Photo tribute to Caucasus

[Rivkin]

Here is an example of typical khevsurian houses. Not made for comfort, made to kill people below. The last one is church (again, made to fight off the enemies after prayers).

[Rivkin]

Currently Caucasus is torn apart by wars, terrorism and occupation. Caucasians abroad are sometimes employed by various military organizations.

Examples below - circassian 14th squadron of Foreign Legion - was mostly involved in actions against arab insurgents in Lebanon and Syria, later fought against Germans/Vichy in the Middle East, jordanian honor guard (circassians and chechens) with jordanian royal prince.

[Rivkin]

Another nationality present in Caucasus are jews. They are divided into tats (farsi-speaking jews from Iran), Kipchaq jews who migrated with kipchaqs from Asia, Ashkenazi - european jews, and georgian jews.

Also important are muslim clans descending from jews. Approximately 15% of chechens (around Shatoi, Khasa-urt etc.) belong to clans that ether considered to be jewish (zhukti) or in some blood relationship with them. Another example are lezginians from Ahty, while today they are considered muslims and respectively chechens or lezgins they maintain some of their jewish traditions (shabbat etc.).

Enclosed are jewish or circassian (they used to serve in Israel army as mercenaries and later conscripts) in Jerusalem, and a tat couple.

For fun - mountain jews performing in chechen:
http://www.mountain-jews.co.il/Video/Shrek.asx

[Rivkin]

I bring my most sincere apologies to the moderator and esteemed members of the forum for this lengthy post.

Sincerely yours,

Kirill Rivkin

[Jim McDougall]

Apologies??!!!
Rivkin I think these posts are outstanding!!! Thank you for placing them here.
In the west there is little information concerning the Caucusus in world history, which is unfortunate as their history is magnificent and colorful.
I am amazed at these photos and your extremely interesting data on the ethnographic perspective of these fascinating people.

The weapons of the Caucusus are eagerly sought by many advanced collectors and the material you have posted here is extremely well placed. I was aware that Khevsurs wore chain link armour well into the 20th century (as described by Halliburton in his "Seven League Boots" narrative c.1935), but did not realize the application with regard to the firearms caliber. I have often wondered if the Khevsurs still maintain thier 'duelling' tradition with swords, buckler and mail, and if so, are there recent photos?

Well done Rivkin, thank you for sharing a fascinating pictorial of a very esoterically studied ethnographic region!

Best regards,
Jim

[Rivkin]

Glad you liked it. Yes, they still do have these duels, like japanese still have their martial arts, only khevsurs keep it way more "real".

I know that there used to be a documentary made in 1982 on this duels, plus khevsurian boxing and khevsurian kastet (heavy ring actually) fighting. It's hard, but possible to order a copy.

What I really would like to see is a photo of khevsurian house with chopped off hands on it - but it seems that they took down and buried all the hands during 1930s.

But today it's very hard to get to khevsuria - even in summer some of it is covered in snow and the neighbours - chechens have a big war on their hands.

Attached images - megrelian (georgian) assasins, chechen village (tower-houses) on the border with khevsuria and chechen islamists performing islamist's war dance - zikr.

The weapon used is kaldam - adopted chechen version of a khevsurian palash.

[Yannis]

Rivkin thank you very much for all this work. It is amazing!

For the moment please notice my avatar