The umbrella term for the indigenous highland religious systems of the Caucasus: the Circassian pantheon headed by the sky god Tha, the Ossetian Uatsdin tradition of dzuar holy beings such as Wastyrdzhi, and related Abkhaz, Vainakh and Georgian highland cults. These systems overlap and were layered under Christianity and Islam over centuries rather than erased by them, and their shared narrative inheritance survives most fully in the Nart sagas, an oral epic cycle common to the Circassian, Abkhaz, Ubykh, Ossetian and several neighboring peoples.
Facts
Disputed
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Scholars describe the Circassian strand, with its supreme sky god Tha presiding over a wider community of spirits, as sometimes closer to henotheistic than the plainly polytheistic Ossetian and Abkhaz pantheons, which recognize many roughly coequal holy beings with no single supreme figure common to all of them. Origins
Place of OriginThe North and South Caucasus highlands, particularly the mountainous interior of historic Circassia, Ossetia, Abkhazia and highland Georgia (Pshav-Khevsureti and Svaneti). 1 Correspondences & Relations
Connections
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Source Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Colarusso)John Colarusso
Regions Where This Is Principal
Source Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Colarusso)John Colarusso
Worship Of
Source The Nart Sagas: Ancient Myths and Legends of the OssetiansWalter May, translator; John Colarusso and Tamirlan Salbiev, editors
Source Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Colarusso)John Colarusso
Source Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Colarusso)John Colarusso
Source The Nart Sagas: Ancient Myths and Legends of the OssetiansWalter May, translator; John Colarusso and Tamirlan Salbiev, editors
Sources
1. Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (Colarusso)
John Colarusso, Princeton University Press, 2002Colarusso's introduction, on the shared Circassian/Abkhaz/Ubykh Nart tradition and its living context
The Nart Sagas: Ancient Myths and Legends of the Ossetians
Walter May, translator; John Colarusso and Tamirlan Salbiev, editors, Princeton University Press, 2016Colarusso and Salbiev's introduction, on the Ossetian Uatsdin tradition and Wastyrdzhi's living cult
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