Chechen-Ingush - Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. From about the ninth to sixteenth centuries, there is thought to have been missionary activity by the Georgian church (Eastern Orthodox), chiefly among the Ingush. Only traces remain of this tradition—ultimately Greek names for days of the week and an occasional abandoned medieval church in the high mountains. The indigenous traditional religion was basically animistic, with a number of nature and patron deities (the head of the pantheon was simply Deela, "God"), an ancestor cult (the probable source of patron deities), a hearth cult, and belief in an afterlife where the well-being of one's deceased ancestors was determined by one's behavior on earth. Funerals were held the day after death, a few days later (a feast with contests enabling the deceased to rise from his bed in the afterworld), two years later, and three years later. A widow resumed regular dress and could remarry (usually a brother of the first husband) after the third-year funeral. She was buried with her first husband in his family tomb and belonged to him in the afterworld. There were no funerals for women since they did not pass down the clan name. The lowland Chechens converted to Islam (transmitted by the Kumyks) in the eighteenth century and the Ingush in the early nineteenth century. The conversion is described as originally political in motivation, a move to identify and ally oneself with the Caucasian resistance to the Russians. By now, Islam (specifically, Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school) is devoutly professed as religion by most of the population and is widely considered an essential element of ethnicity. Bennigsen and Wimbush describe a system of conservative Islam that takes the form of clandestine brotherhoods ( tariqa ) . Islam spread to the Chechen-Ingush via these brotherhoods along clan and subclan lines; the Soviet repression of Islam, including wholesale destruction of mosques during and after the period of deportation, only strengthened the brotherhood organization. Tariqa are described as fulfilling in modern society a number of the functions traditionally performed by clans and subclans (e.g., determination of preferred patterns of marriage, legal and religious responsibilities, etc.). I have not been able to replicate this information, nor the claim of "an absolute confusion between religious, clan, and national loyalties" (Bennigsen and Wimbush 1986, 188).

Arts. Perhaps the most conspicuous art form is architecture, represented by the finely built tall defense towers in the high mountains. None have been built in historical times, and their construction is sometimes attributed to semimythical previous inhabitants. Wood carving, weaving, felt making, leatherwork, and other crafts were traditionally practiced. Music includes instrumental dance music (now mostly played on the accordion, plus drum) similar to that of Daghestan and (to a lesser extent) Georgia. Dance of the Caucasian type is highly developed. There are lyric songs ( yish ) primarily for solo voice, occasional polyphonic choral songs suggesting Georgian influence, and long epic song-poems ( May); solo music is sung to the accompaniment of a three-stringed strummed instrument ( pondar ) . Traditional music and dance continue to flourish. Novels and lyric poetry, some of distinct merit, have been published in recent decades. There are theaters of note, both Ingush and Chechen, in Groznyï; they perform both Chechen-Ingush and translated dramas, all in Chechen or Ingush.