Ossette

The Ossetians are an Eastern Iranian people of the central Caucasus, descended from the medieval Alans, a branch of the Sarmatian steppe peoples whose kingdom of Alania flourished in the 10th-12th centuries before the Mongol invasions of 1238-1239 drove them into the mountains. Their name comes from the Georgian 'Oseti', land of the Osi; they call themselves Iron (Ir) or Digoron after their two main dialect groups, and since the 1990s many also use the name Alans. Their homeland is divided between North Ossetia-Alania in Russia, which came under Russian rule in 1774, and South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia recognised by Russia after the 2008 war. In the 1860s several thousand Muslim Ossetians, mostly Digor, emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, where their descendants live in Turkey and Syria.

Ossetian culture centres on the extended family and clan (myggag), hospitality and the ritual feast (kuvd), at which the eldest man blesses three round cheese pies (ualibakh, fydzhin) and prays to God and the patron saints. The Nart sagas, shared with other Caucasian peoples, are their great epic. Traditional music uses the twelve-stringed harp, bagpipes and drum, and men's dances such as the simd are performed at weddings. Most Ossetians in Russia are bilingual in Russian, and many urban families speak Russian at home.

Most Ossetians are Orthodox Christians, but folk practice blends Orthodoxy with the old Ossetian faith: shrines (dzuar) to patron spirits such as Uastyrdzhi (Saint George), seasonal festivals and animal sacrifice at the feast. Since the 1990s a revived ethnic religion, Uatsdin (Assianism), has gained followers. A Sunni Muslim minority, mainly among the Digor of western North Ossetia, goes back to Kabardian influence in the 17th-18th centuries; nearly all Ossetians abroad in Turkey and Syria descend from these Muslims.

The full Ossetian Bible was published in stages between 2010 and 2022, after the New Testament in 2006; the Jesus Film and audio recordings exist. The Orthodox Church is the historic church of most Ossetians. Muslim Ossetians, in Russia and abroad, are much less reached, and many in the diaspora understand Turkish or Arabic better than Ossetian.