Cultural heritage

Culture

The village of Tindi, in Daghestan, in the late 1890s. The photograph was taken by M. de Déchy, who returned from the area with large collections of plants, fossils, and photographs.

The Soviet regime gradually altered Dagestan’s traditional way of life by destroying mosques, persecuting the clergy, using Russian as the language of instruction in schools, and enforcing adoption of European-style civilization. A European style has became widespread in clothing, household appliances, technology, and architecture. Younger generations gradually lost contact with the old ethnic culture, Soviet customs gained in popularity, the number of mixed marriages increased, and people migrated to the plains and industrial centers.

Arts and crafts

Dagestan is known for bronze embossing, textile manufacture, and silk spinning. The village of Untsukul has become famous for its woodworking products with silver inlay.

Cuisine

Khingal is the Dagestan national dish of small dumplings boiled in ram’s broth. Depending on the cook’s nationality, the dumplings can be oval or round, filled with meat or cheese, and served with a garlic or sour cream sauce. Dairy products and meat constitute a large part of the diet in the mountainous regions, while in the valley zones vegetables and grain flour are eaten, as well as fruits, edible gourds, edible herbs, and wild grasses.

Clothing

Dagestani men are known for traditional leather boots and wasp-waisted, tight-fitting tunics. To make their waists even smaller, they bind their tunics with the skin of a freshly slaughtered sheep. The bourka, a shaggy, full-length cape made with layers of felt to resist rain—and bullets—is an all-purpose mountaineer’s outfit. Other clothing includes pants, a shirt, a quilted coat, a long, narrow, collarless coat, a sheepskin coat, a cowl, a fur cap, leather shoes, and socks of felt or wool. Traditionally, Avar men from the age of 15 were entitled to wear a saber, rifle, dagger, and pistol, although since the 1930s, carrying and possessing arms has been forbidden. However, since the Soviet period, clothing, particularly for men, resembles ordinary European civilian clothing. Women’s clothing varies from one region to another in Avaria. On the chukht (headdress) were sewn silver ornaments, different for each community. Rural women also wear long-sleeved floral dresses over full pantaloons.

Literature

Epic-historical songs about the defeat of the armies of Persian Nadir Shah and various episodes of the nineteenth century wars are popular among the Avars. Best-known are the ballads “Khochbar” and “Kamalil Bashir.” In the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Avar culture and literature underwent a significant upsurge. Well-known Avar literary figures include the poets Aligaji of Inkho (who died 1875) and Chanka (1866-1909), the lyric poet Makhmud (1873-1919), the satirist Tsadasa Gamzat (1877-1951), and the celebrated poet Rasul Gamzatov (born 1923). Among his poems was Zhuravli, which became a well-known Russian song. Avaria, perhaps more than any other part of Dagestan, was a centuries-old seat of Arabic culture with many scholars, visited by disciples from other Muslim nations.

Music

There is a Dagestani Philharmonic Orchestra and a State Academic Dance Ensemble. Gotfrid Hasanov, who is said to be the first professional composer from Dagestan, wrote Khochbar, the first Dagestani opera, in 1945. Dagestani folk dances include a fast-paced dance called the lezginka. It derives its names from the Lezgin people; nevertheless, Azerbaijanis, Circassians, Abkhazians, Mountain Jews, Caucasian Avars, the Russian Kuban, and Terek Cossacks and many other tribes have their own versions.