L&B Journals

Ben Fuery & Lucy Pinnell / Pankisi Valley, Georgia

The Pankisi valley is one of only a handful of places in Georgia where you’ll hear the Call To Prayer echo out across the mountains. On a Friday morning you can hear this ethereal sound ringing out from the minaret of the Old Duisi mosque, a hundred year old building of red and black brick that towers distinctly over the village, as a group of women shuffle their way through the snow towards a tin-roofed outbuilding. This unassuming location is host to a unique and mystical Sufi ritual, one which we had journeyed for two days through the snow to witness.

The Alazani river carves out the dramatic gorge that gave birth to Pankisi, flowing from its origins in the southeastern slopes of the Caucasus down to the Azerbaijani border, weaving between soaring peaks as it goes. Life here clings to the banks of this river amidst steep and wild mountains, and within this remote valley a unique cultural heritage has blossomed over the last century and a half.

As we turned the corner out of Akhmeta and drove into the valley head, there was a gradual visible shift; the men wore long, wiry beards and the women donned modest skirts and headscarves as they wandered around the village streets, chopping wood and collecting bags of shopping. Farm animals wandered freely across the roads as they did all across Georgia, although pigs, a mainstay in Georgian agriculture, were notably absent here, as were the ubiquitous vineyards. Smoke billowed gently from chimneys, and a few brave shepherds herded their animals through drifts of snow. 

The inhabitants of this valley are the Kist people, a subethnos of the Chechens and Ingush who migrated across the Caucasus mountains in the mid-1800’s. Initially settling among the Baltagora mountains, but later moving down to the riverbanks, they were spurred on by economic hardships stemming from Russia’s military operations, and the tradition of blood feuds among Caucasian highlanders.

They brought with them their customs, language and religion, which blended with Georgian traditions to create this unique cultural and religious enclave in the northeast of the country, where you’ll just as likely hear a conversation in Chechen as you will in Georgian or Russian. 

In this predominantly Orthodox Christian country, the majority of Pankisi villagers today are Sunni Muslims, although the original settlers were in fact Sufi Muslims, and a waning number still are today.

Our boots crunched through the snow as flakes fell heavily on our heads and shoulders; it was a wintry Friday morning in Duisi, and we were trudging our way through the gates of the Old Mosque, a beautiful building of alternating brick patterns that looked (and sounded) older than it actually was. Built in 1902 by the Kists, it was forcefully closed for 40 years by the Soviet government in an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Kist to Orthodoxy, before being later reinstated.

We entered the small building, kicking off our boots and tying my headscarf in place, and were grateful to see a lady already building a fire inside a stove in the corner. The room was spartan, with softly textured green walls, cushions and a large silk carpet; a singular clock hung on the wall, and a handful of misbaha prayer beads draped from a coat stand.

We were just warming our fingers and camera lenses by the fire when another seven women shuffled in and seated themselves on cushions around the heat source. One of these women was Raiza, singer and leader of the Zikr ceremony we were here to watch. Duisi is one of the only places in the world where this ceremony is performed by women, and not just by men, and so this promised to be unique and rare experience.

The group gathered in a circle, a hush fell over the room, and then Raiza’s crystal voice pierced the silence. 

Aaaa o ma shaʾa llah a llah…  Muhammedi ma’h’allah…

The rest of the group soon chimed in, with voices ranging from silvery highs to gravelly lows, some in time with the lead and others weaving their own dissonant melodies throughout. The sound was ethereal, haunting almost, and timeless, rooted in ancient mysticism and spirituality.

The Zikr (or dhikr) ceremony is performed by Sufi Muslims all over the world, as a way to achieve unity with Allah. Participants, or Dhakirs, chant, clap, pray and move in circles as a form of meditation that often leads to a trance and a state of ecstasy. In Pankisi these chants are interwoven with Sufi hymns and Nazms, Kist religious a capella songs performed in the Kist dialect of the Chechen language. These hymns call for peace and forgiveness, or marshua kavkaz which means ‘peace in the Caucasus’, and are sung with a beauty and sincerity that could stir deep-rooted feelings of spirituality in the most unmoving of people.

The chanting progresses as the ladies start clapping, rising to their feet to begin pacing in circles with Raiza spurring the group on. As their feet stamp harder so their voices become more guttural, with a power and roughness reminiscent of throat singing; soon they appear to be completely at one with their God, the surroundings of the room forgotten. To be in this unity is to be in a constant state of remembrance of all creation, as each member of the group effaces themselves, feeding off the synergy of the others in remembrance of Allah.

ʾIlla llah la ʾilaha… ʾIlla llah la ʾilaha… ʾIlla llah la ʾilaha…

Aside from this being one of the few female Zikr ceremonies performed in the world, there is another glaringly obvious difference between this ritual and those of the Whirling Dervishes in Türkiye, or the frantic circle dancing of the men across the mountains in Checnyna; in this group with an average age of 74, the physical energy is lacking, even if the spiritual energy is not. The group pace in circles, but they do not run, whirl or dance; at various points members have to sit out and regain their breath, and one elderly lady winds up laying on a pile of cushions sipping a glass of water.

The youngest participant in this tariqa- or order- is 64; the eldest, 84. There are no young people learning the ritual in preparation to take over from Raiza as leader, which carries with it the threat that in years to come this ceremony will likely die out with its members.

Half a kilometre and an entire set of beliefs away is the Abu Bakr As-Siddik Mosque, colloquially known as the New Duisi Mosque, a more popular venue where a stricter form of Sunni Islam is being taught. This branch discourages singing and dancing, and refers to the round dancing of the Zikr ceremony as a ‘pagan’ ritual¹. This mosque is sometimes called the “Wahhabi mosque” by locals, was built in 2002 with funding from Saudi Arabia, and stemming from the beliefs of the more conservative Chechen Wahhabis who migrated to Pankisi in 1997 and began to preach their version of “Pure Islam”².

These two factors, the age of the Sufi Kist women, and the waning interest of younger, more conservative Sunni Kists, have endangered this unique ritual, and in due time it is at risk of fading out and disappearing altogether.

The Dhakirs’ chanting slows and a sense of calm washes over the group. Hands raise up, palms inwards, and passionate prayers are recited for the recent victims of the Türkiye and Syria earthquakes, among others. The group wipe their hands over their faces at the end as though wiping away their sins, a gesture which supplicates Allah as they beg him to answer their prayers of peace and forgiveness.

Raiza then launched into a rendition of the Sufi song Ramazan, usually performed with her fellow singers that make up the Aznash Laaman Ensemble, a group that that has become synonymous with Pankisi Valley. The other women join in with the song and clap along; the lyrics are exquisitely repetitive and inspire the same sense of awe as the Zikr chants.

Ramazan’i, ramazan… Ramazan, ramazan…

Raiza started learning to perform the Zikr ceremony at 18, and by the age of 31 had taken over as its leader. Not one of the original performers she started with is still alive now, including the woman who taught her. During her early years the room was always full of people, but as the years went on the numbers began to dwindle; some died, some are too elderly or ill to perform, and many were absent on the day we visited. Raiza says she is keenly aware that the tradition might die, but at the same time does not feel there is anyone suitable to continue leading the ceremonies.

She also performs as one quarter of the Aznash Laaman ensemble, who sing traditional Chechen songs, ballads of the Caucasus, and Sufi hymns, occasionally touring around Europe and spreading the music of Pankisi as far away as Australia.

Following the Russo-Chechens wars of the 90’s and early 00’s, the Pankisi Valley faced major social and political problems, and saw an influx of refugees arrive from neighbouring Chechnya. Among them were many families of the local Kists, who sheltered up to 85% percent of the arriving refugees. The mass migration of refugees in 1999 - 2000 aggravated an already difficult economic and social environment in the Pankisi region. Crime worsened and by late 1999, Georgia’s government had effectively lost control of the region³.

A small number of Chechen separatists and Islamist insurgents harboured in the valley over the next decade, leading to sensationalised media coverage around the world dubbing Pankisi the “hotbed of Islamist radicalisation”, a stigma the region has struggled to shake off.

Since 2004 the local inhabitants have worked hard to restore peace and stability back to the valley however, and the initiative of one local Kist woman, Nazy Dakishvili, has led to a surge in community-based tourism. Her guesthouse was the first to open its doors to tourists in the region, a place that people had been previously afraid to visit, including the National Tourism Board of Georgia⁴.

Today Pankisi Valley has a small but thriving tourism industry, a place for lovers of fresh air and pristine mountains, and boasts several guesthouses, an ethnographic museum, artisan felt-maker, and a brewery (non-alcoholic, of course). The efforts of Nazy and the locals have been successful in changing the negative stereotypes of this misunderstood region, and have brought prosperity to its villagers. Additionally, watching the Zikr ceremony has long been a draw for tourists, who are invited to come and watch, but only so long as it is still being performed.

We thanked Raiza and the group via a hastily written message on Google Translate, which she happily read out to the group as we stood in the falling snow. Despite having no religious ties of our own, the ceremony had been a moving and humbling experience for us. We left with a newfound admiration for Sufi mysticism, with songs heard nowhere else on earth that would stick in our heads for weeks, and with a tangible sense of sadness for this unique cultural tradition that, next time we visited Pankisi, may well have died out altogether.