Jeyrakh-Assin Reserve
Jeyrakh-Assin Reserve

The Jeyrakh-Assin historical, architectural and natural museum-reserve is located within the boundaries of the Jeyrakh district of the Republic of Ingushetia on the northern slopes of the foothills of the Central part of the Greater Caucasus Range. The reserve was established on June 2, 1988. The area of the reserve is slightly more than 627 square kilometers. The activity of the reserve is aimed at ensuring the preservation, restoration and study of territorial complexes of cultural and natural heritage, material and spiritual values in their traditional historical (cultural and natural) environment. On the territory of the museum-reserve there are 122 ancient architectural complexes, including more than 2,670 objects of cultural significance, including defensive and residential towers, burial crypts, Christian and pagan sanctuaries and temples. The oldest buildings of the megalithic type belong to the middle of the second millennium BC. Every year, significant scientific discoveries are made on the territory of the reserve, new objects are identified, archaeological expeditions are constantly working, scientists from all over the world come. Since 1996, the reserve has been a candidate for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Significant value in the reserve is given to work on creating conditions for the development of organized tourism, its educational and service component.

On October 16, employees of the museum-reserve made an inspection trip to the Shuang “City of the Dead”, located 1.0 km west of the Shoan tower complex, in the area of Mohde.

The scale of the “Shuang City of the Dead” (Mohde) is impressive – it is the largest necropolis in the region and the region, consisting of more than 200 underground and semi-underground collective crypt tombs with remains of the late Middle Ages.

They are distinguished by significant design features and diversity: completely immersed in the mountain soil and visible from the outside on low stone pillars and mounds; with a clear bulge formed by a vault and a low facade wall with a manhole; with an underground chamber, with a gable-step roof, half out of the ground.

In terms of crypts rectangular, and burial chambers - often, with stone or wooden shelves, small niches, stone boxes, sometimes arranged in the side walls, caches and other original structural details.

Some tombs are multi-chambered and multi-tiered. In a number of tombs, the back wall is formed by a protrusion of a rock or an aligned mountain slope, and there are special stone beds for the dead. The roof of buildings is more often gabled, less often flat.

This unique crypt necropolis has been studied stationarily since the end of the XIX century by V. F. Miller, V. I. Dolbezhev, L. P. Semenov, E. I. Krupnov, M. H. Kataev, M. V. Muzhukhoev, D. Y. Chakhkiev, E. I. Narozhny, R. A. Dautova, X. M. Mamayev and other researchers, whose scientific works give general and detailed characteristics to many local tombs, which were used in the funeral rite, found here on numerous gold coins and timbers. The results of the latest scientific research allow us to attribute this burial ground as a whole to the second half of the XIII-XV centuries.

Of these, 77 burial grounds are registered with the state, further work on their inclusion in the list of identified objects of cultural heritage, and then, after the historical and cultural expertise, in the unified state register of the OKN of the Russian Federation will be continued.

Go to group