Circassian Family Life
Historical familial structures
Classical Circassian society went through two phases of gender domination.
There is some evidence that the society was initially matriarchal, later
transforming to patriarchy when the physically more powerful males sought
to overturn the tables. According to Maxime
Kovalevsky, there were some aspects of the customs and traditions
of the Circassians that could only be explained by assuming an antecedent
matriarchal society.
¹º
He constructed a model of Circassian society in which confraternities were
the basic units of social structure. These prescribed exogamous marriage,
and the ‘bought’ bride became a communal possession. Circassian custom had
it that a widow was obliged to remarry one of the brothers of her deceased
husband. In Kovalevsky’s model, the widow was
only able to remarry outside the group if she could redeem her price. Otherwise,
any member of the confraternity could claim her. The offspring of the union
were considered those of the deceased.
In the seminal tale ‘The Council of the Matriarchs’ of the Nart Epic,
we learn that:
… in the olden times, there was the Council of
Matriarchs, which was made up of wise and far-sighted mature ladies. The
Council discussed the day-to-day issues of the young Narts, and legislated
laws and customs by which the youth had to abide in their mundane life. The
Council members relied on their long experience and perspicacity in formulating
relevant edicts.
In other tales, marking the transformation to patriarchism
, the formidable Nart Nesrenzchach’e expressed
his refusal to obey and swear allegiance to Lady Satanay, imploring the Narts
to appoint a male leader.
Kovalevsky cited the legend of the Amazons in Circassian oral tradition
as the record of transition to patriarchy. The Amazons and Circassians had
been engaged in continual war. One day, the former resolved to enter into
parleys with the latter. The queen of the Amazons spent a few hours in Prince
Toulmey’s tent, and came out intent on putting
an end to the futile conflict. She declared that war was over and she announced
her betrothal to her erstwhile adversary. She advised her followers to follow
suit and pair with Circassian warriors. They took her counsel—and there an
end to matriarchal rule. In Kovalevsky’s estimation,
the temporary union between groups of men and women of different societies
preceded the patriarchal custom of life-long marriage consecrated by vows
of fidelity. He considered male domination as a later development in Circassian
society.
Some Western travellers of the 18th and early 19th centuries commented on
the looseness of sexual morals in Circassian society, being unable to appreciate
fully the complex social processes at work. According to them, for a married
woman to have a lover, sch’ase, was not
considered as a shame. In fact, husbands felt proud and were flattered that
other men admired their wives and took interest in them.
Incest was prohibited a very long time ago. The Nart Epos preserved
ancient tales that provide a vestige of those far away days when this practice
was not yet tabooed. Circassian traditions took the prohibition to the extreme.
Prospective couples were supposed not to be related up to the seventh forefather.
Many men chose their partners from outside the village. It would seem that
the ancient Circassians were aware of the detrimental effects of close-relation
marriages.
Traditional family life
The Circassian clan was not divided into nuclear families. The normal familial
unit was the extended household consisting of a father and his married sons,
winezexes. The head of the family was
loath to allow sons-in-law to demur in his house, in accordance with the
saying ‘Malhx’esch,
zhip’ew wineghw wimisch
’’ (Say not ‘He’s my son-in-law’, and take him into your house). All
obeyed the eldest member of the clan.
Avoidance customs entailed the prohibition of association of some members
of the same family. Siblings avoided fraternizing in private and in public.
If a person approached a group of people and he saw one of his brothers in
the group, then, according to seniority of age, he either walked away from
the group, or joined it, whilst the junior bid his leave. This custom was
sanctioned to lessen sibling rivalry. Some vestiges of this custom can still
be evidenced in the
A man avoided being seen in public with his wife at all costs, although the
severity of proscription eased with old age. Females walked behind their
male co-ambulators. It was unseemly to talk about
a man’s wife in his presence or inquire after her health. A man was loath
to call his wife by her name in the presence of strangers or household members.
He never mentioned her in conversations with outsiders. A newly married man
had to devise ingenious plans to visit the bedroom of his bride.
A wife did not sit in the presence of her spouse unless he gave her permission
to do so. She never called her parents-in-law, husband, or her brother-in-law
by their names. In the last case, she used a pet name,
pschiqwets’e, to refer to him, for example, as ‘
Dighets’ik’w’ ‘Little Sun’. It was a secretive appellation that
she never divulged outside the family circle. A saying prevalent in olden
times was ‘Pschiqwets’e
mix’wame, qidzhei’e
schexwr!’—‘Tell us your secret, if it isn’t the pet name of your
brother-in-law!’ Among the upper classes, it was considered a mark of courtesy
that when the names of a women’s husband, father, or elder brothers, were
mentioned, she stood up. Mothers usually used shortened forms of their children’s
names to call them by. In some cases, totally different names of a more childish
nature were used.
The ordering of Circassian personal names reflected the tribal structure
of a society which laid more emphasis on a person’s clannish background rather
than his individuality. Thus, the name was transposed, with the family name
coming first and the first name last! In less formal settings, the
patronym took precedence over the first name. For example, in the
tale ‘Sosriqwe Fetches Fire,’ some Narts were
addressed by invoking the patronym in the first
instance—son of Ashe, Ashemez, son of
X’imisch, Baterez. A class of surnames
has a patronymic form obtained by adding the suffix -
qwe ‘son’ to a personal name, e.g. Zhiloqwe
, Hevzhoqwe, Themoqwe
. Another onomastic nicety had to be observed.
When the said suffix was added to a nominal stem, it was the preceding vowel
which indicated whether the compound was a personal or family name. An -
i- marked the former, -o- the other. For example,
Ch’ischiqwe, son of
Ch’isch, vs. Ch’ischo
qwe, clan or family of Ch’isch;
Ghwch’epschiqwe vs. Ghwch’epsch
oqwe (J. Kokov, 1983, p6).
In the Soviet period, Russianized forms of family
names gained importance, and even supremacy, especially in the official spheres.
These forms were standardized, and were usually made up of the Russian patronymic
-ov//-ova suffixed to the nearest
Russian renderings of the original names. In works on
onomastics, such as J. Kokov’s, Circassian
surnames are usually followed by their Russian versions. Thus, two designations
were associated with each person, one ‘ethnic,’ used within the national
group, the other formal. This legacy,
still prevalent today, makes it almost impossible for an outsider to recognize
nationality from the name.
The relationship between father and children, especially his sons, was characterized
by sternness, bordering on severity, on the part of the father and absolute
obedience on the part of the progeny. The father did not show any emotion
towards his offspring except to vent his anger on them whenever untoward
behaviour needed to be rectified. Holding and fondling them was out of the
question. He never called them by their names in the presence of strangers.
A son was forbidden to sit in his father’s presence. He only spoke when he
was asked to by the patriarch. A small boy was not allowed to make his presence
in front of his grandfather or his uncles until he had reached manhood.
When there were no guests in the house, the head of the family ate first
either on his own or with his grandchildren. Nobody else was allowed to sit
with him. When he had his fill and left the table, the other members of the
household would have their meal. Such was the reverence for the elders.
Each family used to have a unique symbol, damighe
, which was cut out on belongings and used as a decoration pattern and to
brand cattle. No family was allowed to use another’s. The allocation of these
emblems was the prerogative of the Council of the Nobles. These signs were
first found in the Bosporan kingdom, dated to
the first century AD, inscribed on the walls of underground tombs or on ritual
objects. It is known that the Sarmatians adopted these symbols and used them
to brand their personal possessions, the ritualistic significance being lost.
Later they took them to
Despite the relative dominance of the male sex, women in Circassian society
in general enjoyed a relatively good position, perhaps unparalleled by any
other ‘Eastern’ people. Girls were not secluded, but enjoyed most of the
pastimes of the boys. They were neither shy nor ill at ease in other people’s
company, and they served guests and strangers. A woman was free to choose
her marriage partner. Coercion was rare. The father did not usually interfere
in the matter, the mother making the proper arrangements with her daughter.
There were exceptions as there always is. A suitor was allowed to visit a
maid’s house so that the couple would have the chance to get to know one
another before making the binding decision. Divorce was rare and the eastern
habit of taking second and more wives was frowned upon.
The newspaper Segodnya published results
of research on the lives and problems of Russian women in a special supplement
in 1994. It was found that the position of women in Kabardino-Balkaria and
the
Circassian society placed a great premium on lean female figure, and in order
to ensure that girls attained this ideal they were fed sparingly, their diet
consisting of milk and boiled millet cakes. On the negative side, the slave
trade, in place from time immemorial up to the conquest, had detracted from
the status of women, at least those who belonged to the lower classes.
Charity & social work
Within each clan or fraternity co-operation was essential to maintain a strong
community. Social work and voluntary institutions were well developed. Mutual
help, the backbone of a social safety net, ensured that the poorest families
had decent abodes to live in. In times of calamities, people were never at
a loss for places at which they would be put up in comfort. This mutual aid
system was, and still is, prevalent in the whole
After the rites associated with a new harvest, people were at liberty to
donate part of the crop to the poor. This obsolete custom was called
sejit. According to a defunct custom called
chirbishghezh (literally: ‘adobe drying’), some Sundays were devoted
to manufacture of adobe. Another tradition of note was
sch’ihexw, which was not unlike an American bee. Residents of
a neighbourhood volunteered a day for house building, usually to accommodate
indigent families. As befits a martial society, every member of which was
expected to carry arms and defend his homestead, poorer residents of a community
were given assistance in procuring personal weapons.
Tsarist & Soviet periods
During the Tsarist period, no attempts were made by the Russians to undermine
the traditional structure of the Circassian family, and no substantive changes
were evinced.
The Soviet system brought on a new set of rules concerning the structure
of the ideal Soviet family. All people were expected to converge to this
paragon. The age of consent was fixed at 18 for men and 16 for women. Marriage
was contracted at a registry office with a lay person officiating. Divorce
was initially easy to obtain. However, lax rules gave unscrupulous men the
opportunity to gratify their carnal desires quickly and cheaply. The sanctity
of married life was compromised. However, bowing to public outcry, authorities
made divorce procedures more stringent.
During the first few years of communist rule, the family system remained
intact, that is until the onset of collectivization in 1928-29. This period
was characterized by great upheavals. Some aspects of traditional village
life were disrupted, and the villagers were forced to work in kolkhoz and
sovkhoz farms. Those who resisted the new system
were dealt with harshly. The Bakhsan uprising
of 1928 was a direct consequence of the cruel measures of implementation.
Many people were accused of being kulaks (well-to-do peasants exploiting
other people’s toil) and were either executed or exiled. Women were expected
to shoulder the effort of building the new utopia but without being given
commensurate political power. The Soviet system was strictly a patriarchal
affair.
Industrialization and concomitant growth of the cities attracted a part of
the rural population, which had to adapt to a new way of life. Mixed marriages
were not common, the pattern being for Circassian men to marry Russian women.
It was very rare for Circassian women to marry Russians on both religious
and traditional grounds, for they were expected to be, and actually acted
as bastions of ethnic customs and traditions. Some ambitious Circassian men
opted for Russian spouses to improve their chances of promotion. This is
a typical pattern of intermarriage between two groups in which one feels,
or is made to feel, inferior by the other dominant one.
Of the 1,250 marriages recorded in Kabardino-Balkaria last year, less than
40 involved members of different clans (Zarina
Kanukova [Qaniqwe
], ‘Forbidden Love in Balkaria’, in Institute
for War & Peace Reporting, no. 25,
The new ideology was inimical to Circassian traditions. Some customs were
vehemently attacked as throwbacks to the dark ages of feudalism. Russian
researchers picked some aspects of social life and denigrated them as reactionary.
Avoidance customs were particularly targeted, and papers were published denouncing
them. Despite the offensive to erode their traditions, and the many evils
introduced by the Communist system, like alcoholism and crime, the Circassians
managed to preserve many aspects of their traditional way of life, especially
in the countryside.
One of the curious results of the October Revolution was that many Circassian
family names were registered as a result of renaming. According to J.
Kokov, there were 2,000 Kabardian family names in the three Circassian
republics. Some families boast of a few thousand members.
In addition, a new pattern
of familial attachment emerged in which all bearers of the same surname considered
themselves as one clan, even if they were not blood-relatives. Strict exogamy
was observed no matter how distant the relationship. In the relative freedom
of Glasnost years, large families began to organize themselves to foster
co-operation.
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