Chechens

Pre-Islamic beliefs. Ethnographers recorded the veneration of natural forces, sacred places and ancestors, and ideas about the afterlife. Among the recorded names are Dela, Sela and Tusholi. This information has come down to us mainly through later records and the comparative study of Nakh traditions. They do not provide grounds for reconstructing a single, unchanging religious system of all Chechens in antiquity. How to read early testimonies. The work of B. K. Dalgat relies, in particular, on journeys in 1891–1892 to mountainous Ingushetia. In older literature the name "Chechens" sometimes also covered the Ingush. Therefore the Ingush festival or sanctuary he described cannot, without explanation, be declared Chechen. Today these materials are used with attention to the place of recording and historical terminology. Christian influence. Contacts through the Central Caucasus, Alania and Georgia brought Christian ideas and ritual elements. Their traces have been noted in legends and religious vocabulary. The Christianization of individual societies does not prove that the whole people professed Christianity at one and the same time. The well-known Tkhaba-Yerdy temple is located in present-day Ingushetia, not in Chechnya. How Islam spread. Important routes were ties with Muslim neighbours, above all Dagestan: trade, education, preaching and contacts between rural communities. Researchers discuss different datings of the early stages. In works on the mass spread, the end of the 16th and the 17th century, and the activity of Termaol and Bersa-Sheikh, are especially highlighted. The process proceeded unevenly and continued later in the mountain societies. There is no scientifically confirmed single date for the conversion of all Chechens. The 18th and the first half of the 19th century. The preaching of Sheikh Mansur and the organization of the imamate contributed to the strengthening of the Islamic community and Sharia institutions. This was a new stage of an Islamization that had already begun. Local customs, adat and religious law could interact and come into conflict. The political participation of society in the imamate does not automatically describe the personal religiosity of every inhabitant. Sunnism, madhhab and Sufism. In the Chechen religious tradition Sunni Islam of the Shafi'i madhhab predominates. The madhhab is a legal school, while the Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya are Sufi brotherhoods within Islam. These concepts belong to different levels of religious life. A wird denotes the circle of followers of a particular spiritual guide; it cannot automatically be equated with a teip. Kunta-Haji and the Qadiriyya. After his pilgrimage, Kunta-Haji Kishiev spread Qadiri teaching; his influence became especially noticeable in the early 1860s. His preaching linked moral perfection with renunciation of the continuation of war. An important place was held by collective zikr, the remembrance of God. The arrest and exile of the guide did not end the existence of communities of followers. The year of his birth is given differently in scholarly literature. The Soviet period and revival. Anti-religious policy restricted the activity of the clergy and religious institutions. At the same time, the family transmission of faith and Sufi ties were preserved, including in deportation. From the late 1980s an open religious revival began. In the 1990s disputes also intensified over religious norms and relations between different Muslim trends. They cannot be presented as differences between individual peoples. Faith today. Islam remains an important part of the cultural and social life of many Chechens. Namaz, fasting in Ramadan, Uraza-Bayram and Kurban-Bayram form the basis of Muslim practice; in Sufi communities zikr and veneration of guides are preserved. Ethnic belonging does not automatically determine the convictions of a particular person. The percentage of believers according to an ethnic census is not given here: it does not measure religious practice.