III.

The People of the Caucasus

In 1989 the Caucasus had a population of 21 million. The principal cities of the Caucasus are Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan; Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia; Yerevan, the capital of Armenia; Groznyy, the capital of Chechnya; Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan; and Vladikavkaz, the capital of Alania. With more than 50 distinct peoples and dozens of distinct languages, the Caucasus is one of the most complex linguistic and ethnic regions in the world. More than half of the people of the Caucasus are Muslims. Among them are the predominantly Shia Azerbaijanis, Talysh, Tats, and some Lezgins; the predominantly Sunni Chechens and Ajars (ethnic Georgians who are Sunni Muslims); and some Abkhazians and Ossetians. Most of the other Caucasians are Orthodox Christians, including the Georgians, the Kabardinians, many Abkhazians and Ossetians, and most of the ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. The Armenians adopted Christianity in the 4th century and have had a separate Christian church, the Armenian Church, since the 5th century.

The region’s native Caucasian languages are usually divided into two main groups: North Caucasian and South Caucasian. The majority of languages are part of the North Caucasian language family, including Abkhaz, Adyghe, Bats, Chechen, Ingush, and Kabardian. The most widely spoken South Caucasian language is Georgian. The Caucasus also has a number of Indo-European languages, including Armenian, Russian, and Ukrainian, as well as languages of the Indo-Iranian languages subfamily such as Kurdish and Ossetic. The third major language group in the Caucasus consists of Altaic languages, including the Turkic languages Azeri and Karachay-Balkar.