¹ J. Eden, God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World War (Oxford, 2021), p. 159.

² Just a few months had passed after his denunciation against DUMSK, when Mugumaev was arrested and thrown into jail for several years. In the summer of 1957, he wrote an appeal in Arabic entitled ‘A complaint from the sixty million Muslims imprisoned by Communism in the USSR [addressed] to all the Muslims of the free world’. Attending the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in early August 1957 while serving as a translator, he handed this text over to the head of the Iraqi delegation, Omar Abu Rad, who turned out to be an agent of the KGB. He was immediately arrested and sent to a Gulag for six years; see P. Sartori and S. Shikhaliev, 'Message in a thermos, or story of a contrarian in socialist Dagestan', SICE Blog, 15 May 2024, https://www.oeaw.ac.at/sice/sice-blog/message-in-a-thermos-or-story-of-a-contrarian-in-socialist-dagestan.

³ E. Tasar, ‘The officials madrasas of Soviet Uzbekistan’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59.1–2 (2016), pp. 265–302.

⁴ In particular, Mugumaev claimed that the pamphlet said that ‘without a Sufi master, praying God is impossible’. Implicitly, Mugumaev suggested that the work in question was a pro-Sufi text.

⁵ Central State Archive of the Republic of Dagestan (henceforth, TsGARD), f. R-1234, op. 4, d. 7, l. 128.

⁶ He held this position for three years, until he lost the competition for authority to Gikiev.

⁷ One manuscript (spisok ‘a’) was copied in the mid-1960s and the name of its copyist is unknown. The second manuscript (spisok ‘b’) was copied by one Muhammad b. Charanov in the village of Mogokh in September 1951. The two manuscripts are now preserved in the private collections of Shamil Shikhaliev (Makhachkala) and Charan Charanov (Mogokh), respectively.

⁸ ‘Abd al-Ḥafīdh al-Uḥlī, Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li’l akh al-muṣliḥ, MS Makhachkala (spisok ‘a’), fol. 2b.

⁹ Najm al-Dīn al-Ḥūtsī (Gotsinsky, 1859–1925) was a prominent Dagestani religious and political figure of the first quarter of the twentieth century, a muftī of the United Republics of the North Caucasus (1917–1919), in which he spearheaded the anti-Soviet uprising from 1917 to 1921. After the suppression of the insurgency, Najm al-Dīn hid in the mountains of West Dagestan for a while, after which he was seized by the secret police (OGPU) and was subsequently executed in 1925. See N. Sahakyan, Muslim Reformers and the Bolsheviks: The Case of Daghestan (London and New York, 2022), pp. 55–88; K. Donogo, Nadzhmuddin Gotsinskii (Makhachkala, 2011).

¹⁰ Born into a family of Naqshbandi shaykhs, Shu‘ayb al-Baghini (1856–1912) is known mainly for having authored a biographical dictionary of Sufi scholars of the khalidiyya network, Ṭabaqāt al-khwajagān al-Naqshbandiyya wa-sādāt al-mashāyikh al-khālidiyya al-maḥmūdiyya. For more information about him and his work, see M. A. Musaev and S. S. Shikhaliev, ‘Chudesnye deyaniya svyatykh v araboyazychnykh sufiiskikh biograficheskikh sochineniyakh dagestanskikh sheikhov nachala XX veka’, Pis’mennye pamyatniki Vostoka 17.2 (2012), pp. 218–232.

¹¹ On this newspaper and al-Ghumuqī’s involvement, see A. R. Navruzov, Dzharidat Dagistan: Araboyazychnaiy gazeta kavkazskikh dzhadidov (Moscow, 2012).

¹² R. R. Gould, ‘The geographies of ʿAjam: the circulation of Persian poetry from South Asia to the Caucasus’, The Medieval History Journal 18.1 (2015), pp. 87–119.

¹³ M. Kemper, ‘The legitimisation of the imamate in the North Caucasus’, Central Asian Survey 26 (2004), pp. 89–105.

¹⁴ A. Bustanov and Sh. Shikhaliev, ‘Archives of discrimination: the evolution of Muslim book collections in Daghestan’, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 15.1 (2024), pp. 82–109.

¹⁵ M. Kemper, ‘Ijtihad into philosophy: Islam as cultural heritage in post-Stalinist Daghestan’, Central Asian Survey 33.3 (2014), pp. 390–404.

¹⁶ See especially chapter 3, ‘The language of ijtihad’, in M. Q. Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 75–107.

¹⁷ B. Krawietz, ‘Cut and paste in legal rules: designing Islamic norms with Talfiq’, Die Welt des Islams 42.1 (2002), pp. 3–40.

¹⁸ This treatise has survived in two manuscript copies. One is housed at the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Dagestani branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (henceforth IHAE) in Makhachkala and it was copied in 1929; see ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī, Al-Risāla fī taqlīd wa jawāz at-talfīq, IHAE, collection M.-S. Saidov, inventory (opis’) 1, No. 37, fols. 80a–86a. The other was copied in 1913 and it is currently preserved in the library of the congregational mosque of Karabudakhkent—a settlement situated 40 kilometres south-west of Makhachkala (inventory number 66). Interestingly, these two copies were crafted by the same person—the Dagestani scholar Nadhīr al-Durgilī (1891–1935), which explains why they are identical.

¹⁹ I. Weismann, ‘A perverted balance: modern Salafism between reform and Jihad’, Die Welt des Islams 57.1 (2017), pp. 33–66. For an important exchange on the application of the term Salafi in Western historiography, see F. Griffel, ‘What do we mean by “Salafi”? Connecting Muḥammad ʿAbduh with Egypt’s Nūr Party in Islam’s contemporary intellectual history’, Die Welt des Islams 55.2 (2015), pp. 186–220; H. Lauzière, ‘Rejoinder: what we mean versus what they meant by “Salafi”: a reply to Frank Griffel’, Die Welt des Islams 56.1 (2016), pp. 89–96.

²⁰ Krawietz, ‘Cut and paste in legal rules’, pp. 3–40.

²¹ Y. V. Medzhidov and M. A. Abdullaev, Ali Kayaev. Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva (Makhachkala, 1993); S. S. Shikhaliev and A. R. Navruzov, Iz istorii zhizni i tvorchestva Ali Kayaeva i Saifulla-kadi Bashlarova: dokumenty i materialy (Makhachkala, 2018); S. S. Shikhaliev, ‘Musul’manskoe reformatorstvo v Dagestane (1900 - 1930)’, in Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom, ‘RANKhiGS’, No. 3 (35) (Moscow, 2017), pp. 134–169.

²² He copied the treatise in question when he was studying at the madrasa in the village of Sogratl. See the following missive that ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī addressed to one Muḥammad Efendi in 1898, Ilyas Kayaev Collection, item no. 415: ‘Peace and blessings, and the mercy of the Most High Allah be upon you. I have received your letter and I would like now to know whether you intend to travel. If you wish to come to us, you are welcome. Meanwhile I have sent to you the book al-Musliḥ wa-l-muqallid by Rashīd Riḑā. As for al-Radd ‘ala al-dahriyyīn by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, which you have requested, [one copy] is currently available at our mosque. [Qāḑī] Muḥammad al-Sugūri did not allow me to remove it therefrom. However, if you visit us, the doors of our library are always open to you. ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī’ 1315 [1898].’

²³ This point has been made forcefully by D. A. Stolz, ‘“By virtue of your knowledge”: scientific materialism and the fatwās of Rashīd Rida’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 75.2 (2012), pp. 223–247.

²⁴ This work is based on al-Ghumuqī’s exchanges with students of history and philology from the Leningrad State University during an ethnographic expedition to Dagestan led by V. G. Bogoraz. It shows the extent to which al-Ghumuqī was familiar with the works of Camille Flammarion, Gottfried Leibniz, René Descartes, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jean-Baptiste Le Rond D’Alembert—mostly through translations into Ottoman Turkish. This text exists in two manuscript copies. The first was copied by Nadhīr b. Muḥammad al-Durgilī on 11 May 1929; see IHAE, collection M.-S. Saidov, inventory 1, MS. 90c, fols. 133a–193b. The second copy was made by al-Ghumuqī’s student, ‘Abd al-Raḥīm Aymaqī (1898–1992), on 26 June 1968; see private collection Ilyas Kayaev, MS. 51.

²⁵ On al-Ghumuqī’s presence in Astrakhan, see A. M. Barabanov, Khronika Mukhammad Takhira al-Karakhi o dagestanskikh voinakh v period Shamilia (Moscow and Leningrad, 1941), p. 9.

²⁶ That al-Ghumuqī studied in Cairo is confirmed by several sources. First, al-Ghumuqī’s private archive (Iyas Kayaev collection) includes excerpts of various works on law, dogma, and hadith, which al-Ghumuqī made when he was studying at the al-Azhar. In addition, his archive preserves forms for ordering books at the then Khedive Library in Cairo (now the Egyptian National Library and Archives). The last entry dates back to 1908. Furthermore, al-Ghumuqī’s training at the al-Azhar and his collaboration with Rashīd Riḑā is mentioned by ‘Abd al-Ḥafīdh al-Uḥlī in his work al-Jawāb al-saḥīḥ (see above), and Nadhīr b. Muḥammad al-Durgilī, al-Fajr al-ṣādiq fī radd ‘alā munkarī al-wasā’it wa-l-khawāriq, IHAE, collection M.-S. Saidov, inventory 1, MS. 31b, fols. 2a–2b.

²⁷ See the Lak newspaper Channa Tsuku (‘The Morning Star’), No. 8 (1917).

²⁸ See, in particular, his article ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī, ‘Fī ḥaqq al-ijtihād wa-t-taqlīd’, Jarīdat Dāghistān 31, 3 August 1913, p. 4.

²⁹ For a recent, innovative exploration of Islamic modernism in South Asia, see M. O’Sullivan, ‘The Indian Muslim salariat and the moral and political economies of usury laws in colonial India, 1855-1914ʹ, Past and Present XX (2023), pp. 1–44.

³⁰ R. Bar Sadeh, ‘Between Cairo and the Volga-Urals: Al-Manar and Islamic modernism, 1905-1917ʹ, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21.3 (2020), pp. 525–553; M. Kemper, ‘Imperial Russia as Dar al-Islam? Nineteenth-century debates on ijtihad and taqlid among the Volga Tatars’, Encounters 6 (2015), pp. 95–124.

³¹ For the most recent iteration of this view, see E. J. Lazzerini, ‘Jadidism, modernity, and Islamic communities in imperial Russia’, in Oxford Research Encyclopaedias, Asian History (Oxford, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.291.

³² M. Roschin, ‘Ali Kayaev—Muslim educator and reformer of Daghestan’, in Islam and Sufism in Daghestan, (ed.) M. Gammer (Helsinki, 2009), pp. 79–84.

³³ Letter to al-Ghumūqī, al-Ghumūqī collection item no. 273.

³⁴ A. J. Frank, ‘Sufis, scholars, and divanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the works of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï’, in Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (15th – Early 20th Centuries), (eds.) N. Pianciola and P. Sartori (Vienna, 2013), pp. 213–232; S. Jacquesson, ‘On folklore archives and heritage claims: the Manas Epic in Kyrgyzstan’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62.4 (2021), pp. 425–454; J. Duishimbieva, ‘“The Kara Kirghiz must develop separately”: Ishenaali Arabaev (1881–1933) and his project of the Kyrgyz nation’, in Creating Culture in (Post) Socialist Central Asia, (eds.) A. Breed, E.-M. Dubuisson, and A. Iğmen (London, 2020), pp. 13–46; B. M. Babajanov, ‘“Ulama”-orientalists: madrasa graduates at the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies’, in Reassessing Orientalism: Interlocking Orientologies during the Cold War (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe), (eds.) M. Kemper and A. M. Kalinovsky (London, 2015), pp. 84–119. On the Soviet enterprise of collecting folklore material for purposes of nation building, see F. Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca and London, 2005); A. Bustanov, Soviet Orientalism and the Creation of Central Asian Nations (London and New York, 2015).

³⁵ ‘Alī-Ḥājjī al-Aqūshī (1847–1930) was a Naqshbandi shaykh who became a prominent figure amidst the political turmoil of the Revolution and Civil-War eras in the North Caucasus, and led the anti-Denikin uprising in the region. Collaborating with the Bolsheviks, he actively contributed to the establishment of Soviet authority in Dagestan. However, during the second half of the 1920s, he voiced dissent against Soviet policies, which led to the deportation of all his family to Central Asia.

³⁶ Kazem-Bey (Muhammad Kazim-bey?), a colonel and Turkish officer, commanded Turkish forces in the Caucasus during the summer offensive of 1918 into Armenian territories. Subsequently, he took up residence in Baku and became a member of the Turkish military-political mission that was dispatched to Turkestan with the aim of negotiating a joint effort against the British. In 1919, he led negotiations with the Khan of Khiva, Junaid Khan, which proved unsuccessful. Following the defeat of the first anti-Denikin uprising in Dagestan in July 1919, the Defense Council of Dagestan and the North Caucasus invited Kazem-Bey to Dagestan, appointing him as the commander-in-chief of the partisan army. He established close ties with ‘Alī-Ḥajji Aqūshī while vehemently opposing the Bolsheviks in Dagestan. In the mid-1920s, following the advance of the Red Army, he departed for Azerbaijan and later moved to Central Asia.

³⁷ Nūrī Pasha (Nuri Killigil, 1881–1949), a general of the Turkish army and step-brother of Enver Pasha, the minister of war of the Ottoman empire and one of the organisers and leaders of the ‘Union and Progress’ party. In December 1919, Nūrī Pasha was appointed commander-in-chief of the partisan army by the Defense Council of Dagestan and the North Caucasus, succeeding Kazem-Bei in this position. In early 1920, Nūrī Pasha began to oppose the Bolsheviks, who sought to utilise the struggle of the peoples of Dagestan against Denikin to establish Soviet authority in the region. Subsequently, following the advance of the Red Army, the Bolsheviks no longer required Nūrī Pasha’s services. By the end of March 1920, on the eve of the establishment of Soviet authority, he departed Dagestan, residing in Azerbaijan for a period before returning to Turkey.

³⁸ Makhach Dakhadaev (1882–1918), a graduate of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Railway Engineers, was an active participant in the struggle for Soviet authority in Dagestan. In 1905, he served as one of the leaders of the Temir-Khan-Shura organisation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP). Following the February Revolution of 1917, he played a crucial role in organising the Dagestani Socialist Group. From May 1918, he served as a member of the Regional Military Revolutionary Council. In 1918, he led military operations against the forces of L. F. Bicherakhov. He was elected to the 1st Soviet Dagestani Regional Executive Committee and served as a member of the Extraordinary Military Council of Dagestan. In 1918, while transporting a large sum of money for the armament of the Bolsheviks, he was captured and executed.

³⁹ Jalāl al-Dīn Korkmasov (1877–1937), a graduate of the law faculties of Moscow University and the University of Sorbonne, emerged as a prominent figure in the revolutionary movement. In 1910, he joined the Socialist Group and relocated to Istanbul, where he published the newspaper Stambulskiye Vedomosti and also resided in Paris. Following the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Dagestan, actively participating in revolutionary activities. Upon the establishment of Soviet authority in Dagestan, he served as the chairman of the Dagestani Revolutionary Committee, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, and was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in Moscow. In 1937, he was arrested by the secret police (NKVD) and executed by firing squad in September of the same year. He was posthumously rehabilitated.

⁴⁰ Levan Melikov (1817–1892), a participant in the Caucasian Wars from 1835 to 1859, commanded troops in the Dagestani region (Dagestanskaya Oblast’) and took part in the expedition to Khiva. In 1877, he led the suppression of the uprising in Dagestan, personally commanding the troops. In 1880, he was appointed assistant to the commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Army, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich Romanov.

⁴¹ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ghāzīghumuqī (1837–1901), a Dagestani scholar, disciple, and son-in-law of Imam Shamil, participated in the Caucasian War. Following the end of the Caucasian War, he spent seven years in honourable exile alongside Shamil. Later, he entered imperial service and, in the 1890s, served as the qāḍī in his native village of Kumukh. He authored several works in Arabic on the history of Dagestan, including The Book of Memories detailing events of the Caucasian War, A Brief Account of the Detailed Description of the Affairs of Imam Shamil covering events after the capture of Imam Shamil, and The Fall of Dagestan and Chechnya due to the Instigation of the Ottomans in 1877.

⁴² ‘Alībek-ḥājjī (Aldanov, 1850–1878), the leader of the 1877 uprising in Dagestan. Following the suppression of the uprising, he was captured by imperial forces, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging.

⁴³ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣughūrī (1792—1882), a prominent Muslim scholar and Naqshbandi shaykh, authored several works on Sufism and logic. During the period of Imam Shamil’s imamate (1834–1859), he served as the muḥtasib, tasked with resolving conflicts within the imamate. During the 1877 uprising, the Dagestanies requested him to lead them but, due to his advanced age, he declined, passing this responsibility to his son, Muḥammad-ḥājjī. After the suppression of the uprising, he was sentenced to exile, which was later replaced with house arrest in the village of Nizhnee Kazanishche, where he passed away.

⁴⁴ Muḥammad-ḥājjī al-Ṣugūrī (1839–77), the son of shaykh ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣughūrī, led the 1877 uprising in Dagestan and was elected as the Fourth Imam of Dagestan and Chechnya. Following the suppression of the uprising, he was captured by imperial authorities and executed by hanging.

⁴⁵ It is likely that al-Ghumuqī is referring here to the practice of ijtihad, which allowed the companions of the Prophet Muhammad to draw their own conclusions and to not accept the opinions of others if they were sure that their reasoning was correct and in accordance with the norms of Islam.

⁴⁶ Muhyī al-Din al-Nawawī (1233–1277) was an influential scholar and prolific jurist ‘in the legal tradition of the Shāfi’ī school of Islamic law’, Fachrizal A. Halim, ‘al-Nawawī, Muḥyī al-Dīn', in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds.) K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas, and D. J. Stewart, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_40625 (consulted on 25 February 2024).

⁴⁷ Al-Kamal Ibn Humām al-Ḥanafī (1388–1457), major Egyptian Ḥanafī legal scholar.

⁴⁸ That is, followers of the Mālikī madhhab.

⁴⁹ The volume of water in Islamic law. It is usually considered in the context of water that is suitable for ablution, in case impurities (najas) have fallen into it but have not changed its smell, colour, or taste. The volume of this water reaches different values in different schools of law. For example, in the Shāfi‘ī madhhab, it is about 216 litres. Also, in four schools of law, there are different opinions about the suitability of water for ablution if impurities have got into it and it does not reach the volume of two kullāhs.

⁵⁰ In the Mālikī madhhab, unlike the other three madhhabs, water is considered suitable for performing ablution even if it contains impurities that do not change its colour, smell, or taste. It is not forbidden to perform ablution with such water, although it is not desirable. In contrast, for example, in the Shāfi‘ī and Ḥanafī madhhabs, if impurities have fallen into water of less than two kullāhs, then such water, even if it has not changed colour, smell, or taste, is not suitable for performing ritual ablution.

⁵¹ That is, of the Mālikī madhhab.

⁵² ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī, Al-Risāla fī taqlīd wa jawāz at-talfīq, fols. 80b–81a. Here, al-Ghumuqī refers to the work Al-qawl as-sadid fi ba’d masa’il ijtihad wa at-taqlid, which was authored by the Ḥanafī scholar Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Azīm al-Makkī (d. 1642).

⁵³ Ali Akbar Dianat, (trans.) F. Negahban, ‘Abū al-Suʿūd, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Muṣṭafā ʿImādī’, in Encyclopaedia Islamica, (ed.) F. Daftary, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-9831_isla_COM_0143 (accessed nline 25 February 2024).

⁵⁴ The Ḥanafī scholar Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (1879–1952) regarded Zufar b. al-Hudhayl as ‘an absolute mujtahid (al-mujtahid al-muṭlaq), associated (intisāb) with Abu Hanifa’, noting that, in some matters, he disagreed with Abū Ḥanīfa. See his Lamḥāt al-naẓr fī sīrat al-imām Zufar (Cairo, 1368 [1948]), pp. 20–21.

⁵⁵ He does so mainly by relying on the Hujjat Allāh al-bāligha of Shāh Waliullāh al-Dihlawī.

⁵⁶ ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī, Al-Risāla fī taqlīd wa jawāz at-talfīq, fol. 82a.

⁵⁷ A figurative turn of phrase meaning that the mujtahids relied on the Qur’an and Sunnah.

⁵⁸ With reference to al-Sha’rānī, Al-Ghumuqī means that what later scholars say is not always the opinion of the founder of the madhhab himself. And the one who transmits his words as he understands them is an ignoramus who does not know the essence of the madhhab.

⁵⁹ Abū ‘Abdullāh Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ḥalabī, better known as Ibn Amīr Ḥājjī (1422–1474), Ḥanafī scholar, author of a number of works on tafsir, law, and the theory of Islamic law.

⁶⁰ The work in question is Ibn Amīr Ḥājjī’s Sharḥ al-taḥrīr, which is a commentary on the work by Ibn Humām mentioned above.

⁶¹ ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī, Al-Risāla fī taqlīd wa jawāz at-talfīq, fol. 83b.

⁶² Ibid, fol. 84a.

⁶³ That is, strict adherence to the madhhabs.

⁶⁴ That is, a common Muslim does not have to strictly follow the restrictions that are found in the books of one madhhab when there may be some lighter solutions in another madhhab on the same issue.

⁶⁵ See footnote 35. ‘Shaykh ‘Alī-ḥajjī al-Aqūshī was a scholar from Dagestan who met with traditionalists (qadīm) from among the scholars of al-Ḥaramayn [during the hajj], who told him that Wahhabis [are all about] confusion and delusion. They also added that some other Dagestanis too visited Egypt and began to follow the new path of Wahhabism’; see ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī, Tarīkh al-inqilāb fī Dāghistān, MS Makhachkala, Ilyas Kaiaev’s Private Collection, No. 209, fols. 11b–12a. In his memoirs, al-Ghumuqī unmistakably indicates that there had been already a major disagreement between him and al-Aqūshī.

⁶⁶ ‘Alī-ḥājjī al-Aqūshī, Al-Jawāb li ṣulaḥā’ min ahl qaryat Gubdān fī ḥukm miyāhihim, Karabudakhkent collection, MS. 66, fol. 1b.

⁶⁷ The theory of the Shāfi‘ī legal system takes into account the later rulings of Imam Shāfi‘ī, which he did not change until his death, preferring these later rulings to earlier ones.

⁶⁸ Muḥammad Nawāwī al-Jāwī (1815–1898), Shāfi‘ī legal scholar, Sufi, and commentator of the Qur’an, was a native of Banten on the island of Java in Indonesia. He was educated in his homeland, then moved to Mecca, where he died. He is the author of a number of works on Muslim law, Sufism, ethics, dogmatics, tafsirs, and Arabic-language stylistics.

⁶⁹ Alī-ḥājjī al-Aqūshī, Al-Jawāb li ṣulaḥā’, fol. 2a.

⁷⁰ Qur’an: 57; 16.

⁷¹ Al-Muhūkhī’s Kharq al-asdād exists in two copies, crafted on 10 December 1934 and 1953–1954, respectively. The first copy is now held at Abubakar Saidbekov’s (b. 1977) private library in Khasavyurt (Dagestan). The second copy is in the private collection of Charan Charanov in the village of Moghokh (the ancestral village of the author).

⁷² The eponymous founders of the four schools of law.

⁷³ On the use of the term taqrīr in the North Caucasus to define a legal opinion (fatwa), see R. Gould and S. Shikhaliev, ‘Beyond the taqlīd/ijtihād dichotomy: Daghestani legal thought under Russian rule’, Islamic Law and Society 24 (2017), pp. 142–169.

⁷⁴ Abū Muḥammad Mas‘ūd al-Muhūkhī, Kharq al-asdād ‘an abwāb al-ijtihād, fol. 1.

⁷⁵ Ibid, fol. 2.

⁷⁶ Ibid, fol. 27.

⁷⁷ Ibid, fol. 47.

⁷⁸ Nadhīr al-Durgilī, MS Makhachkala, Ilyas Kayaev‘s Collection, inv. no. 228, fol. 285.

⁷⁹ J. Cesari, What is Political Islam? (Boulder, 2018).