Editing Chechens (section)

=== Antiquity ===
{{Main|Durdzuks}}

Ancestors of the modern Chechens and Ingush were known as [[Durdzuks]]. According to ''[[The Georgian Chronicles]]'', before his death, [[Togarmah|Targamos]] [Togarmah] divided the country amongst his sons, with [[Caucas|Kavkasos]] [Caucas] receiving the Central Caucasus. Kavkasos engendered the Chechen tribes, and his descendant, Durdzuk, who took up residence in a mountainous region, later called "Dzurdzuketia" after him, established a strong state in the fourth and third centuries BC.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jaimoukha|first=Amjad|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203356432|title=The Chechens|date=2004-11-10|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-203-35643-2|location=|page=31|doi=10.4324/9780203356432}}</ref> Among the Chechen teips, the teip [[:ru:Зурзакой|Zurzakoy]], consonant with the ethnonym Dzurdzuk, lives in the [[Itum-Kale]] region of Chechnya.

Georgian historian [[Giorgi Melikishvili]] posited that although there was evidence of Nakh settlement in the Southern Caucasus areas, this did not rule out the possibility that they also lived in the North Caucasus.<ref>Jaimoukha, Amjad. The Chechens: A Handbook. Page 24. "Also, the Georgian historian G. A. Melikishvili maintained that the formation of the Vainakh took place much earlier than the first century BC. Though evidence of Nakh settlement was found on the southern slopes of the Caucasus in the second and first millennia BC, he did not rule out the possibility of their residence in the northern and eastern regions of the Caucasus. It is traditionally accepted that the Vainakh have existed in the Caucasus, with their present territory as a nucleus of a larger domicile, for thousands of years, and that it was the ‘birthplace’ of their ethnos, to which the peoples who inhabited the Central Caucasus and the steppe lands all the way to the Volga in the northeast and the Caspian Sea to the east contributed."</ref>

The state of Durdzuketi has been recorded since the 4th century BC.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> ''The Armenian Chronicles'' mention that the Durdzuks defeated the Scythians and became a significant power in the region in the first millennium BC.<ref name="ReferenceA" />

The Vainakh in the east had an affinity with Georgia, while the [[Malkh|Malkh Kingdom]] of the west looked to the new Greek kingdom of [[Bosporan Kingdom|Bosporus]] on the Black Sea coast (though it may have also had relations with Georgia).<ref name="ReferenceA" /> According to legend, [[Adermakhus|Adermalkh]], chief of the Malkh state, married the daughter of the Bosporan king in 480 BCE.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> [[:ru:Малхистинцы#|Malkhi]] is one of the Chechen [[tukkhum]]s.<ref>Крупнов Е. И. Древности Чечено-Ингушетии. — Изд-во Академии наук СССР, 1963. — с. 256</ref><ref>Натаев Сайпуди Альвиевич. ПРОБЛЕМА ЭТНОТЕРРИТОРИАЛЬНОЙ СТРУКТУРЫ ЧЕЧНИ В XVIII–XIX ВВ. В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ.</ref><ref>Марковин В. И. «В ущельях Аргуна и Фортанги». Москва, 1965 — с. 71</ref><ref>Мамакаев М. «Чеченский тайп в период его разложения». Грозный, 1973.</ref><ref>Шавхелишвили А. И. «Грузино-чечено-ингушские взаимоотношения». Тбилиси, 1992. — с.65, 72</ref><ref>Пиотровский Б. Б. История народов Северного Кавказа с древнейших времен до конца XVIII в. — Наука, 1988. — с.239</ref><ref>Н. Г. Волкова. Этнический состав населения Северного Кавказа в XVIII-начале XX века — Москва: Наука, 1974. — с.169</ref>