Derbend

Which reminds me to say, what I ought to have told you earlier, that the derbends which I so often mention, are stations of police guards, appointed to defend uninhabited parts of the public roads from robbers.

Possibly the original village was a derbend settlement (charged with the maintenance and protection of roads, passes, and bridges) and thus enjoyed a special status as a tax-exempt village.

In the morning the rare luxury of a turkish bath relieved them of some of their soreness as well as the dirt and the fleas they had acquired, and with fresh horses and clear sunny weather, which at this altitude was cheering rather than oppressive, they rode for a few hours, stopping briefly at a derbend, a kind of halfway house, to devour a stuffed lamb the tartar had bought en route.

Besides the use of derbends to control mountain passes, the state sometimes engaged in the wholesale removal of troublesome mountain villages, forcibly resettling them in the valleys.