Bats people

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Batsbi ბაცბი
Total population
4,000 approx.
Regions with significant populations
Tusheti (Georgia)
Languages
Nakh
Religions
Georgian Orthodox Church, Islam
Related ethnic groups
Chechens, Ingushs, and Kists

The Bats people (Georgian: ბაცი) or the Batsbi (ბაცბი) are a small Nakh-speaking community in Georgia who are also known as the Tsova-Tushs (წოვა-თუშები) after the Tsova Gorge in the historic Georgian province of Tusheti (known to them as "tsovata"), where they settled after migrating from the North Caucasus in the 16th century.

Most of the Bats people currently live in the village of Zemo Alvani in the Kakheti region, close to the town of Akhmeta (at the mouth of the Pankisi Gorge), but their families are scattered elsewhere in Georgia. A significant proportion of the village's inhabitants travel to Russia and Europe for work as seasonal migrants. Part of the community still retain their own Bats language, which has adopted many Georgian loan-words and grammatical rules, and is mutually unintelligible with other the two other Nakh languages, Chechen and Ingush. This language is unwritten and the Bats community have used Georgian as a language of literacy and trade for centuries. Their customs and traditions now resemble those of other eastern Georgian mountaineers; the Bats have retained very little of their cultural traits.

The group should not be confused with the Kists - also a Nakh-speaking people, migrants from Chechnya - who live in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia.

The TransCaucasus blog has more information on the Bats.