The Communal Winter Festival among the Tsezy

Abstract

In February 1982, A. I. Azarov and the author of this article, both graduate students at the Leningrad Section of the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sciences, USSR, were present at a traditional celebration of mid-winter in the Tsez1 settlement of Shaitli in Tsuntin Raion of the Dagestan ASSR. This settlement is in the upper reaches of the Ilan-Khevi river,2 a tributary of the Mitluda, on spurs of the Bogoss range. Until the 1860s it was a center of a union of village communes, the free community of Dido-Shaitli (Ilan-Khevi), which joined together thirteen settlements. Nowadays, the village of Shaitli is the center for a rural soviet. As in the past, this village stands out from among neighboring villages by its size. All its population with the exception of one Russian woman, the librarian, are Tsezy. Neither the lifestyle of the inhabitants nor the architecture of the village differ from other Tsez settlements. But the feast of mid-winter, Igbi, is observed in Shaitli and in two neighboring sett...