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Ingush towers () are medieval Ingush people stone structures used as residences, signal posts, and fortifications. Most are found in the Sunzhensky and Dzheyrakhsky Districts of Ingushetia, North Caucasia.
Tower-building in the North Caucasus originated as early as the first or second millennium BC. Remains of megalithic cyclopean dwellings are found near ancient Ingush villages, including Targim, Khamkhi, Egikal, Doshkhakle, and Kart.
Tower building was revived during the Middle Ages, especially in the mountains of Ingushetia which became known as the "land of towers", where most of the existing towers date from the 13th to the 17th centuries.
In 2022 the region's tourism committee received a patent from the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property for the slogan "Ingushetia — Homeland of Towers". Public access to some towers is limited due to remoteness, and many towers have suffered significant damage from invasions starting with the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, up to the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush from 1944 to 1957, which destroyed many historical monuments.
The Ingush Koban culture tribes of the North Caucasus built stone towers at the end of the first to second millennium BC. Remains of ceramics dating to the 1st millennium BC, the period of the Koban culture, were found at several megalithic dwellings.
The settlements evolved into medieval fortress as their populations grew. Each settlement resembled a small "medieval city", a self-sufficient entity inhabited by close relatives from one or more clans ( teips.) Authority was vested in elected elder who was subject to popular law ( adat) and handled foreign relations. The interests of "free and equal citizens" was reflected in policy. Settlements in a mountain gorge could form "federations of towns and villages". The largest settlement, or the one best placed geographically to control the pass, acted as a Capital city.
In 1931, Ukrainian traveller and explorer M. Kegeles wrote:
Soviet archaeologist and historian Evgeny Krupnov wrote in his "Medieval Ingushetia":
Local conditions and soil quality was also important. Fresh water sources were necessary, in the form of small rivers and springs, and many villages were located near the major rivers Assa and Armkhi. Settlement on the scarce and valuable arable land in mountainous areas was avoided, so tower settlements were usually built on barren areas with rocky soil, or on bare rocks.
In the mountains of Ingushetia, several signal and defensive towers built on rocky ledges can be observed. The most famous is the tower complex of Vovnushki, which in 2008 became a finalist in the Seven Wonders of Russia competition.
Similar constructions are found in Khay and in the Assa valley of Ingushetia. Two rocky shelter towers, erected in caves on the steep mountain slope of the rocky range above the villages Metskhal and . The second shelter tower is located above the first, and covered a large cave in the past. Now most of the wall has collapsed. The stone steps leading into the cave have been preserved.
External scaffolding was not used. Work was from the inside using temporary flooring resting on wall protrusions intended for permanent floors and corner slabs. The pyramidal roof of combat towers was assembled from the outside by rope-suspended craftsmen. When the masonry was finished, the master builder demanded a "descent" fee and made a hand print — chiseled or in wet mortar — at the tower entrance.
There are Ingush folk songs (''illi'') about the construction of towers, which glorify their beauty, skill and talent of the craftsmen. One of them is called ''".''
Ingush clan prestige was affected by towers. A construction time of more than a year was perceived as weakness. Tower collapse also affected the reputation of the owning family, the reasoning being that the family had been too weak and poor to make full payment to the builders. Familial wealth was the important measure as class differences were unknown in Ingushetia. Tower building was an honorable occupation. Architects were known by name, as were the reputations of builders. Craftsmen were well rewarded for completing combat towers.П. Пелевин. История и традиции строительства ингушских башенных комплексов. Фонд «Азан» (2011)
Builders, or "artists of stone" (), were specialists in the construction of high-quality multi-story residential buildings, various types of crypts, temples and sanctuaries. A subset of Ingush masters were responsible for religious buildings associated with concepts sacred to the mountaineers. These masters were honored and recognized for their professional skills, and moral and ethical conduct. Recognized and famous master builders of the Middle Ages were:
The construction craft was sometimes the work of almost entire family brotherhoods, a kind of "professional clan". Such recognized artisans, especially in the construction of military towers ( vhov), included, e.g., the Barkinkhoev family from the villages of Upper, Middle and Lower . Ingush masters were also known outside Ingushetia—in Chechnya, Ossetia and Georgia.
Scholars have noted the leading role of the Ingush school of architecture in the 14th–18th centuries in the area covering the territories of present-day Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia and the northern regions of Georgia.: “The similarity between Ingush, Chechen, Khevsur and partly Ossetian battle towers is obviously explained by the influence of Ingushetia on its closest neighbors.”
After exploring Ingush architecture, ethnographers Vladimir Basilov and Veniamin Kobychev concluded that the layering of various technical methods in Ingush buildings, from primitive to more advanced, and also genetically interconnected, convinces us that local architecture developed primarily on the basis of the accumulation of its own experience, and not affected by any external influences. The obvious continuity with the monuments of the Bronze Age makes us look for the origins of stone architecture among the Ingush in ancient times. This was asserted by Soviet researcher Arkady Goldshtein, who proclaimed the existing evidence of the work of Ingush master builders in Ossetia, Northern Georgia and Chechnya, whilst there being no evidence that foreign masters were ever invited to build in Ingushetia.
The pyramidal-stepped roof of the tower, usually, consisted of thirteen slate slabs and was crowned with a large cone-shaped stone. Professor Evgeny Krupnov considered towers with pyramidal roofs as "an expression of the purely individual characteristics of Ingush culture." Based on ethnographic and archaeological data, specialist in the field of Caucasian stone architecture Arkady Goldshtein believed that the formation of the Caucasian combat tower with the pyramidal-stepped roof originated in Ingushetia.
An example of a tower of this type is also the Byalgan combat tower. It is located on the slope of Mount in the village of Byalgan. It is a 16-meter battle tower with a flat roof and a crenellated top. There are four more residential towers nearby. These are architectural monuments of the 9th–10th centuries, but this particular tower dates back to the 13th century.
Professor of archaeology, , proposed a similar typology. His first group included monumental residential and defensive structures, residential towers ( ghalash), combat towers ( vhovnash), fortified castles, fortifications and defensive walls.
The second group included burial structures including underground, semi-underground and above-ground stone crypts ( kashamash), cave and ground burials, cists and .
The third group included ancient temples (e.g. Alby-Yerdy, Tkhaba-Yerdy), various kinds of pagan sanctuaries (e.g. Dyalite, Myat-Seli, Mago-Erda, Tumgoy-Erda, Kog-Erda, etc.) and roadside steles ( churtash).
The masonry of the walls in the residential towers, which consisted of roughly processed stone blocks, was more primitive compared to the masonry of the military towers. The task of constructing a residential building differed from a combat one, since it required the speedy completion of construction to settle a family, so such close attention was not paid to the appearance. Towers were erected everywhere in mountainous Ingushetia using lime mortar, and the top was covered with a thick layer of yellow or yellowish-white plaster, and the masonry seams were covered with mortar from the inside. This was a characteristic detail of all architectural monuments of mountainous Ingushetia; military and residential towers, crypts and sanctuaries. According to legend, milk or whey and chicken eggs were added to the lime mortar.
The first floor of the residential tower was dedicated to a stable, in which the cattle were tied to the manger in a certain sequence. A special corner was arranged for the horse. Part of this room was fenced off; grain was stored in this corner. In some cases, the entire second floor was cleared for small livestock, where the cattle were driven along a wooden flooring arranged for this purpose. In the middle of the tower, from the very base, stood a quadrangular stone pillar (), which served as a support for the main thick beams of the interfloor floors. Thinner beams ran across them, resting at one end on the stones of the opposite side protruding parallel to them. Brushwood was laid on top of the beams, onto which clay was poured and compacted.
In most towers, the second floor was the main living space (). On average, it was 40–45 m² in area, in some towers the area was quite significant: 60–70 m². The height of this floor exceeded 3–4 m. It was a spacious room containing basic household items: bedding, dishes, and utensils. A central hearth () was also built here, above which a supra-focal chain () descended. The family spent most of their time in this room., free from work and other worries. The last floor was intended for storing food and agricultural equipment. It was also a room for resting guests, who, upon receiving them in the living quarters, were accommodated for the night in a separate upper room, where a special sleeping place was equipped for this purpose. Sometimes a balcony was added to the third floor, which had an economic purpose. Initially, a ghala also had a defensive significance, which is confirmed by the structural details of the architecture: protective parapets on the roof of the towers, the construction of many viewing slots and loopholes, compartments for keeping servants (prisoners of war) etc.
Each floor of the battle towers had its own specific functions. One of the first to try to characterize these functions was the architect Ivan Shcheblykin, who wrote: "the first floor was intended for prisoners, the second for guards and defenders, the third and fourth for defenders and family, and the fifth for observers and family." The first floor served as a prison for prisoners and storage of agricultural supplies; for this purpose they were equipped with special cone-shaped stone "bags", i.e. compartments at the corners of the tower. It could only be entered through a square hole from the second floor. The entrance to the tower was usually located at the level of the second floor, which also deprived potential enemies of the opportunity to use a ram. It was a vaulted doorway, closed from the inside with strong wooden shutters and locked with a wooden beam that slid into the thickness of the walls. And only some towers, located in hard-to-reach places, had an entrance on the ground floor.
The second floor served as housing in case of a siege. Above it, as well as above the upper floor, stone ceilings were built in the form of a closed (four-sided) false vault with a lancet outline. Such a ceiling, unlike a wooden one, could not be set on fire if the besiegers burst inside, and the besieged locked themselves upstairs. They were also intended to enhance the seismic resistance of the tower, so, being completed with a strong stone vault that strengthened all four walls, the second floor became additional support for subsequent floors. Some battle towers (in particular, the complex, built by master builder Khanoy Khing) were reinforced with an additional stone vault between the fourth and fifth floors to give them special strength. And in most cases, other vertical floors were divided by wooden floors supported by ledges and special stone cornices. Communication between floors was carried out through square confined spaces, hatches equipped in the corners of the towers, along ladders in the form of jagged logs. These passages between floors were arranged in a zigzag pattern. Starting from the second, each floor had skylights, combat niches (loopholes) and viewing slits (eyeholes). The construction of the loopholes was carried out in such a way as to cover, if possible, all approaches to the tower.
At the level of the last (fifth or sixth) floor, which was the main observation point and at the same time the main combat platform, weapons were stored here: stones, bows, arrows, guns. In the middle part of each of the walls of the floor there were through door niches (embrasures). They were covered with special stone hanging balconies, i.e. machicolations (). The upper part of the embrasure remained free for observation. Archaeologist Maksharip Muzhukhoev suggested that the choice of building one or another type of defensive tower depended on the terrain. Based on the architecture of towers with a pyramidal stepped roof, which are distinguished by the greatest defensive capability, Muzhukhoev believed that this type of tower was erected in easily accessible places, the approach to which was not naturally fortified. Such towers were built taking into account that the enemy would be able to get close to the walls of the tower. In places difficult to access, from the point of view of a possible assault, less fortified flat-roofed towers were erected.
Petroglyphs are carved on many towers. Among them are signs resembling letters, drawings in the form of crosses, spirals, swastikas, solar circles, images of household items and weapons. Family symbols were also depicted on the towers.
The tower culture of Ingushetia, a vibrant legacy of ancient material culture, is unique both in the Caucasus and throughout the world. The Ingush as an ethnic group are inextricably linked with their tower culture. It is believed that for many centuries the tower complexes developed among the Ingush mountaineers an aesthetic sense of beauty, a sense of caring for the house as a family sanctuary, which is one of the foundations of the Ingush code of honor—.
Preservation is also an issue, as significant damage to towers was caused by invasions during the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, the Russian Revolution, and the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush from 1944 to 1957, which destroyed half of the nation's historical monuments.
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