Dvals

The Dvals (Georgian: დვალები, Dvalebi; Ossetian: Туалтæ, Twaltæ) were an old people in the Caucasus, their lands lying on both sides of the central Greater Caucasus mountains, somewhere between the Darial and Mamison gorges. This historic territory mostly covers today’s South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia and part of North Ossetia–Alania, Russian Federation, as well as some neighboring lands in Georgia’s historic regions of Racha and Khevi.

The name of the Dvals (Georgian: დვალნი, Dvalni) comes from the old Georgian annals, their land called Dvaleti (დვალეთი. Dvalet`i) after them.

The ethnonym survived to modern times as "Tual" and "Urs-Tual" (Ossetian: Урстуалтæ meaning "white Tuals"), Georgian surname Dvali (დვალი), Dvalishvili (დვალიშვილი) and Ossetian Tuallagov/Twallægtæ come from the name of Dvals.

The Dvals are sometimes tentatively linked to the "Talae" of Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy.

When the Mongols destroyed, in the 13th–14th centuries, the Alanian kingdom in the Northern Caucasus, the Ossetes migrated towards and over the Caucasus mountains, forming in part of Dvaletia their community called Tualläg. The Dvals were pushed southward and, as a result, the process of their assimilation into the Georgians and Ossetes accelerated and was completed by the early 18th century. The term Dvaleti, retaining only a geographic meaning, then narrowed to refer solely to the area around the Kudaro valley in the west (modern-day Java district in South Ossetia/Shida Kartli).

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