The Bats people or the Batsbi are Nakh-speaking Tushetians in the country of Georgia. They are also known as the Ts’ova-Tush (წოვათუშები) after the Ts’ova Gorge in the historic Georgian mountain region of Tusheti, where they migrated to from mountainous Ingushetia. The group should not be confused with the neighbouring Kists – also a Nakh-speaking people who live in the nearby Pankisi Gorge.
Language and customs
Part of the community still retains its own Bats language ("batsbur mott"), which has adopted many Georgian loan-words and grammatical rules and is mutually unintelligible with the two other Nakh languages, Chechen and Ingush. As Professor Johanna Nichols put it, "[the Batsbur] language is related to Chechen and Ingush roughly as Czech is related to Russian [and the Batsbi] not belong to vai naakh nor their language to vai mott, though any speaker of Chechen or Ingush can immediately tell that the language is closely related and can understand some phrases of it. The Batsbi have not traditionally followed Vainakh customs or law, and they consider themselves Georgians." Batsbur language is unwritten and the Batsbi have used Georgian as a language of literacy and trade for centuries.
The renowned Georgian ethnographer Sergi Makalatia wrote in his study of Tusheti about the Tsova-Tush language (Batsbur):
John F. Baddeley also considered the origins of the Tsova-Tush language Ingush.
Nowadays, all Batsbi speak Georgian (usually with a Tushetian or Kakhetian accent). Only a handful speak Batsbur with any kind of proficiency.
The Batsbi have retained very little of their separate cultural traits, and their customs and traditions now resemble those of other Eastern Georgian mountaineers, particularly those of the Tush (obviously, but there are also deeper pagan-religious links between the Tush and the neighbouring Khevsur).
Origins
Descent from Ingush
According to most authors, Batsbi are descended from the Ingush. According to Sir Richard Phillips and , the Batsbi are an Ingush tribe. The origin of the Tsova-Tushins from the Ingush (Galgai) was also acknowledged by the first Tsova-Tushino writer I. Tsiskarov. The data of the Ingush and Batsbi folk legends also testify that the Batsbi came from the area of Vabua (Fappi) in mountainous Ingushetia. This was confirmed by special studies at the beginning of the 20th century. According to some information, the resettlement of a part of the Ingush-Fyappins to Tusheti occurred at the end of the 16th century or at the beginning of the 17th century.
Tsovata and migration to Kakheti
The Batsbi's villages in the Ts'ova Gorge (Tsovata) were Ts'aro, Shavts'qala, Nazarta, Nadirta, Mozarta, Indurta, Sagirta and Etelta. Each was inhabited by one or several extended families who believed they shared a common ancestor. In the early nineteenth century, following the destruction of two of their villages by landslides and an outbreak of the plague, the Batsbi abandoned their eight villages in the Ts'ova Gorge in western Tusheti and began to migrate down to the lowlands on the left bank of the Alazani river in western Kakheti.
A significant proportion of the village's women work in Europe and in America, sending money home to the village. Many men still work as shepherds or cowherds, most of them wintering the animals in the Shiraki lowlands (south-eastern Georgia, on the border with neighbouring Azerbaijan) and then taking them up to summer pastures in Tusheti (a two- to three-week journey).
According to a study written and published by Professor Roland Topshishvili as part of the University of Frankfurt's ECLING project, the Batsbi only lived in temporary dwellings around Alvani in winter. In the summer, the men and their families would lead their flocks of sheep up to summer pastures around Tbatana and in Tsovata, returning to Alvani in the autumn.
Professor Johanna Nichols also wrote about the migration of the Batsbi in her article on "The Origin of the Chechen and Ingush":
Batsbi tradition as recorded by Desheriev (1953, 1963) preserves memory of a two-stage descent: first, abandonment of the original highland area in northern Tusheti, settling of villages lower in the mountains, and a period of transhumance plus permanent descents of a few families; then, complete abandonment of the highlands and year-round settlement in the lowlands after a flood destroyed one of the secondary mountain villages in the early nineteenth century. That is, Batsbi lowland outposts were established by a combination of transhumance and individual resettlements, and some time later there was a sizable migration into an established outpost.