Pre-Islamic Survivals Helping to Preserve Ethnic Identities in Daghestan, Seferbekov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 14 – Survivals of pre-Islamic pagan practices and beliefs among the peoples of Daghestan, things which neither the Soviets nor Muslims could root out, now play a critical role in helping to maintain ethnic identities in that multi-national republic, according to Ruslan Seferbekov of the Makhachkala Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography.

            Seferbekov, himself an ethnic Tabasaran who has made a life-long study of these survivals and their remarkable vitality despite the efforts of the Soviets and Islamists both before and after Soviet times to root them out, describes them to Artur Priymak, who writes on religion and ethnicity for Nezavismaya gazeta (ng.ru/ng_religii/2020-04-14/13_485_dagestan.html).

            Just now, the Daghestani scholar says, various national groups in Daghestan are celebrating the Day of the First Furrow, in honor of the beginning of the planting season. It traces its roots to pre-Islamic fertility cults and still features many of their practice.  But what is important now is that each nation has made it uniquely their own linguistically and in terms of practice.

            Consequently, Serferbekov says, what some might dismiss as simply “a survival of the past” is in fact a way of defending and enhancing national traditions against the remnants of the anti-religious policies of the Soviets and those who still think in Soviet terms and the pressure of Islamists who want to do away with national distinctiveness as well.

            He catalogues the ways different groups have “nationalized” this holiday, not only by giving it a name in their own languages but also by linking this and other practices to national heroes and modifying the beliefs and practices so that it is theirs alone.  Some of these practices are fading, but most continue to show remarkable vitality.

            But it is not just in cultural affairs that this survival or even revival of more ancient practices can be seen. It is also in evidence in legal arrangements where adat or customary law is still dominant over civil law from the state or shariat from Islam.  Indeed, one can call Daghestan today “the republic of adat.”

            Ironically, the Soviet attack on Islam set the stage for this. If Soviet officials were more or less consistently anti-Muslim, closing mosques and medrassahs and punishing Islamic practice, they “looked through their fingers” at pre-Islamic customs, “especially in rural areas.” And as a result, those practices survived.

            Today, they remain in place, Seferbekov says, in the face of de-ideologization and renewed Islamization.  And that, he concludes, “gives a certain hope for the preservation of the ethnic identity of the peoples of the republic in the era of globalization,” where pre-Islamic customs can define people as much as high technology there.