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Памяти Амри Рзаевича Шихсаидова (1923-2019)
The article analyzes contribution of late Professor Amri R. Shikhsaidov (1923–2019), the patron of Arabic studies in Russia’s North Caucasus to academic Caucasus studies. He belonged to the last student generation that had classes from the USSR’s foremost Arabist of the time, Ignatii Krachkovskii (1883–1951). After graduation Shikhsaidov made a career at what is today the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography in the Dagestani Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Makhachkala. From 1973 to 1998 Shikhsaidov directed the Institute’s Department of Oriental Studies, known for its growing manuscript collection. While the study of Islam and Muslim culture in the North Caucasus was a sensitive issue in Soviet times, Shikhsaidov managed to sideline some official taboos by focusing on medieval historiography in the Arabic language. Before him Krachkovskii had already emphasized Arabic’s role as a written lingua franca for the many small nations of Dagestan. Yet Arabic also linked the North Caucasus to the wider Muslim world. Shikhsaidov developed this research agenda considerably further by organizing yearly expeditions to Dagestani villages for the study of Arabic manuscripts in private collections. He discovered (and published in Russian translation) numerous historical narratives from the medieval period, including the famous Dagestani chronicle of Islamization (Ta’rikh Daghistan). A second major field in which Shikhsaidov opened up new horizons is the study of Arabic epigraphical monuments in Dagestani villages, fortresses, and cemeteries, from Kufi to modern inscriptions. A third research field that Shikhsaidov firmly established is the systematic study of manuscript collections as they are preserved in private homes or in mosques. Shikhaidov was not only the most outstanding Islamologist in the twentieth-century North Caucasus but also a brilliant teacher who formed his own academic school of Arabic and Islamic studies.