Khevsurs

Khevsureti is a region in the north of Georgia, Caucasus, wich is inhabited since hundreds of years by the people called Khevsurs. The Khevsurs are with no doubt Georgians and they are orthodox christians with a lot of pre-christian archaic traditions in their life and religion. The famous German ethnologe Gustav Radde travelled Khevsureti in 1876 and after and published 1878 a book "The Khevsurs and their homeland " in wich he first collected all available
information about the Khevsurs and their beautiful homeland. (Radde, Gustav, Die Chewsuren und ihr Land . Kassel, 1878.)
I met the Khevsurs first in Autumn 1996, when a Khevsur Jago Arabuli happend to
be the "Tamada" in a feast in Telavi in Eastern Georgia, Kakheti. What did I wonder, when "my" first Khevsur spoke fluently German to me. We got immediatly friends and since that I am a friend of Khevsureti and his unique people. I want to thank all Khevsurs, wich I met during the last years, wich helped me in various situations, wich had been hospital to me on any occasion.

Khevsurian friends


Armazi


Lagaza from Dshuta (sometimes written Juta)


Sumbata from Roshka


Murgwar from Ardoti with one of his daughters


Vasha and his brother Kviria from Shatili


At Atengenoba-feast Roshka


A Khevsur with his traditional Dshokha

The Sno-Valley

View from the Sno-Valley to the mountains of Khevsureti

Khevsureti Location

On Kists, Chechens, Tushs, Khevsurs and Pshaws

A profound history of the Kists from Pankisi with very interesting passages on the other Highlanders of the Northern and Southern Slopes of the Caucasus a found in the thrilling work Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge: An Ethnographic Survey
by Shorena Kurtsikidze and Vakhtang Chikovani from the University of California, Berkeley

Read the full work here http://tinyurl.com/8cw2w Here is a small exerpt:

"Historically, the Georgian highlander societies of the Khevsureti, Pshavi, and Tusheti were autonomous from the Georgian kings. These societies were regarded as borderland-dwellers and were not included in the administrative-territorial divisions of feudal Georgia. In these official administrative units, local princes (vassals to the king) governed and the general population lived in serfdom. The situation of the borderland-dwellers was entirely different. These inhabitants of the southern slopes of Caucasian mountain range were under the direct protection of the Georgian kings. They were free of any taxes. The major duties of these societies were protecting Georgia’s northern borders from invasion and participating in the military operations of the Georgian king. In return they had administrative and religous autonomy. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in order to protect its southern borders, the Russian administration organized settlements of Cossacks in the region of the Tergi River. The population of Pshavi, Khevsureti, and Tusheti played a similar role on the southern slopes of the Caucasian mountain range. Amazingly, one 19 th century traveler compared the Khevsurs to the old inhabitants of Zaporozhie (i.e., the ancestors of the Cossacks). Many Khevsurs and Tush today work as the northern border patrol in the Georgian military."