Mythologies of the Kumyk Tribe

Kumyks (Kumyk: Къумукълар, romanized: Qumuqlar, Russian: Кумыки) are a Turkic people, living in Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia. They are the largest Turkic people in the North Caucasus. They traditionally populate the Kumyk plateau (northern Dagestan and north-eastern Chechnya), lands bordering the Caspian Sea, areas in North Ossetia, Chechnya and along the banks of the Terek river. They speak the Kumyk language, which until the 1930s had been the lingua-franca of the Northern Caucasus. Territories where Kumyks have traditionally lived, and where their historical state entities used to exist, are called Kumykia (Kumyk: Къумукъ, Qumuq). All of the lands populated by Kumyks were once part of the independent Tarki Shamkhalate. Kumyks comprise 14% of the population of the Republic of Dagestan, the third-largest population of Chechnya, and the fifth-largest population of North Ossetia, all of which are parts of the Russian Federation. Kumyks are the second largest Turkic-speaking ethnic group after Azerbaijanis in the Causasus, the largest Turkic people of the North Caucasus and the third largest ethnic group of Dagestan. According to the Russian national census of 2010 there were more than 500,000 Kumyks in Russia.

Kumykia (Kumyk: Qumuq, Къумукъ), or rarely called Kumykistan, is a historical and geographical region located along the Caspian Sea shores, on the Kumyk plateau, in the foothills of Dagestan and along the river Terek. The term Kumykia encompasses territories which are historically and currently populated by the Turkic-speaking Kumyk people. Kumykia was the main "granary of Dagestan". The important trade routes, such as one of the branches of the Great Silk Road, passed via Kumykia. Shamkhalate, or Shawkhalate, or since the 16th century the Shamkhalate of Tarki (Kumyk: Tarğu Şawhallıq) was a state that presumably formed around the 8th century and existed until the 19th century, in different forms, even though it disintegrated in the 16th century into several feudal entities. The ruler of Shamkhalate was considered the ruler of all of Dagestan and held the title of Vali of Dagestan. In the end of the 16th century Shamkhalate de facto was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Shamkhalat had vassal regions and political entities stretching to Balkaria, and was acknowledged throughout the Northern Caucasus. Since the 16th century the state had a major importance in Russian Tsardom's and then Empire's politics at its Southern borders, as it was the main obstacle in conquering the Caucasus and competing with Persians and Ottomans for regional dominance.

The Kumyk are a Muslim, agricultural people located along the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea inside Dagestan in southern Russia. The Kumyk people make their livelihood primarily by farming, vineyards, and raising cattle. Although the modern era has led a few Kumyk to settle in other regions of the North Caucasus, as a whole they've chosen to live close to their ancestral home on the upper terraces of the Kumyk Plateau in Dagestan. The reason is most likely due to the fertile soil that this pleasant plateau has always offered their people. The Kumyk are one of two Turkic-language peoples among the 34 languages of Dagestan (the Nogai the other Dagestani Turkic language). The Kumyks became Muslims in the 9th century. The hearts of the Kumyk have not been fertile to the gospel of Jesus since the 9th century. Few cultural remnants of Christianity remain. Starting from the 16th-19th Centuries under the Shamkhal Khanate the Kumyk exerted major political leadership in the region of central Dagestan. The Russian language started replacing Kumyk as the lingua franca in the Caucasus region in the 19th century. Russian is the language that people of the Caucasus speak to a person outside their group.

The Kumyks live in flatlands and foothills, in all the cities of the Daghestan Republic, and in part of Chechen-Ingushia and North Ossetia. Their own territory runs from the Terek River in the north to the Bashlychai and the Ulluchai in the south—an area known as the Kumyk plain. The foothills consists of ridges with an average elevation of 500 to 700 meters. To the east Kumykia is bounded by the Caspian Sea into which flow the Terek, Sulak, Gamri-ozen and other rivers; some of the rivers do not reach the sea. There are few lakes in the Kumyk plain. The climate is moderate to warm (continental) with dry and hot summers, rainy autumns, and cool winters with little snow; the average year-round temperature is 11° C. In the Terek-Sulak lowlands the annual precipitation only reaches 20 to 30 centimeters, but in the foothills it is somewhat greater. The overall Kumyk population is 282,200 (1989), of which 231,800 live in Daghestan; population growth during the last decade has been 23.5 percent. Until the 1950s and 1960s the Kumyks formed a fairly homogeneous community, but now, with the massive resettlement of mountaineers onto the Kumyk plain, the territorial unity of the Kumyks has been disrupted and the population density on the plain has sharply increased. In terms of physical anthropology, the Kumyks belong to the Caucasian type with an admixture of the Caspian type. The Kumyk language belongs to the Kipchak Subgroup of the Turkic Branch of the Altaic Family, while manifesting, however, elements of the languages of the Bulgars and Khazars (ninth and tenth centuries) and the Oghuz Turks (eleventh and twelfth centuries). Roughly from the seventeenth until the beginning of the twentieth century, Kumyk served as a language of interethnic communication in the northeastern Caucasus. The language today consists of five dialects, with the Khasavyurt and Buinaksk dialects serving as the basis of the literary language. The Kumyks are one of the indigenous peoples of Daghestan. The ethnonym itself is mentioned by Ptolemy (second century a.d.), Mohammed of Kashgar (eleventh century), P. Carpini (thirteenth century), and others. At various historical periods, the ancestors of the Kumyks must have entered into the Hunnic Confederacy, and those of the Sabirs, the Barsils, the Bulgars, the Khazars, the Kipchaks, and others. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the following political formations existed: the Tarkov Shamkhalate, the Mekhtul Khanate, and the Endireev, Kostekov, and Aksai domains. The southern Kumyks became part of the Kaitag utsmiate (principality). A special place was occupied by the Tarkov shamkhal, who was called the vali (ruler) of Daghestan. He commanded unlimited power although periodically he gathered a council (majlis ) together for decisions on important goals. The shamkhal did not have a standing army but did have a large number of men-at-arms; his vassals included appanage princes (biy, bek ) and ministers (vazir ). Almost the same system was observed in other domains of Kumykia. After the union with Russia the supreme power was concentrated in the hands of the czarist military command.

Kumyks (Kumyk: къумукълар, qumuqlar, Russian: кумыки) are a Turkic people living in north-eastern Dagestan. The territories traditionally populated by Kumyks, and where their historical states used to exist, are called Kumykia. The land inhabited by Kumyks once used to be a part of a Kumyk statehood Tarki Shamkhalate. Their origins can be traced to Sunni-Kipchak Cossacks and the Borchali (or Burjoglu), originally the name of a seventeenth century Turkic tribe that settled in Caucasian Georgia with Turkic-Khazar roots. Montclair State University professor H. Mark Hubey traces the origins of the Kumyk people to the Bronze/Iron Age tribe Kumukku of the Ancient Near East. Kumyks are divided into six clans: Arpali (connected with the Árpád dynasty), Sarali, Targulu, Zhan-Ahmetli, Chagarli and Ulashli. The dialects of the Kumyks are: Kaitag, Terek, Buynaksk and Xasavyurt. Kaitag (Mountain Kayı), which for ten centuries (10–19 cc.) was a lingua franca in the North Caucasus, is the Russified name of the Kayı tribe who played a prominent role in the history of the Caucasus. Kaitag principality was a leading component of the Shamkhalate of Kazi-Kumukh state on the Caspian western seaboard that, in different forms, lasted from the 8th to the 19th centuries. Kaitag textiles, stamped out under Soviet rule, their artistry and artistry remain distinct.

Sunni Islam spread among the Kumyks between the eight and twelfth centuries. Christianity had been widespread prior to this and, among the upper class of Khazaria, Judaism. Not many pagan beliefs have been preserved, and the institution of shamanism as such is virtually nonexistant among the Kumyks. Folklore and ethnographic material, however, indicate that Kumyk tribes worshiped the high god Tengiri and the divinities and spirits of the sun, the moon, the earth, the water, and so on. There are surviving heroic poems, narratives, and ritual songs concerning, among others, the demon Albaslï (a woman with huge breasts thrown over her shoulders, who might injure women giving birth); Suv-anasï, the "mother of water"; the three demons Temirtösh, Baltatösh, and Qïlïchtösh (with ax blades protruding from their chests with which they kill people); Sütqatïn, a goddess or spirit of the rain; Basdïrïq, who could suffocate people in their sleep; and a gluttonous figure. The subsequent spread of Islamic mythology often transformed or provided an overlay to the pagan beliefs. Today Muslim and, in particular, pagan beliefs are becoming things of the past. The Kumyk people have created highly artistic forms of folklore. Their heroic epics include the ancient "Song of Minküllü," similar to the Gilgamesh epic; the "Song of Kartkozhak and Maksuman," a segment of the Kumyk Nart epic; and the "Song of Javatbi," in which, as in the Oghuz epic of Dede Korkut, the tale is told of the struggle of the hero with Azrail, the angel of death. Poetry of the yearly cycle includes songs for bringing rain ("Zemire," "Sütqatïn"), for meeting autumn ("Güdürbay," "Hüssemey") and spring ("Navruz"), and family-ritual songs: wedding songs and laments. Children's literature is also significantly developed, as are myths, legends, and tales. The epics include songs of legendary heroes such as Aigazi, Abdulla, and Eldarush and the heroes of the anti-colonial and anticzarist struggles of the nineteenth century. To the relatively late genres of Kumyk folklore belong the songs about the freedom-loving Cossack warriors, the takmaks and sarïns (quatrains used in verbal dueling), amatory verse, and humorous and other songs. The telling of proverbs and maxims also flowered. Kumyk dance, which has about twenty variants, is related to Lezgin dance. Characteristic of its choreography are compositional precision, a clearly expressed manner of realization (powerful and masculine by the men; tranquil and proud by the women), a complex pattern, and a duple rhythm. Vocal art is also highly developed, particularly the male polyphonic choir. Dances and songs are accompanied by a kumuz (a plucked string instrument), an accordion, or less often a wind instrument. Solo folk songs are also performed on these instruments.

The Kumyks are a Turkic people living in the North Caucasus. The Kumyk territory is separated into seven districts covering 12,000 square kilometers, mainly in the plains and foothills of today’s Republic of Dagestan, where they constitute approximately 14 percent of the population. They speak Kumyk, a Turkic language which has been the lingua franca of the region until the 1930s. Mentioned as early as the second century anno Domini as one of the numerous tribes inhabiting the Caucasian region, the Kumyk people later belonged to various kingdoms between the fourth and the 13th centuries. From the 14th century onwards, they were united under the Kumyk Shamkhalat Kingdom, which fell only in 1867 when Russia occupied the North Caucasus and divided the kingdom into two Russian provinces. Under Soviet occupation, a policy of ethnocide was implemented and leaders of the Kumyk movements were repressed, persecuted and killed. The introduction of mono-culture agriculture, the exploitation of the soil and deforestation led to an economic and ecological crisis in the area. In addition, the Kumyk people were unable to preserve their culture, as, for example, they were denied the right to write their language in the traditional Arabic script or teach their language in schools. During their UNPO membership, the Kumyk people advocated for an administrative reform in the Republic of Dagestan and seek self-determination in the form of national autonomy. They also strived to preserve their traditional way of life, culture and customs.

Kumyks - the most numerous Türkic ethnic group of the North Caucasus. Kumyk language belongs to the Kipchak group of the Altai language family. The Kumyk ethnogenesis attended Türkic tribes: the Huns (3rd-4th cent.), The Bulgars - Barsils and Savirs and Khazars (10th c.) And Kipchak (9th c. cent.). One of the most powerful Kumyk states on the north-eastern Caucasus was shamkhalate of tarki (Targu Şavhallıgı). It arose as an independent state in the period of the collapse of the (Kipchak Khanate) Golden Horde, namely in 1443, almost simultaneously with the formation of the Crimean Khanate and lasted until 1867. And from this point of view it can be considered as postzolodordyn Türkic-Tatar state. As a single entity, it prosuschestovalo to death Chopan-Shamkhal Targu in the 80-ies. Of the 16th century. It was only later due to the impact of internal and external factors in the late 16th - early 17th cc. It broke up into so-called biyliki (Mehtulin Khanate of Endirey, Kostekov and Aksaevskooe ownership). Under Shamkhalov authorities were not only the Kumyks but also Nogai, upper Dargin, Laks, some Avar groups, Chechens and other ethnic groups. The capital Shamkhalate initially, as evidenced by reliable sources, was “the city Shevkal initial Tarki” (S.Belokurov), “the former capital of the once powerful Khazars, and then threatening Shamkhalov” on Caspian. In addition, Shamkhalov had his summer residence in the mountains - (Casimir) Kumuk. Family Cemetery Shamkhalov came to our days. Influence Shamkhalov was so great that it spread and beyond to the neighboring fiefs, associations and unions of rural communities (Jamaat). Shamkhalov charged to submit almost all holdings in the region. According to sources at the time, called Shamkhalov valiyami and Nutsa Accidents she Shamkhal called «Padishah». “Dagestan padishah” (“Shahin-shah”) calls it in his book “Seyahat-name” in the 17th century. and Turkish traveler, long visit at Shamkhalov Evliya Çelebi. 15th-16th centuries were the period of the rise of the power Shamkhalov. In diplomatic correspondence they were called “Shevkali kings.” As a result of the hostilities with Shamkhalov Kabarda Kartli and Kakheti their possession prostrated to Pyatigorsk and p. Kuma. Shamkhalov mountain ethnic groups are attached to Islam and Türkic culture. According to Muslim historians, in the 16th-17th centuries Shamkhalov were the main obstacle to the Russian aggressive policy towards the south. While Kumyk Shamkhalate was the only country opposing Russian expansion in the region.

Kumyk (къумукъ тил, qumuq til, قموق تی) is a Turkic language spoken by about 426,212 people, mainly by the Kumyks, in the Dagestan, North Ossetia and Chechen republics of the Russian Federation. Until the 20th century Kumyk was the lingua-franca of the Northern Caucasus. Kumyk language belongs to the Kipchak-Cuman subfamily of the Kipchak family of the Turkic languages. It's a descendant of the Cuman language, with likely influence from the Khazar language, and in addition contains words from the Bulghar and Oghuz substratum. The closest languages to Kumyk are Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, and Karaim languages. Nikolay Baskakov, based on a 12th-century scripture named Codex Cumanicus, included modern Kumyk, Karachai-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, Karaim, and the language of Mamluk Kipchaks in the linguistic family of the Cuman-Kipchak language. Samoylovich also considered Cuman-Kipchak close to Kumyk and Karachai-Balkar. Amongst the dialects of the Kumyk there are Kaitag, Terek (Güçük-yurt and Braguny), Buynaksk (Temir-Khan-Shura) and Xasavyurt. The latter two became basis for the literary language.