Temir-Khan-Shura is a Dagestani city located 40 kilometers southwest of Makhachkala. One of the city’s landmarks is the Cavalier Battery rock, previously known as Tamerlane Rock. Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov climbed to its summit during his visit to Temir-Khan-Shura in 1840. At the base of the rock a painting from the Stone Age has been
preserved—it depicts of a herd of deer fleeing from a hunter. This petroglyph dates back to the end of the 2nd – beginning of the 1st millennium BC.
In 1858, Alexandre Dumas Sr. visited Temir-Khan-Shura while traveling in the Caucasus to write a novel about Imam Shamil. His impressions are reflected in his three-volume work “The Caucasus,” which was published in 1859. Dumas stayed at the corner of what are now Lenin and Khizroev Streets (later, this location housed the military headquarters).
In 1859, the captured Imam Shamil was in Temir-Khan-Shura while being transported from Gunib to Saint Petersburg. He was held in the governor’s house. On May 14, 1923, Temir-Khan-Shura was renamed Buynaksk, in honor of Ullubiy Danialovich Buynaksky (1890-1919), a Dagestani revolutionary figure.