Nart Sagas
Whilst the title would be most likely misunderstood as Naruto, I belong to the extreme minority who do not interpret Nart as Naruto.
Colchis in the Greek Mythology
Those who love the Greek mythology most likely know one of the destinations of the Argonauts in the east coast of the Black Sea, Colchis, which is centered in present-day western Georgia also including the region of Abkhazia, but is known with the Golden Fleece in the Greek mythology.
Strabo refers to a nation called Zichia to the north of Colchis, and Zichia is the predecessor of Circassia and a medieval kingdom on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, inhabited by Circassians.
Circassians themselves don't use the term "Circassia", and refer to their country as Адыгэ Хэку (Adıgə Xəku) or Адыгей (Adıgey).
This is nothing unique. Armenians call their country Hayastan Հայաստան, and this -stan is a Persian suffix meaning "a place abounding in". That's why there're country names like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc.
The Circassians
Long time ago, I read "The Circassians" by Amjad Jaimoukha:
Geography (corrected)
Since Armenia has been one of my main interest for long time, it is quite natural that the ethnology in Caucasus also has interested me, except for the oil-rich dictator-led country AZ facing the Caspian Sea. I read several books on tribes in that area. Although not being a part of North Caucasus, Republic of Kalmykia (Хальмг Таңһч) located in Southern Mordor, lying north of the North Caucasus, is a home of the Kalmyks, a people of Oirat Mongolian origin who are mainly of Tibetan Buddhist faith, which is truly a stupendous revelation😮
One of the reasons why I bought this book "The Circassians", however, is attributed to my memory of "Lawrence of Arabia". Those who love the film would not require any annotation for a correlation between Lawrence and Circassian.
In 1917 Lawrence was captured by the Turks while attempting to penetrate the Turkish defenses at Deraa in Syria. He was disguised as a Circassian, but was recognized. It is a wonder that he was not immediately killed, or handed over for the price on his head, $:20,000. But his captor, Hajim Bey, happened to be ''an ardent paederast'' (Lawrence's own term).
via New York Times
Nart Sagas
Then I read "Nart Sagas from the Caucasus" by John Colarusso, a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages:
Please note that Ubykh
is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, an ethnic group of Circassian nation who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported en masse to the Ottoman Empire in the Circassian genocide.
…
The Ubykh language died out on 7 October 1992, when its last fluent speaker, Tevfik Esenç, died...
Naruto is zillion times more famous than Nart… which is totally unavoidable.
The Nart sagas (Abkhaz: Нарҭаа ражәабжьқәа; Adyghe: Нарт тхыдэжъхэр; Ossetian: Нарты кадджытæ ...) are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of the basic mythology of the ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin, Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar, and to some extent Chechen-Ingush folklore, known with its hero Sosruko or Soslan, who
as a character, is sometimes cast in the light of the trickster god, comparable to the Scandinavian Loki (who finds a closer parallel in the Nart Syrdon, however), Georgian Amirani, or the Ancient Greek Prometheus.
In addition, I had better mention Satanaya, a mythological figure who appears in many cycles of the Nart sagas of the North Caucasus, who
is the mother of the Narts, a fertility figure who is also an authority over her children, often cast in the light of a "wise woman" or matriarch, which mirrors the relative freedom of women in North Caucasian societies generally.
My rudimentary knowledge in Hindi urged me to find the mystery of Satanaya having Sanskrit flavor…Indeed Satanaya can be written सात Sata + नय Naya and it's easy to find vocabularies in Sanskrit lexicon such as Wisdom Library. Not being an expert, I had better stop letting my imagination run wild.
Unexpected contact
The following came literally unexpectedly, no way to
"expect the unexpected",
which I learned in (old-fashioned) project management course 30+ years ago.
① A notification in ❌ (Twitter):
② It was a "repost" of my old tweet on 20th June 2022 before ❌ killed⬇️
It's just a tiny tiny tiny thing, but priceless for me in a sense.
Then I found lot of activities by Circassian diaspora and learned a lot about Circassian genocide, none of which appears to be reasonably known in the country of the rising sun…
Circassian genocide
It's hard to believe what is described in the above Wikipedia, but that dreadful atrocity has continued down to the 21st century as we see today.
Here are other sources:
✳️ by European Conservatives and Reformists
"Their only crime was not being Russian: The Circassian Genocide"
✳️ by Ukrainian World Congress
"Ukraine recognizes the genocide of Circassian people by Tsarist Russia"
🔳