Lezgin

The Lezgins are a Northeast Caucasian people native to southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan, whose language belongs to the Lezgic branch. Their society was traditionally built on village unions called djamaat, bound by an unwritten code of honour known as Lezgiwal.

Arab writers recorded a kingdom of Lakz whose people defended Shirvan against northern raiders. Islam arrived in the eighth century but spread slowly, and many kept older beliefs until the fifteenth. The Safavids brought the region under Persian rule in the early sixteenth century.

In 1721 the Lezgin cleric Haji Davud sacked Shamakhi and established a short-lived Shirvan Khanate under Ottoman protection. After Nader Shah's death in 1747, the Lezgins were divided between khanates and self-governing highland societies. The treaties of 1813 and 1828 transferred them to Russia; Lezgin clans later fought under Imam Shamil in the Caucasian War.