Russia’s mountain republic speaks fourteen official languages
Dagestan, a Russian republic on the Caspian North Caucasus, covers about 50,300 square kilometres with more than 3.1 million people across thirty-plus ethnic groups and eighty-one nationalities. Fourteen official languages and twelve groups each above one percent of the population make it Russia’s most linguistically complex federal subject.
The republic occupies Russia's southern tip, north of the Greater Caucasus and within the North Caucasian Federal District. Azerbaijan lies to the south and Georgia's Kakheti region to the south-west, while inside Russia it meets Chechnya, Stavropol Krai and Kalmykia. Makhachkala is the capital and largest city; Derbent, Kizlyar, Kaspiysk, Izberbash and Buynaksk are the other big towns. Its eastern side runs along roughly 405 kilometres of Caspian shore, and the territory stretches up to 400 kilometres north to south but only 200 east to west.
Most of the land is mountainous, with the Greater Caucasus filling the south. Bazardüzü, on the Azerbaijani border, is the highest peak at around 4,450 metres, and Russia's southernmost point lies about seven kilometres south-west of it. Diklosmta, Addala Shukgelmezr and Dyultydag all exceed 4,100 metres, and more than 1,800 rivers drain the republic.
The name joins Turkic dağ, mountain, with the Persian suffix -stan, land. At various times parts of the region were known as Lekia, Avaria and Tarki. From 1860 to 1920 a Dagestan Oblast covered what is now the south-east of the republic, and today's borders date from the 1921 autonomous Soviet republic, which added the flat eastern part of Terek Oblast along the Caspian lowland.
Most people speak a Northeast Caucasian or Turkic language at home, including Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgian, Lak and Tabasaran, but Russian serves as the common tongue. That diversity makes the republic one of the most mixed administrative units anywhere. Internationally it is famous for combat sambo, and many of its wrestlers have moved on to mixed martial arts.
Source: Dagestan
