Russian general and historian A. V. Komarov (1869) wrote: "The country of the Lak people consists of many canyons that connect into one in 3 miles below the main village Gumuk; from the Samur valley it is separated by a high ridge, parallel to the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, whose many peaks are covered with eternal snow and passage through them is possible only in the summer months, and the same ridges but slightly lower separate Lak people from the neighbors — Kurins, Dargins and Avars".