Turkish as a lingua franca of Dagestan
The third aboriginal family is the Lezghien. The
Lezghiens proper, to the number of 560,000, frequent the south of Daghestan,
the valleys of the Alazan and of the Lower Koura, professing Sunnite
Mohammedanism, and are to be compared with the Wahabis of Central Arabia.
Then come the Avars, 340,000, originally the terror of
Italy and Byzantium. They dwell to the north of Daghestan, and to this tribe
did Schamyl belong. Has no one even written the story of this hero's life? If
we had sent an army into the Caucasus at the fall of Sebastopol, Schamyl was
counted on as our ally. Schamyl the Avar! After resisting for twenty-five years
the inroads into his highlands, he is at last driven, early in 1859, to his
stronghold of Gounib with but a remnant of his tribe. After a blockade of some
months the fortress, on the night of September 6, is carried by escalade, and
the chief, feeling all was lost, accepted his destiny, and took the oath of
allegiance to the Czar. Some of his relatives and people took service with
Russia, but the old man, after detention at Kalouga, retired to Mecca, where he
died, blind, at eighty years of age. One still finds in Daghestan villages and
hamlets the inhabitants of which have a distinct appearance, and speak a
language unknown to their nearest neighbours. Such are the Kabatschi, who
pretend to be descended from the Franks; the Oubi, whose dialect offers, some
analogies with the ancient Egyptian, and many others besides. The difficulty
that the mountaineers of some distant districts have in understanding one
another has caused them to adopt the Turkish - Arabic of Azerbeidjan as a
common language.
Colonel Augustus le Messurier, From London to Bokhara and a Ride Through
Persia. — London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1889. Pp. 66―67.
No comments:
Post a Comment