Aghul people

Aghuls
агулар
	Flag of the Aghuls
Total population
	45,000 (est.)
Regions with significant populations
Russia Dagestan 23,314;	34,576
Ukraine	108
Latvia	25 - 33
Languages
	Aghul
Religion
	predominately Sunni Islam
Related ethnic groups
	Other Northeast Caucasian-speaking peoples; Especially Lezgins, Tabasarans, and Udis

Aghuls (Aghul: агулар/agular, Lezgian: Агъулар) are a people in Dagestan, Russia. According to the 2010 census, there were 34,160 Aghuls in Russia (7,000 in 1959).^[8] The Aghul language belongs to the Lezgian language family, a group of the Northeast Caucasian family. Ethnically, the Aghuls are close to the Lezgins. There are four groups of the Aghul people, who live in four different gorges: Aguldere, Kurakhdere, Khushandere, and Khpyukdere. Like their neighbors the Kaitaks, the Aghuls were converted to Islam at a fairly early date, subsequent to the Arab conquest of the eighth century. Their oral traditions claim Jewish descent.^[9]

Culture

As elsewhere in Daghestan, the Aghuls were divided into tukhums (clans), comprising twenty to forty households. Each tukhum had its own cemetery, pastures, and hay fields, and the members were bound by obligations of mutual support and defense. ^[10]

Each Aghul village had a village council, on which each of the three or four tukhums were represented. The council was headed by an elder. The village mullah and qadi also played an important role in local affairs. In some cases the wealthier tukhums exerted a disproportionate strong influence on village government.

The Aghuls tended to practice endogamy within the tukhum—marriages with outsiders were very rare. In the past the Aghuls lived in extended family households, though not especially large ones (fifteen to twenty members, on average). A senior male, father or eldest brother, functioned as chief, with fairly broad authority over the affairs of the household and its members. Should the extended family split up, sisters—even those who had already married and left the household—received a portion of the land as well as the movable property. They were each apportioned one-half of the land share given to each of their brothers, a practice that was unusually generous by Daghestanian standards.^[11]

References

^ Флаги различных национальностей России
^ Флаги национальностей России. Выпуск 12. Агульцы.
^ (2002 census) Archived 2006-08-31 at the Wayback Machine
^ "Оценка численности постоянного населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
^ "About number and composition population of Ukraine by data All-Ukrainian census of the population 2001". Ukraine Census 2001. State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. Archived from the original on 17 December 2011. Retrieved 17 January 2012.
^ "Population by ethnicity at the beginning of year – Time period and Ethnicity | National Statistical System of Latvia". data.stat.gov.lv.
^ Latvijas iedzīvotāju sadalījums pēc nacionālā sastāva un valstiskās piederības, 01.01.2023. - PMLP
^ Russian Census 2010: Population by ethnicity Archived 2012-04-24 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
^ Peoples, Nations and Cultures. Edited by John Mackenzie. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2005.
^ Akiner, S. (1987). Islamic Peoples Of The Soviet Union (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203037928 Retrieved 25 September 2024.
^ Dobrushina, N. (2023). Language ideology in an endogamous society: The case of Daghestan. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 27, 159–176. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12590

Culture

References

Further reading