While popular folklore claims the endonym Ghalghaj comes from the wordghala, historical development indicates it is a composition of the wordskha and khal, which directly means three cities. Inhabitants of the 3 settlements Targim, Khamkhi and Egikal, who operated as one, started taking over surrounding Nakh areas and building the grounds of what would later turn into the modern Ingush nation. This is supported by the first actual mention of the word in 1590, when the "mountain people Kolkan" attacked 2 Russian ambassadors in the Darial pass.
History
The ancestors of the Ingush people have been historically mentioned under many different names, such as Dzurdzuks,Kists or Ghlighvi, although none of them was used as an ethnonym. The ancient Greek historianStrabo wrote about the Gelai, an unknown people in the Caucasus he thought to be of Scythian origin, which the American cartographer Joseph Hutchins Colton later used to label the Vainakh people in his map from 1856. Contemporary sources mention the ethnonym Nakhchoy, the ethnonym Chechens still use today. Nakhchoy was replaced by the word Vainakh starting from the 1930s. Ingush people were collectively mentioned as a tribe of the Chechens and divided into the Ingushi and the Ghalghaj up until the 20th century. In 1770, the elders of 24 Ingush tribes signed a treaty with Russia, but are commonly considered under Russian rule from 1810, when 6 major teips of todays Ingushetia, signed an oath to fight off the enemies of Russia, particularly the Chechens and Kabardians. Under Soviet rule during World War II the Ingush, along with the Chechens were falsely accused of collaborating with the Nazis and thus, the entire population was deported to the Kazakh and Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republics. The Ingush were rehabilitated in the 1950s, after the death of Joseph Stalin, and allowed to return home in 1957, though by that time western Ingush lands had been ceded to North Ossetia.
Architecture
The famous Soviet archaeologist and historian, professor E.I. Krupnov described the Ingush towers in his work «Medieval Ingushetia»:
Culture
The Ingush possess a varied culture of traditions, legends, epics, tales, songs, proverbs, and sayings. Music, songs and dance are particularly highly regarded. Popular musical instruments include the dachick-panderr, kekhat ponder, mirz ponder, zurna, tambourine, and drums.
According to one test by Nasidze in 2003, the Y-chromosome structure of the Ingush greatly resembled that of neighboring Caucasian populations. There has been only one notable study on the Ingush Y chromosome. These following statistics should not be regarded as final, as Nasidze's test had a notably low sample data for the Ingush. However, they do give an idea of the main haplogroups of the Ingush.
J2 – 89% of Ingush have the highest reported frequency of J2 which is associated with the Fertile Crescent.
F* – This haplogroup was called "F*" by Nasidze. It may have actually been any haplogroup under F that was not under G, I, J2, or K; however, it is probably consists of haplotypes that are either under J1 or F3.
G – Typical of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus. The highest values were found among Georgians, Circassians and Ossetes. There was a noticeable difference in G between Ingush and Chechens, possibly attributable to low samples that were all from the same town.
In the mtDNA, the Ingush formed a more clearly distinct population, with distance from other populations. The closest in an analysis by Nasidze were Chechens, Kabardins and Adyghe, but these were all much closer to other populations than they were to the Ingush.
