Karachay-Balkar Paganism

The Karachay-Balkar religion is the traditional belief of the Karachays and Balkars, the Turkic mountain peoples of the central Caucasus around Mount Elbrus. It never had a fixed canon or an orderly pantheon: it is pieced together from the Nart epic and legends, and scholars find in it Turkic, Alan and common Caucasian layers.

The supreme god was Tejri, the sky god, and thunder was shared among Choppa, Shibilya and Elia. Myth makes the first smith, Debet, a child of Sky and Earth.

Alania's Christian past left its mark in the names of saints: Elia is the prophet Elijah and Totur is Saint Theodore. After Timur broke Alania in about 1395, Islam spread among the highlanders, and most Balkars adopted it in the eighteenth century. Tejri then became a name for the one God.