Marriage and Wedding Ceremonies Among the Chechens

Abstract

In the past, all the peoples of the Caucasus considered marriage and family as the greatest human values, and marriage as a moral duty of every person. Only marriage made it possible to attract the necessary working hands to an ordinary peasant family, and in the future - to increase its production potential at the expense of grown-up daughters and especially sons. Only this made it possible to conduct a full-fledged economy also because in a traditional society there was a strictly regulated inter-sex division of labor between a man who earns a living and a woman who serves him with her housework. Not the last role was played by the fact that in the conditions of such a society with its regorical patriarchal foundations, only marriage could ensure normal communication between a man and a woman, not to mention procreation. Finally, the traditions of paramilitary patriarchal-feudal life, characteristic of most peoples of the Caucasus, added another one to the main motives for marriage - to expand the circle of family ties in order to provide themselves with additional support and protection.