Aghul people explained

Group:Aghuls
агулар
Flag:Flag of Aghuls.svg
Flag Caption:Flag of the Aghuls[1] [2]
Total:45,000
Total Year:est.
Region1:
Pop1:34,576
Ref1:[4]
Region2: Ukraine
Pop2:108
Ref2:[5]
Region3: Latvia
Pop3:25 - 33
Ref3:[6] [7]
Rels:predominately Sunni Islam
Langs:Aghul
Related:Other Northeast Caucasian-speaking peoples
Especially Lezgins, Tabasarans, and Udis

Aghuls (Aghul: агулар/agular, Lezghian: italic=yes|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.

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.

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. http://www.vexillographia.ru/russia/minority.htm Флаги различных национальностей России
  2. https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d500bdfe854a900ae069aea/flagi-nacionalnostei-rossii-vypusk-12-agulcy-5d6e2a4afbe6e700aea6b9b4 Флаги национальностей России. Выпуск 12. Агульцы.
  3. http://www.statistics.ge/main.php?pform=14&plang=1 (2002 census)
  4. Web site: Оценка численности постоянного населения по субъектам Российской Федерации. Federal State Statistics Service. 2 July 2024.
  5. Web site: About number and composition population of Ukraine by data All-Ukrainian census of the population 2001 . Ukraine Census 2001 . State Statistics Committee of Ukraine . 17 January 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20111217151026/http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/nationality/ . 17 December 2011 .
  6. Web site: Population by ethnicity at the beginning of year – Time period and Ethnicity | National Statistical System of Latvia . data.stat.gov.lv.
  7. https://www.pmlp.gov.lv/lv/media/9756/download?attachment Latvijas iedzīvotāju sadalījums pēc nacionālā sastāva un valstiskās piederības, 01.01.2023. - PMLP
  8. http://www.perepis-2010.ru/results_of_the_census/tab5.xls Russian Census 2010: Population by ethnicity
  9. Peoples, Nations and Cultures. Edited by John Mackenzie. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2005.