Tsontaroy Kala

Tsontaroy was the ancestral village of the Chechen community bearing its name, in the wooded hills of eastern Chechnya. Local tradition tells of its foundation by Suntar, who came from the mountain country of Nashkh, and of later changes in the village's site. Kinship and the memory of common ancestors bound its inhabitants to other settlements in the region. In 1832 Russian troops burned the village during an expedition towards Gimry in Dagestan, where the followers of Imam Ghazi Muhammad had taken their stand.