The Hinukh (Hinukh language: гьинухъес hinuqes,
In the official documents and the censuses the Hinukh did not appear as an independent ethnic group. After the forcible deportation of the Vainakh people and disbandment of the Chechen–Ingush ASSR, they were (together with some other Avar–Andi–Dido peoples) resettled in Vedensky District which was given to Dagestan ASSR. After the rehabilitation of the Vainakh peoples in 1958 they settled back in their native lands.
In 1960s the population of the Hinukh people was estimated to be 200. 2002 Russian Census showed their number as 531. They were considered as a subgroup of Avar people in this census. 2021 Russian census registered 630 Hinukh, nearly all living in Dagestan.
The first information about Archi language was in a letter from Peter von Uslar to Franz Anton Schiefner dated 1865, where he writes about a special language in Inukho aul ( i.e. Hinukh). The first written material about Hinukh language was a list of 16 words with their counterparts in Tsez language, given by the Belarusians ethnographer and folklorist Aleksandr Serzhputovkiy in his work about the Tsez people in 1916.
Linguist Nicholas Marr classified Hinukh language as an independent language, but erroneously described it as a language "between Avar language and Dido language languages". It was classified as a dialect of the Tsez language by the linguists D.S. Imnaishvili and E.S. Lomtadze.
The Hinukh people and Hinukh language were not in the list of the ethnic groups and languages of Dagestan for a long time. They appeared only in the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
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