INTERACTION BETWEEN POWER AND RELIGION IN DAGHESTAN: EXPERIENCE, ERRORS, AND LESSONS

Ruslan KURBANOV

---

Ruslan Kurbanov, Ph.D. (Political Science), Learned Secretary, Regional Center for Ethnopolitical Research, Daghestanian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Makhachkala, Russian Federation)

---

The Heterogeneous Nature of the Islamic Space

At no time could Daghestan be described as an ethnically, politically, or confessionally homogeneous territory. It is an ethnic patchwork—Russia’s and the world’s most ethnically diverse region. The past of this mountainous country is filled with the efforts of its peoples to beat off the attempts of their neighbors to establish total domination over them (with the exception of some cases of economic or political dependence).

Local traditions contributed to the region’s political diversity. Nearly all specialists on Daghestan pointed to the varied forms of administration and political-administrative structures as one of the key features typical of the mountain communities. M. Aglarov, for example, described the community of the northeast Caucasian peoples as a “museum of a multitude of political units with varied forms of political and administrative structures.” Indeed, khanates, aristocratic and democratic jamaats, unions of jamaats (“free societies”), and democratic “federative societies” under the nominal rules of the khans coexisted in Daghestan. The efforts of some of them to spread their rule to neighboring territories invariably triggered powerful, sometimes “suicidal,” opposition.

As distinct from the rest of the Northern Caucasus, the Muslim expanse of Daghestan has never been homogeneous either. Three types of religious world outlook dominated Daghestan’s religious culture: Sufism, schools of the Shafi‘ite legal experts, and……………..

---

Please fill subscription form to obtain full text of this jounal