Quranic motifs in the Kumyk religious literature

Abstract

The object of this research is the Kumyk medieval literature, dominated by thee ideas of enlightenment and religious unity. As a result of adoption of Islam by the peoples of Dagestan, including Kumyks, their written literature grounded on Quran, acquires a pronounced Muslim character. The Kumyk religious literature existed in the forms of sermons, cogitations, philosophizing and homilies, commonly known as “turki”. The concept of “turki”, which encompasses numerous religious poems of various contents and forms, represents a uniform system of genres, namely religious poetry. It is determined that alongside consolidation of the position of Islam in Dagestan in the XVI century, the religious themes become increasingly popular in the literary works of Kumyk poets and theologians. The authors examine  the Quranic motifs in the Kumyk religious literature  on the example of the collection “Majmu ul-Manzumat al-Ajamiyya”. Eschatological motifs in the aforementioned work can be divided into two parts: edifying that provide moral and ethical instructions, and descriptive that depict perturbations that await people for non-compliance with such instructions.