Jewellery - a philosophy of life in Kubachi (Part 1)

Kubachi is different from the other villages of Dagestan because here one cultivates not the soil, but the skills to work with precious metals. The Kubachins have a unique craft of artistic metalwork  which determines the life of the whole village. The weekend here is Friday and Saturday, while Thursday is a market day, when food is brought from other villages because Kubachins are not engaged in farming. Even during Soviet times there was not a collective farm, but an artistic complex. The school here is also unusual. From their early years children learn the basics of the Kubachi art and, after graduating, receive the specialization of jeweller. Even the traditional costume of the Kubachins

is quite special - the local women wear embroidered white scarves. Ethnically, the Kubachins belong to the Dargins (the second largest ethnic group in Dagestan), although their dialect is different.

The current population of Kubachi is about 2,500. Summer here is the season of weddings. On the day of our visit there were three weddings. Each wedding in Kubachi lasts for three days. The relatives of the bride and the groom organize their own separate weddings that, on the last day, merge into one big celebration, when the bride is brought to the bridegroom's house.  Kubachi maintains a tradition of not marrying girls out to other villages.

The age of the village remains unclear. Archeological findings from graves and vessels suggest that in the first few centuries AD this settlement belonged to the Caucasian Albania.  The current name of the village is of Turkish origin, but before the 16th century it was known under the Persian name of Zirekhiran and at one point was even the capital of a small state.

Like many other communities of Dagestan, Kubachi had local self-government (Jamaat), in which the village elected its own governor. The view of old Kubachi was quite typical for Dagestan. The houses (saklya) were built very close to each other, separated by very narrow streets and arches. The whole village looked like a staircase going up the slope, where the flat roofs of the lower houses served as the yards for the upper. The look of the village changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century, when the Kubachins started

constructing two- or three-storey buildings and using metal instead of clay for their roofs.

Dagestani  villages were usually built in not-easily-accessible places to protect the settlement from enemies and to save fertile land. Previously, Kubachi was surrounded by walls with four guard towers, but only one of them has survived. On each floor of the tower there is an open fireplace made from carved and decorated stone - a  typical attribute of local houses.

Although most Kubachins do not engage in farming, they are quite well-off, due to their ancient craft. This craft made them famous throughout the continent already in the first millennium AD. Kubachi was a center of production of weapons, knives, daggers, swords and coats of armour, as well as of some more "peaceful" items  - carious domestic goods, women's jewellery, belt buckles and harness parts. These products were known not only for their high quality but also for a typical Kubachi decoration that included geometrical and plant ornamentation combined with animal or human figures and inscriptions. The decoration could also include enamel, mother-of-pearl, ivory or precious stones.

The 19th century saw a renaissance of the ancient Kubachi craft because of the fashion for Caucasian weapons among Russian officers.  The examples of the weapon artworks of Kubachi can now be found in the Kremlin Armoury, the Historical Museum and the Museum of Oriental History and Culture in Moscow and in the museums of Makhachkala.

The museum of Kubachi contains masterpieces made by the local artists in the 20th century, notably by Rasul Alikhanov, who died in 2000, and Gadzhiakhmud Magomedov, who died this April. On the items created during Soviet times the traditional plant ornament is combined with socialist symbols, five-pointed stars and images of Soviet leaders.

The collection of the museum also includes some parts of the medieval mosque. The decorated wooden mosque doors preserved the bright colours of the natural dyes, drawings, and inscriptions, as well as the ivory sculpting. The mosque rostrum (minbar), from which the imam would read the Friday prayers, contains twenty tables with inscriptions in Arabic, pagan ritual symbols and Kubachi ornamentation. Some historians regard this minbar as a sign of the tolerance of the Kubachi society of the time.

In the 14th and 15th centuries some groups of Kubachins converted to Islam, but some remained pagan. The Muslims and the pagans not only lived in the same village, but also prayed in the same temple. Interestingly, in the times of Caucasian Albania some part of Kubachi was Christian.

(To be continued)

Musa Musaev, Makhachkala-Kubachi, specially for Vestnik Kavkaza.