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The Kists (ქისტები, kist'ebi; ; ) are a Chechens sub-ethnic group in Georgia. They primarily live in the Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti, where there are approximately 5,700 Kist people. The modern Kists are not to be confused with the historical term Kists, an ethnonym of Georgian origin, which was used to refer to the Nakh peoples in the Middle Ages.
| Ethnonyms given by neighboring people to Kists: | |||||
| Ethnonyms: ! style="border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCFF" | Term meaning ! style="border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCFF" | Year ! style="border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCFF" | Author ! style="border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCFF" | Work | |
| "Iz kylturnogo proshlogo ingushey" | |||||
| "Iskonnye imena chechentsev i ingushey" | |||||
| "Russko-chechenskiy slovar" | |||||
In 1989, it was calculated that Pankisi was about 43% Kist, 29% Georgian and 28% Ossetian, but many of the Ossetians later fled as a result of the more hostile situation due to the Russian-supported conflict of Ossetians against ethnic Georgians in the Samachablo region of Georgia.
Around the same region of Georgia, there is also a related but still different community of Nakh peoples origin called Bats people. The early history of the Kist people is not well known and there are few sources mentioning their traditions, culture and history. The only historical sources available about the ethnic Kists in the area of Pankisi are found in the Georgian press, dated in the 1880s by E. Gugushvili, Zakaria Gulisashvili, Ivane Bukurauli, and Mate Albutashvili (ethnic Kist).
During the Second World War, the Kists were the only Chechens in the Soviet Union who were not ethnically cleansed by Stalin in 1944.
During the Second Chechen War, the Kists gave shelter to about 7,000 refugees from Chechnya.
When the Kists first arrived in the valley in the early 19th century from Chechnya and Ingushetia, their religious practices included both Islam and their original Vainakh religion, with some overlap with the indigenous beliefs of their highland Georgian neighbors. There were also Christian influences. In the latter half of the 19th century, the Russian government pressured the Kists to convert to Orthodox Christianity, and there were various episodes of mass baptisms and church construction. In 1902, Kists who had remained Muslim constructed a mosque in Duisi, but the Russian government refused to recognize it. The Duisi mosque was forcefully closed, along with other religious structures after the Bolshevik revolution, and not reopened until 1960. Sanikidze notes that many Kists, regardless of their designation, have a mix of Muslim, Christian and indigenous religious practices.Sanikidze. ''Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Caucasian Region: "Global" and "Local" Islam in the Pankisi Gorge. Page 266-270.
The position of Islam strengthened among the Kists in the Soviet period, in part because "wandering" mullahs continued to proselytize and managed to persuade many to convert to Islam, a process that continued into the 1970s. In sum, over the years considerable numbers of Kists became Christian, but most of those who did later reconverted to Islam. Even so, until around 1970, a considerable part of the villagers of Jokolo, Omalo, and Birkiani were Christian, and a Christian chapel was built in Omalo in the 1960s. In the 1970s, however, many Christians in Jokolo and Omalo returned to the Islamic faith. Only Birkiani has a majority Christian population today. Birkiani has two mosques as of 2022. There is also a small community of Kists in Kakheti (a region of Georgia bordering on the Gorge), mainly in the city of Telavi, who consider themselves Orthodox Christians.
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