Bats people


The Bats people or the Batsbi are Nakh-speaking Tushetians in the country of Georgia. They are also known as the Ts’ova-Tush after the Ts’ova Gorge in the historic Georgian mountain region of Tusheti. The group should not be confused with the neighbouring Kists – also a Nakh-speaking people who live in the nearby Pankisi Gorge.

Language and customs

Part of the community still retains its own Bats language, "batsbur mott", which has adopted many Georgian loan-words and grammatical rules and is mutually unintelligible with the two other Nakh languages, Chechen and Ingush. As Prof. Joanna Nichols put it, ' language is related to Chechen and Ingush roughly as Czech is related to Russian not belong to vai naakh nor their language to vai mott, though any speaker of Chechen or Ingush can immediately tell that the language is closely related and can understand some phrases of it. The Batsbi have not traditionally followed Vainakh customs or law, and they consider themselves Georgians.' Batsbur language is unwritten and the Batsbi have used Georgian as a language of literacy and trade for centuries.
The renowned Georgian ethnographer Sergi Makalatia wrote in his study of Tusheti that "the Tsova-Tush speak their own language, which is related to Chechen and Ingush. This language has, however, borrowed many words from Georgian; the Tsova-Tush speak it both at home and among each other. Everybody knows the Tsova language. It is shameful not to speak it. Children start speaking Tsova-Tush and learn Georgian later."
Nowadays, all Batsbi speak Georgian. Only a handful speak Batsbur with any kind of proficiency.
The Batsbi have retained very little of their separate cultural traits, and their customs and traditions now resemble those of other Eastern Georgian mountaineers, particularly those of the Tush.

Debate over ethnic origins

The origins of the Bats are not so clear, and there are various theories. As the Estonian scholar Ants Viires points out in his Red Book, it is actually two separate disputes: the first being whether it was Nakh tribes or Old Georgians that inhabited Tusheti first, the second being from which the Bats are descended.

Descent from 16th century Ingush migrants

Some scholars, such as Caucasus linguist Johanna Nichols, argue that the Batsbi crossed the Greater Caucasus range from Ingushetia in the seventeenth century and eventually settled in Tusheti, and that they are therefore a tribe of Ingush origin which retained their faith after the Mongolic invasion and were not Islamized like their mostly Pagan and Orthodox Christian population.

Descent from the South Caucasian Nakh tribes

Others hold that they are descended from ancient Nakh tribes inhabiting the region. Caucasus historian Amjad Jaimoukha argues that there was once a larger ethnic group in Kakheti called the "Kakh" in Old Georgian, who he believes called themselves "Kabatsa" and were "Tushians of Nakh extraction". Jaimoukha notes that according to an 18th-century Georgian historian named Vakhushti, the Kakh considered other confirmed Nakh peoples as their kin.
Another theory is that the Georgian name may be linked to the Tsov, who were claimed by the Georgian historian Melikishvilli to have been Nakh and ruled over the Kingdom of Sophene in Urartu who were apparently forcefully moved to the region around Erebuni, a region linked by some to Nakh peoples by place names and various historiography.

Descent from Old Georgian tribes

Ants Viires also notes that there are theories involving the Bats being descended from Old Georgian tribes who adopted a Nakh language. According to this theory, the Batsbi are held to have originated from Georgian pagan tribes who fled the Christianization being implemented by the Georgian monarchy. A couple of these tribes are thought to have adopted a Nakh language as a result of contact with Nakh peoples.

Tsovata and migration to Kakheti

The Batsbi's villages in the Ts'ova Gorge were Ts'aro, Shavts'qala, Nazarta, Nadirta, Mozarta, Indurta, Sagirta and Etelta. Each was inhabited by one or several extended families who believed they shared a common ancestor. In the early nineteenth century, following the destruction of two of their villages by landslides and an outbreak of the plague, the Batsbi abandoned their eight villages in the Ts'ova Gorge in western Tusheti and began to migrate down to the lowlands on the left bank of the Alazani river in western Kakheti.
A significant proportion of the village's women work in Europe and in America, sending money home to the village. Many men still work as shepherds or cowherds, most of them wintering the animals in the Shiraki lowlands and then taking them up to summer pastures in Tusheti.
According to a study written and published by Prof. Roland Topshishvili as part of the University of Frankfurt's ECLING project, the Batsbi only lived in temporary dwellings around Alvani in winter. In the summer, the men and their families would lead their flocks of sheep up to summer pastures around Tbatana and in Tsovata, returning to Alvani in the autumn.
Prof. Joanna Nichols also wrote about the migration of the Batsbi in her article on "The Origin of the Chechen and Ingush":
Batsbi tradition as recorded by Desheriev preserves memory of a two-stage descent: first, abandonment of the original highland area in northern Tusheti, settling of villages lower in the mountains, and a period of transhumance plus permanent descents of a few families; then, complete abandonment of the highlands and year-round settlement in the lowlands after a flood destroyed one of the secondary mountain villages in the early nineteenth century. That is, Batsbi lowland outposts were established by a combination of transhumance and individual resettlements, and some time later there was a sizable migration into an established outpost.

Most of the Batsbi currently live in the village of Zemo Alvani in the eastern Georgian province of Kakheti, close to the town of Akhmeta. Around half of Zemo Alvani's c.7,000 inhabitants are of Bats origin.

Historical population figures

The first reference to the Batsbi in European ethnographical literature is in the chapter on the Tush and Tusheti in Johannes Güldenstädt's Reisen durch Rußland und im Caucasischen Gebürge , published posthumously by Peter Simon Pallas between 1787 and 1791, although Güldenstädt does not mention them by name, merely pointing out instead that "Kistian and Georgian are spoken equally in the 4 first-named villages . Their inhabitants could also more easily be descendants of the Kists than the other Tush" .
Figures from the Russian imperial census of 1873 given in Dr. Gustav Radde's Die Chews'uren und ihr Land — ein monographischer Versuch untersucht im Sommer 1876 include the Bats villages in the Ts'ova Gorge :
1873 TOTAL: 344 households, consisting of 785 men and 741 women, in all 1,526 souls.
Dr. Radde adds:
'The members of have largely emigrated to the lowlands along the Alazani River, to the east of Akhmeta; they move up in summer to the rich pastures of Tbatana at the southern end of the Massara mountain range, but still consider Indurta as their property and even leave 2-3 families living there in winter. By the north-western spring of the Tusheti Alazani River. Together, these two communities made up the Ts'ova community until 1866.'

The decline of the Bats/Tsova-Tush language

Concerning the slow decline of Batsbur as a language, Prof. Topshishvili's writes:
'In the scientific literature, especially in the Soviet Russian ethnographic science great attention was paid to the marriage facts of people of different languages. Russians were greatly interested in russification of the people living in the Russian empire to make them speak Russian. In the Soviet Russian ethnographic literature it is emphasized that the problems rise in the languages of small groups when the percentage of their daughters-in-law of different languages exceeds 15-20%. In this case, the language gradually faces the danger. In such families the children do not speak their fathers’ languages. The children start speaking their mothers’ language from the very beginning and speak it afterwards.
'In this view, we got interested in the situation of the Tsova-Tushs at their compact dwelling place in the village Zemo Alvani. In the local village board 398 married couples are officially registered. As it turned out, in the last 10-12 years, the considerable part of the married couples, because of different reasons, are not registered officially. It appeared that, from the 398 couples only 226 are Tsova-Tushs. i.e. 226 Tush men’s wives are also Tsova- Tushs. That makes 56-57%. The rest men’s wives are aliens. The most of the latter are the women speaking Tush dialect of Georgian. There are also many women from the different villages of Kakheti region. Several Russian, Kist, Ossethian and Armenian women were also recorded. Thus, the percentage of those women in the Tsova families not speaking the Tsova-Tush language is 43, 22%.
'According to ethnographic data was proved that until the 60-70s of the XX century, the most of the Tsova-Tush men entered into marriage with Tsova-Tush women. Though, even then were not rare the facts of marrying women speaking Tush dialect of the Georgian language. But it does not exceed the considerable limit. The above mentioned conjugal relations lasted until the time when the marriage matter was a competence of the parents. Since the parents do not interfere in marriage matters of their children and the young people decide their fate independently, the most Tsova-Tush men often find their partners in other villages. All this reasoned in the dying-out of the Tsova-Tush language. Only 25-30 years ago existing bilingual situation is disappearing and the most part of the population uses Georgian as the usual language. The fact is that, the most Tsova-Tushs consider this event as quite normal and only some of them are very sorry for that, especially the old people.
'It is also a remarkable fact that in disappearance of the Tsova-Tush language, the role of human factor should be eliminated. The indifference towards the above matter could be explained by their Georgian consciousness. They are the organic part of the Georgian nation and do not differ from other Georgians with their traditions, customs and habits and mentality.'