Armed Chechen
Painting by an unknown artist of the 18th century
General Alexey Yermolov
Imam Shamil
Chechen Fighter
Painting
by an unknown artist of the 19th century
Chechen fighters
(click on the picture to enlarge)
Click here to read the
articles on Chechnya from YETT
(Young Experts’ Think Tank) Chechnya
BACK TO CHECHNYA
BACK TO THE
CAUCASUS
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BETWEEN
TURKEY, IRAN AND RUSSIA: 1556
- 1914
(Historical maps available here)
Previous chapter
By 1560, Ottoman Turks under Suleyman the Magnificent, conquered considerable parts of
Georgia
and firmly established themselves in Trans-Kuban Adyghea and Kabardia. Meanwhile
the Safavid Iran became dominant in Azerbaijan,
advancing to the Vainakh lands and sending
missionaries further, thus spreading Islam in the area. Beginning with 1556, Russia started military expeditions to the
steppes of Northern Caucasia,
finally establishing its border along the Terek
river by 1598. Russians were building forts, settling the lands of steppe Vainakhs with Cossacks
and pushing the Vainakhs southwards across the Terek and into the mountains.
The wars between Ottoman Turkey, Iran, Russia
and smaller Georgian states of the early 18th century ended up with the
Turkish conquest of practically all the Caucasus south of Kuban and Terek by
the year 1724. The Vainakhs (by that time also
called the Chechens) became Ottoman subjects and remained in that status until
1735. That and the two following decades of the 18th century were marked by
the final Islamisation of Chechnya and Daghestan and the end of the remnants of Christianity
there.
(Click here for more information about Christianity
among the Vainakhs)
Rapid final Islamisation
of the Chechens was greatly boosted by their struggle against Russian
expansion in the area. Supported by Iran
and Turkey,
the Chechens under the leadership of Sheikh Mansur
managed to secure their northern border along Terek
which the Russian empire was reluctant to cross until the end of the 18th
century. However, the very beginning of the 19th century brought dramatic
changes of Russia's
doctrine in the Caucasus. At the beginning
of the year 1800, Russian Imperial court made plans to expand into Transcaucasia and possibly further into Mesopotamia and Syria. After Russia successfully annexed the kingdom of Eastern Georgia
in 1801, three other Georgian states in 1804, Ossetia
in 1806 and some territories in Northern Iran (modern Azerbaijan) in 1805-1813, came the turn of Chechnya and Daghestan. Without securing these North Caucasian
territories within the empire, Russian dominance in Transcaucasia could not be stable.
The year of 1807 was the
beginning of the new tactic of imperial Russia
against Chechnya
and Daghestan. Before 1807 Russian troops limited
their military action to sporadic raids across Terek
aimed at “testing” and “punishing” the enemies of the empire. However, since
February 1807, Russian army and the Cossacks started slow and planned
conquest of the territory remaining in the hands of the Chechens and their
allies (Avars, Lezgins
and other tribes of Daghestan). Further escalation
of Russian military action started after 1813 when Russia
finally concluded Gulistan peace treaty with Iran and General Alexey
Yermolov (“the Butcher”) was appointed
Commander-in-Chief of all imperial troops in the Caucasus
(1816). Yermolov pursued a well-planned, cruel and
uncompromising policy of annexation and colonization of the enclaves of the
Caucasus still remaining insubordinate to Russia,
among them Chechnya.
The methods used by Yermolov, were not restricted
to military campaigns. They included economic pressure by depriving the
Chechens of their traditional sources of income, sealing the borders of Chechnya and Daghestan and denying the residents of those areas any
access to foreign countries or Russian-controlled territory. Yermolov also used the tactics that can be described as
ethnic cleansing and monitored genocide. Russian troops were taking and
executing hostages (the amanats), wiping out
the population of the whole villages including women and children and driving
“non-cooperative” Chechens out of their land and settling the emptied
hinterland by Russian and Cossack population. By 1817 Russians managed to
conquer huge territory south of Terek pulling the
Chechens across the Sunzha river and building the
so-called “Sunzha wall”. After Yermolov
was dismissed in 1826, his successors (Count Paskiewicz,
Baron Rosen, Count Vorontsov and Prince Baryatinsky) followed both Yermolov’s
policy and methods.
While trying to consolidate all
of their forces, many Chechen clans united into the tarikats.
The tarikats were Sufi Islamic orders whose
characteristic features were religious devotion, strict hierarchy and
discipline. Even today the two tarikats (Najbandiya and Kadiriya)
are very strong in Chechnya
and among the Chechen diasporas worldwide.
The strongest tarikat at the beginning of the war
of 19th century was Al Kadiriya later
split up into two separate orders, among of Batal-Hajites
and Kunta-Hajites. The followers of Kunta-Haji tried to find compromise with Russian empire
while Batal-Haji were aiming at fighting Russia to
the death until the whole Caucasus would be free of them. It was Batal-Hajites who managed to organize anti-Russian
resistance in Chechnya and Daghestan driven by the
slogan of Jihad and whose spiritual leaders (Imams) Kazi-Magomed, Hamzatbeg and Shamil became the heads of the Imamat
of Chechnya and Daghestan, the centralized
state that united the areas of North-east Caucasia
that were still independent of Russia.
Shamil was the
last and the most famous Imam who governed his followers with an iron hand
from 1832 to 1959. The followers of Imam tried to transform the Chechen
society from relative freedom and religious tolerance to strict discipline,
Islamic fundamentalism and asceticism (even folk songs and dances were
strictly forbidden under Shamil). The followers of Shamil wiped out the last traces of Christianity in Chechnya
including the destruction of books, icons, crosses
and even forbidding to talk about the Christian past. Every person daring to
disagree with the Imam (or reported to disagree) could be beheaded without
any trial (Shamil always appeared in public being
accompanied by a hangman who often had to do his job on the spot). Shamil also managed to organize relatively successful
resistance against Russian conquest in spite of his forces being heavily
outnumbered by the enemy. Under his leadership the Imamat
armies several times invaded Ossetia,
Georgia and Azerbaijan trying to get access to the sea as
well as to Russia-fighting Adyghea,
Turkey and Iran. Shamil’s emissaries appeared in Western
Europe trying to solicit international support. In fact, Shamil’s state was also in control of Adyghea
a bigger anti-Russian enclave to the west of Ossetia and Kabardia,
ruled by Shamil’s Nayib
(ca. Vice-Roy), Mohammad Amin. That allowed Shamil to call himself “the Imam of the Caucasus”.
That also allows modern Chechens to believe that their recent ancestors
managed to unite the Caucasus.
Russia’s
military and technical supremacy and relative international isolation
combined with inside opposition (Kunta-Hajites, Bamatites and other groups) led to the fall of the Imamat by the end of the 50s. On August 25, 1859, Shamil surrounded inside his last stronghold in Gunib, surrendered to the Russians. Later the same year
the Russians captured Mohammad Amin. While being
interned in Russia,
Shamil and his family were treated respectfully
treated as a family of an imprisoned head of a conquered foreign state. He
died in 1871 in Kaluga
swearing allegiance to the Russian Emperor shortly before his death. Some of Shamil’s followers (Umaduev. Udayev, Alibeg Haji) continued sporadic guerilla struggle for several
years after the capture of Shamil until the last of
their leaders was slaughtered in 1878.
The defeat of the Imamat was accompanied by mass exodus of Chechens from
the Russian Empire to Turkey.
Together with hundreds of thousands of expatriates forcedly deported from Adyghea, the Chechen expatriates settled in different
areas of the Ottoman empire (Bosnia,
Bulgaria, Syria, Mesopotamia, western Anatolia,
etc.). As of today the descendants of both the Adygh
and Chechen expatriates form isolated communities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq,
Jordan and Israel (all former parts of the Ottoman empire) where they are
collectively called Circassians or the Cherkes people.
Between 1878 and 1914 the
Chechens tried to co-exist with the Russian rule without major open
conflicts. Such relapses of guerilla fight like the Abrek
movement (e.g. the violent actions of the band of Zelimkhan
Ashmazukayev in 1905 - 1913) can hardly be defined
as the continuation of the resistance war and were officially defined as
banditry by Russian imperial authorities.
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