Nakh

The Nakh, or Vainakh, are the Northeast Caucasian peoples of the central Caucasus, ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush. Persian authors called their highland clans the Durdzuks, and Georgian and Alan missionaries spread Orthodox Christianity among them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

In the fourteenth century their principalities formed the kingdom of Simsim, whose Christian prince Gayur-khan defeated the warlord Mamai in 1362. His support of Tokhtamysh drew Timur's revenge: in 1395 Timur wrecked Simsim, drove its people into the mountains and planted Islam through a client ruler. Lowland churches faded and many villages reverted to pagan rites; Islam advanced again from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and became general in the Shafi'i form.

Mountain life was organized around rival teip clans with stone tower villages, bound by customary law and blood feud. From the eighteenth century they opposed the tsars' Caucasian advance.