Tabasaran

Tabasaran was the highland country of the Tabasarans, a Lezgic people of southern Dagestan, near the road between Derbent and Shirvan. Its northern and southern districts came under different hereditary rulers.

From the fifteenth century local lords built a strong principality. One account dates a later principality to the 1642 breakup of the Gazikumukh shamkhalate; it was governed by two rulers, a Ghazi and a Ma'sum. Russian expansion reached Dagestan in the early nineteenth century.