Vainakh Paganism

The Vainakh peoples of the North Caucasus, the Chechens, the Ingush and the Batsbi, were polytheists before Christianity and Islam took hold among them. Their roots were the worship of natural forces, ancestors and spirits, with trees thought to be spirits' homes.

Dela was the supreme god and creator of the world, and Sela, the thunder god, was honoured beside him. The earth rests on the horns of a bull, and no Chechen or Ingush worked on Tuesday, the day of the bulls.

The Tkhaba-Yerdy church in what is now Ingushetia, said to have been built over an older pagan temple, was remodelled under Queen Tamar of Georgia between 1184 and 1213. Islam, present among the Chechens since the fourteenth century, spread only slowly, and the old religion was still strong in the nineteenth century.