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The Soviet government's post-WWII resettlement policy as well as the spontaneous migrations of highlanders to the lowlands in the 1990s has deeply modified vectors and contents of the development of Dagestan's religious culture. Despite the harsh measures successively taken by the Soviet power against Sufism, and the overall secularization policy implemented in the USSR, rural mass migration from uplands to lowlands produced unprecedented change in the level of religious consciousness and of religious culture among open country dwellers. Lowland districts, initially secularised after the antireligious campaigns of the 1920s-30s, were transformed in the 1950s-80s by the immigration of settlers from the highlands into major religious centres with different types of religious culture, from the Sufis of varied affiliations to non-Sufi bearers of the Shafii juridical tradition and recent Salafis, endowed with the diverse confessional cultures borne, respectively, by dwellers and settlers. ; Политика переселений, проводившаяся советским правительством в период после Второй мировой войны, а также стихийная миграция горных жителей на равнины в 1990-е гг. кардинально изменили направление и суть развития религиозной культуры в Дагестане. Несмотря на жестокие меры, принимавшиеся советской властью против суфизма, и на массовую политику секуляризации, проводившуюся в СССР, массовая миграция сельского населения с гор на равнину породила беспрецедентное изменение уровня религиозного сознания и религиозной культуры среди равнинных сельских жителей. Равнинные районы, первоначально секуляризированные в ходе антирелигиозных кампаний 1920−30-х гг., в результате миграции горных жителей в 1950−80-е гг. превратились в важные религиозные центры с различными типами религиозной культуры, он суфизма различных толков до несуфийского шафиизма и, позже, салафизма, привнесённых различными типами религиозных культур местного и приезжего населения соответственно.

The paper analyses the discussion of Sufism between the representative of different trends in Dagestan – Sufi sheikhs, on the one side, and Islamic reformers on the other. The introduction part provides a brief historical excursus on the history of Sufism dissemination in Dagestan. Initially, before the spread of the ideas of Muslim reformism in Dagestan and even in parallel with the movement of reformism, the discussion about the legitimacy of certain practices took place within different groups of Sufi communities. At the end of the imperial period, the reformers, better known in the scientific literature as the Jadids, joined the discussion. It is noteworthy that among the reformers, the attitude towards Sufism and Sufis was not the same. One group of Jadids considered Sufism to be a legitimate trend in Islam, criticizing in the pages of the Islamic press only contemporary Dagestan Sufi sheikhs. Another group of reformers went further and did not recognize the legitimacy of Sufism at all. This controversy did not end in the early Soviet period, and survived to this day. In the post-Soviet period, the same rhetoric about the illegitimacy of Sufism as a trend, which did not exist during the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the first generation after him, was picked up by modern Salafists. In turn, Sufi sheikhs of both the early Soviet and post-Soviet periods also wrote works refuting the views of their opponents. Despite the common rhetoric of the early Soviet Jadids and post-Soviet Salafists, there is still no continuity of traditions between them. The paper is based on the analysis of original Arabic sources, including manuscripts and articles in the local press, many of which have been introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

Religious contacts of Muslims of Dagestan and the Volga-Ural region have not been in the focus of any particular research till date. Scarce information from various Tatar theologians, who studied in Dagestan at the end of the 17th – 18th centuries, have already been mentioned by Tatar researchers. However, numerous Arabographic sources in Arabic and Tatar show close contacts of the Muslim elite of these two regions, starting from the Middle Ages. The present article aims to review available sources about the educational and scientific contacts of Dagestanis, Tatars, and Bashkirs. The sources available and analyzed in the article revealed the bilateral nature of these contacts. While at the end of the 17th – 18th centuries a number of Tatar theologians received a proper education in Dagestan and opened madrasahs in the Volga-Ural region according to the Dagestan type, then starting from the second half of the 19th century one can observe a quiet strong influence of ideas that were widespread in the Volga-Ural region on the Dagestan intellectual elite. Moreover, starting from the 20th century, Tatar journals, textbooks and scientific literature began to penetrate widely into Dagestan, as evidenced by their considerable number of manuscripts and old printed books in private collections. Mutual contacts of Muslims of Dagestan and the Volga-Ural region were due to various reasons – traveling in order to receive education, exile, commercial affairs, personal correspondence, etc. The mixing and interpenetration of the educational, scientific traditions of the Muslims of these two regions led to their wider cultural development and closer integration into various institutions of the Russian Empire.

Dagestani orientalists Amri Shikhsaidov and Shamil Shikhaliev study the Arab Period of islamization in Dagestan in the seventh-ninth centuries. As is known, the spread of Islam in different frontier regions of the Arab Caliphate happened in the context of rapid Arab conquests in the form of jihad raids. In the North-East Caucasus the Arabs encountered serious resistance from the Khazar Khaganate and local feudal political forces. Medieval written sources show continuity of Dagestani resistance against the Arab advance in the region. By the mid-tenth century Islam was established only in the town of Derbent and neighboring lands. The process of islamization of the region passed two distinct periods. In the first of them Islam was propagated by the Arab missionaries. In the second period from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries islamization was carried out by succeeding waves of Turkic conquerors including the Seljuks, Timur as well as local ghazis. Gradually, Islam and Arabic language became an integral part of the culture of different Dagestani peoples. ; Дагестанские востоковеды Амри Шихсаидов и Шамиль Шихалиев изучают арабский период исламизации Дагестана в седьмом – девятом веках. Как известно, распространение ислама в различных периферийных регионах Арабского халифата происходило в ходе стремительного арабского завоевания в виде набегов под флагом джихада. На Северо-Восточном Кавказе арабы столкнулись с упорным сопротивлением со стороны Хазарского каганата и местных феодальных политических сил. Средневековые письменные источники свидетельствуют о длительном дагестанском сопротивлении арабскому вторжению. К середине десятого столетия ислам закрепился только в Дербенте и на прилегающих землях. В процессе исламизации региона можно выделить два периода. В течение первого периода ислам распространялся благодаря проповедям арабских миссионеров. Второй период внедрения ислама связан с последовательными вторжениями тюркских завоевателей, включая сельджуков, Тимура и местных гази. Постепенно ислам и арабский язык стали неотъемлемой частью культуры различных народов Дагестана.

The article overviews some tombstones of the Abu Bakar-sheikh cemetery (Darg. – Abu Bakar-shaikhla hIyabri), located in the center of the village of Kischa. During the detailed analysis of their styles, shapes, inscriptions, as well as interviews with locals, the authors divided the monuments into two groups according to their characteristic features. The first one is tombstones of Abu Bakar-sheikh' followers, who after his death remained in the village. The monuments of this group are characterized with artistic variety, rich ornament, and the inscriptions carved on them, mainly written in Kufic script. By analogy with dated steles of the similar design in the Kubachi highlands and the Kaitag-Tabasaran zone, the monuments can be dated from the beginning to the first half of the 15th century. The second group of tombstones located in the same cemetery is distinguished by the lack of decoration and stone processing; the names of the buried have Turkic-Persian roots which is not characteristic of local anthroponymy. By combining these facts, as well as information from written sources and local legends, it was possible to draw a parallel between these burials and Timur's sixth campaign to Dagestan in 1396.
The reconstruction of events established that Kischa village, located at the old trade route that connected Kaitag and Zirihgheran with Akusha, Usisha and Mugi villages, was in the way of Timur's army heading towards Kaitag and Zirihgheran. Upon pillaging the village, timurids suffered some losses, and the only possible place for burring their dead in Kischa was the Muslim cemetery of Abu Bakar-sheikh. Thus, the paper describes the group of tombstones of Timur's soldiers, which is unique in modern Dagestan.

Dakhadayevsky district of Dagestan is one of the most saturated with historical and cultural monuments in the republic. Among them are towers, bridges, mosques, minarets, ziyarats, cemeteries. Most of them bear inscriptions that have not been adequately studied. Meanwhile, epigraphic texts are one of the main sources of the spiritual, religious, political, social, and economic history of the region's Middle Ages.This work presents the most remarkable examples of Arabic epigraphy, starting from the 12th century, from the villages of Amuzgi, Kubachi, Urkarakh, Kalkni, Khuduts, Ashty, and Kunki. The article gives their reading, translation into Russian, notes the features of handwriting, methods of application, draws attention to the shape of the monuments, their size, and ornamentation. Of greatest interest are texts that carry specific historical information, and dated samples, which allow, by typological similarity, to attribute the monuments of the region to a certain period of time. Among such monuments are the gravestones of 774 A.H. (1372-73), 877 x. (1472), 902 x. (1496-97), 958 x. (1551); there are historical records on stones embedded in places of worship dating back to 718 A.D. (1318-19), 765 x. (1363-64), 1035 x. (1625-26). Some of the studied inscriptions have previously been read and published, but we present our own reading. It is interesting that the inscription of 1625-26, discovered by us on the walls of the minaret, is adjacent to two texts known to science. That is, it did not come to the attention of researchers. This circumstance serves as an additional justification for the fact that when conducting epigraphic expeditions, it is necessary to cover not only territories where epigraphists have not been, but also settlements that are considered studied by scientific specialists.

Studies the formulation, transmission and application of Islamic law under Russian colonial rulePresents the theory and application of Islamic law in the Volga-Ural region, the Kazakh Steppe, the north Caucasus and Central Asia from the 1550s to 1917Draws comparisons between Islamic law in Russia and elsewhere in the colonial worldBased upon important, but largely unstudied print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian and the Turkic languagesBrings together the work of an international collective of scholars of Islam in RussiaThis book looks at how Islamic law was practiced in Russia from the conquest of the empire's first Muslim territories in the mid-1500s to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the empire's Muslim population had exceeded 20 million. It focuses on the training of Russian Muslim jurists, the debates over legal authority within Muslim communities and the relationship between Islamic law and 'customary' law. Based upon difficult to access sources written in a variety of languages (Arabic, Chaghatay, Kazakh, Persian, Tatar), it offers scholars of Russian history, Islamic history and colonial history an account of Islamic law in Russia of the same quality and detail as the scholarship currently available on Islam in the British and French colonial empires