The Collection of Magomed-Galib Sadyki at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Manuscripts and Documents from Southern Dagestan, 19th–20th Centuries

The article examines the collection of manuscripts, documents, and early printed books that belonged to the Dagestani Arabist scholar and manuscript collector Magomed-Galib Mukhiddinovich Sadyki (1918–2000). In autumn 2025, the collection was transferred to the Center of Islamic Manuscripts of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS. The collection has been catalogued, while detailed description and partial digitization are ongoing. The collection of M.-G.M. Sadyki brings together documents and manuscripts from dispersed private and mosque collections in Southern Dagestan. It includes both common Arabic works and texts related to regional history. It contains manuscripts and books in Turkic, characteristic of Southern Dagestan’s written culture. Materials concerning the work and biography of the Lezgin poet Etim Emin (1841–1880) occupy a special place and reflect the deliberate nature of Sadyki’s collecting activities. The article focuses primarily on a corpus of legal documents comprising more than seventy letters and texts, dating from the 1860s–1890s. A part is connected with the Yaltsug rural court and traces practices of adjudicating property, inheritance, and family disputes, as well as interactions between the rural court and district administration during the spread of the legal system in the region. These documents demonstrate the integration of imperial judicial norms into local legal practice and provide micro-cases for studying transformations in Muslim legal culture from below. The collection of M.-G.M. Sadyki is an important source for studying the everyday history of Southern Dagestan, legal practices, rural court record-keeping, regional intellectual traditions, and documentary heritage in the 19th century.