MAGAZIN: Legend about the Caucasus

The Chechen Times №5
19.01.2003

According to our data, the legend is said to be written by Dzhambulat Dzanti, a Chechen by origin, poet, litterateur, who used to work for the emigrant magazine «Mountaineers from Caucasus» published in Paris from 1929 to April 1934 and edited by prince Elmurza Bekovich-Cherkassky. Barasbi Baitugan, who used to live in Warsaw at that time, was a coeditor.

The magazine «Mountaineers from Caucasus» was the mouthpiece of the Popular Party of Caucasian Mountaineers with a headquarters in Paris. Representatives of North Caucasian emigrant communities of Warsaw, Lion, Lozanna, New York, Paris, Pargue, etc. published their articles and essays in the magazine.

From May 1934 the magazine began coming out under a new name — «North Caucasus." Under that name it came out until June 1939, with Barasbi Baitugan as the editor. The magazine published works by Arslan, Aptek, Taulu, Kazi-han, Kunduh, Edige, Hadji-Bilal, Azamat, Ayas-Iskhaki, Adil-Bek Kullati, Doguzh, Temir Bazyrykkho, Daud, Adyge, Khursh, Andemyrkan, Dzhankhot and many others. The rubric «From North Caucasian folklore» was very popular with the magazine’s subscribers. [...]

And let us present his «Legend about the Caucasus," which, as he put it, his grandfather told him.

The Caucasus is a country of miracles, the country of knights, the country of amazons, the country of treasures from around the world, which will enrich and sparkles with its metals, precious ores it will heal people of soul and body ailments with magic air and miraculous waters. The Caucasus is a magic hero.

A Circassian coat is a symbolic reflection of the hero. The hero held his proud head upright. Clouds served him as a sheepskin hat, and eternal white snows — as a turban. Later the mountaineer from the Caucasus put on his proud head the sheepskin hat with long, curling white fleece which looked like eternal snow drifts on the peaks of grand mountains Elbrus and Kazbek — the two heads of the great Caucasus. The rocky Caucasian ridge was the hero’s breast. That is why proud mountaineers decorated their mighty breast wit gazyrs. Long laps of the Circassian coat — are wide and splendid Caucasian plains. In its mighty hands the Caucasus held two seas — the seas of Azov and Kara-Deniz as two boiling coppers and poured salty water over enemy’s eyes. [ more ... ]