TsӀob

Tsez · deity · Tsez traditional religion; continuing · deity

Tsob is the supreme sky-and-thunder god of the Dido, the largest of the Tsezic peoples, and stood at the head of the pre-Islamic pantheon shared by the Avar–Andi–Tsez and Nakh highlanders. Thunder and lightning were his weapon, wielded to strike down the guilty, while the same power over the sky made him the giver of rain and of the harvest. His cult crystallised around a fetish: a square white stone at the village of Asakh near Tsunta, venerated by the whole community as 'Tsob-God' (ЦӀоб-Аллах). No crop could be eaten and no animal slaughtered until a share had been laid before the stone with the words 'This is for you, Tsob-God', and in drought the stone was addressed in rites to bring rain. Sources note that the name was proper to the Avar–Andi–Dido and Nakh peoples and was later supplanted among the Avars proper by the god Beched, even as it persisted among the Dido.

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