Sarhat Rashidova

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Sarhat Rashidova
Born	1875? Dagestan, Russia
Died	January 16, 2007 (age 131?) Dagestan, Russia
Known for	allegedly being one of the world's oldest people

Sarhat Ibrahimovna Rashidova (Russian: Сархат Ибрагимовна Рашидова, Azeri: Sərhət İbrahim qızı Rəşidova) (1875?, Zidyan (near Derbent), Dagestan, Russia – January 16, 2007, Dagestanskiye Ogni, Dagestan, Russia) was an ethnic Azeri woman that lived in the Dagestan Republic, in Russia and who was said by some people to have been the oldest person in the world prior to her death. According to her passport issued by Dagestani authorities, she was 131 at the time of her death.

Sarhat Rashidova got attention from the Russian media when the local authorities were replacing her expired Soviet passport by a Russian one. The year of 1875 written as her date of birth was thought to have been a mistake until an investigation was carried out proving the original data accurate, according to those authorities.

Rashidova grew up an orphan. Her only husband who was already a widower when he married her died in the 1950s. Despite living in Russia, she only spoke her native Azeri. She never had any children of her own, but raised 5 children from her husband's first marriage. Rashidova spent most of her life in pise-walled house in a remote village of Zidyan, which was situated between the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian Sea and in 2007 had a total population of 10 families. She died while visiting her family in the neighbouring town of Dagestanskiye Ogni.

According to her friends and family, she never had diseases, nor complained of any pain, nor took ingested medicines. Her diet mainly included chicken, eggs and milk. A little before of her demise, her state of health was considered satisfactory, by her nurse, though her vision got worse. Rashidova worked until recently in a kolkhoz (agricultural co-operative), and alone managed to take care of four cows, as well as geese and chicken. On the week preceding her death the local authorities expressed intentions to have her included in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living person.

Throughout her life, Sarhat Rashidova is believed to have lived through historical events like the death of tsar Alexander II of Russia in a terrorist attack; the rise of Alexander III and the murder of the last tsar of the Romanov Dynasty, Nicholas II, in 1917, and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. She also witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution, the First and Second World Wars. In the 1940s she along with many other Dagestanis dug antitank trenches around Derbent and Makhachkala to prevent Nazi Germany's advance.

In January 2007, officially and according to confirmed sources, the oldest person in the world was the Puerto Rican Emiliano Mercado del Toro, 115 years old, and the oldest woman was the Canadian Julie Winnefred Bertrand, born one month after. Both died several days after Rashidova's death. The confirmed oldest person in the world ever since was the French Jeanne Calment, who lived until 122 years of age.

The Caucasus mountains are claimed to be the home of some of the oldest living people in the Earth due to geographical isolation and their millenarian habits, perfect antidotes against anxiety and stress, according to some specialists.^[1]

However, much research in the past 30 years (since 1979) has indicated that extreme age claims in the Caucasus could be false, and the reason people 'live so long' is that they inflate their age in a culture that values extreme age.^[2]