Tabasaran people are one of several peoples occupying the southeast region of Daghestan, specifically its subalpine zone. The Tabasaran language belongs to the Lezgian group of the Nakho-Daghestanian family of indigenous Hibero-Caucasian languages. Written records mention the Tabasarans as early as the 3rd-4th centuries.
Tabasaran culture has many distinctive, original features. Of particular interest are traditional (pre-Islamic) beliefs related to agriculture. The systematic description and study of Tabasaran traditional religion began in the mid-19 century, although some elements are described in earlier sources. In the works of medieval authors we find precious information concerning the cult of the "Sacred Dagger".

Agriculture has a long history in Dagestan. Archaeological monuments enrich our notion of ancientness of agriculture as well as its role. As is becoming clear, agriculture was highly developed in the chalcolithic and bronze ages when the ethnic composition of Dagestan population was defined. All names of agricultural implements were the same for the entire population of Dagestan. Those implements date back to the period when this population spoke one and the some language. The same could be said about Agricultural holidays.
The ethnographic materials presented in this paper reveal the old traditional beliefs of the Avars that were not affected by two, wide-spread religions in Dagestan-Christianity and Islam.
It was easier for Dagestanian highlanders to use old magic methods in their everyday practical life. The representatives of the Islamic Geology decided to allow this situation to persist and give Islamic motivation to these old beliefs.

"Zena Sopheli" (Upper Country), one of the central regions in the Eastern Georgia corresponds to the later "Shida Kartli" (Inner Kartli).
The immediate goal of the present research is to identify the circumstances attending the origin of the name "Zena Sopheli" and consequently, detect those historical and geographical conditions that brought about the change of the land called "Upper Country" into the "Inner Kartli".
As the investigation revealed, the division of the territory of Kartli into "upper" and "lower" lands (later, the division of the kingdom of Kartli into "Upper", "Inner" and "Lower" Kartli) corresponded to the division of the Mtkvari, the major river in the kingdom into upper, middle and lower flows. And the vicinity of Mtskheta, the oldest capital of Kartli (namely the "Kartli Mountain", the same as the "Armazi Mountain") that must have been an important Eastern-Georgian cultural, political and religious centre of that period, must be regarded as a supposed region that gave name to the Upper Country. The territory of the Upper Country was referred to by name of the Inner Kartli shortly after the kingdom of Kartli was settled by the Southern Georgian communities that had resided the upper part of the Mtkvari ravine (Meskheti, Javakheti, Shavsheti, Kola, Artaani). Later these communities themselves together make the integral territorial unit of the "Upper Country" or "Upper Kartli".