Dagestan in the context of "Greater Caucasus"

Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.

The territory of what is now Azerbaijan was ruled first by Caucasian Albania and later by various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north of the Aras was part of Iran until it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, where it was administered as part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty.

The North Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, is a subregion in Eastern Europe governed by Russia. It constitutes the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, which separates Europe and Asia. The North Caucasus is bordered by the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the west, the Caspian Sea to the east, and the Caucasus Mountains to the south. The region shares land borders with the countries of Georgia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. Located in the southern part of the region, Mount Elbrus is the tallest peak in Europe. Krasnodar is the most populous among the urban centres in the region.

The North Caucasus came under Russian control in the 19th century, following the Caucasian War between the Russian Empire and the various regional powers. The territory is the southernmost portion of Russia and is divided between a number of republics and krais. It is administered as part of the North Caucasian and Southern Federal Districts and consists of Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the constituent republics, approximately from west to east: the Republic of Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia–Alania, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Republic of Dagestan and to the north: Kalmykia.

The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to Pontic languages for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in Georgia and diaspora populations in Western Europe and the Middle East. According to Glottolog, there are currently 36 Nakh-Dagestanian languages.

The Guarded Domains of Iran, alternatively the Sublime State of Iran and commonly called Qajar Iran, Qajar Persia or the Qajar Empire, was the Iranian state under the rule of the Qajar dynasty, which was of Turkic origin, specifically from the Qajar tribe, from 1789 to 1925. The Qajar family played a pivotal role in the Unification of Iran (1779–1796), deposing Lotf 'Ali Khan, the last Shah of the Zand dynasty, and re-asserted Iranian sovereignty over large parts of the Caucasus. In 1796, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar seized Mashhad with ease, putting an end to the Afsharid dynasty. He was formally crowned as Shah after his punitive campaign against Iran's Georgian subjects.

In the Caucasus, the Qajar dynasty permanently lost much territory to the Russian Empire over the course of the 19th century, comprising modern-day eastern Georgia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Despite its territorial losses, Qajar Iran reinvented the Iranian notion of kingship and maintained relative political independence, but faced major challenges to its sovereignty, predominantly from the Russian and British empires. Foreign advisers became powerbrokers in the court and military. They eventually partitioned Qajar Iran in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, carving out Russian and British influence zones and a neutral zone.

The Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813 was one of the many wars between the Persian Empire and Imperial Russia, and, like many of their other conflicts, began as a territorial dispute. The new Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his kingdom—modern-day Georgia—which had been annexed by Tsar Paul I several years after the Russo-Persian War of 1796. Like his Persian counterpart, the Tsar Alexander I was also new to the throne and equally determined to control the disputed territories.

The war ended in 1813 with the Treaty of Gulistan which ceded the previously disputed territory of Georgia to Imperial Russia, and also the undisputed Iranian territories of Dagestan, most of what is modern Azerbaijan, and minor parts of Armenia.

The Treaty of Gulistan (also spelled Golestan: Russian: Гюлистанский договор, romanized: Gyulistanskiy dogovor; Persian: عهدنامه گلستان, romanized: Ahdnāme-ye Golestān) was a peace treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and Qajar Iran on 24 October 1813 in the village of Gulistan (now in the Goranboy District of Azerbaijan) as a result of the first full-scale Russo-Persian War (1804 to 1813). The peace negotiations were precipitated by the successful storming of Lankaran by General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky on 1 January 1813. It was the first of a series of treaties (the last being the Akhal Treaty) signed between Qajar Iran and Imperial Russia that forced Persia to cede the territories that formerly were part of Iran.

The treaty confirmed the ceding and inclusion of what is now Dagestan, eastern Georgia, most of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and parts of northern Armenia from Iran into the Russian Empire.

The Caucasus Viceroyalty was a special administrative unit of the Russian Empire located in the Caucasus region, existing from 1801 to 1917 under the governance of various administrative offices. It included the present-day countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as the Russian republics of Adygea, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and North Ossetia–Alania and portions of Southern Russia and Turkey.

The Ilkhanate or Il-khanate was a Mongol khanate founded in the southwestern territories of the Mongol Empire. It was ruled by the Il-Khans or Ilkhanids (Persian: ایلخانان, romanized: Īlkhānān), and known to the Mongols as Hülegü Ulus (lit. 'people / state of Hülegü'). The Ilkhanid realm was officially known as the Land of Iran or simply Iran. It was established after Hülegü, the son of Tolui and grandson of Genghis Khan, inherited the West Asian and Central Asian part of the Mongol Empire after his brother Möngke Khan died in 1259.

The Ilkhanate's core territory was situated in what is now the countries of Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. At its greatest extent, the Ilkhanate also included parts of modern Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Dagestan (Russia). Later Ilkhanid rulers, beginning with Ghazan in 1295, converted to Islam. In the 1330s, the Ilkhanate was ravaged by the Black Death. The last ilkhan, Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan, died in 1335, after which the Ilkhanate disintegrated.