Udis (endonym Udi or Uti) are a native people of the Caucasus that live mainly in Russia and Azerbaijan, with smaller populations in Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and other countries. Their total number is about 10,000 people. They speak the Udi language, which belongs to the Northeast Caucasian language family. Some also speak Azerbaijani, Russian, Georgian, or Armenian, depending on where they reside. Their religion is Christianity.
History
The Udi are considered to be one of the 26 tribes of the Caucasian Albania of
late antiquity. According to the classical authors, the Udi inhabited the area of the eastern Caucasus along the coast of the Caspian Sea, in a territory extending to the Kura River in the north. There was also a province of the Kingdom of Armenia,
Utik (later annexed by Caucasian Albania), which likely bore the name of the ancestors of the Udis.
Since the 5th century, the Udi people are often mentioned in the Armenian sources. More extensive information is given in The History of the Land of Ałuank
Centuries of life in the Armenian Culture, Iranian culture, and Azerbaijanis spheres influenced their culture, as is expressed in Udi folk traditions and their material culture.
Udi villages
Until 1991, the main Udi villages were Vartashen (now Oğuz) and Nij in Azerbaijan, as well as the village of
Zinobiani in Georgia.
Today the only places of concentrated Udi settlement are Nij and Zinobiani, which was founded by Udi refugees from Vartashen in the 1920s.
In the recent past, Udi people also lived in Mirzabeily,
Soltannuxa, Jourlu, Mihlikuvah, Vardanli (now Karimli), Bajan, Kirzan, and Yenikend. In contemporary times they have mostly assimilated with the people of Azerbaijan.
Vartashen was mainly a Udi village, where the Vartashen dialect of the Udi language was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church and had Armenian surnames. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Udis as well as the Armenians were expelled to Armenia.
Small groups reside in Russia in the Rostov Oblast (Shahty, Taganrog, Rostov-na-Donu, Azov, Aleksandrovka); in the Krasnodar Krai (Krasnodar, areas of Dinskoy, Leningrad, Kushchevsky); in the Stavropol Krai (Minvody, Pyatigorsk); in the Volgograd Oblast (Volgograd, Dubovy Ovrag); and also in Sverdlovsk, Ivanovo, Kaluga areas, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Astrakhan; in Georgia in the outskirts of Tbilisi, Poti, Rustavi, in Armenia mainly in the Lori Province, and Aktau in Kazakhstan. Some also live in Ukraine's Kharkiv oblast.
Language
The
Udi language is a Northeast Caucasian language of the
Lezgic languages. The two primary dialects are
Nij (Nidzh) and
Vartashen. The people today also speak Azerbaijani,
Russian language, and Georgian. The Udi are commonly bilingual, and less frequently trilingual, depending on residence and work. Many use Udi only in daily life, but for official purposes, the Udi use the language of the country in which they reside, such as Azerbaijani, Russian, or Armenian.
Dialects
The Udi language has two dialects: Nidzh and Vartashen. Nidzh dialect has sub-dialects that are divided into three subgroups - bottom, intermediate, top. Linguists believe the dialects originated according to geographic groupings of the Udi from the Tauz region: the villages of Kirzan and Artzah (Karabah, v. Seysylla, Gasankala) moved to Nidzh and Oguz.
[ Игорь Кузнецов. Удины.] The Vartashen dialect has two sub-dialects: Vartashen and Oktomberry.
History
In the past the Udi language was one of the widespread languages of Caucasian Albania, on the basis of which in the 5th century the Caucasian Albanian script
[ И. В. Кузнецов. Заметки к изучению агванского (кавказско-албанского) письма] was created by the Armenian monk
Mesrop Mashtots.
[Jost Gippert and Wolfgang Schulze. Some Remarks on the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests (2007) pp. 210.] The alphabet had 52 letters. The language was widely used, as major Bible texts were translated into the Caucasian Albanian language. Church services were conducted in it. After the fall of the Caucasian Albanian state, the Caucasian Albanian liturgical language was gradually replaced by Armenian in church.
Population and changes
In 1880, the population of the Udi people living in the area around
Qabala in northern Azerbaijan
[ Map showing in dark green the Udi area in 1800] was estimated at 10,000. In the year 1897, the number of the Udi people was given around 4,000, in 1910, it was around 5,900. They were counted as 2,500 in the census of 1926, as 3,700 in 1959, as 7,000 in 1979, and in 1989, the Udi people numbered 8,652. In census of 1999 in Azerbaijan, there were 4,152 Udis.
[Петрушевский И. П., Очерки по истории феодальных отношений в Азербайджане и Армении в XVI – начале XIX в.в., Л., 1949, с. 28]
In the 2002 Russia Census, 3,721 residents identified as Udi. Most of the Udi people (1,573 persons) in Russia have been registered in Rostov region.
Notable Udi people
See also
External links
