Tukkhum

Vainakh social organization scheme.

Tukkhum are systems of social organisation in traditional Chechen society. A tukkhum is a grand alliance of familial clans or teips. The tukkhum brings together clans which are unrelated by blood but united in a higher association for the joint solution of common problems - the protection from enemy attack and economic exchange. Tukkhums occupied a specific territory, which consisted of them actually populated areas, as well as the surrounding area, where the teips, which were part of tukkhums, engaged in hunting, farming and cattle breeding. Each tukhum spoke their own dialect of the Vainakh language.

Tukkhums, in contrast to the teips, had no official head or commander (Chechen: byacha). Thus tukkhums was not so much body control as a social organization.

Deliberative tukkhums was the Council of Elders, which consisted of representatives of all the teips, were part of this tukhums, on an equal footing.

Council of Elders would convene to address inter-teip disputes and differences, to protect the interests of the individual teips, and tukhums in general. Council of Elders had the right to declare war, conclude peace, to negotiate with the help of their own and others' ambassadors, make alliances and break them.

Tukkhums were not consanguineous union, but a kind of brotherhood. It is a formation that emerged from the tribal organization. This alliance, and (or) the association of several teips one and the same tribe, established for specific purposes.

The tribal union of tukkhums forms the Kham or the whole Chechen nation. During the 16th and 17th centuries nine tukkhums, composed of separate teips were formed in Chechnya,

At the moment, the Chechens are united in 9 tukhums, comprising more than 100 teips:

1. Äkkhi,
2. Mälkhi,
3. Nokhchmakhkakhoi,
4. Orstkhoi (Arshtkhoy),
5. Terloi,
6. Chanti,
7. Cheberloi (Chebarloi),
8. Sharoi,
9. Shotoi.

See also

• Teip
• Clan
• Ethnic autonomous regions
• Kinship and descent
• Tribe

References

• (in Russian) Mayrbek Vachagayev, Sovremennoye Chechenskoye Obshchestvo, p. 16 Tsentral'naya Azia i Kavkaz, No 2, 2003
• Clans and clan relations in old and modern Chechnya