The Caucasus region lies outside central Asia, but it too was absorbed (see Russian influence consolidated in central Asia) by Russia in the late eighteenth century, and its Muslim populations once, attached to those of the Ottoman and Safavid empires, have become linked to those of central Asia. Islam was first introduced to Azabayjan and the surrounding areas by the Arab conquests in the seventh century. It was reinforced by the Seljuk migrations in the eleventh century. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Golden Horde introduced Islam to the northern Caucusus, and the influence of the Crimean Khans and the Ottoman empire helped spread Islam among Caucasian peoples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The hold of Islam on the local people prepared the way for later preachers who would make the Caucusus the bastion of Islamic Resistance to the Russians which it has remained till this day.

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