«At-tavarikh ar-rusum ad-dagistania»: codification of Customary law in the Dagestan Province

Abstract

When the territories of the North Caucasus became part of the Russian Empire and Dagestan Province was formed in 1861, the colonial authorities faced the necessity of the spread of common legal norms and the judicial system in the region. It was decided to turn to the Customary law, which was popular enough among the population (Arabic. ‘adat ) and on its basis to draw up a unifi legal code. Two Arabic-language manuscripts and one Russian-language document have come down to nowadays, presumably representing attempts to codify ‘adat . The purpose of the article is to review and compare texts using historical and textual analysis answering following questions: what legal systems are refl in the «At-tavarikh ar-rusum ad-dagistania»? How did the imperial authorities manipulate them and what was the result of the interaction of local forms of law and colonial ones? As a result of the study, it was revealed that the documents created by Russian offi included not only the legal norms of the residents of North Caucasus, but also references to the imperial legal system and shari‘a . Despite the proliferation of courts under customary law in the region, we do not fi evidence of the use of the codes in question in them, which is probably due to their unpopularity due to signifi discrepancies with local ‘adat norms.