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Peoples of Russia
Rutuls
The Rutuls are one of the native peoples of Dagestan.
Language
They speak the Rutul (Mukhad) language belonging to the Lezgin subgroup of the Nakh-Dagestan branch of the Northern Caucasus language family. Its dialects are: Mukhad (Rutul proper), Luchek, Shinaz-Myukhrek, Ikhrek, Borch-Khnov.
Dispersion
The Rutuls live in Dagestan (24.3 thousand people), in the valleys of the rivers Samur and Kara-Samur, in two settlements in the valley of the river Akhtychay (Khnov and Borch) as well as in the cities (Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, Derbent, etc.) A small group of Rutuls (0.6 thousand) lives in Kalmykia, in the Stavropol territory and the Rostov region. Away from the Caucasus, a number of Rutuls lives in the Tyumen district.
Society
The predominant form of the family for the Rutuls was the nuclear one, though in the 19th-early 20th century some big unseparated patriarchal families still survived. The largest kinship group was tukhum headed by its oldest members. At the council of the heads of separate families of the tukhum, the cases of division of estate, coordinated marriages, etc., were solved.
Traditional occupations
The main occupations are cattle breeding (raising cattle and breeding sheep on distant pastures) and plough agriculture. The crops cultivated are the spring and winter wheat, rye, barley, millet and spelt. The traditional home industries are fullery, carpet weaving, feltmaking, making woollen knitted footwear, patterned socks, wheel-less pottery, stonework, copperwork, silverwork, etc.
National costume
The traditional clothes are of the same type as the clothes of the other Lezgin peoples. Men wore tunic-like shirts with round edge piping of the collar and a straight vertical cut in front, trousers with a not particularly wide leg, a chokha of the North Caucasus type with cartridge belts and a papakha hat from long-piled sheepskin. Women wore an unfastened long robe, in the villages bordering Azerbaijan, a short thigh-long unfastened jacket and a long wide skirt. The headgear consisted of a pouch-like hair cover (qatsigen) and a headscarf folded as a triangle. A significant role in female clothes was played by silver jewellery.
Dwellings
The settlements were built in hard-to-reach places. To increase defensive capacity, fortress walls were built, as well as signal and defensive towers. The types of dwellings: the earliest was one-storey house or one-room house uplifted on stone pillars, standing separate from the outbuildings; then two-storey house without the yard or outbuildings; one- or two-storey house with small open yard with outbuildings.
Food
The food is mostly flour, meat and dairy-based. Several types of bread were made from unleavened and sour dough. The most widespread dishes are: khinkal of various forms and sizes, millet and oatmeal gruel, pies with various fillings.
