The code of laws of the Avar Khanate

The code of laws of the Avar Khanate , also known as the Code of Umma Khan of Avar, is a collection of legal norms of the Avar Khanate .

The code of laws of the Avar Khanate
The code of laws of the Avar Khanate
Fragment of the Code of Laws of Umma Khan of Avar
The authors	Umma Khan I
Date of writing	XVI century.
Original language	Arab
Original	preserved

The code was drawn up by Avar Nutsal Umma Khan I , for which he received the nickname “Just”. The code of laws was adopted at the end of the XVI century, the exact date of its adoption is unknown. Compiled on the basis of mountain adat . Until the XIX century, the code of Umma Khan was considered the main source of law in the Avar Khanate. With the inclusion of the Accident in Imamat Shamil , the Code was replaced by Sharia norms. In his work “Adaty and legal proceedings on them” Alexander Komarov writes:

“When Shamil established himself in Avariya and began to persecute adat’s adherents, one Avar who had a collection of adats that were tried during Omar Khan’s times, fearing to keep him at home and foreseeing it, he hid him in a hollow of a tree. When Shamil was taken prisoner, the master of the collection took him out of the hollow and handed over to his village for guidance in handling cases, earning a general thanks for his forethought. ”

From this it is clear that the Avar Code began to be applied again only after the defeat of Shamil.

The first to talk about the Avar law is the 19th century Russian historian Fyodor Leontovich . Speaking about the ancient collections of the Daghestani adats, he mentions the collection of Umma-Khan of Avars, noting that “the Omarov collection, unfortunately, is still unknown to the press”.

The Code was first discovered in 1946, in the mountainous Dagestan , among the old Arab books. At present, the code found is stored in the Dagestan Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

People's poet of Dagestan Gamzat Tsadas translated from Arabic into Avarian Codex. The translation from the Avar text into Russian was made by the Dagestan historian H.-M. O. Khashayev

The code of Umma Khan is written without breakdown into chapters and articles. The Code contains rules governing property, family and domestic, land, administrative and managerial relations. It traces the desire to protect private property, the rights of feudal nobility, and also to put an end to the self-government of individuals, namely, the seizure of another’s property (the debtor). Only with the permission of the administration, the seizure of another’s property (Ishkil) was allowed until the debtor satisfied the claimant’s claims. The Code also contains articles aimed at restricting the custom of blood feuds, reducing the issues of reconciliation of the murderer with the relatives of the murdered person to property compensation (Diyat). Contained in this collection and articles regulating the relationship between different social strata of society.

The Umma Khan’s Code of Law is an interesting monument to the history of the state and the rights of the peoples of Dagestan, since many of its articles were reflected in the customary law of the unions of rural societies neighboring the Avar Khanate.