Since ancient times, the towers have attracted the attention of historians, travelers and ethnographers. Being one of the most durable types of structures, they have appeared in the cultures of various peoples over many centuries. These are complex and expensive works of architecture.
In the North Caucasus, towers served both a residential and defensive function, which is why they most often served as clan guards. Due to enemy invasions, most of these structures were not preserved. Some of the towers were family ones. According to custom, the tower should have been built no more than a year, otherwise the family could be considered dysfunctional; It was usually built near a settlement. Early watchtowers (XV–XVII centuries) differed from the ancestral watchtowers in height and location.
Village of Itsari
On the outskirts of the plateau, near the Dagestan village of Itsari, there is a round ancestral watchtower. Locals They built it on the outskirts of the village to protect themselves from attacks from the neighboring community. The tower has a decorative hanging cornice that replicates the hinged loopholes for vertical shelling of the enemy. The entrance is located on the second floor level. The thickness of the walls decreases towards the top. The tower was assembled from chipped stones coated with clay mortar. Small stones were used to level the masonry. This type of construction is typical for Dagestan.
Village of Musrukh
A seven-story ancestral watchtower on a steep mountain slope in the village of Musrukh was built by the Keleb community. It was necessary for protection from tribal communities from the Gidatl valley. The tower, installed in the central part of the village, occupies a dominant position both in it and in the basin of the Keleb Valley. The height of the structure and its placement on a rocky platform provided excellent visibility.
Aul Khulam
In Balkaria, in the upper reaches of the Cherek-Balkarian and Khulamo-Bezengi gorges, towers were built at strategically important points. They were a perfectly thought-out defensive system. The Khulam ancestral watchtower is located above the Khulam village, on the left side of the Khulamo-Bezengi gorge. It was erected on a hard-to-reach horizontal site. It was possible to get to the tower only along a dangerous mountain path, which ended with a barrier wall between the rocks.
Mamiya-Kala Tower
The Khuzruk three-story tower (Mamiya-Kala) was erected on the top of Mount Kala-Basha. The arched entrance is located at the ground floor level. Communication between floors was carried out via ladders through hatches in the interlevel ceilings. Mamiya-Kala has a square base. The walls consist of perfectly adjacent hewn stones coated with a lime mixture. On the walls of each level there are ledges for the interfloor beams. Near the entrance there is a well hollowed out in the wall and lined with stones. Food supplies and fuel were stored in it.
Amirkhan Tower
The Amirkhan Tower near the ancient village of Shkanta is an outpost of the defensive system of the Cherek-Balkarian Gorge. It was built on a five-meter boulder, made of cut stones coated with lime mortar. According to historian I.M. Miziev, the tower consisted of two floors.
Bolat-Kala complex
The main attraction of the village of Upper Balkaria is the Bolat-Kala tower complex, considered the most powerful defensive structure of the Cherek-Balkarian Gorge. Initially it was a single-chamber structure with a fortified barrier wall. Then main tower a two-chamber extension was erected; through its windows and loophole the entire surrounding territory was clearly visible. The entrance to the complex is in a wall opening adjacent to the cliff face. Several wells in the corner of the main tower were used for household needs.
Erzi complex
The Erzi castle complex in the Dzheirakh region of Ingushetia is considered the largest and best preserved. It consists of nine combat, twenty residential and two semi-combat towers. Archaeologists believe that the complex was created from hewn boulders in the 14th–17th centuries. The towers have no foundation, they are located on a rocky terrace, and behind them rise Mountain peaks. Five-tier battle towers almost entirely survived to this day.
Towers as a symbol
Many tower complexes and ancestral watchtowers are also found in the eastern part of Balkaria, near the border with North Ossetia.
The North Caucasian towers symbolize the honor of the clan, unity and courage, being the pinnacle of the construction and architectural skills of the highlanders North Caucasus.
“The builder of the tower, before placing the stone in the wall, turned it a hundred times. And when he found the face of a stone, he placed it so that it looked outward,” says the ancient legend.
Looking at the Ossetian towers, you begin to believe it. Only with such an attitude to work were they able to survive for seven centuries. Not just stand there, but still remain surprisingly level. But, after all, the stones simply lie on top of each other, they are stacked without cement!
2. Savings on building materials can be explained. Firstly, lime, eggs and sour cream, from which the solution was made in those years, still need to be mined in the mountains. Secondly, during the attack, the tower itself was used as a weapon - loose stones were dropped from above onto their heads.
3. We are in the village of Lirsi in the Mamison Gorge. 14 towers, of which seven have survived, and many extensions created a small labyrinth town.
4. Come in and explore, the place is sparsely populated - there are not even trodden paths in the grass.
5. No guards, no tickets, not even “No Trespassing” ribbons or “Do not touch with hands” signs.
6. They lived and defended themselves in the towers. They usually had three or four floors. On the first there are livestock, on the second there is a hearth and a bedroom, above there is a room for guests and storage rooms.
7. Later towers were built with a binder mortar. I climbed into this one from below, where the sheep came in, and the gap above was the door to which the ladder was attached.
8. The towers had everything necessary; they could withstand a long siege and even setting them on fire was useless.
9. But by the 18th century, the Ossetians moved to the plain and the mountainous areas were deserted.
10. Nobody built new ones - they could no longer resist modern weapons. And by that time, the first brick factories had already appeared in Vladikavkaz, significantly simplifying construction.
11. While processing this photo in the evening, I increased the light in the shadows and got scared - there is a head there! But I was all alone inside! Ugh... it's me...
12. Rock cave fortresses are another amazing type of Ossetian structures.
13. Higher in the mountains, in inaccessible places, fortresses were built around caves.
14. Dangerous paths carved into the rocks connected the structures, and the entrance was rope ladders.
15. Dzivgis fortress is the largest in the Caucasus; it could house dozens of soldiers.
16. Here, too, they will tell you a legend. About a cat that was released in the fortress and how it came out through the cave passages on the other side of the ridge.
17. How they scared her that she didn’t come back, how they realized that this was exactly the cat and how someone on the other side was able to meet her, history is silent.
My childhood and adolescence passed in North Ossetia, so I was glad to have the opportunity to go there on a tour. And the program offered was interesting: Kurtatinskoye Gorge, Fiagdon Basin, Dargavs- these are places where shrines and historical monuments of the North Caucasus have been preserved.
We began our acquaintance with the sights of Ossetia with a visit to the Huge Uastirdzhi monument above Ardon. Uastirdzhi is the Ossetian embodiment of St. George the Victorious.
North Ossetia-Alania is the only republic of the North Caucasus, the majority of whose population professes Orthodoxy. And the patron saint of Ossetia is Saint George the Victorious. In the republic there are a huge number of sanctuaries, chapels, churches dedicated to this saint, places where he performed his deeds. As they say, Ossetians do not begin any business without praying to St. George.
I always associate the Caucasus with ancient fortresses and ancestral towers. And I read somewhere that the largest number of these structures have been preserved in the mountains of North Ossetia. Including in the Kurtatinsky Gorge, most famous for its historical and architectural Ossetian monuments.
The first stop in the Kurtatinsky gorge is at the bridge opposite the village of Dzivgis.
In the center of the village, consisting of several modern rural houses, there are the ruins of a tower, and above the village...
It took my breath away - I clung to the steep walls of the gorge impregnable fortress! It looked like a natural continuation of the rocks, so it was not easy to notice it right away and, to its credit, our guide played up the presentation of this ancient monument masterfully: having said that there are many Christian and pagan sanctuaries in the vicinity of the village, he simply said - Look at the rock above the village... . A fleeting tetanus hit everyone, after which it seemed that everyone exhaled at the same time and rushed towards the rock.
According to legend, the Dzivgis fortifications blocked the road to the Kurtatin Gorge for the Persian Shah Abbas in the 16th century, who was moving from Transcaucasia.
The Dzivgis cave fortress is one of the most powerful fortifications not only in Ossetia, but also in the Caucasus. The fortress consists of six buildings attached to the entrances of natural caves located at different heights. The main strengthening is different large sizes and is located on the lower level, access to it is possible via a stone staircase. There was a passage to the rest of the fortress buildings from the neighboring ones along paths carved into the rocks and hanging stairs, which were removed if necessary. Therefore, during the battle, communication between the fortifications was impossible, and each of them was an independent, autonomous center of defense. The function of these small fortifications, built at a height of 10-20 m and accommodating up to a dozen soldiers, was to provide flank cover for the main one. The Dzivgis fortress was seriously damaged during one of the punitive expeditions of the Russian tsarist troops.
Here in the village is located Dzivgisy dzuar(Dzivgisy Uastirdzhy) - Christian temple of the 13th-15th centuries. St. George, crypt burial grounds.
Dzivgis is the first village on the side of the plain, located in the Upper Fiagdon basin, which has long been the center of the Kurtatinsky Gorge. And, having driven away from the village, I could not tear myself away from the window: the snowy peaks of the Greater Caucasus, gray-yellow rocks and green slopes of the basin, Ossetian towers and ruins of fortresses everywhere - the grandeur of what I saw was mesmerizing!
And even the natural background of the excursion minibus did not distract.
The basin of Upper Fiagdon is a world of towers. They were everywhere: in abandoned villages on the slopes of the basin, and in residential roadside yards.
It was noticeable that some towers were being restored.
The beginning of tower construction dates back to the early Middle Ages - to the times of the Alan era. Perhaps even to an earlier period. The typical style of the Caucasian Ossetian tower with its characteristic features developed in the late Middle Ages, approximately in the 17th-18th centuries.
Towers were built as defensive, combat, and often residential buildings. In addition to purely military significance during raids by invaders, many towers in North Ossetia appeared as a means of protection against blood feud.
Ancestral towers were revered as shrines because they were considered the habitat of the holy spirit. Family towers were a stronghold and guarantor of the integrity and continuity of the clan and family name. The role of the towers in Ossetia was so important that over time they became objects of cult.
Behind the mining village of Verkhniy Fiagdon (the mines are now closed), the construction of the Alansky Holy Dormition is being completed monastery on the site of a 19th century church. The monastery buildings are stylized as traditional Byzantine architecture and are closely adjacent to the ruins of medieval Ossetian buildings.
This concludes our cursory examination of the Upper Fiagdon valley. I would like to see more, to get to the ruins of abandoned villages, but I cannot grasp the immensity... We still have Dargavs and his legendary City Dead!
The road from the Kurtatinsky gorge to the Gizeldon valley, in which the village of Dargavs is located, for us, residents of the plains, presented a lot of thrills and made us tightly cling to the arms of the chair!
Village Dargavs quite large, but there is practically no permanent population. This is due to the collapse of the Kolka glacier in September 2002, which destroyed the road leading to the village, and Dargavs was left without communication with the outside world.
Dargavs is famous for its battle towers and the “city of the dead”.
The Dargavsky necropolis is the largest in the North Caucasus (95 above-ground and semi-ground crypts). It is sometimes compared to the Valley of the Pharaohs in Egypt.
Some experts associate the creation of the “city of the dead” with the terrible plague epidemic, when the population of Ossetia decreased from 200 thousand to 16 thousand people. But research shows that the necropolis functioned from the 9th to the 18th centuries.
Unusual architectural forms in the poor Middle Ages gave rise to the most unusual assumptions about the creators of the necropolis. They called Mongols, Nogais, and aborigines - Kobans. But now it is considered established that the original builders were Alans, the ancestors of the Ossetians. Archaeological finds confirm that since the 6th century these places were densely populated by Alans. But this did not eliminate many mysteries. It is surprising that the dead were often placed in small boats, which is not found among any other people of the Caucasus; sometimes an oar was placed nearby, despite the fact that there are no navigable rivers in Ossetia. The crypts were used for a very long time and became the final refuge for entire generations of highlanders.
It so happened that by the final stage of the excursion my fellow travelers were apparently tired. Most of them did not go to the necropolis, preferring to explore it from the foot of the mountain. Therefore, I was lucky to be in this place alone. I had with me a good piece of Ossetian cheese pie and some cognac.
I sat among the crypts, sipped cognac and snacked on a pie. I looked at the valley below and the mountains surrounding it. It was calm and peaceful. I am sure that the spirits of those resting here did not consider my liberties to be sacrilege.
Some information about North Ossetia-Alania
Slightly less than half of the territory of North Ossetia-Alania is located in the mountainous area, north of the Main Caucasus Range, on the Side, Skalisty, Pastbishchny and Lesist ridges that lie parallel to it. The ridges are cut by gorges, the main of which are Daryalskoye, Genaldonskoye, Kurtatinskoye, Kassarskoye, Alagirskoye and Digorskoye.The republic borders: in the north, where the Terek-Kuma Plain stretches, with Stavropol Territory; In the west along the Kabardian inclined plain with Kabardino-Balkaria, in the east along the Ossetian inclined plain with Ingushetia, and in the south Ossetia’s neighbor is Georgia. The border here is the mountains of the Main and Side ranges.
North Ossetia is located on the same parallel with Bulgaria, Central Italy And Southern France.
When I was very little, I had a book by Yu. Libedinsky “The exiled hero, his friends and enemies.” This is how I met the wonderful tribe of Narts, dashing both in battles and at feasts, responding with a blow of a sword to a blow of a sword and friendship for friendship... And it just so happened that for a long time I believed that playing backgammon meant a little to be Soslan and Syrdon, Uryzmag and Khamyts... Then, of course, I figured it out... Backgammon is a fascinating ancient game, widespread in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia...
In the territory where Ossetians live there are a large number of architectural monuments, the most prominent of which are medieval towers and castles, widespread in the mountainous area.
The beginning of tower construction dates back to the early Middle Ages - to the times of the Alan era. Perhaps even to an earlier period. The typical style of the Caucasian Ossetian tower with its characteristic features developed in the late Middle Ages, approximately in the 17th-18th centuries.
Defensive structures of the Ossetians are divided into combat (“mæsyg”) and semi-combat residential towers (“gænakh”), castles (“galuan”), rock and cave fortresses, and defensive walls. Each of these types of monuments is characterized by certain methods of construction, a special layout and a specific purpose. Ossetian craftsmen were invited to build towers and other structures in Balkaria, Georgia and other regions of the Caucasus.
In Ossetia, more than three hundred towers of varying degrees of preservation have been noted, the best preserved are the military towers, and the residential towers are in much worse condition. A large number of towers and other fortifications were destroyed or damaged during the punitive expedition of General Abkhazov in Ossetia in 1830. The destruction of the Shanayevs' tower in the village of Dargavs, three towers in the village of Chmi, the villages of Barzikau, Lats, Khidikus, Ualasykh, 10 in total has been documented settlements were burned and destroyed. Also, Ossetian towers and fortresses were massively destroyed during various punitive expeditions to South Ossetia.
Kosta Khetagurov mentions the sequential destruction of Ossetian towers in his ethnographic essay “Osoba” (1894):
Currently, in the Nara Basin, and in all of Ossetia, there is not a single tower that has been preserved intact; all of them, by order of the Russian government, were destroyed in the forties and fifties of the last century.
In the depths of the Kurtatinsky gorge, on one of the plateaus of the southern slope of the Kariu-khoh rock massif, at an altitude of about 170 m from the foot of the mountain, there is unique monument middle ages, architectural complex Tsmiti village.
The hand of time has erased the traces of the wealth and splendor of this ancient Ossetian settlement, but the Ossetians have preserved the legend that there was a rich city here, safe from all predatory raids, and serving great place for trade.
In the village of Tsmiti, ancient military and residential towers have been preserved. They were built on three floors. The first served as a stable for livestock, the second housed the family, and the third was used as a guard or defensive structure.
Ancestral towers were revered as shrines because they were considered the habitat of the holy spirit. Family towers were a stronghold and guarantor of the integrity and continuity of the clan and family name. The role of the towers in Ossetia was so important that over time they became objects of cult.
👁 Do we book the hotel through Booking as always? Booking is not the only thing in the world that exists (🙈 for a huge percentage from hotels - we pay!) I have been practicing for a long time
A very interesting and informative article about towers.
Originally posted by gvernikov at Ingush ancestral towers
And towers of castles on the rocks
They looked menacingly through the fogs -
At the gates of the Caucasus on the clock
Guard giants!Mikhail Lermontov. Daemon.
This always happens on trips like this: you find yourself in one place or another unprepared, you are delighted, you take photographs, and only then, upon returning home, you begin to collect information about what you saw.
This fully affected the trip to the ancestral towers in the Dzheirakh Gorge, which was kindly organized for us in Ingushetia Kaloy Akhilgov . Despite the obvious uniqueness of these places and architectural monuments, there is not as much information about them on the Internet as I expected, and almost all materials are concentrated on Ingush sites. This is nothing more than a consequence of the unrealized tourism potential and the status of the closed border zone in which the Dzheyrakho-Assinovsky historical and architectural museum-reserve is located.
A little history of ancestral towers
According to modern historians, the massive construction of stone towers in the mountainous regions of modern Ingushetia dates back to the 16th-17th centuries.
To climb to the towers, you need to overcome a difficult path, winding along steep cliffs (however, our Seva from Kinokruzhka, armed with a camera, overcame this path without any problems). This arrangement of buildings excluded an unexpected attack. Moreover, the inhabitants of the castle could, on occasion, successfully resist the attackers, withstanding a long siege of the fortress. From mouth to mouth, descendants pass on a legend about a woman who, during the days of the siege, saved small children in cradles from fire and attacking enemies. The legend says that she miraculously managed to make several transitions from one tower of the fortress to another using a rope left over from the suspension bridge destroyed by the besiegers.
The place where Vovnushki was built deserves a separate story. This is an example of mountain nature - the fast and cold mountain river Assa, surrounded by thickets, flows at the foot of the high rocky Tsoreilam ridge. Assa arises from springs and melt waters of snowfields at an altitude of 2700 meters. It has many tributaries and rivers flowing into it, such as the Galgai-Che and Guloikhi rivers. On a shady slope mountain range A dense forest grows, and on the sunny side, where the towers of Vovnushka Castle stand, only individual trees stubbornly cling to the stones. The entire area in which Vovnushki is located is called the Targim Basin. The bottom of the Targim Basin lies at an altitude of 1000-1100 m above sea level. This basin, like the Armkhi River valley, is located in the “rain shadow” zone. It receives significantly less precipitation than in the northern foothills area. High mountain range blocks it from rainfall northern winds, which leave all the moisture on the northern slopes of the ridges and enter the basin in the form of downward - dry and warm air currents. Therefore, dry and sunny weather prevails here.
By the way, one of the employees of the Dzheirakho-Assinovsky reserve, who accompanied us on the trip, is a direct descendant of the Ozdoevs, who erected a castle in Vovnushki in the Middle Ages.
It can also be noted that there is at least one Ingush who is building a tower today. Since childhood, fascinated by the history of his homeland, artist Murad Polonkoev depicted towers in almost every painting. And one day he put down the easel and took up the trowel. It took ten years and six Kamaz trucks to build the tower. mountain stones. We wish Murad good luck and successful completion of construction!
Tourism in Ingushetia
