Khabib Nurmagomedov: belief

Transcript context

…Refusing to back down, refusing to give up their land or lose their identity. Their homes, their villages, yeah, their families, and land. If we look back a thousand years in history, maybe fifteen hundred years, there was the Khazar Khaganate, the Arabic Caliphate, then the Iranian Empire, or the Persian Empire, I should say. Then the Russian Empire, Timur passed through there, the Mongols. And if we look at the geographical location of Dagestan, for those who don’t know, the Caucasus range runs across the whole region like a wall, and then it slopes down right where the Caspian lowlands are. So you’ve got the sea on the right, the mountains on the left, and the Caspian lowlands right here. And there was a city there that’s still standing today. It’s one of the oldest cities in the world, not just in Russia. It’s Derbent. It used to be called Babul Abwab. It means the gate of gates. Very major trade routes went through there. Very large armies passed through, and it was bound to leave a mark on the people. We have so many languages, more than thirty different languages, and people just don’t understand each other. Take Islam and me. We have different languages, come from different backgrounds. Islam is Lak, and I’m Avar. When we talk, it’s not like it’s a dialect. We don’t understand each other at all. But since Islam has been with us for nearly twenty-five years, he actually picked up some Avar over time. But anyway, the deep history of the region, it all left its mark. It created many different languages and traditions. Basically, of course, Islam is our primary religion, but Dagestan has actually absorbed a lot of cultures and faiths. Even our food culture, it is incredibly rich. We have European and Asian and Caucasian, our own unique cuisine. So on the people, on the people themselves, the last fifteen hundred years of history have left a huge mark. If you’re into history and you start reading about Dagestan, I think you’ll get completely immersed and be amazed by what a unique place it is. So all of this left a huge mark. Look at the terrain. It’s a coastal plain, and then the mountains rise up. For instance, take someone like Timur. When he passed through with a huge army, he stayed in the Dagestan lowlands but never went up into the mountains. Why? Because you’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops, soldiers traveling with horses and supplies. If they had started going up into the mountains where it’s cold and there are no roads, it would have been too tough for them. So the highlanders somehow managed to stay independent. But the lowlands, the Caspian lowlands of Dagestan, they kept changing hands. Massive empires would roll in, and all of that left a mark on the people. Gate of the gates, Babul Abwab. Historians wrote about it, say, a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, great historians from various countries. People have written so much about Dagestan. It went by different names back then, but they wrote a ton about this exact region. Many people, many empires invaded our land. So do you feel that inside you, in your blood, your heart, like all of this history?…

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