Terek Cossacks

The Terek Cossack Host (Russian: Терское казачье войско) was a Cossack host created in 1577 from free Cossacks who resettled from the Volga to the Terek River. The local aboriginal Terek Cossacks joined this Cossack host later. In 1792 it was included in the Caucasus Line Cossack Host and separated from it again in 1860, with the capital of Vladikavkaz. In 1916 the population of the Host was 255,000 within an area of 1.9 million desyatinas.

Many of the early members of the Terek Cossacks were Ossetians.

Early history

It is unclear how the first Cossack community appeared on the Terek. One theory is that they were descendants of the Khazar state and of the Tmutarakan Principality, as there are records indicating that Mstislav of Tmutarakan in the Battle of Listveno in 1023 had Cossacks on his side when he destroyed the army of Yaroslav the Wise. This would mean the Slavic peoples of the Caucasus are native to the region having settled there much earlier. But later Terek Cossacks assimilated the first Terek Cossacks and introduced their own new agriculture.