Tsakhur peopleThe Tsakhur or Saxur (ЦIахурар, Saxurlar, Цахуры) people are a Lezgin sub-ethnic group of northern Azerbaijan and southern Dagestan (Russia). The group numbers around 30,000 people and are called yiqy (pl. yiqby), but are generally known by the name Tsakhur, which derives from the name of a Dagestani village, where they make up the majority. The Tsakhurs are first mentioned in 7th-century Armenian and Georgian sources where they are named Tsakhaik.
Vainakh religionThe Vainakh peoples of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingush) were Islamised comparatively late, during the early modern period, and Amjad Jaimoukha (2005) proposes to reconstruct some of the elements of their pre-Islamic religion and mythology, including traces of ancestor worship and funerary cults. The Nakh peoples, like many other peoples of the North Caucasus such as Circassians and Ossetians, practised tree worship, and believed that trees were the abodes of spirits.
Dagestan OblastThe Dagestan Oblast was a province (oblast) of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire. It roughly corresponded to most of present-day southeastern Dagestan within the Russian Federation. The Dagestan oblast was created in 1860 out of the territories of the former Caucasian Imamate, bordering the Terek Oblast to the north, the Tiflis Governorate and Zakatal Okrug to the west, the Elizavetpol Governorate to the south, and Baku Governorate to the east. The administrative center of the oblast was Temir-Khan-Shura (present-day Buynaksk).
