The Hinukh ( Hinukh: гьинухъес ''hinuqes'', av, гьинухъесел , translit=hinuqesel) are a people of

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; rus, Дагеста́н, , dəɡʲɪˈstan, links=yes), officially the Republic of Dagestan (russian: Респу́блика Дагеста́н, Respúblika Dagestán, links=no), is a republic of Russia situated in the North C ...

living in 2 villages: Genukh,

Tsuntinsky District Tsuntinsky District (russian: Цунти́нский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #16 and municipalLaw #6 district (raion), one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. It is located in the southwest of the republic. The are ...

- their 'parent village' and Novomonastyrskoe,

Kizlyarsky District Kizlyarsky District (russian: Кизля́рский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #16 and municipalLaw #6 district (raion), one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. It is located in the north of the republic. The area of ...

- where they settled later and live together with Avars and

Dargins Dargins or Dargwa (, ''darganti'') are a Northeast Caucasian native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus, and who make up the second largest ethnic group in the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan. They speak the Dargwa language. The ...

and also in the cities of

. They are being assimilated by the

Caucasian Avars The Avars, also known as ''Maharuls'' (Avar language, Avar: , , "mountaineers") are a Northeast Caucasian languages, Northeast Caucasian ethnic group. The Avars are the largest of several ethnic groups living in the Russian republic of Dagestan ...

History

Etnonym "''hinukh''" comes from the word ''hino''/''hinu'' - "the road" (

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

''-kh''/''-kho'' form

essive case In grammar, the essive case, or similaris case, (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case.O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller. "Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure." Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. 6th ...

- "at the road", "on the road").

Bezhta people The Bezhta (also Kapuchi) are an Andi–Dido people living in the Tsuntinsky region in southwestern Dagestan. In the 1930s along with the rest of the Andi-Dido peoples they were classified as Avars. However, some people identified themselves as ...

call them "гьинухъаса" (''hinukhasa''),

Georgians The Georgians, or Kartvelians (; ka, ქართველები, tr, ), are a nation and indigenous Caucasian ethnic group native to Georgia and the South Caucasus. Georgian diaspora communities are also present throughout Russia, Turkey, G ...

- "ლეკები" (''lekebi''), "დიდოელები" (''didoelebi''),

Tsez people The Tsez (also known as the Dido or the Didoi) are a North Caucasian ethnic group. Their unwritten language, also called Tsez or Dido, belongs to the Northeast Caucasian group with some 15,354 speakers.Olson, James Stuart; Pappas, Lee Brigance ...

- "гьинузи" (''hinuzi''). In the official documents and the censuses the Hinukh didn't appear as an independent ethnic group. After the forcible deportation of the Vainakh people and disbandment of the Chechen–Ingush ASSR, they were (together with some other

Avar–Andi–Dido peoples The Avars, also known as ''Maharuls'' ( Avar: , , "mountaineers") are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group. The Avars are the largest of several ethnic groups living in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The Avars reside in the North Caucasus betw ...

) resettled in

Vedensky District Vedensky District (russian: Веде́нский райо́н; ce, Веданан кӏошт, ''Vedanan khoşt'') is an administrativeDecree #500 and municipalLaw #14-RZ district (raion), one of the fifteen in the Chechen Republic, Russia. It is ...

which was given to

Dagestan ASSR The Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic av, Дагъистаналъул Автономияб Советияб Социалистияб Жумгьурият az, Дағыстан Мухтар Совет Сосиалист Республи ...

. After the

rehabilitation Rehabilitation or Rehab may refer to: Health * Rehabilitation (neuropsychology), therapy to regain or improve neurocognitive function that has been lost or diminished * Rehabilitation (wildlife), treatment of injured wildlife so they can be retur ...

of the

Vainakh peoples The Nakh peoples, also known as ''Vainakh peoples'' (Chechen/Ingush: , apparently derived from Chechen , Ingush "our people"; also Chechen-Ingush), are a group of Caucasian peoples identified by their use of the Nakh languages and other cult ...

in 1958 they settled back in their native lands. In 1960s the population of the Hinukh people was estimated to be 200.

2002 Russian Census The Russian Census of 2002 (russian: Всеросси́йская пе́репись населе́ния 2002 го́да) was the first census of the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, carried out on October 9 through Oc ...

showed their number as 531. They were considered as a subgroup of

Avar people Avar(s) or AVAR may refer to: Peoples and states * Avars (Caucasus), a modern Northeast Caucasian-speaking people in the North Caucasus, Dagestan, Russia **Avar language, the modern Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Avars of the North C ...

in this census.

2010 Russian Census The Russian Census of 2010 (russian: Всеросси́йская пе́репись населе́ния 2010 го́да) was the second census of the Russian Federation population after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the ...

registered 433 Hinukh, nearly all living in

Religion

The Hinukh people are overwhelmingly

Sunni Muslims Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...

. They

converted to Islam Religious conversion is the adoption of a set of beliefs identified with one particular religious denomination to the exclusion of others. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliatin ...

possibly in the late 18th century, through the

mountain guides A mountain guide is a specially trained and experienced professional mountaineer who is certified by local authorities or mountain guide associations. They are considered to be high-level experts in mountaineering, and are hired to instruct or ...

from the Free Community of Gidatl and

Khunzakh Khunzakh ( av, Хунзахъ, , russian: Хунзах) is a rural locality (a '' selo'') and the administrative center of Khunzakhsky District in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia, located in the North Caucasus mountains above sea level. Populati ...

and the

who were already

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

Language

The

Hinukh language The Hinuq language (autonym: гьинузас мец ''hinuzas mec'', also known as Hinukh, Hinux, Ginukh, or Ginux) is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Tsezic subgroup. It is spoken by about 200 to 500 people, the Hinukhs, in the Tsuntinsk ...

is a

Northeast Caucasian language The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a language family, family of languages spoken in the Republics of Russia, Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and ...

of the Tsezic subgroup. Beside their native

, many also speak Avar, Tsez,

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

and often also other languages of the region. The first information about Archi language was in a letter from

Peter von Uslar Baron Peter von Uslar (, ''Pjotr Karlovič Uslar'') ( — () was a Russian general, engineer and linguist of German descent, known for his research of languages and ethnography of peoples of Caucasus. Biography Peter von Uslar was born in Kur ...

Franz Anton Schiefner Franz Anton Schiefner (June 18, 1817 – November 16, 1879) was a Baltic German linguist and tibetologist. Schiefner was born to a German-speaking family in Reval (Tallinn), Estonia, then part of Russian Empire. His father was a merchant who had e ...

dated 1865, where he writes about a special language in Inukho ''

aul An aul (; ce, oil; russian: аул) is a type of fortified village or town found throughout the Caucasus mountains and Soviet Central Asia, Central Asia. The word itself is of Turkic origin and simply means ''village'' in many Turkic language ...

'' (''i.e.'' Hinukh). The first written material about

was a list of 16 words with their counterparts in

Tsez language Tsez, also known as Dido (Tsez: () or ()), is a Northeast Caucasian language with about 15,000 speakers (15,354 in 2002) spoken by the Tsez, a Muslim people in the mountainous Tsunta District of southwestern Dagestan in Russia. The name is sai ...

, given by the Belorussian ethnographer and folklorist Aleksandr Serzhputovkiy in his work about the

in 1916. Linguist

Nicholas Marr Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (, ''Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr''; , ''Nikoloz Iak'obis dze Mari''; — 20 December 1934) was a Georgian-born historian and linguist who gained a reputation as a scholar of the Caucasus during the 1910s before embarking o ...

classified

as an independent language, but erroneously described it as a language "between Avar and

Dido Dido ( ; , ), also known as Elissa ( , ), was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage (located in modern Tunisia), in 814 BC. In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (t ...

languages". It was classified as a dialect of the

by the linguists D.S. Imnaishvili and E.S. Lomtadze. The Hinukh people and

were not in the list of the ethnic groups and languages of

for a long time. They appeared only in the second edition of the ''

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

''.

References

*Wixman, Ron. ''Peoples of the USSR''. p. 74. {{Peoples of the Caucasus Ethnic groups in Dagestan Muslim communities of Russia Peoples of the Caucasus