Necropolis of the Mehtulla Khans in the village of Nizhnii Dzhengutai (Delet- Qaburlar cemetery)

Abstract

During the ?ield trip to the Piedmont and Mountainous Daghestan in 2022 the authors studied the “Delet- Qaburlar” cemetery in the village of Nizhnii Dzhengutai, which was the capital of a major local political entity the Mekhtulla Khanate which had existfrom the middle of the 17 th century to 1867. At the cemetery, previousl unsearched tombstones of the last representatives of the Mekhtulla Khanate dynasty were found. On these tombstones, the names of the buried, the date of their death and auspicious inscriptions were carved in Arabic. The main goal of the study was compare the buried representatives is genus known in historical sources. In otal, the article contains a description of the nineteen tombstones. In the ?irst part, the monuments of the ideti?ied persons with their brief biographical information are given. The second part contains descriptions of tombstones whose owners could not be identi?ied. Ithis article authors have considered some aspects of the biographies of Ahmad-khan Mekhtulinskii (1808–1843), his wife Nuh-bike (d. 187), their sons: the elder Ibrahim-khan (1836–1869) and the younger Rashid-khan (d. 1876), as well as their relatives: Shikhshabek (d. 1865), Mirza-bek, son of Abusulan nutsal-khan (d. 1855) and other representatives of the local aristocracy buried in this cemetery.