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The Issue of the Chechen “Taip” in Ethnographic Research of the Caucasus Scholar B.K. Dalgat
DOI 10.18522/2072-0181-2015-84-4-67-72
Bashir Kerimovich Dalgat was a prominent Caucasus scholar of the late 19th– early 20th century, whose scientific heritage has not been appropriately researched and comprehended by social scientists. The article attempts to provide a
summary of Dalgat’s research materials on the Chechen “taip” collected by the scholar during his ethnographic expeditions in the mountainous Chechnya in 1892–1894. Dalgat succeeded in producing academic research of high theoretical and analytical quality on the social living of the Chechens and Ingushes. This includes primarily the contention of the Chechen taip not as a “clannish” institution but a “brotherhood” – a form of the Chechen social organization during the period
of the traditional society. The scientist and Caucasus expert should be credited for defi ning for the fi rst time the social functions of the taip, the structural units of the Chechen taip and family.
B.K. Dalgat held the view that during the researched period the taip for its social functions receded into the background and the structural units of the taip such as gara, nekqi, ts’a took the dominance in the Chechen social and family living. In Dalgat’s work there can be traced the process of Chechen taip’s genesis with the consideration of landscape and geographical features as well as economic and social factors.
There is a mistaken notion rotated in the academic literature that “a taip was headed by a taipankh’alkhancha – taip’s leader”. B.K. Dalgat supported an opposite view. He wrote “brotherhoods or taips did not have one unifi ed leader”.
Contrary to other researchers, the scholar did not see the power held by the head of the Chechen family as despotic. In his opinion, the head of the family did not possess any special exclusive rights.
The article presents an opinion, which diff ers from the offi cial point of view in the Russian ethnographic literature, on tukhamas a “tribe”, “union of clans” among Chechens. The scholar’s research work has retained its scientifi c and practical value up to the present time.
Bashir Kerimovich Dalgat was a prominent Caucasus scholar of the late 19th– early 20th century, whose scientific heritage has not been appropriately researched and comprehended by social scientists. The article attempts to provide a
summary of Dalgat’s research materials on the Chechen “taip” collected by the scholar during his ethnographic expeditions in the mountainous Chechnya in 1892–1894. Dalgat succeeded in producing academic research of high theoretical and analytical quality on the social living of the Chechens and Ingushes. This includes primarily the contention of the Chechen taip not as a “clannish” institution but a “brotherhood” – a form of the Chechen social organization during the period
of the traditional society. The scientist and Caucasus expert should be credited for defi ning for the fi rst time the social functions of the taip, the structural units of the Chechen taip and family.
B.K. Dalgat held the view that during the researched period the taip for its social functions receded into the background and the structural units of the taip such as gara, nekqi, ts’a took the dominance in the Chechen social and family living. In Dalgat’s work there can be traced the process of Chechen taip’s genesis with the consideration of landscape and geographical features as well as economic and social factors.
There is a mistaken notion rotated in the academic literature that “a taip was headed by a taipankh’alkhancha – taip’s leader”. B.K. Dalgat supported an opposite view. He wrote “brotherhoods or taips did not have one unifi ed leader”.
Contrary to other researchers, the scholar did not see the power held by the head of the Chechen family as despotic. In his opinion, the head of the family did not possess any special exclusive rights.
The article presents an opinion, which diff ers from the offi cial point of view in the Russian ethnographic literature, on tukhamas a “tribe”, “union of clans” among Chechens. The scholar’s research work has retained its scientifi c and practical value up to the present time.
Dalgat B.K., Taip, Genesis, family, the community, the head of the family, clan, tohum