The religious culture of the North Caucasian peoples until the beginning of the 19th century was a bizarre mixture of Christian traditions and pagan rituals. A consequence of the protracted Caucasian war was the spread of Islam in this region as a religion-symbol of opposition to the ideology imposed on Caucasians by Christian Tsarist Russia.
Caucasians were Christians
Early Christianity before the total Islamization of the North Caucasus region, which began in the 19th century, was by no means an alien religion for the highlanders. Penetrated into the North Caucasus from Byzantium in the 8th-9th centuries, this religion was adopted by the Caucasian Alans at the end of the 9th century. True, after a while they again switched to the usual pagan rituals, having driven out foreign clergy, who were sent to these lands by the Byzantine emperor. On the territory of modern Karachay-Cherkessia, the remains of Christian temples of those times have been preserved.
When Byzantium and Alania fell, the North Caucasus again returned to pre-Christian folk beliefs. However, Christianity still left its mark on the religious culture of the mountaineers - there was a transformation of many Christian rituals, which later became pagan. Monotheistic Christianity, in principle, influenced the very paganism of the highlanders, which was no longer the same.
The degree of influence of Christianity can be judged by the names of the pantheon of pagan North Caucasian deities, renamed into Christian saints: St. George was called Wasgerti, Geurge among the mountaineers, St. Ilya - Elia, Elia, etc. True, Balkars, Karachais, Kabardians, Circassians, Ossetians and some peoples of Dagestan took only the names of saints from Christianity.
How Georgia tried to protect itself from the highlanders
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Georgia was also engaged in active Christianization of the peoples of the North Caucasus, which in the XII-XIII centuries tried to prevent the raids of the mountaineers on its territory in a similar way. This was the period when the Georgian feudal monarchy was flourishing. A Christian temple of the pre-Mongol period Tkhaba-Yerdy remained from the Georgian missionaries in Ingushetia.
And Catholicism did not take root there
Attempts to feed the North Caucasian flock with Genoese Catholics in the XIII-XIV centuries were also not crowned with success. However, the Karachais, Balkars and Ossetians mention this period in their folklore legends. Perhaps, it was in memory of the unaccustomed Catholicism that the Karachais named the days of the week after the names of Christian saints: Eliya (Ilya), Nikola (Nikolai), Endreyuk (Andrey), Abustol (Apostle), Geurge (George), Baras (Paraskeva).
When shibleudge and tsoppai danced
There was no unity in the North Caucasian folk beliefs. The difference between one people of the North Caucasus from another, respectively, affected the rituals. However, there were many similar aspects in different religious cultures. In particular, this similarity concerned mythological images that reflected the peculiarities of the life of the highlanders.
So, among all the peoples of the North Caucasus, special reverence was given to the deities of the hunt, the deity-thunderer (Ilya, Elia). The ritual actions accompanying the burial procedure for a person killed by lightning also had much in common among different mountain peoples. The Circassians put the deceased in a coffin, hung the domina on a high tree. Then came the turn of fun and dancing for the deceased's neighbors. Bulls and rams were slaughtered. The sacrificial meat was mainly distributed to the poor. We walked like that for three days. Then every year the celebration was repeated until the corpse decayed - the Circassians considered such dead people saints.
Among the Kabardians, the thundering deity was called Shible. Shible ruled not only over thunderstorms, but also over water and fire. The Kabardian Prophet Ilya in action is a horseman riding in the sky. The Christianized Circassians called a similar deity Elijah (Elle). Their reverence for Elle was expressed in a special dance - shibleudzh.
The Ossetians danced tsoppai in front of the lightning struck. Then the deceased was placed in a cart, and the oxen themselves had to indicate the place of burial - where the animals stopped, there they dug the grave. Ossetians, like the Circassians, Karachai-Balkars and Ingush, worshiped places of lightning strikes - trees, buildings.
The highlanders transformed Christian practices and used the saints of this religion in their cults and beliefs. When elements of Christian culture did not correspond to popular ideas about deities, then such aspects were simply not used by Caucasians.
By the 1920s, pagan culture still played an important role in the life of the North Caucasian peoples, although by that time the entire population of the North Caucasus was officially divided into those professing Islam and Christianity.