Greben Cossacks

The Grebensky Cossacks or Grebentsy was a group of Cossacks formed in the 16th century from Don Cossacks who left the Don area and settled in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. The Greben Cossacks are part of the Terek Cossacks. They were influenced by Chechen and Nogai culture and most were bilingual in the Russian language and the Nogai language.

Scenes, landscapes, customs and costumes of the Caucasus drawn from nature by Prince G. Gagarin.

Name

According to the article on Grebentsy in ЭСБЕ (1893), whose author — a writer V. E. Rudakov [ru] — is referring to some historians, who, in turn, allegedly relied on materials from «Book to the Big Drawing [ru]» and the legend of the Grebensky icon^[a], claimed that Grebensky Cossacks descended from the Don Cossacks who settled in the Caucasus, whose community originally lived in the interfluve Seversky Donets and Kalitva [de; es; it; ru] near a hill called the Grebensky mountains, hence the name of these Cossacks — Grebensky.^[1]

General information

Settlement territory

Modern scholars have no information about the settlement area of Grebentsy on the right side of the Terek River (old Russian Terka / Terki). Basic facts about these Cossacks appear after their relocation to the left bank of the river. In 1712^[b] the Grebensky Cossacks moved to the left bank of the Terek River in the area of the fortification of the Terka / Terki^[c] (Sunzhensky fortification).

Notes

1. Legend under the early Ryazan Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky.^[1]
2. According to the "Chronicle of the Guards Cossack Units" of 1912, the Grebens moved from the right bank of the Terek to the left earlier - in 1711.^[2]
3. There is a mistake in the "Soviet Military Encyclopedia": instead of a Terka/Terki a fortification-fortress, to which the Grebens moved, named a Tarka.^[3]