Article published on 12/01/2010 Caucaz.com
By Nicolas LANDRU in Kabale / Ninigori
© Nicolas Landru Horse Market Kabale
The cattle market in Kabale Sunday Kakheti, bordering south-eastern Georgia and a few kilometers from the border with Azerbaijan, income seems like another era. It is the largest market of its kind in Georgia, in the heart of a region showing a superposition of peoples and cultures. Where pastoralism joined the sedentary, some perspectives on tropism emblematic of dozens of local economies in Transcaucasia.
region Kabale District Lagodekhi, is a transitional space. North and west, deep Kakheti wine and Georgian traditions. South, the steppes of Kakheti and shepherds, which opens on Azerbaijan and beyond, the Caspian and Central Asia. The area inhabitedspreads like a line between the steep walls of stone and without holes of the Greater Caucasus (beyond which lies the Dagestan Russia) and Alazani Valley, a vast alluvial bed of the river traditionally uninhabited because of floods, and now reserved for agriculture.
The village of Kabale predominantly inhabited by Azeris and is one of the oldest in the region. All District Lagodekhi is composed of a mix ethnicity. Georgian villages, the vast majority, more precisely in western Georgia Imérétiens relocated here in 1930 to populate this region then virtually uninhabited; Azeri villages; Ossetian being fast depopulation, emigration to the North Ossetia being dramatic, and finally ethnic groups Dagestan (Lezgins, Avars). There are even some villages Oudis, Christian people almost disappeared, forming a small minority in Azerbaijan, and is said descendant of the ancient Caucasian Albanians.
Pastoralism
A group of people roamed throughout the year from north to south of Kakheti, somehow giving unity to the region: Keys, shepherds from the mountains of the far north-Touchette is, where are the summer pastures for their herds. In autumn, they descend the valley to reach the Alazani their winter pastures, steppes Chiraq on the border of Azerbaijan. Many Azeris in the south of Kakheti are also pastors and move seasonally in the southern region, often crossing the border of their country "owner", Azerbaijan.
In sum, the veil of nomadism is still space in the region to come and mingle with the sedentary culture of wine and Georgians. In Soviet times, nomadic peoples were semi-sedentary, often assigned to monitor herds collectivized. Cultures "nomads" of origin was not long reappear in full force with the collapse of the USSR, and the paucity of infrastructure, the horse has taken a prominent place in local culture.
Used for transport, such as oxen and water buffalo, but also as a mount for surveillance of flocks of sheep raised for wool and meat, these little horses of Arab type reminder that there is no two centuries of Turkic nomads from the steppes of Central Asia (which would become one of the many components of the Azeri minority) were still settling into the area.
node of a subsistence economy
Important point
trade horses, oxen and sheep, located between two villages, the cattle market in Kabale is as a large flat area without specific infrastructure, spread around the alluvial bed of the river Kabala. Quick muddy when it rained, it looks like mostly a vast wasteland where every Sunday we can come and try to sell his cattle.
Vehicles (Ladas carts and horses mostly) are vaguely parked on the sides, and field, men exhibit and ride the animals, a horse to negotiate 300-2000 laris by "quality" of the beast , age, size, strength. Racing and trials of carts and horses are held between the stalls, providing the necessary entertainment with the long hours of waiting, sometimes spreading panic among the crowd.
Tackle Annex, saddles and stirrups, tanks or harness is handcrafted, wood, leather or sheepskin. If the market does not collect the horses almost exclusively of men, the equipment market, with food, clothing, and miscellaneous products under precarious halls located across the site, is the preserve of women and families. This market, as found around the Caucasus, is still the most important south of Kakheti.
A factor of regional integration?
Like the religious festival of Alaverdoba, north of Kakheti, which takes place around the Orthodox Cathedral of Alaverdi and is traditionally open to all denominations, the market Kabale is a meeting point villages and ethnic groups in the region. Factor of regional balance, we come from afar to participate in this rural province, and agriculture and to a lesser extent, pastoralism, are an important part of the household economy.
The Kakheti region is one of the most multiethnic of Georgia, but it is also in more stable and less use of ethno-political tensions. If this phenomenon is related to many factors, the management style of leaders, the power structure, history, geo-strategic reasons, he also has to do with the undeniable fact that all groups in the region - none of which are isolated and who speak the Georgian language of communication - are united in a particular socio-economic system that revolves around the encounter between viticulture, pastoralism, nomadism and sedentary.
"14 people live in Lagodekhi," exclaims Bacho in a toast that brought his profession to go door to door throughout the region. "Everybody needs everyone, and all live in peace as good neighbors. .
Far from Tbilisi and the new Georgia, the market is a residue of Kabale age where time is not moving as fast. It is a relic that the USSR was not buried, far away, and Georgia will take time to disappear. The socio-economic developments facing the country relate to specific areas affecting almost exclusively the population of the capital. They have very little impact on the "ecosystem" of the province. Without a sustainable economic revolution that can fundamentally restructure a society still rooted in the rural and pastoral, the market in Kabale and countless parents will host many more Sundays of micro-regions of the Caucasus.
See also portfolio Caucaz.com: Market Kabale
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