Avar

The Caucasian Avars, who call themselves Maarulal, are the largest people of mountain Dagestan, unrelated to the medieval Eurasian Avars. Between the fifth and twelfth centuries Georgian missionaries brought Orthodox Christianity into their valleys, and the Christian kingdom of Sarir long dominated Dagestan, leaving the tenth-century Datuna church.

After Sarir collapsed in the early thirteenth century the Muslim Avar Khanate took its place, and Sunni Islam prevailed from the fourteenth century. Through alliance with the Golden Horde the khans prospered until the Shamkhalate of Kazi-Kumukh absorbed them in the fifteenth century. The Avar free communities kept self-rule under loose Safavid suzerainty and in the eighteenth century routed an army of Nader Shah at Andalal; under Umma Khan Avar power levied tribute as far as Georgia.

The khanate submitted to Russia in 1803, but Russian forts and taxes drove the highlanders to revolt under imams Ghazi Mohammed and Hamzat Bek, opening the Caucasian War.