Mongol invasions of Durdzuketia

During what was the late Middle Ages of Western Europe, the Caucasus was invaded by Mongols and their Turkic vassals. The first appearance of Mongol troops in the Caucasus was an arrival of scouts in 1220-1222.[4] Kypchak Turkic peoples - some of which becoming future affiliates of Genghis Khan - had been invading and settling areas further and further South and West (a process that had was continuing since the fall of the Khazars), including the fertile river valleys of the Terek and the Kuban. In the 1230s, the Mongols gained rule over the Kypchaks, and turned them into vassals.

The Mongol invasion of Georgia had commenced a year earlier to the invasion of the Vainakh kingdom of Dzurdzuketia. The Kingdom of Georgia was traditionally strong ally of Dzurdzuketia, but it was unable to help the Durdzuks when it was under invasion itself.

In 1237, the assault on the North Caucasus began.[4] Mongols launched the first attacks: against the Circassians and the Alans (note that at this time, the Alan kingdom was actually highly multiethnic and was partially Dzurdzuk[5]). Alanian villages in what is now northern Ingushetia, a part of northwestern Chechnya and North Ossetia were completely destroyed.[4][6] Having consolidated their rule over the western parts of the Terek, the Mongols then moved East along the river to attack the Durdzuk states of Durdzuketia and Simsir (which was less than modern Chechen and Ingush republican control of the Terek, due to the previously superior position of the Alans).[4] Durdzuketia and Simsir were also attacked from the south and east, by the Mongol troops which had recently conquered Derbent, capital of the Lezghins, in modern Dagestan.[6]

The attack on Durdzuketia, already having been commenced, intensified, and the Mongols went as far as the highlands in their attacks. Here, too, the Dzurdzuk proved no match for the arrows and flames of the Mongols, and their villages were totally destroyed. Jaimoukha states that a majority of the Dzurdzuk people were probably killed or enslaved by the Mongols.[6] Within a few years of the invasion, Dzurdzuketia was history, but its resistant people survived up in the mountains. Adding to the misfortune of the Durdzuks, the Mongols successfully established control over much of the Sunzha river, which was an existential threat to the Chechen people due to their need for the Sunzha's (as well as the Terek's) agriculture to support their population. Those remaining joined their mountainous brethren in the highlands (lowland Circassians fled to the Circassian highlands, Alans, to southern parts of Alania, and Dzurdzuks to southern Dzurdzuk territory), fleeing out of lack of an alternative. They regrouped in the mountains and reorganized themselves, planning a counterattack on the Turkic and Mongol invaders. Their goal was to survive both biologically and culturally.[6]

The Dzurdzuks had both the forests and the mountains on their side, and waged a successful guerrilla war.[4]

Jaimoukha cites a writing of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, a Papal Ambassador to the Mongols, in 1245-1247. He apparently asserted that the Khan's armies had failed to take the mountainous parts of the eastern part of Alania, to which they had been laying siege for 12 years already, because of the persistence of the defenders (who were, according to Jaimoukha, almost certainly Dzurdzuks given their geographical location).[6] William of Rubruck, the emissary of the Kingdom of France to Sartaq Khan (son of Batu) travelled to the Caucasus in 1253.[6] He wrote that the Circassians (used here to refer not to Adyghe specifically, but rather to all North Caucasians from Anapa to Avaria) had never "bowed to Mongol rule", despite the fact that whole fifth of the Mongol armies were at that time devoted to the task of crushing North Caucasian resistance.[7]

In 1239-1240, the Mongols deployed Chinese weapons such as catapults with gunpowder were used, as they had earlier done under Genghis Khan in Transoxania in 1219 and 1220.[8]

Timurlane

In order to avoid future conflicts with the Mongols and give the Dzurdzuks time to recover, the ruler of the Princedom of Simsir (also known by the shorter name of "Simsim"; it was a small Dzurdzuk-run feudal principality separate from Alania and Dzurdzuketia, located between the two rivers[9]), known to the Mongols as Gayur Khan (though this probably was not what his own subjects called him), allied itself with the Golden Horde.[10] To underline Simsim's loyalty to the Horde, Gayur even adopted Sunni Islam as a state religion, although this move was purely symbolic (as the bulk of the Chechens were still pagan and those that were Muslim or Christian were highly syncretic in their practice).[9]

However, ultimately this proved to be a mistake. In the second half of the 14th century, the Golden Horde began to weaken. Timurlane (Tamerlan/Timur) dealt a major defeat to the Golden Horde, from which it would never recover.[11] But Timurlane did not intend on stopping with the Horde, and the Caucasus was one of the many conquests he planned. He then used Simsir's alliance with the Horde as pretext for war against Simsir.[10] He did not stop with Simsir, and continued on, attacking all Dzurdzuk lands. This meant that the Dzurdzuks, still recovering from the damage done by the first Mongol invasion, would have to deal with a second.

Timurlane first sent his Turkic imperial warriors to attack the Caucasus in 1390, and greatly stepped up the invasion in 1395-1396. The second Mongol invasion was just as brutal as the first, and many Dzurdzuks were completely annihilated, as were various churches and pagan sanctuaries.[11] However, although initially successful in the lowlands, they were confronted with, and defeated by, the same set of problems the first Mongol invaders faced. Unlike the previous Mongol invaders, Timurlane eventually made peace with the Chechens rather than waste huge amounts of his strength on trying to conquer them. Traditional folk history remembers that in order to give peace, he gave the Chechens his sabre as a gift.[12]

When the battle of the day was over, Timur asked his commanders: "Have you taken away their Phondar’" (musical string instrument). The answer was negative. And then he said: "If you haven’t taken away the ‘pondar’, you only destroyed their army, but you didn’t subjugate them. So we must make them our allies. I welcome them, and I wish as a sign of my respect to their steadfastness and for their edification, to grant them my sabre, which I haven’t given to anyone yet." His men didn’t find the fighting men; they were all killed. They brought the storyteller, who was prohibited from taking part in the battle and had to observe from a distance, so that he could tell the story to the future generation. The storyteller, Illancha, took the sabre of the Iron Lame and gave it to nine pregnant women, who passed it on to nine young boys. Later, Timur ordered freedom for all the Chechen prisoners. The Chechen elders told that this sabre, together with other presents and many Chechen relics were saved up until February 1944, when the Chechen people were robbed of all their possessions during deportation; the main part of the Chechen treasures were taken to Moscow.[12]

• Mongol invasions of Georgia
• History of Chechnya