The Nogais are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Russian North Caucasus. The Nogai people are descended from the Mongols and Turks of the medieval Nogai Horde, and the vast majority of the Nogais practiced Sunni Islam. By the 1990s, there were 65,000 Nogais living in Dagestan, Chechnya, Stavropol Krai, and Astrakhan Oblast.