This article compares three key texts in Daghestani Islamicate literature by Persian Azeri writer Bākīkhānūf (d. 1847), Lezgi polymath al-Alqadārī (d. 1910), and Qumyq (Turkic) biographer al-Durgilī (d. 1935), with a view to understanding how their authors conceptualized their role as chroniclers of times past. I draw in particular on Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano’s account of antiquarianism in order to develop a concept of Islamic antiquarianism and to propose a new way of understanding Islamic historiographic methods and traditions. By comparing Daghestani authors’ varying historical epistemologies, I also shed light on Daghestani multilingualism. I argue that Daghestani cosmopolitanism is linked to the antiquarian imagination of its most notable theorists and chroniclers of times past.