Durdzuketia

Durdzuketia was the mountain country of the Durdzuks, Vainakh ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush, in the gorges of Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Thirteenth-century Mongol invasions and Timur's campaigns in the fourteenth century drove the Durdzuks into high valleys, while Islam spread slowly alongside older cults. In the 1780s Sheikh Mansur led a rising against Russia. Russian troops built Fort Grozny in 1818, opening the long Caucasian War.