Month: July 2015

Khevsur – Descendants of Crusaders?

My father was reading an over 100 year old book, where he found information about “Kevzor” people living in Kaukasus mountains and with the roots far away from Alsace, today’s France.Khevsureti, Caucasus

This was interesting enough to search for more information. And after a while I found out a Wikipedia article about Khevsureti.

The article tells “There has been a hypothesis, coming from the locals and descriptions by Russian serviceman and ethnographer Arnold Zisserman […], that these Georgian highlanders were descendants of the last European Crusaders.[…] the pure Crusader origin of Khevsurs is not supported by most modern scholars. However, some form of settlement of Crusaders in these areas is possible, as they are mentioned in several manuscripts of the time as participants of several battles against the Muslims in Georgia […], and the fact that some passed through here after the fall of the Holy Land.”

And the crusades reminded me from the medieval Europe and maps from that era. See the map from AD 1160 at Medieval Europe and the Middle East

 

Is the Language Vanishing?

The ethnologue tells that the Awjila language is moribund, meaning that language will vanish sooner or later.

Town of Awjila, the place where this Berber language is spoken
Plan of Awjila from Scarin 1937 (insert between pp. 76 and 77).

Despite this fact found in Ethnologue, I found a blog about the language and that tells that this Berber language is used a lot in the Facebook. So perhaps the possibility to use their own language in written form is going to save the language — who knows?