Hizqil (Yeḥezqel) Avshalumov was a Soviet author and editor in Dagestan, who wrote in Judeo-Tātī (Juhūrī) and Russian. He was probably the most important promoter of the de-Judaizing (“Tatizing”) of  the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus region in the late Soviet era.  

The son of a Jewish farmer, Avshalumov was born in 1913 in Nügdi, Dagestan, and began writing for the Judeo-Tātī newspaper Zahmetkash (The Worker) in the 1930s. In 1940 he published his first novel in Judeo-Tātī, Besguni Djovonho (The Victory of the Young), and edited a collection of Judeo-Tātī folktales that included fab…