Ossetians

Ossetians
(ирæттæ)

Ossetian girl (1883 photograph).
Regions with significant populations
Russia:   515,000 South Ossetia (Georgia):   65,000 (1989) Rest of Georgia:   38,028 (2002 census) Turkey:    100,000 (est)
Languages
Ossetic, Georgian, Russian
Religion
Mostly Eastern Orthodox with a minority professing Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
Yaghnobi people, and other Iranian peoples along with the Jassic people of Hungary

The Ossetians (Ossetian: ирæттæ, irættæ) are an Iranic ethnic group indigenous to Ossetia, a region that spans the Caucasus Mountains. They are of the Causasian race. The Ossetians mostly populate North Ossetia-Alania in Russia, and South Ossetia a large part of which is now de facto independent but internationally recognised as part of Georgia. They speak Ossetic, an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch. The Ossetians are mostly Christian with large Muslim minority.

Etymology

The Russian geographic name "Ossetia" and the corresponding ethnic designation "Ossetians" comes from a Georgian root.

The Russians originally called the Ossetians Jas possibly related to their contact with Jazones.

In Argonautica (of Apollonius of Rhodes) Jason's companions land on a beach of Colchis called Circea. They saw tamarisk and willow trees having corpses tied to the tree tops wrapped in an ox's skin. Apollonius explains that even in his day, when a male died, they hung him from a tree outside the town. The women, in contrast, were buried. In particular among the Ossetians, these funereal practices were still widespread up until a few decades ago. In Late Antiquity, records become much more diffuse, and the Iazyges generally cease to be mentioned as a tribe. In the Middle Ages an Iranian people appeared in Eastern-Europe, the Jazones (named in Latin diplomas also from Philistei/Filistei from the Biblical nation). Jazones, an Ossetic people migrated in Hungaria, are first mentioned in Hungarian records in the year 1318, and their name, spelled in Greek Language means "jason's" (Ιασονες).

In the late 14th century adopted the Georgian name of the Ossetians and their nation. In the Georgian language, Alania and the Alans are known as "Oseti" (ოსეთი) and "Osebi" (ოსები) respectively. From the Russian language the names Ossetia and Ossetians came to other languages.

The Ossetians themselves refer to their nation as irættæ (maybe related to Aeetes or Iran).

History

The Ossetians descend from the Alans, a Sarmatian tribe. About A.D. 200, the Alans were the only branch of the Sarmatians to keep their culture in the face of a Gothic invasion, and the Alans remaining built up a great kingdom between the Don and the Volga, according to Coon, "The Races of Europe." Between A.D. 350 and 374, the Huns destroyed the Alan kingdom, and a few survive to this day in the Caucasus as the Ossetes. They became Christians in the 12th century under Georgian and Byzantine influence. A large number adopted Islam, and most of them are Sunni Muslims.

In the 8th century a consolidated Alan kingdom, referred to in sources of the period as Alania, emerged in the northern Caucasus Mountains, roughly in the location of the latter-day Circassia and the modern North Ossetia-Alania. At its height, Alania was a centralized monarchy with a a strong military force and benefited from the Silk Road. Forced out of their medieval homeland (south of the River Don in present-day Russia) during Mongol rule, they migrated towards and over the Caucasus mountains, where they formed three distinct territorial entities:

• Digor in the west came under the influence of the neighbouring Kabard people who introduced Islam. Today the two main Digor districts in North Ossetia are Digora district or Digorskiy rayon (with Digora as its centre) and Irafskiy rayon or Iraf district (with Chikola as its centre). Digora district is Christian while some parts of Iraf district are Muslim. The dialect spoken in Digor part of North Osetia is Digor, the most archaic form of Osetian language.
• Kudar in the south, in the Georgian central region of Shida Kartli. After the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801, this part formed the Ossetian okrug within Tiflis governorate from 1846 to 1859 and in 1922 received an autonomy within the Georgian SSR as South Ossetia.
• Iron and Digor in the north became what is now North Ossetia-Alania, under Russian rule from 1767. Iron language is a younger version of Ossetian language and is the literary and written language of Ossetians.

In recent history the Ossetians participated in Ossetian-Ingush conflict (1991-1992) and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts (1918-1920 and early 1990s).

The southern Ossetians are chiefly pastoral, herding sheep and goats and some herding cattle.The Latin alphabet is now used to write the Ossetian language, whereas formerly the Armenian alphabet was used.

Language

Main article: Ossetic language

The Ossetic language belongs to the Indo-European language family. It belongs to the Iranian branch of that language family. Ossetic is divided into two main dialect groups: Ironian (os. - Ирон) in North and South Ossetia and Digorian (os. - Дыгурон) of North Ossetia. There are some subdialects in those two: like Tualian, Alagirian, Ksanian, etc. Ironian dialect is the most widely spoken.

Ossetic is classified as Northeastern Iranian, the only other surviving member of the subgroup being Yaghnobi, spoken more than 2,000 km to the east in Tajikistan. Both are remnants of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect group which was once spoken across Central Asia. Ossetic has substantial genetic similarities with Pashto, another Eastern Iranian language.

Religion

Today the majority of Ossetians, from both North and South Ossetia, follow Eastern Orthodoxy. As the time went by, Digor in the west came under Kabard and Islamic influence. It was through the Kabardians (an East Circassian tribe) that Islam was introduced into the region in the 17th century. Today, a minority of Ossetians profess Sunni Islam. Tuallag in the southernmost region became part of what is now Georgia, and Iron, the northernmost group, came under Russian rule after 1767, which strengthened Orthodox Christianity considerably. Most of the Ossetes today are Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Location

Most Ossetians today live along the central part of the Greater Caucasus Range in the two Ossetias, with a significant number living in central Georgia. A large Ossetian diaspora lives in Turkey, and Ossetians have also settled in Russia, France, Sweden, Syria, the USA, Canada and other countries all around the world.

Gallery

• 
  Ossetian woman in traditional clothes, early years of the 20th century.
• 
  Ossetian women working (19th century)
• 
  Ossetian Northern Caucasia dress of the 18th century, Ramonov Vano (19th century)
• 
  Three Ossetian teachers (19th century)
• 
  Women of Ossetia (1876)

Bibliography

• Nasidze et al., Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome Variation in the Caucasus, Annals of Human Genetics, Volume 68 Page 205 - May 2004
• Nasidze et al., Genetic Evidence Concerning the Origins of South and North Ossetians (2004) [1]

See also

• Jassic people
• Alans
• Sarmatians
• Scythians
• Iranian peoples
• Peoples of the Caucasus

External links

• Ossetians.com: a site about famous Ossetians