Udi people

The Udi are considered to be one of the 26 tribes of the Caucasian Albania of late antiquity. According to the classical authors, the Udi inhabited the area of the eastern Caucasus along the coast of the Caspian Sea, in a territory extending to the Kura River in the north. There was also province of the Kingdom of Armenia, Utikʻ (later annexed by Caucasian Albania), which likely bore the name of the ancestors of the Udis.[5][6]

Since the 5th century, the Udi people are often mentioned in the Armenian sources. More extensive information is given in The History of the Land of Ałuank[7] by Movsēs Kałankatuatsʻi. The Udi were one of the predominating Caucasian Albanian tribes.[8]

Udi woman as depicted by Max Karl Tilke

Due to their Caucasian Udi language and their Christian faith, the Udis are regarded as the last remnants of the old Caucasian Albanians. Under Arab and later Persian rule, some of them converted to Islam, and soon adopted the Azeri language. Others assimilated into the Georgians or Armenians. The Armenian Apostolic Church held services exclusively in the Armenian language and refused to ordain a local Udi priest, against which Udis protested:[9]

...our strong desire is that our pastor be a representative of our people, for although we belong to the Church of St. Gregory the Enlightener, our language is different: we are the Uti and we know that these people live nowhere except for the villages of Nizh and Vardashen. We do not have the slightest command of the Armenian language; nor have we any idea about what the Gospel says...

Today, most Udis belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, while in Nij, they belong to the Armenian Apostolic (or Gregorian) Church and used to conduct services in Armenian. Centuries of life in the Armenian, Iranian, and Turkish spheres influenced their culture, as is expressed in Udi folk traditions and their material culture.[10]

Whereas the Udis of Vartashen remained in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Udi Christians of Nij changed from the Armenian to the Russian Orthodox Church soon after the beginning of Russian rule.[9] In 2003, the “Albanian-Udi Christian Religious Community” was founded in Azerbaijan, which seeks to restore the Albanian Apostolic Church as a church independent from the Armenian Apostolic Church.[11]

Until 1991, the main Udi villages were Vartashen (now Oğuz) and Nij in Azerbaijan, as well as the village of Zinobiani in Georgia. In the recent past, Udi people also lived in Mirzabeily, Soltan Nuha, Jourlu, Mihlikuvah, Vardanli (now Karimli), Bajan, Kirzan, and Yenikend. In contemporary times they have mostly assimilated with the people of Azerbaijan.[12]

Vartashen was mainly a Udi village, where the Vartashen dialect of the Udi language was spoken by about 3000 people in the 1980s. The Udis of Vartashen belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church and had Armenian surnames. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Udis as well as the Armenians were expelled to Armenia.[13] Some 50 Udi people remained among some 7000 ethnic Azeris in the town, which was renamed to Oghuz.[14]

Today the only places of concentrated Udi settlement are the village of Nij in Azerbaijan and the village of Zinobiani in Georgia, which was founded by Udi refugees from Vartashen in the 1920s.[14][12]

A significant group of Udi lives in the Georgian village of Zinobiani, founded by Udi from Vartashen in the 1920s. Small groups reside in Russia in the Rostov region (Shahty, Taganrog, Rostov-na-Donu, Azov, Aleksandrovka); in the Krasnodar territory (Krasnodar, areas of Dinskoy, Leningrad, Kushchevsky); in the Stavropol Territory (Minvody, Pyatigorsk); in the Volgograd region (Volgograd, Dubovy Ovrag); and also in Sverdlovsk, Ivanovo, Kaluga areas, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Astrakhan; in Georgia in the outskirts of Tbilisi, Poti, Rustavi, in Armenia mainly in the Lori Province, and Aktau in Kazakhstan. Some also live in Ukraine's Kharkiv oblast.[14]

The Udi language is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Lezgic branch. The two primary dialects are Nij (Nidzh) and Vartashen. The people today also speak Azerbaijani, Russian, and Georgian. The Udi are commonly bilingual, and less frequently trilingual, depending on residence and work. Many use Udi only in daily life, but for official purposes, the Udi use the language of the country in which they reside, such as Azerbaijani, Russian, or Armenian.

In 1880, the population of the Udi people living in the area around Qabala in northern Azerbaijan[18] was estimated at 10,000. In the year 1897, the number of the Udi people was given around 4,000, in 1910, it was around 5,900. They were counted as 2,500 in the census of 1926, as 3,700 in 1959, as 7,000 in 1979, and in 1989, the Udi people numbered 8,652. In census of 1999 in Azerbaijan, there were 4,152 Udis.[19]

In the 2002 Russia Census, 3,721 residents identified as Udi. Most of the Udi people (1,573 persons) in Russia have been registered in Rostov region.

• Stepan Pachikov, co-founder of ParaGraph Intl., Parascript, Evernote Corp. among other software companies which contributed heavily to the development of handwriting recognition and VRML technologies.
• George Kechaari, Udi writer, educator, public figure and scientist.
• Voroshil Gukasyan, Soviet linguist, Caucasologist and specialist in the Udi language and Caucasian Albanian inscriptions.
• Movses Silikyan, major general of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I and then of the army of the First Armenian Republic.
• Zinobi Silikashvili, founder of Udi village of Zinobiani

• Caucasian Albania
• Romans in Caucasian Albania
• Ingiloy people

• Udis and Udi language.