New Muslim Burials from the Golden Horde City of Madzhar (Stavropol Region)

The materials of ten new Muslim graves of the 14th century from the city of Madzhar (Stavropol region), investigated in 2020 between the concrete foundations of the future commercial and office building in Budennovsk, are published. The peripheral rows of the medieval cemetery are pits with lining, or narrow pits with vertical walls, with the exception of three burials with an overlap of raw bricks. The skeletons of heterosexual adults, teenagers and an almost one-year-old child are laid with their heads to the West, with a slight turn or on the right side, to the South. Three pits out of ten are simple ground pits, skeletons in which with traces of their turning in the opposite direction from the Qibla, i.e. to the North. This situation, judging by the analogy with the "pagan" burial ground of the settlement "Zheleznodorozhnoye-2" in the Kuban, is most likely a reminiscence of traditional, pre-Muslim rituals preserved by part of the population of Madzhar after its Islamization.