Identification and Self-Identification Terms of Udi-Christians Based on Materials of Armenian and Udi Written Sources

Abstract

After the abolition of the second kingdom of Caucasian Albania, accompanied by the process of Islamization of its peoples, the remaining Christian Albanians, who retained their Albanian identity until the 18th century, were concentrated on the territory of the historical regions of Shaki and Kabala. Created in the 7th century, the myth about the Apostle Yeghishe contributed to the “nationalization” of Christianity in the Shaki–Kabala region in Albania. In parallel with islamization and the loss of a common Albanian identity, among the islamized Caucasian-speaking groups of Albanians, processes of the formation of a narrow ethnic “me”, “we”, and a significant number of various names close to ethnonyms gradually emerged. The Christian-Albanian identity of the Christian part of the population was concentrated among the worshipers of the Apostle Yeghishe Albanian Christianity up to the 18th century. The most visible group with the Albanian identity were the Udins. During the 18th century most of them were forcibly islamized and assimilated. Among the remaining Christian Udins, the cultural and political importance of the “Albanian national-religious dissidence” disappeared, and new processes of self-determination emerged, leading to multi-level group ethno-religious loyalties. Religious commonality with the Armenian Church and the Armenian people was reflected in the common Udi word գshton and the literary Armenian word lusavorchakan. Ethnonymic designations “uti/udi”, “Udin-speaking tribe”, “Udin-speaking nation” reflected their own narrow ethnic belonging. In the Udi language, there is no word that marks ethnicity – the equivalent of the words “people”, “nation”, they are replaced by words xalq, milleti borrowed from the Turkic language.