They numbered 1,425 in 1926 and about 4,500 in 2007. They live mainly in the three villages of  Godoberi  (abt 2500), Ziberkhali (abt 60) and Beledi (abt 10) in the  Botlikhsky District . About 1,800 Godoberis live on the plains of Dagestan in Terechnoye (close to the city of Khasavyurt).  Most Godoberi are followers of   Sunni Islam .   They adopted the religion by the 16th century due to the influence of   Sufi   missionaries.   They had their own feudal free community that had a loose relationship with the   Avar Khanate   prior to the annexation of the area to Russia in 1806.   During the transition from Czarist to Communist rule many Godoberi became involved in nationalistic and pan-Islamic movements. Among these were   Firkatul-Vedzhan . Large numbers of the supporters of such movements were killed by Soviet authorities around 1...
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Mythologies of the Botlikh Tribe

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The  Botlikh  tribe (also known as  Bótligh ,  Botlig ,  Botlog  or  Buikhatli ) are an  Andi–Dido people  of  Dagestan . Until the 1930s they were considered a distinct people. Since that time they have been classified as  Caucasian Avars  and have faced a campaign to have them assimilate into that population. The Botlikh are primarily  Sunni Muslims .  They adopted the religion by the 16th century due to the influence of  Sufi  missionaries.  They numbered 3,354 people in 1926. They speak the   Botlikh language , which belongs to the   Northeast Caucasian language family . According to the   2021 Russian census , 3,788 people in Russia declared themselves as Botlikhs (all of them in Dagestan), and 5,073 people declared speaking the Botlikh language. The number of speakers is higher, about 5,500, according to a survey by Koryakov in 2006.  The village of   Botlikh   is ju...
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