Durdzuks

thumb|Durdzuks (Цурцукы) on Prince Vakhushti of Kartli|Vakhushti's map in 1745 located between the Kisti (Кисты) and [[Gligvi (Глигвы).]] thumb|"Dourdsoukethi" (Mitcheghi). Atlas of the Caucasus. Dubois de Montpereux F., 1843 The Durdzuks (), also known as Dzurdzuks, was a medieval exonym of the 9th-18th centuries used mainly in Georgian, Arabic, but also Armenian sources in reference to the Vainakh peoples (Chechens and Ingush).

== Geography == Researchers unanimously identify the Durdzuks as the ancestors of modern Chechens, Ingush and Bats. Some historians link the Durdzuks to mountainous Ingushetia and identify them with the Ingush people. Others believe that during the Middle Ages, the population of Chechnya was known to the South Caucasian peoples under the name "Durdzuks", or "Dzurdzuks", while the population of Ingushetia under the names "Glighvi", "Ghilighvi". In 1745, Georgian geographer Vakhushti of Kartli noted that the country "Durdzuketi consists of Kisti, Durdzuki and Gligvi", placing the first in the vicinity of the Darial Gorge and the latter farther east of the three, bordering Pankisi, Tusheti and Didoeti. Russian ethnologist A. Genko believes that, since the earliest times, the name Durdzuk encompassed the whole of the Northern Caucasus. Georgian historian V. Gamrekeli claims that "Durdzuk" is definitively and, with all its references, uniformly localized between Didoeti-Dagestan in the east and the gorge of the Terek River, in the west. The village Zurzuka in the Vedensky District of Chechnya has been theorized to be connected to the ethnonym Durdzuk. Historians often place the "Gate of the Durdzuks" in the Assa Gorge of Ingushetia, which is a path connecting the North and South Caucasus regions.