Gagarin St., 2, Derbent, Republic of Dagestan, Russia, 368600
Dash Gates (from Turkic: Stone Gates or Gates of Stone) are the third gates from the citadel Naryn-Kala on the northern wall. They led to the quarries from which the residents took building materials. Hence the name of the gates. The gates were small in size, which is why Arab authors of the 9th-10th centuries called them Bab al-Saghir (Small Gates). In some Arab sources, they are called Bab al-Imara or Bab al-Qasr. Russian authors refer to these gates as the Shurin Gates, named after the administrative center of the Dagestan region, the city of Temir-Khan-Shura (now Buynaksk), to which the postal road through these gates led. The gates were repeatedly rebuilt, as a result of which they lost the traditional form of Derbent city gates — a rectangular opening on the outside and a pointed arch on the inside — and acquired the form of a circular arch. This happened during repair and restoration works of the city fortifications carried out in 1811 under the direction of the Russian military engineer Karpov. In the masonry above the gate opening, a stone with a damaged Persian inscription was preserved for a long time: “Raised for these gates Jabbar bin Ibrahim and five… declared a holy war… bin Umar, and written by al-Kharis bin Yazid, builder, in the year 856 of the Hijra (the year 856 Hijra corresponds to 1452/3 AD).” This inscription apparently appeared as a result of one of the numerous restorations. In the 1930s, the upper part of the gate with this inscription was lost. In the 1940s, the gates from the city side were completely rebuilt. In 1965, the arch of the gates was dismantled and the opening was widened because the relatively small dimensions did not meet the needs of the main highway Rostov-Baku passing through the city.
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