The long history of this people cannot attract interest in what kind of nation the Nogais are? Proud descendants of the ancient Golden Horde, they are now scattered in different areas of southern Russia: in northern Dagestan, northern Chechnya, Stavropol, Astrakhan and Karachay-Cherkessia. This is one of the surviving subgroups of the Golden Horde, which is of Mongolian-Turkic origin. They speak their own language, which belongs to the Turkic group. Nogai got their name in honor of Khan Nogai, great-grandson of Genghis Khan.
Title
The self-name of this people comes from the name of one person. The Nogais are named after the great-grandson of Genghis Khan. Nogai was an outstanding leader and true leader of the Golden Horde. He was the ruler of the Nogai Horde west of the Danube. Nogai was killed either in 1294, or, according to other sources, in 1300, but his name remained in history as a designation of nomadic people in the steppes near the Sea of Azov. In earlier Nogai texts, the Turkic people who came from the east were called the North Caucasus Tatars.
History of the people
The origins of this nationality are associated with the Nogai Horde or Nogai Horde, the Golden Horde and the Kipchak tribal confederations, known from the 13th and 14th centuries, from where the Nogai nationality originates. In the first half of the 17th century, several of these tribes roamed in the steppes between the Danube and the Caspian. The invasion of warlike Kalmyks forced some Nogai tribes to leave their native steppes and leave for the foothills of the North Caucasus. On the Kuban River, they met with the Circassians. In the Moscow chronicles of the XVI-XVII centuries there are several references to Nogai, including two Nogai Hordes, the Great and the Small. The first wandered beyond the Volga, the second - in the western part of Russia. Both of them participated in numerous military clashes with the Russians. In the XVII century, some of the Nogai leaders entered into an alliance with Moscow and from time to time fought with the Russians against the Kabardinians, Kalmyks and peoples of Dagestan. They also took part in the expeditions of Peter I. Since the beginning of the 19th century, most of them settled in the North Caucasus.
Habitat
Nogais in Russia live as separate groups that do not form a single ethnic or administrative unit. A significant group existed in the Nogai steppes, but in 1957 they were divided against their will between three administrative units: the Dagestan Autonomous SSR, the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous SSR and the Stavropol Territory. An administrative policy of this nature further accelerated the trend towards cultural decline and the loss of national identity among Nogais. Currently, the largest number of Nogais live in the North Caucasus, having moved there from the border of Moldova and Romania and the Astrakhan region. In the North Caucasus, they settled in the following areas:
- Karachay-Cherkess Autonomous Okrug, where, according to rough estimates, about 20,000 Nogai live;
- the villages of Karamurzhin and Kangli, as well as in the Neftekumsky and Achikulaksky districts of the Stavropol Territory;
- Northern Dagestan: Nogai and Kizlyar districts of Dagestan and the Shelkovsky district of Chechnya. Another small group of Nogais live in the Tatar Slobodka near the city of Novocherkassk. Astrakhan and Crimean Nogais, as well as a number of Dagestan Nogais, underwent linguistic assimilation with the local population.
Ethnic culture
Studying the culture and language of this people allows you to find out what kind of nation the Nogais are. Before migration to the North Caucasus, countless tribes led a nomadic life. All of them were united by common political and economic interests. The Karanogays continued to be nomads until the establishment of Soviet power. In the North Caucasus, tribes began to lose their former structure and mix with each other. Kuban Nogais at the end of the 18th century settled along the rivers Bolshoy and Maly Zelenchuk, Nizhny Urukh and Laba. The nomadic way of life has left a noticeable mark on the economy and culture of this people. Many representatives of the Nogai nationality (pictured) have retained most of the element of traditional culture.
Transition to a settled lifestyle
Livestock methods are similar to the methods of the Kazakh and other peoples of Central Asia. For centuries, horse breeding has gained great importance: horses were used for transportation in the vast steppes, cavalry was the main military force in the battles, people drank horse milk and ate horse meat. Horses were also sold annually to Moscow. After the tribes began to lead a sedentary lifestyle, agriculture among the Kuban Nogais became of paramount importance.
In Nogai farms, both collective and private, animal husbandry was the main occupation, and agriculture acted only as an auxiliary; horse riding once flourished, but was completely eradicated in the 1960s and 1970s. After the end of World War II, canals were built to irrigate the land, however, in recent years, the total pasture area belonging to the Nogai people has decreased. This is due to the fact that Georgians and Avars living in the neighborhood drive their cattle through Nogai pastures. In addition, in the Stavropol Territory, large tracts of arable land were taken from the Nogais.
This once nomadic people mainly lives in small villages and works in agriculture and, in particular, with livestock. There is still a national cuisine that has preserved many of their Mongol features due to the Nogai origin, for example, tea, which is made in boiling milk with butter, salt and pepper. In southern Russia, Nogai patriarchal traditions are mixed with the modern influences of the Russian, Central Asian and Muslim world.
Population
The population according to the census was 34,000 in 1926; 41,200 - in 1959 (including 17,600 in the Stavropol region and 14,900 in the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic); 52,000 in 1970, of which 46,000 spoke their native language and 59,546 in 1979.
According to various estimates, the population of the Nogais in 1990 ranged from 60,000 to 80,000.
Currently, about 70,000 people live in Dagestan, a total of more than 100,000 people in Russia as a whole. More than 90,000 self-identified Nogai live in Turkey, significant Nogai populations are also in Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Resettlement
In the Astrakhan region, in the lower reaches of the Volga, there are four ethnic groups of Nogai ethnicity: yurts (Volga region), Kundrovtsy (Tuluganovka village), Karagash (Krasnoyarsk and neighboring areas) and Utar-Alabugats (areas adjacent to Kalmykia). The ancestors of yurts, Kundrovtsy, and Utars, who came from the Great Nogai Horde, at the beginning of the 17th century moved to the vicinity of Astrakhan to avoid Kalmyks. The Karagashs who settled here at the end of the 18th century came from the Lesser Nogai Horde of the Kuban. Yurt ties with their North Caucasian relatives were severed in the middle of the 17th century, and a century later with Karagash.
Soviet development
The cultural and linguistic influence of the peoples of the Middle Volga (Kazan and Mishar) on yurts was strong, somewhat weaker - on karagash. In the years 1931-1943. The Narimanov district constituted the Tatar-Nogai national territory. In the 1939 census, most Nogais were registered as Tatars. Since the early 1970s, the desire for ethnic self-preservation has intensified, especially among the Karagaz people. In the 1989 census, several thousand Lower Volga Nogai (mainly Karagash) were registered as legs.
Absolutely no attention was paid to the modernization of Nogai villages. The roads in their places of residence were poor; communication is even worse. It was not unusual for children to attend school for several weeks due to impassable roads in spring and autumn. In many villages, there was virtually no normal water supply. As a result, the Nogais began to leave their historical areas of residence in Stavropol, Moscow Region, in the north, in Astrakhan and Khabarovsk.
Language structure
The Nogai language belongs to the Kipchak or northwest group of Turkic languages, which includes the Karakalpak and Kazakh subgroups. It is associated with the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak and Crimean Tatar languages. Nogai is one of the less studied Turkic languages. It is divided into three dialects:
- the Karanogai dialect spoken in the Nogai region of Dagestan, in the lower reaches of the Kuma River and in the area between Lower Kuma and Lower Terek in Northern Dagestan;
- in fact, the Nogai language, which is spoken in the Achikulak and Neftekam districts of the Stavropol Territory (those who speak these two dialects make up the so-called steppe Nogai group);
- Aknogai dialect (in the Turkic language “ak” means “white”: Turkic peoples usually divided their tribes into black and white, “black” means “northern” and “white” - western) on the Kuban River and its tributaries in Karachay-Cherkessia and in the village of Kangli in the area of Mineralnye Vody.
Language features
The first two dialects spoken by representatives of the Nogai nationality are linguistically similar, while the dialect dialect is somewhat different from the rest. Dialectical differences are the result of a long geographical division. Contact with neighboring ethnic groups also influenced the development of dialects. The speakers of the Karanogai dialect always interacted with the Russians and Armenians, and the Kuban Nogais, that is, speakers of the Aknogai, interacted with the Russians, Circassians, Abazins and Karachays. Numerous contacts significantly influenced the language and culture of the Kuban Nogais.
Until 1928, native speakers used a version of the Arabic alphabet when writing. From 1928 to 1938, the Latin alphabet was used for writing, after which the Nogais switched to the Cyrillic alphabet.
The evolution of writing
The first book on spelling based on the Latin alphabet was published in 1929 in Moscow, then textbooks, several dictionaries of terminology and an orthographic manual were published. The spelling system based on the Latin alphabet was compiled by the Nogai academician A. Dzhanibekov, based on the principles adopted for all Turkic languages. It was based on the phonetic principle. The creation of a new spelling contributed to further Nogai linguistic research. The difficulty was finding a suitable dialect base for the written language. Finally, the Karanogai dialect spoken in Dagestan was adopted as the basis on the grounds that it was the language of the "Nogatian masses." The fact that the founders of the alphabet and spelling lived in Dagestan also did not matter much. After a while, a huge number of lexical differences from the Kuban Nogai dialect were discovered. The Dagestan dialect contains many Arabicisms and Tatarisms. Therefore, the dialect base was revised, and by 1936 a new project for the literary language was prepared, but it was never put into practice: under the inspiring leadership of the North Caucasus Regional Committee for the Introduction of the New Alphabet, its translation into Cyrillic began.
Changes in Linguistics
A new transition was carried out in 1938, which gave impetus to the development of education. The spelling based on the Latin alphabet was supposedly an obstacle to learning the Russian language. As a wrong practice, the spelling of international (that is, in fact, Russian) words in Turkic phonetics was announced. The adoption of Russian borrowings without any assimilation, practically in an unchanged form, was considered a great advantage for the Nogai language. However, some scholars believed that the introduction of the Russian alphabet was a violation of the language, undermining and destroying its structure.
The development of modern language
In the Nogai district of Dagestan, Nogai language and literature are included in the school curriculum from the 1st to the 10th year, they are also taught at the Karachay-Cherkess Pedagogical School and the national branch of the Pedagogical Institute, as well as in the elementary grades of a comprehensive school. This language is not official, however, it acts as the main medium of education and cultural development of this people.
Linguistic studies of the Nogai language are carried out by the Institute of Historical, Linguistic and Literary Studies in Cherkessk.
The development of his stylistic wealth is due to the active enrichment of the language thanks to borrowings from the languages of the peoples of Karachay-Cherkessia (Karachay, Circassian, Abazin), as well as through the Russian language from Arabic, English, German, French and other languages of the world. The original vocabulary of the Nogai language is replenished thanks to borrowings, the normalization of terminology.
Accordingly, the Nogai literary language currently has common spelling and lexical norms. The Nogai language, being the native language of the Nogais living compactly in the territory of Karachay-Cherkessia, Dagestan, the Stavropol Territory, and the Astrakhan Region, has significantly strengthened stylistic wealth. Its stylistic enrichment is due to the development of fiction and journalism. Now two newspapers are published in this language: Shoal Tavysy and Nogai Davysy. On Tatar radio, a broadcast in Nogai is released once a week. There are several poets and writers, representatives of the Nogai nationality, whose works are written in this language.