Takhnaeva P.

Argvani : the World of Bygone Times (Historical Portrait of a Village Community in Mountain Dagestan)

Еditor: Bobrovnikov Vladimir

Москва, 2012, 485 p.

This monograph is an attempt at microhistory of a village community (jama'at) in Mountain Dagestan, its land, society and people, from the advent of Islam in the Middle Ages through the Caucasus War, incorporation of the area into tsarist Russia in the modern times till the beginning of forced Soviet reforms started with the full collectivization that had been taking place in the mountains in the 1930s and the early 1940s. On the basis of a wide range of narrative sources, documents and letters from private and state collections, written and oral evidence gathered in Dagestan, Georgia and Russia, the author traces the development of a Muslim jama'at in the mountains of North-West Dagestan. Argvani is the name of an Avar village whose origin local chronicles date as early as 1038 A.D. On the whole, the book tells us a different story of Dagestani medieval and modern history at the village level shown through its institutions, everyday practices and people. Among the latter the author pays a special attention to the Argvani Muslim spiritual elite whose representatives played an important role in the creation of Dagestani Arabic language literature, which is in evidence from the eighteenth century, if not earlier.