A djamaat is a politically organized community in

Dagestan Dagestan ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Fede ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, usually a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

or a group of villages with a historical connection.

Overview

The djamaat is a centuries-old political unit, traditionally consisting of up to ten

tribal The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

or ancestral structures known as tuhums, which are broadly extended families. The government of a djamaat traditionally consisted of the elders from each of the tuhums. The djamaats were, in turn, governed by the ''adat'' (''common law, prescriptions''). The role of the djamaats in Dagestani history has been compared with that of the

poleis Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

. Although members of the djamaat often spoke the same

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

was not the primary connecting factor. The role of the djamaats faded after the new 1994 constitution of

, which provided other sources of authority in the republic, but the djamaats re-emerged when the national movement weakened. The Dagestani political life began to be dominated by "ethnoparties", whose key positions were often filled by djamaat members. The Dagestani djamaat, with its transcending kinship and ethnic structures, has been seen as a stabilizing factor in the political life of this ethnically and culturally diverse region.Ware, p.47-51

Footnotes

Sources

*{{cite book, title=Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the North Caucasus, last1=Ware, first1=Robert Bruce, last2=Kisriev, first2=Enver, isbn=978-0-7656-2028-6, publisher=M.E.Sharpe, year=2010 History of Dagestan Politics of Dagestan