From the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, a dual system of customary law ( ʿāda ) and Sharīʿa developed in the Caucasus. The absence of a state system and state law favored the lasting preservation of ʿāda in North Caucasus. Three kinds of customary law can be distinguished: pre-reformation customary law (fifteenth to mid-nineteenth century), reformed customary law (second half of nineteenth to early twentieth century), and customary law of the Soviet and post-Soviet period (1920 to the 1990s).

The pre-reformation North Caucasian customary law can be described as an unwr…