The article addresses key issues in the political history of Dagestan. To shed light on these problems, the authors propose a model of the genre evolution of Dagestani historical literature, drawing on the methodological framework developed by A. A. Shakhmatov for the study of Old Russian chronicles. In the seventeenth century, Dagestan was characterised by works of an epic nature (such as the Darband-nāma and the History of Maza), whose authors sought, more or less consistently, to adhere to the sources they employed. In contrast, the eighteenth century saw the widespread emergence of pseudo-biographical compositions (including the Tarīkh Dāghistān, the work of Mahmud of Khinalug, and several others), which were largely based on the materials of earlier writers. The present study applies methods of textual deconstruction to analyse the circumstances of their composition and assess the reliability of the information they contain. As a result of a detailed examination of three such works, the authors conclude that, despite the high value of the data they preserve, these texts can be used for the reconstruction of historical events only with considerable caution and only after establishing the relativistic motives underlying their production.