Arab dagestanis – direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad
- Where do the Prophet’s e descendants in Dagestan live nowadays and what is the number of sayyids today?
- No one can tell the exact number today. There are quite a few historical facts that say there were descendants of the Prophet Muhammad in Dagestan. There is a letter written by a head of the village of Tsoloda to the Khunzakh khan Umakhan. It says some descendants of Prophet Muhammad live in Tsoloda, and that the head of the village asks the khan not to tax them.
At the times of imam Shamil there were more than 70 families that truly were sayyids. Dagestan families had many children those days, so we may consider that there are many of the Prophet’s offsprings in Dagestan today.
We also must mention the fact that people having secret knowledge (sheikhs that are aqtabs, people who have high ranks) are descendants of Hasan, a grandchild of God’s Messenger . This can be proved by the fact that we have true Tariqa sheikhs in Dagestan who are the offspring of the best among people – Muhammad .
It is wonderful to have so many people coming from the noble family in such a small land as Dagestan. Thanks to their grace and wisdom Dagestan is calm and peaceful, although there are always attempts to destabilize the situation.
If we take into consideration that there were many marriages between different Dagestan tukhums, it is possible to call them all Arabs, because thousands of families moved here from Sham (Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon), Mecca and Medina in the past.
Hisham ibn Abd ul-Malik, who is a cousin of the well-known ruler Umar ibn Abd ul-Aziz, at the times of his reign (105-125 Hijri of 724- 745 CE) came to Dagestan and brought 24,000 soldier families with him.
They moved and settled down here. Ibn Kathir wrote in his book Bidayatu wa Nihayat, that the well-known Abbasid caliph Harun ar-Rashid visited Dagestan with his wife and two children. He also brought 7,000 soldier families with him.
These soldiers moved to Derbent and its region. The village of Kurush in Southern Dagestan was called Kurushiyu before, because Arab people from the Quraysh tribe lived there. Obviously, Arabs assimilated with the peoples of Dagestan.
- What do you do in order to get to know more about Dagestan history, especially concerning the period of Islamisation and Arab arrival? How do you look for Prophet Muhammad’s descendants and the people who come from his noble tribe?
- This task is very laborious and interesting at the same time. We analyse old books and look for information about earlier times; we visit different villages and meet local historians and elder people, etc.
There are people who know something about their ancestors and have documents concerning them and come to us. This kind of help is very important to us. Hereby I want to ask everybody who has historical documents or any information on this topic, who can help to find historical bonds with Prophet Muhammad’s tribe to contact us through our site on the Internet.
MURAD RADJABOV
