1st Edition
Dagestan - History, Culture, Identity
Dagestan – History, Culture, Identity provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of Dagestan, a strategically important republic of the Russian Federation which borders Chechnya, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and its people.
It outlines Dagestan’s rich and complicated history, from 5th c ACE to post USSR, as seen from the viewpoint of the Dagestani people. Chapters feature the new age of social media, urban weddings, modern and traditional medicine, innovative food cultivation, the little-known history of Mountain Jews during the Soviet period, flourishing heroes of sport and finance, emerging opportunities in ethno-tourism and a recent Dagestani music revival. In doing so, the authors examine the large number of different ethnic groups in Dagestan, their languages and traditions, and assess how the people of Dagestan are coping and thriving despite the changes brought about by globalisation, new technology and the modern world: through which swirls an increasing sense of identity in an indigenous multi-ethnic society.
List of maps
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
1 Introduction – what is Dagestan?
2 Shaitans, monsters, magic places and substances
3 The Sasanian walls against the Huns
4 Trade with the Kievan Russ and the Golden Horde
5 Trade with the Moscow Tsardom XV-XVI centuries
6 Trade with Muscovy XVII-XVIII centuries
7 Under Russian governance 1801-1859
8 XIX Century historical consciousness
9 Shamil’s Ethno-religious Imamate
10 Legal systems under the Russian government
11 Repression and Sovietization
12 Language policy of the USSR
13 Schools, literacy and publishing under the Tsar and Soviets
14 Poems written in Avar and Archi languages
15 Re-Islamization of public consciousness
16 Pre-Soviet and contemporary cultures
17 New traditions in urban weddings
18 Social media – the XXI century
19 Surviving Covid and traditional medicine
20 Traditional medicine of mountain Dagestan
21 Dagestan mountain-valley horticulture
22 About Mountain Jews
23 Meat and Fish of the Mountain Jews
24 Heroes of sport and finance
25 Monetizing the Mountains
26 A virtual tour to Archi
27 In Dagestan, as they say, everyone sings and everyone dances
Index
Biography
Robert Chenciner was a Visiting Academic at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He was an honorary member of the Dagestan Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov is Head of the Ethnography Institute of the Dagestan Scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, Russian Federation.
