"Gazikumukh Shamkhalate": On the Legality of the Use of the Term in Dagestan Historiography

Abstract

Introduction. On the basis of a wide range of sources, the article examines the problem of the once influential ethnopolitical association in Dagestan — the Shamkhalate, which is currently debatable in Dagestan historical science. In this regard, the works of recent years devoted to this problem are of particular relevance.

Materials and methods. The realization of this goal became possible due to the use of previously unpublished documents from the Scientific Archive of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Dagestan Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published collections of archival documents, information from contemporaries, narrative sources, as well as the principles of historicism and objectivity, comparative-historical, problem-chronological methods.

Results and discussion. Despite many years of scientific research on the problem of shamkhalism by Dagestan scientists and their achievements, many "blank" spots remain. Some questions still have no answers. Contemporary Dagestan historiography poorly reflects such controversial issues as the origin of the shamkhals, their pedigree, etc. The situation is complicated by the fact that, for subjective reasons, a number of Dagestan researchers deliberately distort facts, give a free interpretation of sources without a proper critical approach, deviating from the principles of historicism and objectivity. We have made an attempt to examine the problem of shamkhalism from an objective position, to present arguments that allow us to refute the illegality of using the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate introduced by R. G. Marshaev due to its scientific groundlessness.

Conclusion. The version about the primacy of Kazi-Kumukh as the capital of the Shamkhalate does not stand up to serious scientific criticism. Relying on special historical literature and archival materials, the authors come to the conclusion that the use of the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate in Dagestan historiography contradicts the sources. It is established that this term is nothing more than a late historical construct. In this regard, the authors believe, based on data from various sources of the 15th–17th centuries, mainly on Russian documents, that it is permissible to introduce the term Shamkhalate into scientific circulation without the name Gazikumukh.

Keywords: Dagestan, Kazi-Kumukh, Tarki, Shamkhalate, historiography, chronicles, residence, Turks, Mongol-Tatars, Golden Horde.

Introduction

In the 15th–17th centuries, the largest state formation in the North Caucasus was the Shamkhalate (Shawkhalate), which had a rather complex ethnic composition whose core was formed by the Kumyks [3, p. 6]. At the height of its power, the Shamkhalate united a territory considerable by North Caucasian standards, including most of Dagestan and a number of adjacent regions [6, p. 151; 12, pp. 8–12]. For six centuries, the rulers of this political entity were the shamkhals — an aristocracy of Turkic origin [7, pp. 10–11; 10, p. 321; 30, pp. 125–128, 130–131].

The Shamkhalate was not a mono-ethnic state formation. This, undoubtedly, aggravated ethnopolitical disintegration within it. The consequence of these processes was the disintegration of the Shamkhalate, which chronologically fell on the second half of the 16th century. And although 16th–17th-century sources contain such terms as Kumyks, Shevkal Land, and the like, within these chronological limits we can no longer speak of the Shamkhalate as a unified state formation [1, pp. 99–100].

Materials and Methods

The research tasks were achieved through the analysis of documents from the Scientific Archive of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Dagestan Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published collections of archival documents, information from contemporaries, and narrative sources. The article is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity; in addition, the comparative-historical and problem-chronological methods were employed.

Literature Review

A number of works on the problem of the Shamkhalate have been published in Dagestan historiography; however, they are not exhaustive. Questions still remain open concerning the origin of the shamkhals, the time of emergence of this state formation, and its geographical extent. The question of the capital of the Shamkhalate arouses particular debate among Dagestan historians. As early as the mid-1950s, R. G. Marshaev advanced the hypothesis that the original political center of the Shamkhalate was Kazi-Kumukh, situated in mountainous Dagestan [27]. As a consequence, he introduced the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate into the scholarly literature. R. G. Marshaev's version was immediately and justly subjected to criticism by R. M. Magomedov, who denied the role of Kazi-Kumukh as the center of the Shamkhalate [26]. The works of B. Ajamatov [2] and A. S. Akbiev and M.-P. B. Abdusalamov [3] present evidence confirming that the center of the Shamkhalate was the town of Tarki. Of particular interest are the works of K. M. Aliev, who has made a substantial contribution to the study of the Shamkhalate of Tarki [5; 6; 7; 8; 9]. He has addressed many controversial questions concerning the problem of the Shamkhalate, including the capital — Tarki, the genealogy of the shamkhals, etc.

Russian historians today pay significant attention to the origin of the term shamkhal. A. K. Alikberov points to the Turkic affiliation of the shamkhals [10]. A. S. Akbiev and M.-P. B. Abdusalamov [4], S. M. Bagautdinov [12], and Yu. M. Idrisov [17; 18] hold a similar view. However, as noted above, some questions concerning the problem of the state formation — the Shamkhalate — require refinement and correction. Painstaking work in this direction still lies ahead for scholars. The problem is complicated by the weakness of the source base and the paucity of primary sources. This article is intended to fill the existing gap in the study of the problem of the Shamkhalate.

Results and Discussion

Initially, it is only fair to clarify how the complex ethnopolitical association under our study was called before its disintegration.

In Dagestan historiography, the approach to the problem of the Shamkhalate is ambiguous. In particular, some Dagestan historians — R. G. Marshaev, Sh. M. Akhmedov, V. G. Gadzhiev, A. G. Bulatova, M.-S. K. Umakhanov, A. D. Kurbanov, T. M. Aitberov, Z. T. Gadzhiev, and others — attempt to prove that originally the shamkhals and their permanent residence were in the Lak village of Kumukh, and therefore, as they suppose, the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate as the designation of the Lak state is legitimate. The foundation of these authors' research on the problem of the Shamkhalate was the work of the ethnographer L. I. Lavrov on the epigraphy of Kazi-Kumukh — in particular, Lavrov's discovery in Kazi-Kumukh of a shamkhal family cemetery of the 16th–17th centuries preserved down to our own day. This was sufficient for a number of Dagestan historians to conclude that Kazi-Kumukh was the administrative and political center, the capital, of the Shamkhalate.

However, it must be taken into account that the shamkhal cemetery discovered by L. I. Lavrov in Kazi-Kumukh was known by the local population from time immemorial precisely as "Semender-related". Ali Kayaev directly refers to the shamkhals buried there as "Tatar-shamkhals". Consequently, this was a discovery for Lavrov himself — in a sense, the satisfaction of his scholarly interest — but to call it a "discovery" for the people of Kumukh is entirely impossible [4, p. 12].

The term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate itself was brought into active circulation in Dagestan historiography in the mid-1950s by R. G. Marshaev.

In connection with the study of the Shamkhalate, a reasonable question arises: was the political center, the capital, of the Shamkhalate the town of Tarki or the village of Kumukh? The answer to this question clarifies much.

The aforementioned R. G. Marshaev, in the article "The Gazikumukh Shamkhalate in Russo-Turkish Relations in the Second Half of the 16th – Beginning of the 17th Century" [27], introduced significant distortions into the cited sources and literature, even into the footnotes he used to the military historian V. A. Potto concerning the resistance of local forces under the leadership of Sultan-Makhmud of Endirey in 1604–1605 against the tsar's voyevoda I. M. Buturlin, replacing everywhere the name of the state Shamkhalate of Tarki with Gazikumukh Shamkhalate, and the ethnonym Kumyks with Laks [17, p. 17]. "Almost all the available data," wrote R. G. Marshaev, "indicate that throughout the 15th–16th centuries Kumukh was precisely the administrative and political center of the Shamkhalate." Moreover, one cannot agree with the following thesis of R. G. Marshaev: "Despite the favourable conditions, Tarki did not become the main residence of the Shamkhalate"¹.

Yet "almost all the available data" that the author adduces in support of his hypothesis are reducible to a fragment from the report of the Georgian envoy Kirill to the Ambassadorial Office in March 1604, which states: "And the shevkal and his children live mostly in Kazy-Kumykh in the mountains, because that place is farther from Russian towns and the terrain is strong; and there are no towns, only… great mountains and gorges"². It is doubtful that the capital of the Shamkhalate would be a settlement that does not even fall under the definition of a "town". Here one should not take the Georgian envoy's expression about the capital of the Shamkhalate in a literal sense. Attention should be paid to the date of Kirill's letter to the Ambassadorial Office — March 1604, which chronologically coincides with the preparation and subsequent march of the tsar's commander I. M. Buturlin into Dagestan. It is not surprising that, in a setting of looming external danger, the shamkhal and his family decided to wait it out temporarily in a remote summer residence in the mountains, safe from the tsar's troops. R. G. Marshaev's inattention to the very same source, where in another place the same Georgian envoy Kirill quite definitely indicates that "the chief town of the Shevkal" is Tarki, is puzzling. Thus, he advised the tsar's government: "…the sovereign's army should take the Shevkal's chief town, Tarki"³.

It should be noted that the lack of sources does not allow us to determine whether the Kazikumukh domain existed before the 16th century as an independent polity, free from the power of the shamkhals. However, Professor R. M. Magomedov, touching on the question of the inhabitants of Kazi-Kumukh being within the Shamkhalate, wrote: "Beginning in the 15th century, the shamkhal emerges as one of the most powerful rulers of the entire North-Eastern Caucasus. Perhaps it was then that the shamkhal managed to subjugate Kazikumukh for a time and compel the Laks to pay him tribute" [26, p. 146].

The principal lords of Kazi-Kumukh were the beks, who had earlier stood in vassal relations with the shamkhals and who, over time — approximately from the second half of the 16th century — became independent of them. The Kazikumukh domain, in the opinion of the well-known Caucasologist E. N. Kusheva, separated from the Shamkhalate at the end of the 16th century and from that time on became independent. This domain had its own prince. The names of the appanage princes who turned at the end of the 16th – beginning of the 17th century into independent local rulers are known: Alibek and his son Chuchulov-murza [24, p. 44].

It is no accident that the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate, proposed by R. G. Marshaev in Dagestan historiography, immediately met detailed criticism from Professor R. M. Magomedov for its scientific groundlessness. Stressing the evidence of sources as well as the economic advantages of the plain and foothills, R. M. Magomedov expressed doubts about the capital functions of Kazi-Kumukh [25]. His words on this question are of interest. "Perhaps," wrote R. M. Magomedov, "this Kazikumukh is the Kumyk Kafyr-Kumukh. I am inclined rather to see the residence of the shamkhals in the latter than to seek it by means of etymology somewhere in the mountains, in foreign territory. That Kafyr-Kumukh long served as the summer residence of the shamkhals is not in doubt; on the contrary, there is every reason to assert that it was precisely this settlement that was the original residence of the shamkhals" [26, p. 146].

It is a known fact that Boynak and Endirey also served as residences of the shamkhals [13, p. 108; 31, p. 111]. Let us note that in 1635–1641 the residence of the Shamkhalate's ruler Aidemir was in Endirey; yet this gives no grounds for calling the state headed by this prince the Endirey Shamkhalate.

In Endirey, Boynak and Kazi-Kumukh, however, there were their own appanage princes. As noted above, Kazi-Kumukh, already in the second half or end of the 16th century, became separated from the Shamkhalate, and an appanage prince Alibek came to rule there. Would this have been possible had this settlement been the capital of the Shamkhalate? As a rule, peripheries are given as appanages, never the capital. The reasons for regularly visiting Kazi-Kumukh as a residence are known: there, with their vassals, the shamkhals would hide during a massed offensive by a foreign enemy; moreover, the settlement was one of the places for collecting in-kind tribute from the region. Such a peripheral residence could well be given by a shamkhal as an appanage to a kinsman. Such a tradition of having several residences is a characteristic feature of many Turkic states in history [2, p. 67]. In Kazi-Kumukh one of the shamkhals' burial places was located; in the Simirdal cemetery (the name, according to the ethnographer A. Bulatova, goes back to the name of the Khazar capital, Semender) stands the gravestone of Eldar-shamkhal with an inscription in the Kumyk language⁴. Yet even as a burial place of representatives of the shamkhal lineage, Kazi-Kumukh is not unique. Their graves are also in Tarki, Boynak, Geli, and Kafyr-Kumukh. A large number of such burials is mentioned by E. Çelebi with regard to Endirey [31, p. 115]. Proceeding from the above, can we speak of Kazi-Kumukh as the capital of the Shamkhalate? We think not.

At the same time, let us stress: there is every reason to assert that Tarki was the capital of the Shamkhalate. First of all, there are economic advantages — its location on the important Volga-Caspian route, along which silk and other valuable Eastern goods flowed from Persia to Europe; near Tarki was the largest place for the extraction of highly valued table salt in the North-Eastern Caucasus — Turali; the plain is full of irrigated, fertile fields and winter pastures that brought the shamkhals great revenues, allowing them to maintain a numerous mounted retinue [2, p. 66].

For a full understanding of the problem of the Shamkhalate, let us turn to the sources. First of all, we should note that during the period of its military and political heyday, the Shamkhalate was integrated into the system of international relations. The ruling shamkhals were in close contact with the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid state, and the Muscovite tsardom. In this connection, we consider it necessary to look for information about the Shamkhalate in documents on the history of Russian-Caucasian, Russo-Turkish, Turco-Caucasian and Russo-Safavid relations of the 16th–17th centuries. Thus, Russian chronicles and archival documents, from the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible down to the accession of Michael Romanov, while meaning the Shamkhalate, strangely enough call it the Shevkal Tsardom⁵, Shevkal Land⁶, Shevkaly⁷, or Kumyk Land⁸, and the ruler of the Shevkal Tsardom a shevkal or Kumyk shevkal (prince)⁹, Shevkal prince¹⁰ — thereby underlining the dynasty's affiliation as well. As E. N. Kusheva wrote, in the 16th–17th centuries, in diplomatic relations with the Terek voyevody and with Moscow as a whole, the shamkhals used the terms Shevkaly, Kumyk Land, Kumyks precisely as a designation of the Shamkhalate — which undoubtedly underscores the identity of this state formation's geographical contours with the territory occupied by the Kumyks [24, pp. 42–43].

The insufficient information of written sources concerning Kazi-Kumukh does not allow it to be regarded as a center of greater significance than Tarki. Old maps of the 15th–17th centuries do not record Kazi-Kumukh, which serves as a weighty argument illustrating that this settlement was neither a capital nor even a town in Dagestan during the period in question. As a rule, geographical maps often indicate capital cities and major centers.

As for the town of Tarki, it is marked in various sources: on the map of Fra Mauro of 1459–1460, the portolan of Vesconte Maggiolo of 1519, the map of Piri Reis of 1525, in the atlas of Angelo Freducci of 1554, on the 1614 map of Hessel Gerritsz, and others [21].

Tarki also occurs in much earlier authors. Thus, in the Italian Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, envoy of the Pope to the court of the Mongol Emperor Güyük in 1245–1247, Tarki appears among other cities and lands subjugated by the Mongols¹¹. Tarki is also mentioned by the chroniclers of the emir Timur (Tamerlane) in the 14th century, Nizam ad-Din Shami and Sharaf ad-Din Yazdi¹², by the Tver merchant-traveller Afanasy Nikitin in the 15th century¹³, and by a number of others.

That the capital of the Shamkhalate was Tarki and not Kazi-Kumukh is specifically indicated by 16th-century sources. Thus, in the authoritative geographical work of the mid-16th century, compiled by order of Tsar Ivan IV, the Book of the Great Map, the town of Tarki is likewise mentioned¹⁴. This work contains a detailed description of the territory of Russia of that era and of neighboring states and domains. Of curiosity are also the reports of the 16th-century English traveller Anthony Jenkinson, a prominent figure of the English trading Muscovy Company, who visited Russia four times. Having undertaken a voyage across the Caspian Sea to Persia, Jenkinson noted the "continent of Shamkhal, or Kumyk of the Mohammedan land"¹⁵.

The fact that Tarki was the political center of the Shamkhalate is also confirmed by 16th-century Eastern authors. Thus, the chronicler of the Safavid state Zeynal Abdi-bey Shirazi wrote that Alqas, the brother of Shah Tahmasp I, rose against him but, having suffered defeat in 1547, fled to "Kumukh and Kaytag", to "Samhalinin paytahti Tarqu" ("the shamkhal's capital Tarqu") (i.e. Tarki — E. B., M.-P. A., S. B.) [32, p. 67], whence he proceeded through the territory of the Crimean Khanate to Istanbul¹⁶.

Turkish sources from the period of the war between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids, which lasted from 1578 to 1590, likewise say nothing about Kazi-Kumukh as the capital of the Shamkhalate. In particular, the well-known Ottoman chroniclers İbrahim Rahimizade, Mustafa Ali Gelibolulu and İbrahim Peçevi, when reporting on the shamkhal's state — then an ally of the Ottomans in their confrontation with the Persians — make no mention of a "Gazikumukh" Shamkhalate or of Kazi-Kumukh. In Rahimizade the shamkhal figures as the lord of "Kumyk and Kaytag" [16, p. 51]. The Ottoman register of the rulers of the Caucasus for 1574–1586, which was an official document of the Ottoman chancery, does not record the names Gazikumukh Shamkhalate, shamkhal of Gazikumukh, or Kazi-Kumukh. Moreover, in this document the shamkhal is listed as the "Lord of the Kumuks, Ulu-Shawkhal" and as ruler of "Kaytag and Komuk" [8, p. 46]. It is very strange that the documents of the official Ottoman chancery practically do not mention Kazi-Kumukh. Were it the capital of the Shamkhalate, would Ottoman chroniclers not have mentioned this?

It should also be noted that, according to many documents, it was precisely in Tarki, and not in Kazi-Kumukh, that the shamkhal received envoys. Thus, the Materials on the History of Georgian-Russian Relations (1615–1640) mention the meeting of the tsar's messenger bearing a charter in Tarki in 1616¹⁸. Here envoys were not only received, but embassies were also dispatched from here to Moscow, Istanbul and Isfahan. The documents often report the sending of amanats (hostages) and the dispatch of envoys from the shamkhals of Tarki to the fortress of Terki. Thus, the collection of documents and materials Russo-Dagestan Relations of the 17th – First Quarter of the 18th Century mentions the arrival at the Terek town of two envoys of the shamkhal Eldar: "…there arrived from Tarki from the Kumyk Ildar-shevkal two men…"¹⁹. The same collection of documents contains the information that "…Ildar-shevkal set out from Shamakhi to his villages in Tarki…"²⁰. Why to Tarki, and not to Kazi-Kumukh?

It is also significant, we think, that the campaigns of the tsar's voyevody G. O. Zasekin, P. M. Shakhovskoy, A. I. Khvorostinin, I. M. Buturlin [11, p. 283; 23, p. 15; 28, p. 9] and others at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries were directed at the capture of Tarki. In addition, from the 1593 correspondence of the Kakhetian envoys in Moscow — Prince Avram and Archimandrite Kirill — it is known that the Muscovite sovereign planned, after taking Tarki, to install as shamkhal a puppet Crimean-shamkhal who was the kinsman of the Georgian King Alexander²¹. This also indirectly indicates that the town was not only the principal residence of the shamkhal, but also the capital. It becomes clear why the tsar's troops were so eager to occupy Tarki.

In addressing the problem of the Shamkhalate, it is worth, for its full elucidation, also touching on the oikonym Kazi-Kumukh. According to the contemporary historian-Orientalist A. K. Alikberov, there existed in mountainous Dagestan before the 12th century a Turkic political formation, Tawyaq ("Mountain Side", or "Mountain Country") [10, pp. 195, 321]. In particular, he notes that the Hunno-Sabir tribes, having been displaced from the Caspian plain, withdrew into mountainous Dagestan and founded there a political union of Turks with mountaineers, Tawyaq. One of the centers of this formation was present-day mountain Kazi-Kumukh [10, p. 321]. Let us note here, however, that this has nothing to do with the Shamkhalate. The state formation — the Shamkhalate — arose later on the plain, with its capital at Tarki (Targu) [2, p. 67].

Of interest is the fact that, in A. K. Alikberov's opinion, the toponym Kumuk derives from the Turkic clan formation kumyk-atykuz, from which the name of the village originated [10, p. 163].

Consideration of the problem we have identified would be incomplete without an explanation of the terms shamkhal, shevkal, shawkhal. How is its origin to be explained?

Let us note that there are two principal versions of the origin of the term shamkhal (whence Shamkhalate): an Arabic one and a Turkic one. We shall not dwell on the first version, because it is not scientifically defensible and was in its time justly criticized by a number of Dagestan scholars. It is enough to say that the version of the shamkhals' genealogy supposedly going back to the Arabs was refuted by the well-known Dagestan Arabist M.-A. Saidov. The incontrovertible facts he adduced showed that genealogically the shamkhal lineage did not go back to al-Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, and none of the scholars who have investigated this question has been able to refute them [29].

Here it is important to indicate that shawkhal is the primary, originally Turkic (Kumyk) title of the Kumyk rulers of the North-Eastern Caucasus. In the form shamkhal the title was distorted by certain chroniclers and historians [20, p. 156]. The term shamkhal, in the opinion of K. Yu. Kadyradzhiev, has a general-Turkic genesis [22]. Even Adam Olearius, who visited Tarki and personally spoke with the sons of the rulers of Tarki, Gerei and Eldar, translated the word shamkhal as "luminary"²². Nicolaas Witsen held a similar view: "…the Shefkal, or Shafkal, or Shemkhal, which means 'light', surpasses all others in strength and importance…" [15, p. 694]. A. K. Alikberov points to the Turkic affiliation of the shamkhals. In his opinion, the term shamkhal is a reinterpretation of the old pre-Islamic titulature of the Turks of the Hunno-Sabir circle [10, p. 321].

On this point, a broad link of the title shevkal with the Turko-Tatar tradition, and at the same time a close one with that of the Horde, is usually noted. For example, in 1472 one of the representatives of the Shawkhal house, the shevkal Zagor (baptized Aleksandr Aybulatovich), "son of a shevkal", entered the military service of Prince Ivan III²³. The Russian chronicles also call a cousin of the Golden Horde khan Öz Beg a shevkal; he was killed while serving as envoy in Tver in 1327 and is known from The Tale of Shevkal. In this connection, some researchers have expressed the view that the shamkhals were of Chingizid origin [7, pp. 10–11].

The version of a Golden Horde (Turko-Tatar) origin of the shamkhals was also advanced in his time by the patriarch of Dagestan historical scholarship R. M. Magomedov: "If one is to speak of the origin of the word 'Shamkhal', 'Shavkal', there would seem to be every reason to refer these terms rather to the Golden Horde than to the Arabs. It may be supposed that the ruler of the Kumyks, during the period of Tatar-Mongol dominance, could have been raised to this dignity by them" [26, p. 145]. While sharing, in general, the view of R. M. Magomedov, we hold that after the disintegration of the Horde, the Kumyks themselves chose their shamkhal from among the local upper nobility, whose descendants ruled in the Eastern Caucasus until the second half of the 19th century. This was pointed out by E. N. Kusheva, who wrote: "…the shamkhals were chosen from among the elder members of the shamkhal lineage of the various feudal domains of the Kumyk Land" [24, p. 45]. In favour of this view speaks also the important role in the Shamkhalate of the institution of the karachi-beks, who, as is known from the history of the Turko-Tatar states, took an active part in electing rulers [19].

In the opinion of the well-known contemporary scholar Professor A. S. Akbiev, "the first rulers bearing the title 'shawkhal' appear in Dagestan at the beginning of the 12th century and were ethnic Turks, leading detachments of ghazis and spreading Islam in mountainous Dagestan. The Turkic dynasty lasted until the beginning of the 14th century and was overthrown by the combined forces of the Golden Horde forces of Kaytag and Avaria. The Golden Horde installed in the Shamkhalate a ruler of their own, from among the Chingizids, whose descendants governed this state formation down to the second half of the 19th century" [4, p. 12].

In conclusion to the article, it will not be out of place, we think, to cite the words of a modern researcher of the military and political history of the Kumyks, K. M. Aliev: "…Between 1396 and 1443 the Kumyks were evidently dominated by the Timurids. The second, 'Tatar' dynasty, which, after the fall of the Timurids in 1442/43, founded an independent state in the Eastern Caucasus, ruled from 1442 to 1867 — that is, down to the abolition of the Kumyk state of Tarki (the Shawkhalate) and its incorporation into the Russian Empire" [9, p. 12].

Conclusion

Summing up the material set forth, it must be stressed that the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate, actively introduced into scholarly circulation in Dagestan historical science by R. G. Marshaev in the mid-1950s, has no scientific foundation. The term is a late historical construct artificially implanted into the historiography in circumvention of the principles of historicism and objectivity. The entire range of materials used in this study (documents of the Ambassadorial Office, chronicles, annals, notes of contemporary travellers, etc.) practically does not record the term Gazikumukh Shamkhalate. In the diplomatic correspondence of the rulers of Tarki with Moscow, the terms Shevkalate, Shevkaly, Kumyk Land, Shevkal Land appear, but nowhere is there any mention of a Gazikumukh Shamkhalate. Nor does the very version (the "Quasi-Kumukh hypothesis") of the primacy of Kazi-Kumukh as the capital of the Shamkhalate stand up to serious scientific criticism. Relying on various sources of the 15th–17th centuries (predominantly on Russian documents), we consider it permissible to use in scholarly circulation the term Shevkalate without the name Gazikumukh.

We hold that originally there was a unified state formation called the Shawkhalate (Shamkhalate), ruled successively by Turkic and Turko-Tatar (Turkified Chingizid) ruling dynasties. After the fall of the Golden Horde, it is legitimate to speak of the Shamkhalate of Tarki or the Kumyk Shamkhalate, because, firstly, the Kumyks themselves chose their shamkhal from among the local feudal aristocracy, whose descendants ruled in the Eastern Caucasus until the second half of the 19th century; secondly, it was precisely the Kumyk ethnos that was dominant in this state formation. The area of Kumyk settlement extended far beyond the Dagestan of that time and encompassed a significant part of Chechnya and Little Kabarda.

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