Ossetians
(Ирæттæ)

(left to right): Kosta Khetagurov, Gazdanov, Kocojty Arsen, Tokaty, Gergiev, Artur Taymazov
Total population
720,000
Regions with significant populations
Russia 528,515 [1] especially in: North Ossetia 445,310 [2]  South Ossetia: (a state with a limited de jure recognition of its independence) 45,000 [3]  Georgia (excluding South Ossetia) 38,028 [4]  Syria 59,200 [5]  Turkey 36,900 [5]  Uzbekistan 8,170 [5]  Tajikistan 5,300 [5]  Ukraine 4,830 [6]  Azerbaijan 2,340 [5]  Turkmenistan 2,170 [5]  Kazakhstan 2,090 [5]  Kyrgyzstan 937 [5]  Belarus 784 [5]  Armenia 392 [5]  Moldova 353 [5]  Latvia 256 [7]  Estonia 116 [8]
Languages
Ossetic, Russian, Georgian
Religion
Predominantly † Orthodox Christianity with a minority professing Ossetian Traditional Religion and Islam
Related ethnic groups
Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans Eastern Iranians (including Pashtuns, Pamiris, Yaghnobi) and other Iranian peoples (like Tajiks) along with the Jassic people of Hungary, Terek Cossacks.

The Ossetians (Ossetic: ирæттæ, irættæ) are an Iranic ethnic group of the Caucasus Mountains, indigenous to the region known as Ossetia.^[9][10][11] They speak Ossetic, an Iranian language of the Eastern branch of the Indo-European languages family, with most also fluent in Russian as a second language. The Ossetians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian, with a Muslim minority.

The Ossetians mostly populate Ossetia, which is politically divided between North Ossetia–Alania in Russia, and South Ossetia, which since the 2008 South Ossetia war has been de facto independent from Georgia.

Etymology [edit]

The Ossetians and Ossetia received their name from the Russians, who adopted the Georgian designations Osi (sing., pl.: Osebi) and Oseti ("the land of Osi"), used since the Middle Ages for the Iranian-speaking population of the central Caucasus and probably based on the old Alan self-designation "As". As the Ossetians lacked any single inclusive name for themselves in their native language, these terms were accepted by the Ossetians themselves already before their integration into the Russian Empire.^[12]

This practice was put into question by the new Ossetian nationalism in the early 1990s, when the dispute between the Ossetian subgroups of Digoron and Iron over the status of the Digoron dialect made the Ossetian intellectuals search for a new inclusive ethnic name. This, combined with the effects of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, led to the popularization of "Alania", the name of the medieval Sarmatian confederation, to which the Ossetians traced their origin, and inclusion of this name into the official republican title of North Ossetia in 1994.^[12]

Subgroups [edit]

• Iron in the east and south form a larger group of Ossetians. Irons are divided into several subgroups: Kudar, Tual (including Urstual), Chsan and North Irons.
  • Kudar (sometimes misspelled Tual, after the indigenous Dvals people), the southern group of Ossetians.
  • Tual in the central part of Ossetia.
  • Chsan in the east of South Ossetia.
• Digoron in the west. They came under the influence of the neighbouring Kabarday people who introduced Islam. Today the two main Digoron districts in North Ossetia are Digora district or Digorskiy rayon (with Digora as its centre) and Irafskiy rayon or Iraf district (with Chikola as its centre). Digora district is Christian while some parts of Iraf district are Muslim. The dialect spoken in Digor part of North Osetia is Digoron, the most archaic form of Ossetian language.

Culture [edit]

Mythology [edit]

The folk beliefs of the Ossetian people are rooted in their Sarmatian origin and Christian religion, with the pagan gods transcending into Christian saints. The Nart saga serves the basic pagan mythology of the region.^[13]

Music [edit]

History [edit]

Charnel vaults at a necropolis near the village of Dargavs, North Ossetia

Prehistory (Early Alans) [edit]

The Ossetians descend from the Alans, a Sarmatian tribe (Scythian subgroup of the Iranic ethnolinguistic group).^[14] About AD 200, the Alans were the only branch of the Sarmatians to keep their culture in the face of a Gothic invasion, and the Alans remaining built up a great kingdom between the Don and the Volga, according to Coon, The Races of Europe. Between AD. 350 and 374, the Huns destroyed the Alan kingdom, and a few survive to this day in the Caucasus as the Ossetes.

Middle Ages [edit]

Map of Alania at 1000 AD

In the 8th century a consolidated Alan kingdom, referred to in sources of the period as Alania, emerged in the northern Caucasus Mountains, roughly in the location of the latter-day Circassia and the modern North Ossetia–Alania. At its height, Alania was a centralized monarchy with a strong military force and benefited from the Silk Road.

Forced out of their medieval homeland (south of the River Don in present-day Russia) during Mongol rule, Alans migrated towards and over the Caucasus mountains, where they subsequently would form three ethnographical groups; the Iron, Digoron, and Kudar. The Jassic people were a group that migrated in the 13th century to Hungary.

Modern history [edit]

In recent history, the Ossetians participated in Ossetian-Ingush conflict (1991–1992) and Georgian–Ossetian conflicts (1918–1920, early 1990s) and in the 2008 South Ossetia war between Georgia and Russia.

Key events:

• 1774 — North Ossetia becomes part of the Russian Empire^[15]
• 1801 — The modern-day South Ossetia territory becomes part of the Russian Empire, along with Georgia^[16]
• 1922 — Ossetia is divided^[17][18] into two parts: North Ossetia remains a part of Russian SFSR, South Ossetia remains a part of Georgian SSR.
• 20 September 1990 – independent Republic of South Ossetia. The republic remained unrecognized, yet it detached itself from Georgia de facto. In the last years of the Soviet Union, ethnic tensions between Ossetians and Georgians in Georgia's former Autonomous Oblast of South Ossetia (abolished in 1990) and between Ossetians and the Ingush in North Ossetia evolved into violent clashes that left several hundreds dead and wounded and created a large tide of refugees on both sides of the border.^[19][20]

Language [edit]

The Ossetic language belongs to the Northeastern Iranian branch of Indo-European language family.

Ossetic is divided into two main dialect groups: Ironian (os. – Ирон) in North and South Ossetia and Digorian (os. – Дыгурон) of western North Ossetia. There are some subdialects in those two: like Tualian, Alagirian, Ksanian, etc. The Ironian dialect is the most widely spoken.

Ossetic is among the remnants of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect group which was once spoken across Central Asia. Other surviving languages closely related to Ossetic are Yaghnobi,^[21] Pashto^[21] and Pamiri languages,^[21] all spoken more than 2,000 km to the east in Afghanistan, northwestern Pakistan and some parts of Tajikistan.

Religion [edit]

The Alans were partially Christianized by Byzantine missionaries in the beginning of the 10th century.^[22] Most of the Ossetians became Eastern Orthodox Christians in the 12th–13th centuries under the influence of Georgia.^[23][24]

As the time went by, Digor in the west came under Kabardian and Islamic influence. It was through the Kabarday (an East Circassian tribe) that Islam was introduced into the region in the 17th century.^[25]

Kudar in the southernmost region became part of what is now South Ossetia, and Iron, the northernmost group, came under Russian rule after 1767, which strengthened Orthodox Christianity considerably.

Today, the majority of Ossetians, from both North and South Ossetia, follow Eastern Orthodoxy, although there is a sizable number of adherents to Islam.

Paganism is still very widespread among Ossetians, with rich ritual traditions, sacrificing animals, holy shrines, non-Christian saints, etc. There are pagan temples, known as kuvandony in most of the villages.^[26] Currently the Osset pagans are united under the organization Etseg Din(Ǽцǽг Дин).^[27]

Demographics [edit]

The vast majority of Ossetians live in Russia (according to the Russian Census (2002)):

• North Ossetia–Alania — 445,300
• Moscow — 10,500
• Kabardino-Balkaria — 9,800
• Stavropol Krai — 7,700
• Krasnodar Krai — 4,100
• Karachay–Cherkessia — 3,200
• Saint Petersburg — 2,800
• Rostov Oblast — 2,600
• Moscow Oblast — 2,400

Second-largest population of Ossetians is in South Ossetia.

There is a significant number living in north-central Georgia (Trialeti). A large Ossetian diaspora lives in Turkey, and Ossetians have also settled in Belgium France, Sweden, Syria, the USA (New York City, Florida and California as examples), Canada (Toronto) and other countries all around the world.

Genetics [edit]

The Ossetians are a unique ethnic group of the Caucasus, being the only people found on both the north and south slopes of the mountain, also speaking an Indo-European language surrounded by Caucasian ethnolinguistic groups. The Y-haplogroup data indicate that North Ossetians are more similar to other North Caucasian groups, and South Ossetians are more similar to other South Caucasian groups, than to each other. Also, with respect to mtDNA, Ossetians are significantly more similar to Iranian groups than to Caucasian groups. It is thus suggested that that there is a common origin of Ossetians from Iran, followed by subsequent male-mediated migrations from their Caucasian neighbours ^[28][29]

Gallery [edit]

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See also [edit]

Russia portal

• Jassic people
• Alans
• Sarmatians
• Scythians
• Iron (people)
• Digor (people)
• Iranian peoples
• Ossetians in Turkey
• Peoples of the Caucasus

References [edit]

Bibliography [edit]

• Nasidze et al., Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosome Variation in the Caucasus, Annals of Human Genetics, Volume 68 Page 205 – May 2004
• Nasidze et al., Genetic Evidence Concerning the Origins of South and North Ossetians (2004) [5]

External links [edit]

• Ossetians.com: a site about famous Ossetians