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The Republic of Dagestan ( or ; (ロシア語:Респу́блика Дагеста́н), ), also spelled Daghestan, is a federal subject (a republic) of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea. With a population of 2,910,249, Dagestan is very ethnically diverse, and is Russia's most heterogeneous republic, with none of its several dozen ethnicities and subgroups forming a majority. Largest among these ethnicities are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgian, Laks, Azerbaijani, Tabasaran and Chechen.〔(Dagestan ). Most inhabitants speak Caucasian and Turkic languages. In terms of religion, however, Dagestan is homogeneously Muslim. Encyclopædia Britannica (Online edition)〕 Ethnic Russians comprise about 3.6% of Dagestan's total population. Russian is the primary official language and the lingua franca among the ethnicities. Dagestan has been a scene of Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, and ethnic tension since the 1990s. According to International Crisis Group, the militant Islamist organization Shariat Jamaat is responsible for much of the violence.〔(Russia’s Dagestan: Conflict Causes ). International Crisis Group Europe Report N°192. 3 June 2008. Access date: 07 April 2014.〕 Much of the tension is rooted in an internal Islamic conflict between traditional Sufi groups advocating secular government and more recently introduced Salafist teachers preaching the implementation of Sharia in Dagestan. ==Toponymy== The word ''Dagestan'' is of Turkic and Persian origin. ''Dağ'' means 'mountain' in Turkic and ''-stan'' is a Persian suffix meaning 'land'. Dagestan used to be called ''Kohestan'' (Kuhistan, "mountainous place") in Persian. When the Persian language gradually faded in those regions and the Turkic language prevailed, the Persian ''koh'' (''kuh'' in contemporary Persian) was replaced with its Turkic equivalent ''dagh''. Some areas of Dagestan were known as ''Albania'', ''Avaria'', and ''Tarkov'' at various times. The name ''Dagestan'' referred to Dagestan Oblast during 1860 to 1920, corresponding to the southeastern part of the present-day Republic. The current borders were created with the establishment of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921, by inclusion of the eastern part of Terek Oblast, which is not "mountainous" at all but includes the Terek littoral at the southern end of the Caspian Depression. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dagestan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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