Kinship
Traditional Laks, like most Daghestani highlanders, lived in patriarchal clan units (tukhums) consisting of a large extended family having a common ancestor, either recently deceased or still living. All members had the same patronymic and all property was owned mutually by the clan; decision making was the responsibility of either the elder patriarch or the elder males. Clan members were expected to provide mutual assistance in work and in family affairs, and to assume collective responsibility in vendettas, as prescribed by adat (traditional Daghestani customary law that predates Islam). The term for close family members within the tukhum is kk'ul, and they refer to each other as usursu (sibling). The importance of tukhums is today being eroded by modernization and continuing out-migration.
Read more about this topic: Lak People (Dagestan)
Famous quotes containing the word kinship:
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
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A kinship lingers nonetheless....”
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