Demographics
Ethno-Linguistic groups in the Caucasus region.
Unlike most other parts of Russia, the population of Dagestan, which was 2,576,531 in 2002, is rapidly growing. The terrirory continues to be the least urbanized republic in the Caucasus—42.8 percent is urban and 57.2 percent rural. Because its mountainous terrain impedes travel and communication, Dagestan is unusually ethnically diverse, and still largely tribal. A large number of the inhabitants still live in remote, often inaccessible mountain villages. Dagestan has the highest average life expectancy in the Russian Federation, which is 65.87 years for the total population.
Ethnicity
The largest nationalities are the 758,438 Caucasian Avars (29.4 percent), who live in the south and the west of the country; the 425,526 Dargins (16.5 percent) in the central regional; and the 336,698 Lezghins (13.1 percent), who live in the south. The smallest ethnic group (only 24,298 or 0.9 percent) is the Ratuls, who spread over four alpine villages in the south. In addition to the indigenous Dagestanis, there are some 120,875 Russians (4.7 percent), most of whom live in the capital, Makhachkala, and the other large cities.
The Kumyks, who number 365,804 (14.2 percent), are a Turkic people occupying the Kumyk plateau in north Dagestan and south Terek, and the lands bordering the Caspian Sea. They practice folk Islam, with some religious rituals that trace back to pre-Islamic times. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries C.E. the Kumyks had an independent kingdom, based at Tarki, and ruled by a leader called the Shamkhal.
The Nogai People, 38,168 (1.5 percent), sometimes called Caucasian Mongols, are a Turkic people group, and an important ethnic group in the Dagestan region. They are descendants of Kipchaks who mingled with their Mongol conquerors and formed the Nogai Horde. They have scant beard growth, and are shorter than most people of the Caucasus. The average height for males is 160cm. They often have almond-shaped eyes, flat faces, high noses, and sometimes blue eyes.
Azeris make up 4.3 percent, while there are 40 or so tiny groups such as the Hinukh, numbering 200, or the Akhwakh, who are members of a complex family of indigenous Caucasians. Notable are also the Hunzib or Khunzal people who live in only four towns in the interior. Other ethnic groups each account for less than 0.5 percent of the total population.
Religion
Old avarian cross with Avarian insription in the old Georgian alphabet.
With such ethnic diversity, 90.4 percent of the population adhere to the Sunni Muslims of the Shafi’i school, and are deeply Sufi. Christians account for the remainder. Though Islam had spread north into the Caucasus and Central Asia during the Arab invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries, Sufism penetrated Central Asia in the twelfth century and into the northern Caucasus in the early eighteenth century. Its success was in great part due to its ability to adapt some local beliefs or customs into Islam.
Dagestan has been long known as a religious area. Before the 1917 revolution, Dagestan had 1700 ordinary mosques, 356 cathedral mosques, 766 Qu’ranic schools (madrassahs), and more than 2500 mullahs. During the Soviet era, most mosques were closed, and the mullahs harrassed. But although religious practice was banned, the public continued such rites as marriage, burial, and circumcision in the Islamic way.
Language
Each of Dagestan’s 33 ethnic groups has its own distinct language. The three main linguistic groups are Turkic, Persian, and aboriginal Caucasian, a complicated language, leading specialists to believe that its speakers always lived there. The people practice what linguists call vertical polylingualism, in which the ethnic group inhabiting the village at the top of the mountain speaks its own language or dialect, plus the language of the village below.
Russian is the lingua franca, though before the 1917 revolution it was Arabic. In 1938, the alphabets of all Dagestani nations with a written language were converted to Cyrillic.
The Avar language belongs to the Avar-Andi-Tsez subgroup of the Alarodian Northeast Caucasian language family. The writing is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, which replaced the Arabic script used before 1927 and the Latin script used between 1927 and 1938. More than 60 percent of Avars living in Dagestan speak Russian as their second language.
The Dargin language has three principal dialects, and Dargwa peoples use a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabets to write their language, which is one of the literary languages of Dagestan. Lezgi belongs to the Northeast Caucasian (Dagestan) language family, is not an official language, but is one of six literary languages of Dagestan.
Kumyk is a Turkic language, spoken by about 200,000 Kumyks in Dagestan. Kumyk was written using Arabic script until 1928, Latin script was used in 1928-1938, and Cyrillic since then.
Men and women
Dagestanis, like most mountain people, are a hardy breed. Both women and men are small, slight, and wiry, with narrow hands and feet and chiseled features. The greatest sign of beauty and status is acknowledged to be a mouthful of glittering gold teeth. The veil was never worn in Dagestan. Women lower their eyes in the company of men.
Marriage and the family
Wall of the Derbent citadel, the only Sassanid fortification in existence.
Marriage outside tribal or ethnic groups is discouraged, but intermarriage is becoming more common among urban dwellers and between members of certain villages. Traditionally Avars marry at about age 15. The parents take most responsibility in the selection of a partner, although a young man can say who he wants to marry. First cousins may marry, and girls do not marry a young man of lower social rank, or someone outside the village group. Avar wedding ceremonies are quite elaborate, accompanied by folk dances, folk music,and sometimes horse races.
The traditional clan organization is called the tukhum in most of Daghestan. The tukhum is patrilineal, and divides into smaller groups the Avars call “the people of one house.” The clan and the village constitute the basic units of Avar society, with councils of elders and village courts. They also form the basis of Sufi brotherhoods.
In the Soviet period, a registered civil marriage became obligatory. The newlyweds lived with the husband’s parents, but with separate living quarters. In divorce, the woman traditionally retained all her dowry, and the children remained with the father. This Sharia-based custom was changed to follow Soviet law so that the children remained with the mother. The formal right to divorce used to rest with the man, but now a marriage can be dissolved by either party. Polygamy was traditional and has resurged after the collapse of the Soviet system.
The Avars, unlike other peoples of the Caucasus, lived in nuclear families. Inheritance was from father to son, while women inherited one-third of the total inheritance, although Avars, especially urban dwellers, followed Soviet laws.
Education
Russia’s free, widespread and in-depth educational system, inherited with almost no changes from the Soviet Union, produces 100 percent literacy. Preschool education is well developed, with four-fifths of children aged three to six attending day nurseries or kindergartens. School is compulsory for nine years, from age seven, leading to a basic general education certificate. Two or three years are required for the secondary-level certificate. Non-Russian pupils are taught in their own language, although Russian is compulsory at the secondary schools.
Ninety seven percent of children receive their compulsory nine-year basic or complete 11-year education in Russian. Entry to higher education is selective and highly competitive. Most undergraduate courses require five years. As a result of great emphasis on science and technology in education, Russian medical, mathematical, scientific, and space and aviation research is generally of a high order.
Class
Avar society was segmentation into classes. A clan-based aristocracy (nutsbi) constituted a patrician class, while freed and the serfs (or “slaves”) made up a lower class. Under Russia, a new aristocracy emerged based on service, and after the 1917 Revolution society was divided into workers, peasants, and intellectuals. Traditional class divisions persisted into the Soviet period, when communist elites had special access to goods, services, and housing. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, oil and caviar mafias flourished.