Introduction

Historically, the evolution of Islam in the Caucasus has been shaped by the region's mountainous landscape, its strategic location between Europe and Asia and its extreme ethnolinguistic and confessional diversity.1 The magnificent Greater Caucasus mountains divided the region's multi-ethnic inhabitants into the plain dwellers and highlanders with their distinctive ways of life and social and political organizations. The Caucasus’ frontier position accounted for its cultural diversity and its numerous polities’ varying and conflicting external orientations. The region experienced either a complete or partial domination by major Middle Eastern and Eurasian empires, including the Sasanian Empire, the Khazar Khaganate, Byzantium, the Arab Caliphate, the Seljūq Empire, the Genghizid Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Safawid Empire and the Russian Empire. On the whole, external political and cultural influences were more powerful on the plains, which hosted a succession of externally dominated khānates, emīrates, kingdoms and other principalities. By comparison, in the mountains various tribal, neighbourhood and religious communities managed to retain a substantial detachment from both external and regional political centres and largely preserved their social order based on ‘adats (customary norms).

The Caucasus's strategic location was also a factor in its early encounter with Islam, which was brought to the region by Prophet Muḥammad's Companions – Ṣaḥābah – and their followers. Unlike the Volga-Urals, the Caucasus was included in both the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates and experienced an influx of Arab and Arabized Muslims from Greater Syria, which contributed to a considerable Arabization of the north-eastern Caucasus, the prevalence there of Shāfi‘ī madhhab and the persistence of Arabic-language proficiency among the region's ‘ulamā’ and other Muslim clergy. This part of the Caucasus also witnessed the proliferation of Ṣūfīsm, as well as the development of sharī‘ah-‘adat legal pluralism. On the other hand, parts of the southern Caucasus, corresponding to modern Georgia and Armenia, withstood the Islamizing pressure and remained within the tenets of Christianity.

We begin with a brief historical account of the Caucasus’ Islamization and an examination of the implications for Islamic authority and leadership of the region's initial partial inclusion in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.