Introduction

After 1991 the main shapers of Islamic trajectories in the Caucasus were the continued ‘Islamic revival’, the Russo-Chechen wars of 1994–99 and 1999–2009 and, in the case of Azerbaijan, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The ‘Islamic revival’ led to the increased presence of Islam in both the public and private spheres. The Russo-Chechen wars enhanced the proliferation in the region of radical Islamism and globalized jihādīsm, while the protracted Azerbaijan–Armenia conflict over NagornyKarabakh (1988–2020) was conducive to increased Turkish influences, both ethnonational and Islamic, in Azerbaijan. Against the backdrop of these developments there emerged new official and unofficial Islamic leaders. In 1989 in the North Caucasus the regional muftīate (DUM SK) was disbanded and replaced by a plethora of ethnonational muftīates, headed by ‘young imāms’. By the mid-1990s there were six muftīates in the Russian North Caucasus, as each autonomous republic of the region acquired its own muftīate. In the north-east, the muftīates became dominated by Ṣūfīs of Shāfi‘ī madhhab, while in the north-west, by Ḥanafī traditionalists. By comparison, in Azerbaijan, the Baku-based muftīate largely remained intact due to the continuation of its leadership.

Across the wider Caucasus the authority of muftīs and the validity of the muftīatebased system of state–Muslim relations has been challenged by unofficial Islamic leaders, mostly Salafīs, who have campaigned for the greater presence of Islam in the social and political spheres. In Chechnya radical Islamists succeeded in seizing power and creating an Islamic state, albeit for a short period. An important factor in the proliferation in the region of Salafīsm, Islamism and jihādism was the financial, theological and practical assistance provided by various government and non-government Islamic funds, organizations and networks based in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Malaysia and other Muslim countries.

The chapter consists of three main sections corresponding to the Caucasus’ northeastern, north-western and southern parts, which have had distinctive Islamic trajectories that affected the nature and role there of the Islamic leadership. The first section analyses the specifics of Islamic official and unofficial leadership in Dagestan, which has been the regional centre of the ‘Islamic revival’.