Erzi Tower Complex is the main attraction of the valley of the Armkha River, one of the largest castle-type tower complexes in the region at the tip of the mountain range. Located in Jairach district.
The Erzi tower complex includes 8 combat, 2 semi-combat, 47 residential towers with various annexes, several different sanctuaries and burial grounds and a long stone defensive wall with wide gates of the late Middle Ages. Most of the battle towers were restored in 2015. Most of them are five-storey (only one of them is six floors). On the first floors of these towers, you can observe large stone cone-shaped "bags" - compartments (from 1 to 6) for storing agricultural supplies and keeping prisoners, and in the walls of the remaining floors (except the upper ones) - numerous narrow loopholes for firefighting, defensive niches, rare small vaulted window openings. The entrance vaulted opening at each tower is located at the level of the 2nd floor. Radiocarbon dating of one of them showed 1683-1723 years of construction.
Residential towers of Erzi complex were 2-4-storey. Some of them had loggia. On their walls preserved petroglyphs and tamga-shaped signs: crosses, spirals, circles, tridents, etc. Near the towers you can see several crypt burial grounds XIII-XVIII centuries. Of particular interest is the core-shaped mausoleum of the XVIII century Yand-Kash (Grave of Yand), which was built over the grave of the famous local architect named Yand, the ancestor of the Yandiev family. There are several legends and legends about Yand. In 2019, the mausoleum was restored. Above the slope you can see the ruins of a small temple-sanctuary of Erdzeli, erected by Yand in the second half of the XVIII century. In the hiding places of the sanctuary, archaeologists discovered three large iron crosses.
The largest relic of Erdzeli is a unique cast bronze eagle statuette made in the VIII century in Iraq. The figure height of 38 cm in the 1930s was taken by the Caucasian scholar Nikolai Yakovlev to St. Petersburg, now it is exhibited in the State Hermitage. An exact copy of the statuette is kept in the State Museum of the Republic of Ingushetia in Nazran.
East of Erzi, near the road to the village of Kerbite are two pillar-shaped sanctuaries. According to legends, the sanctuaries were solemnly erected in the XVIII century.
Erzi Tower Complex is part of the Dzhirakh-Assin State Historical, Architectural and Natural Museum-Reserve and is an identified object of cultural heritage protected by the state.
