AVAR
(Own name: Maarulal)

An East Caucasian mountain people of nearly 600,000 living primarily in the
highest mountains in the west of the Dagestan Republic. The Avar are the largest ethnic group in Dagestan. Constituting a relative majority of approximately 28 percent. Avar elites dominate many political structures in Dagestan. Both in government and in the new Islamic movement.
Avar claim descendency from nomadic Avars, who reached the region in the first centuries AD. They became Muslim before the eleventh century through Arab influence, and in the thirteenth century were temporarily under the role of the Golden Horde. They formed a Khanate in the high valleys of the Caucasus mountains, which by the end of the seventeenth century became the most powerful of all the Dagestan principalities. The Khanate became a Russian protectorate in 1803. Avar played an important and prestigious role in the Muridist movement against the Russian conquest led by the Avar Shamil. Avar territory was finally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1859. The Avar also participated in the 1920 anti-Bolshevik movement. Even after collectivization of Soviet agriculture, the Avar maintained their traditional village community, village assembly and council of elders. Today, the Avar include 15 smaller peoples of the Andi and Dido language group which were earlier registered separately.

Note: This information is taken from "The North Caucasus: Minorities at a Crossroads" written by Helen Krag and Larsh Funch.