Imam Shamil: The Lion of Dagestan and the Struggle for the Caucasus

Imam Shamil unites the Caucasus

The first Muslim guerrilla leader, the unifier of the Caucasian tribes, the propagator of Islam, and at the same time a bloodthirsty, daring and incredibly skilful mountain warrior and horseman, Shamil Shamil earned the title of the Lion of Dagestan on the international stage in the 19th century for his tireless resistance against mighty imperial Russia. This was Imam Shamil, who for 25 years at the head of barely a few thousand men (1834-1859) was the terror and the trembling of one of the world’s greatest powers, himself controlling only a tiny and sparsely populated territory in comparison to Russia’s over parts of modern Dagestan and Chechnya.

This almost mythical historical figure is known to all Muslims, but virtually no one in the West any more. But during his lifetime, the Imam regularly filled the front pages of British newspapers, especially during the Crimean War (1853-1856), when Russia was pitted against Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia for access to the Mediterranean.

This was a clash of great powers, while Shamil, at the head of an alliance of insignificant mountain tribes of the North Caucasus, had successfully resisted Russia for twenty years. He was even known and respected by Queen Victoria of Britain, who sent him some weapons when he asked for her help. The Russians were threatening British possessions, including the most precious of all, India, by expanding their territory to the south and east.

And it is in the light of Russia’s resurgent imperial aspirations that his story is meaningful and instructive for all those interested in Russian history and the complex geopolitics of the territory that belongs to it today, that once belonged to it or that is in its sphere of interest.

In the mountainous Caucasus, the highest mountain range in Europe and the site of one of the world’s longest conflicts, past and present are intertwined. A region that has always been marked by powerful neighbours – Iran to the south, Russia to the north, Turkey to the west – it has been conquered by all the great armies and claimed by the greatest conquerors, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Timur-Lenk, the Persian kings, Peter the Great, Hitler and Stalin.

Shamil’s life took him from the heights of his native Dagestan mountains, through the forests of Chechnya, to the suburbs of Moscow and Mecca and Medina, where he died in 1871 as one of the most respected and revered religious and political leaders of the still-troubled Caucasus region. But who was this irrepressible rebel fighter who united many tribes under his leadership and for many years gave them hope of independence from a swallowing, invading neighbour?

Born at a time when Russia knew no limits to its territorial inclinations and was literally gobbling up parts of the Ottoman and Persian empires, he joined the Murids, a Sufi Islamic mystical community. Led by Shamil’s childhood friend Ghazi Mulla, the Brotherhood declared holy war against the Russians, who had seized control of Dagestan from the Persians in 1813.

After Ghazi’s death, Shamil became the third Imam – the Islamic religious and political leader – of the Caucasus emirate, and continued his anti-Russian attacks with even greater tenacity. He consolidated the rebel movement so much, despite its fragmentation, that the Russians were unable to break it up for 25 years.

He managed to unite peoples separated by high mountains, precipices, raging rivers, impassable forests, which are typical of the colourful North Caucasian landscape, and at the same time dozens of different languages, under the banner of Islam. The greatest link between them was their religion and, through the Koran, the Arabic language in which they communicated with each other.

Between the Black Sea and the Caspian, a true pan-Islamic movement emerged alongside the jihad, for Shamil was not only a fearless warlord but also an insightful Islamic scholar. He is said to have been a man of impeccable principles and impeccable honour, and his abilities and exploits are the source of many legends. As was typical of the warriors of these regions, Shamil had acrobatic skill with his horse and could ride it over distances four times longer than, for example, the Russian cavalry.

In 1834, he established an independent Dagestan and reorganised the Chechen and Dagestani forces in such a way that the Russians had to send more and more troops to the region if they wanted to maintain any chance of success. He escaped by a hair’s breadth on several occasions, which helped to consolidate his reputation and eventually his status as a national hero.

It was not until 1857 that large enough troops and capable generals were sent against him, adapting military operations sufficiently to the geographical conditions and Shamil’s guerrilla style of warfare, that he was finally defeated. In order to stop the henceforth unnecessary bloodshed, he surrendered, and that was the end of the revolt of the Caucasian peoples against the Russians. The Caucasians annexed the whole region towards the end of the 19th century, and the Caspian Sea became the centre of world oil production.

Shamil became a prisoner of the Tsar. But not just any prisoner, but one of the most revered and respected, who was allowed to do virtually everything except return to his homeland. He spent the rest of his life with his family in the suburbs south of Moscow, and after petitioning the Tsar many times, his greatest wish as a deeply devout Muslim was to make the hajj, or holy pilgrimage, to Mecca.

Caucasus

The Caucasus is a mountain chain stretching for more than a thousand kilometres between Europe and Asia, with Europe’s highest peak, but it is also the name of a region that stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Today, it comprises mainly Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia. The latter also includes a number of autonomous republics and provinces, such as Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Adigeya. The history of this region, inhabited by more than 50 ethnic groups, is as varied as its cultural and ethnic heritage.

The ancient Greeks, who believed that the Caucasus was one of the pillars that supported the world, counted three hundred languages, while the ancient Romans travelled through the region with as many as 130 interpreters. The ‘mountain of languages’, as the Russians call it, is home to three language families – Turkic, Indo-European and Caucasian. It is also a religious meeting point between Islam (mainly Sunni), the Orthodox Church and the Armenian version of Christianity.

Its political history also contributes to the complexity of the area, which remains one of the hottest crisis hotspots in the world, as its geostrategic position means that the interests of the superpowers regularly clash here. Since the 16th century, it has been mainly three imperial powers – Russian, Ottoman (Turkish) and Persian (Iranian). But none of these powers has ever managed to completely subjugate the steep, eternally snow-capped mountains, where an infinite number of cultures have survived and where Shamil has trained his followers.

Roughly, the Caucasus is divided into North and South – the North Caucasus is also known as Ciscaucasia, the South as Transcaucasia. Most of it was part of the Persian Empire until the 19th century, when the Persians, under increasing Russian pressure, gave it up, even though the Ottomans fought on their side. Over the next few years, the Russians successfully took the rest of the South Caucasus from the Ottomans in several wars. In the 1860s, Russian influence only stopped in the Persian court.

The Caucasus thus became a testing ground for the growing Russian appetites for conquest, which often entailed the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples, especially when it came to the Muslims who were emigrating in such large numbers to the Ottoman Empire.

Islam was a very powerful unifying factor in the resistance against the Russians, even though many peoples remained loyal to some deeply rooted animist traditions.

What emerged was a unique blend of ancestral customs, passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition and based on intra-clan solidarity, and the teachings of Islam, preached by tribal leaders through the Qur’an and religious institutions.

Shamil also made excellent use of this mixture, promoting the importance of the extended family, mutual respect and egalitarianism. This was characteristic of Chechen society, which did not recognise elites – neighbour was equal to neighbour, differing only in ability and military discipline, which was the basis for survival in an inhospitable landscape.

The importance of family was also reflected in one of the most important traditions followed by the Caucasian warriors. They had to be buried in their village next to their ancestors, and surviving soldiers often went to their deaths to retrieve the bodies of fallen comrades from the battlefield. This was the case in Chechnya in the mid-19th century, and it was the case in Chechnya in the mid-1990s.

Even more so, the region was marked by a code of blood feuds that was so extreme that some banal acts marked entire generations. Families used to kill each other over a stolen chicken for decades. All the writers who have visited the region, from Dumas to Tolstoy, have written about this phenomenon, which Shamil has tried to mitigate. He also declared war, in accordance with the Sharia, on the consumption of alcohol, for which, because his father was an alcoholic, he felt real contempt. He also generally promoted an ascetic, disciplined and abstinent way of life.

Born to be a leader

Ali was born into a devout Muslim family in 1797 in the village of Ghimri in the high mountains of Dagestan on the border with modern Azerbaijan. There have always been hardy people here, proud of their origins, as they are said to be closer to the gods in the highlands, which often made them the envy of the people from the valleys. Dagestan has an average altitude of 960 metres and at least thirty four-thousand-foot peaks.

Russia had already invaded Dagestan at that time, and the boy loved listening to the elders talk about the bloodthirsty Orthodox invaders, but also about the teachings of Islam. He quickly became interested in religion and could recite the Koran even as a child. This was also due to the fact that he was physically weak, so at first he spent a lot of time among books and in the company of adults, rather than in the air with friends. As was customary, such children were often renamed, and Ali’s new name, Shamil (perfect), is thought to have helped improve his health. But he did more than change his name himself.

Highly intelligent, he spent his childhood and teenage years under the watchful eye of a Sufi sheikh, learning Arabic grammar, logic, law, rhetoric and philosophy. The rank and file envied his academic excellence and once ambushed him, brutalising him with their fists and even with a knife.

Humiliated and badly wounded, he struggled to crawl into the woods and patched up his wounds with herbs. He resolved that nothing like this would ever happen to him again. He started regular and varied physical training to strengthen and improve his condition. He became one of the most skilful riders around, known for his speed, agility and leaping over life-threatening obstacles. Towards the end of his teenage years, he pulled himself up further and an imposing figure with a fluttering beard on a muscular horse was born – Imam Shamil, as he made history.

It was believed that there was no one who swam, ran or rode as fast as Shamil. Such physical fitness was invaluable in the guerrilla warfare against Russia and saved his life on more than one occasion. In general, the sword, the bow and the arrow were the most important teaching tools of the Caucasian ‘education system’, whose primary aim was to produce a consummate warrior. Even today, for example, it is the Chechens and Dagestanis who are at the very top of the world in wrestling, which is the national sport.

He and his best friend, Ghazi Mulla, soon left Ghimri village to study the Koran in Yaragul. Religious studies were one of the few reasons for leaving his native village. Both young men quickly fell into fanaticism and an overly strict adherence to the Qur’an. For example, they flogged themselves in public for drinking wine in the past, without realising how serious a sin it was.

Shamil’s life was also marked by the arrival in the region of the Russian General Yermolov, one of the most famous generals in 19th century Russian history and responsible for Russia’s victories over Napoleon in 1812. He had been sent to the Caucasus by Tsar Nicholas with the aim of final subjugation, and Pushkin wrote: “Surrender and bow your snowy head, O Caucasus, Yermolov marches.”

When the Chechens declared independence in 1994, the first thing they did was to tear down Yermolov’s monument. One of his first acts was to erect the Grozny, which henceforth marked the border between Russia and the Caucasus and established the so-called Cossack Line. The Chechens regarded this action as extremely hostile and in pure contradiction with their concept of warfare. The very idea of taking territory was alien to them.

At first, life on the line was boring and deceptive. It was only occasionally attacked by the local people, and the Russian soldiers spent their time in concerts, dancing, reading and drilling. But Ghazi Mullah and Shamil grew more and more determined and patriotic and began to call for resistance and holy war against the invaders.

Holy War

The Caucasian resistance movement was born. It was based on Jihad, proclaimed in 1829, Sharia law and, in line with Islamic Sufism, the duties of students (Murids) towards teachers. For this reason, this puritanical Islamic movement was also called Murid, and the rebels Murids. Ghazi Mullah became the first Imam of the united Caucasian tribes of the newly established Imamate, or Islamic state, which was to protect Muslim religious freedom and autonomy.

The warriors, who were not initially joined by many tribes, were fearless. The Russians were most horrified by their constant readiness to die, and not only their husbands, but also their wives and children never showed any fear of death. On the contrary, they plunged into it if they could contribute in any way to the common cause. Chechen tactics bordered on the morbid, singing death songs and ambushing Russian bayonets and snipers.

But initially, many mountain villages, the so-called aouls, surrendered to the Russians, so Ghazi and Shamil reinforced their defences and retreated to the inaccessible and high lying hometown of Ghimri, around which they had additional stone walls built.

There were about 75,000 Russians under Yermolov at the start of the Murid Wars, but numbers were not crucial to the Ghimri advance. No modern army could climb to 1500 metres above sea level. But even the Russians were persistent and slowly climbed the hill with ropes until they reached the village.

In 1832, the first decisive battle took place. It turned into a real massacre and a disaster for the insurgents. The Russians, who had no idea that they had surrounded the founding fathers of the insurrectionary movement, broke down the walls and massacred everyone in front of them. Only two men are said to have survived, and one of them was Imam Shamil.

According to the description of a Russian soldier, the first line of attackers simply jumped off a raised structure. Although a bayonet was immediately plunged deep into his chest, he immediately pulled the blade out himself and used it to kill the attacker. With another superhuman leap, he jumped over the wall and disappeared into the darkness. With his ribs and shoulder broken, he somehow made his way to the woods and escaped.

Ghazi Mullah, on the other hand, collapsed under the Russian swords.

Shamil, who had been transferred to his father-in-law’s aoul, was on the verge of death and in a constant state of delirium for at least four months. His recovery was slow and he wanted only his wife by his side. With her help, however, he pulled himself together and, at the end of his life, declared this time to be one of the most beautiful.

The Russian commanders proudly reported the victory to the Tsar, hastily declaring an end to the Murid rebellion.

But they rejoiced too soon. Shamil, the epitome of endurance, who was the most popular and respected leader after Ghazi’s death and improbable escape, miraculously returned after six months and rejoined the Murids under the leadership of the then Imam Gamzat Beg. After his assassination in 1834, he became the third Imam of Dagestan or Caucasus. He ruled for the next 25 years and became one of the most legendary guerrillas of the 19th century. His followers, without outside help, dealt many fatal blows to the Russians.

The regime of Imam Shamil

More than anything, Shamil’s life was guided by the Muslim faith, and he took the principles of the Sharia very seriously, adopting a series of sweeping administrative reforms in line with them. He divided the territories under Murid control into provinces, in which a local leader or emir was responsible for all religious and social issues.

He appointed tax-collecting officials and religious judges, or qadis, to ensure order and respect for the law. He had a madrasa or Islamic college built in every village and encouraged talented students to renounce jihad and devote themselves to the study of Islam. This was to ensure that a strong religious tradition would continue among new generations. At the same time, he was also very strict and averse to partying, prohibiting not only alcohol but also wedding celebrations, music and dancing.

The Murids were becoming an increasingly well-organised military force, numbering some five thousand well-armed and, above all, skilled mountain warriors. Every tenth household had to contribute an armed horseman, and fellow citizens were obliged to provide for his family and land.

The common soldiers were dressed in long yellow Caucasian robes, their superiors in black, and all wore green turbans, the colour of Islam. Everyone else had to fight occasionally, for which they were given two sacks of flour a month. Cowards and deserters were punished by having to wear a special metal plate on their backs.

In Shamil’s entourage there was always an executioner with an axe for the worst cases of treason. Sometimes traitors were executed by Shamil himself. For example, he gouged out someone’s eyes and then had eight members of his family burnt to death in his house. A stricter interpretation of Sharia law was virtually impossible.

The Russian Tsar Nicholas I repeatedly tried to bribe Shamil with promises of wealth and luxury if he would surrender and pledge allegiance to Russia. For the principled Shamil, such attempts always fell on deaf ears and were scorned.

But the Russians, too, were increasingly ready for anything and kept sending fresh reinforcements to the Caucasus. In 1837, they began to besiege Akhulga, a fortress not far from Ghimri, but before that they were ready to negotiate. Shamil negotiated, but he was never serious about surrendering. Meanwhile, his followers grew in number and more and more villages joined the jihad in the face of Russian advances and increasing abuses by the local population. Hatred of the Russians grew fiercely.

The Russian Tsar had a completely distorted picture of what was happening on the ground, with his generals boasting that the rebels were active only in a handful of mountain pockets. He even hoped for a visit from Shamil, during which Shamil would ask for forgiveness, formally surrender to him and swear allegiance to Russia.

But this was only wishful Russian thinking. Shamil’s movement grew in parallel with his reputation and influence. Therefore, two years later, the Russians took the decision to try again to subdue Akhulga, where the entire Murid leadership, with Shamil at its head, was then gathered.

The second siege of this fortified mountain stronghold was an important turning point in the war. The Russians had learnt many lessons by then, including the need to travel lightly equipped to move more easily and quickly. In the beginning, they carried a lot of clutter up and down the mountains, including silver samovars for making tea.

In addition, they could rely on two advantages, namely the limited supplies within the fortress and the considerable distance to the nearest river, which the rebels had to access regularly if they wanted to survive. They also made a number of mistakes, most notably the ill-advised and very distinctive way in which the officers were dressed.

Shamil was expecting the Russians with 4000 men, women and children. As they approached the summit, trained Chechen snipers first killed all the officers, causing chaos among the Russian army. Just outside the village, children and women jumped out of the ambush with long curved swords, which they plunged into the bellies of their opponents. In order to dissuade the opponents, the women were dressed in the clothes of their husbands.

The Russians were shocked by the bestial attack, during which even the bodies of children were thrown at them. They reacted with similar brutality and constant shelling. It was summer and soon the unimaginable stench of the bodies of the fallen Muslims began to spread through the countryside, waiting to be picked up by the survivors and given a dignified burial in accordance with tradition.

Conditions were becoming intolerable for both sides and a third of the Russians succumbed to attacks and disease. But Akhulgo was completely surrounded anyway and, among other things, the river could no longer be reached. The water in it was anyway completely bloody and undrinkable, with more than a thousand corpses floating in it.

In the end, Shamil, thinking of the safety of his family, only gave in, even if he had to hand over his eldest son, Jamal-al-Din, as a hostage to the Russians in exchange for peace. His plea to remain in Dagestan was ignored, and soon the young man was on his way to St Petersburg, where the Tsar himself was awaiting the son of the then famous rebel.

Shamil withdrew with his surviving followers to Chechnya. He was a calamity – his sister, his second wife and his closest associate had died, and he had left his first-born to the Russians in exchange for practically nothing.

Healing the wounds

In 1842, Shamil settled in a small Chechen village, but despite his defeat at Akhoulga, he was increasingly revered for his perseverance and increasingly hated by the people. They were so convinced of their rising star that they put a measly thirty pounds on his head.

The Murid sect had been defeated, the Russian generals wrote to the Tsar, and the serious disturbances and uprisings were over. This was very far from the truth, because the Russians had exploited the local lowland population so much that it, too, had sworn allegiance to the Murids. Shamil took advantage of their discontent and further fuelled it during his regular visits. Many Russian deserters even defected to his side in 1840-1842.

The jihadists had perfected guerrilla warfare and were able to assemble in a very short time from all parts of the mountainous region. This mobile army was able to travel up to 80 kilometres a day. Their new headquarters was in the inaccessible Dargah, surrounded by impenetrable forests.

But all did not go according to plan. Some tribes wanted peace and a truce with the Russians, so they tried to bribe Shamil’s mother to stand up for them with her son. She was known for her kindness and devotion to her son, but she also advocated a less strict interpretation of the Sharia.

No one knows how the conversation between mother and son unfolded. She left him with tears in her eyes and he was confined to the mosque for three days and three nights. “Only Allah can decide on surrender”, he declared when he returned to the people. The plea of the Chechen envoys who pressed his mother was shameful and insidious. And she too should be punished, he determined.

The punishment was a hundred lashes with a whip made of dried animal skin. After the fifth stroke, she lost consciousness, people howled, and Shamil knelt and wept beside her. He then announced that, by Allah, the punishment of the mother could be taken by her son. He stripped and demanded 95 lashes.

At the end of the torture, pieces of skin hung from his back, but Shamil returned to his tent, silent and with his head held high. To everyone’s astonishment, he also let the traitors live. He only told them to go back to where they came from and tell everyone what they had experienced.

At the end of 1843, Tsar Nicholas sent 26 new battalions and four regiments of Cossacks to the Caucasus, commanded by his good friend and successful veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. Their target was Dargo, the Imam’s main stronghold.

By this time, a particular pattern of fighting had been established – the Russians advanced, besieged the aoules, took them, then quickly realised that they could not control them, as they were unable to maintain lines of communication due to geography and guerrilla attacks. But they also slowly changed tactics, building roads, tunnels and lines of communication between the fortresses. The Crimean War, however, left them unable to concentrate their forces in the Caucasus for several years, when the scales tipped in favour of the rebels.

Whenever possible, they made sure that the Russians had no food or livestock supplies. When the Russians approached, they even pulled up all the vegetables from the ground, even to their own detriment. But as the Russians retreated, the rebels attacked them and both sides suffered huge casualties. Time and again, stalemates were created, and this went on for years, but it was the local population who suffered most, constantly oscillating between loyalty to one or the other.

Even the young Tolstoy fought for a while in the local area, and in 1853 he wrote in his diary that it was a very ugly and unjust conflict.

A tooth for a tooth

Despite the constant vicissitudes of the years of fighting with the Russians, which required constant preparedness and adaptation, Shamil never forgot the fate of his first son, Jamal-al-Din. Not resigned to the possibility of never seeing him again, he came up with a cunning plan to help him until his return.

Tsinandali, a Georgian village some 80 kilometres from the capital Tbilisi, was the rich estate and palace of the famous poet and aristocrat Alexander Chavchavadze, whose extended family was credited with Russia’s expansion across the North Caucasus. In the summer of 1854, during the absence of Alexander and his son David, mountain rebels led by Shamilov’s son Ghazi Mohamed kidnapped most of the estate’s inhabitants, especially women and children, during a robbery attack on the estate.

When members of the Chavchavadze family saw the campfires of the Murids in the distance, they panicked, but did not leave the property. Suddenly, the whole courtyard was filled with the turbans of two hundred men, their loud shouts and horses, and then the looting and pillaging began. When the bandits burst into the room where the women were hiding, they burst out laughing in amazement that they were not met by armed men. They gathered them all on the ground floor, tied them to horses and drove them into the mountains.

The event shocked Russia and the West, for among the captives were several princesses, petty princes and the Tsarina’s ladies-in-waiting. The French governess of the youngest Bluebloods, Madame Drancy, was also present and gave a detailed account of the eight-month-long adventure.

The attackers, of course, knew full well what valuable prey they had captured. For example, they all knew the husband of one of the captured princesses, for he had already been Shamil’s prisoner and had proved to be very brave and noble. Indeed, hostage-taking was widespread in the region.

During the journey to the mountains, the hostage-takers showed a mixture of kindness and cruelty to the hostages. One nanny, who was badly injured during the attack because her left arm was completely dislocated, slowing down the caravan, had her throat cut in cold blood. One of the children, who was crying too much, had his head smashed against a rock. One of the princesses lost her baby when she could no longer hold it and it fell under her hooves.

The weather conditions during the climb were disastrous, with rain falling frequently and everyone shivering from the cold. Then the hostages were better cared for by the kidnappers, who comforted and warmed the children. Occasionally, they stopped at an aoulo where the kindness of the local people was obvious. They offered shelter and good food to the desperate princesses and showed them respect. Despite all the suffering, Mrs Drancy’s descriptions also referred to the beauty of the landscape, which often completely overwhelmed her.

Five weeks after the attack, the group finally reached its destination – Dargah, Shamil’s closely guarded and protected capital, not far from a landscape covered in perpetual snow. It had only four hundred permanent inhabitants and two hundred Murids. All aristocratic women were immediately treated with respect and attention. They were received in white robes by Shamil himself, then 65 years old, but still attractive, respectable and in excellent physical condition.

Mrs Drancy, like all those who found themselves in his company, immediately succumbed to his charms. She compared him to a lion at rest, calm, modest, serious, but imposing and superior in every way. He explained to them that for years he had been looking for important hostages and that they had been taken for a reason, because his only wish was to see his son again. They were to remain in captivity until his son returned.

Then, one by one, his wives came forward. The Imam’s favourite wife was Shuanette, a 32-year-old Armenian, the most beautiful and the kindest to the hostages. She herself had been kidnapped in a similar raid to the one on Tsinandala. But she became so attached to the imam that she stayed with him willingly, even though her father was prepared to pay huge sums of money for her.

The hostages’ initial resistance was softened both by Shamil’s character and by the affection of his wife Shuanette. Both convinced them that they would be released as soon as the ransom was paid and Jamal-al-din could return. Shamil’s wives and princesses together resisted boredom and loneliness and passed the time in each other’s company.

The money was collected, but there was no news about Jamal-al-Din for a long time. When he was finally located in Poland and told that he would have to return to his native land, he accepted the news stoically. Despite having forgotten his roots and being completely Russified, he did not resist the decision out of a sense of duty towards his father. He said, “I have to go back to ignorance again, I will forget everything I have learnt.”

Shamil was told by the intermediaries that his son had become Russian, which hurt him very much. He prepared a house for his son in Dargah, and at the same time feared and looked forward to his return.

The hostages were escorted back to the valley by 7000 men, and Shamil beamed with happiness at the thought of reuniting with his son. But it did not turn out as the great Imam would have wished. For his son’s health began to fail as soon as he returned. He missed his Russian life and died of grief and tuberculosis barely two years after his return.

Russian domination

With the end of the Crimean War, Russia could once again focus on the stubborn Caucasus. There, the new Tsar Alexander sent a capable commander, Prince Bariatinsky. For several years, the Russians had been steadily and thoroughly cutting down the trees of the hitherto impenetrable Argouna forest, which protected Shamil’s troops.

In 1858, they finally cleared enough land to take the whole area and in the spring of 1859 began the siege of Dargah. The Murids soon realised that the end was near and the local populations resented the senseless burning of the aouls to prevent their supplies from falling into Russian hands.

The Russians sent as many as 70,000 troops against the Murids, and after two months of siege of Dargah, Shamil and his four hundred troops were forced to retreat deeper into the mountains. He was still prepared to fight to the last soldier, but when he asked his followers for their opinion, they decided to surrender and to make peace with the Russians. The terms of the agreement included freedom to practise Islam and a ban on recruiting members of the Caucasian peoples into the Russian army.

Tsar Alexander II finally got what he had wanted for years, and before him his father, Tsar Nicholas I. To meet in person the legendary guerrilla leader who had caused so much grey hair to their empire. On the road to St Petersburg, he did not know what was in store for him. At first he thought he was going to be torn to shreds, but then he was treated with such respect that he was completely bewildered. Everywhere he went he was greeted by boundless crowds who cheered him enthusiastically.

On arrival, he was dressed in a tailor-made uniform and even his wives were able to choose new and luxurious clothes. Then he was taken to the Tsar, who said to him, “I am glad you are here in Russia. We are going to be friends.” They watched the military manoeuvres together and chatted for hours. He also reminisced about his meetings with the generals who were at his side, especially Yermolov and Bariatinsky. This was certainly not his idea of captivity.

The final place of his exile was Kaluga, a dull Moscow suburb with simple houses and tree-lined streets. For the rest of his life, he sought peace of mind, resisted the luxuries with which his Russian hosts showered him, and wanted only one thing more. Like every deeply religious Muslim, he wanted to make the holy pilgrimage or hajj to Mecca.

After ten years and many petitions, the Tsar finally gave him the opportunity. Eighty-four-year-old Shamil’s last wish was fulfilled. He was welcomed like a true star on the road and there was hardly a corner to which he could retreat alone. From Mecca, he made his way to Medina, where he soon died of illness.

His lasting legacy is clear – he contributed to the strong Islamic identity of the Caucasus, which still characterises this otherwise problematic region today. 135 years after the Imam’s surrender, the Caucasus is once again in open conflict with Russia. In 1999, Russian President Yeltsin meaningfully declared: ‘The biggest problem Russia has today is Chechnya’.

Today, that is no longer the case, although Chechnya also remains an open wound for Russia.