Photo tribute to Caucasus

[Rivkin]

Traditionally Caucasus divided into 2 parts - Northern Caucasus, inhabited mostly by Adygha (Circassian): shapsugs, adighe, kabarda, Dagestani (mostly Vainach) tribes - Dag, Lak, Avar, Lezgin, Turkish tribes - Balkars and Kipchaqs.

Southern Caucaus (TransCaucasian area) is populated by Georgian tribes - Megrels, Svans, Imereti, Guria, Khevsur, Pshav, Kacheti, Kartli per se etc,
Alan tribes - Osetians,
Armenians and
Turkish Azeris.

In between of this division are Chechens, Ingush and other tribes that change their alliance in between of Northern and Southern states.

Enclosed are the symbolics of Adyghe (Black Crosses, 3 arrows), Chechen (Wolf and Green Banner) and Georgian (Cross).

The latter one is from crusaders, who are deeply revered by both muslim and christians on the whole Caucasus. When Caucasus stood on the brink of destruction in front of assaulting turkish tribes, 300 members of the first crusade whent to Caucasus and together with Georgian Kings, who adopted Jerusalem Cross as their symbol they united cacuasian tribes in fight against the enemy.

Till XIX century especially valuable swords made by both muslim and christian weaponsmith would bear the "bee" - cross like shape, coming from tradition to use small parts of weapons of those who fought seljuks 1000 years ago as part of new weapons, supposedly to bestow them with magic powers.