45
sending regular deputies and missionaries, called naibs, for the first time in the
North Caucasus, brought the isolated tribes and jama’ats under a unified Shari’a
based legal system to ensure a coordinated resistance against the Russians. By the
mid-1850s, the Imam has already established a sovereign state and ruling with
complex machinery.
Through comprehensive administrative, fiscal, and military measures based
on the Shari’a, Shamil eliminated the power base of the traditional rulers and
created a new central state, which became known as the Imamate of Shamil. In
order to achieve unification, he combined both the religious and military authority
in the personality of the Imam, and, as Zelkina stressed, he established a kind of
‘constitutional monarchy’.
98
First of all, Shamil’s state, without any controversy, was a religious one.
The Shari’a was its constitution and thus the Imam’s authority was bound by this
constitution. At the top of the pyramid was the imam. In the early years of his rule,
he used the title of al-Imam al-a’zam, which meant Great Imam, but in time, in line
the consolidation of his power, he replaced it with Amir al-mu’minin, the
Commander of the Believers, which highlighted his claims to have full authority as
the sovereign ruler of the Imamate.
99
In his Imamate, Shamil established, more or less, a system of balance of
power. Beyond the all-powerful Imam, there was a legislative assembly called the
shura al-ulama (the council of scholars). This legislative assembly was comprised
of religious leaders and had the power to elect the Imam. In the early 1840s, again
98
Zelkina, God and Freedom, 217.
99
Zelkina, God and Freedom, 214-5 and Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 225-7.
46
in line with the enhancement of Shamil’s authority, it was replaced by the congress
of naibs, known as the Majlis al-nuwwab, and it took the consultative rather than
legislative character and dealt exclusively with military issues.
100
Then, Shamil began to fulfil the legislative duties by himself, but under the
control of a privy council, the Shura al-imam or Divanhane, which was comprised
of the closest confidant Naqsbandi leaders, trustworthy naibs, and respected elders.
In addition to its consultative and high-level decision-making functions, Divanhane
served as a body relieving the imam of the burden of daily routine decisions. In
order to gain legitimacy and achieve compliance with the Shari’a, all the laws and
initiatives of the imam had to be approved by the Council. All the members of the
Council had equal vote but as the real authority, the Imam had the power of veto
over decisions. However, the religious traditions of the tariqat, or the Sufi murshid-
murid bond, in fact prevented any kind of direct clash between the Imam and the
Council members.
101
Beyond that, as stressed above the Shari’a was the ultimate legislation in
the Imamate. Shamil’s interpretation of the Shari’a was of the orthodox in nature
adopted by the Naqshbandiya.
102
Basically it was strictly against, and even hostile,
to the local adat and some innovations or bid’as resulting from contact with the
Russians. Thus, Shamil’s main duty, as the Imam and the chief competent
interpreter, was the removal of the entire habits or daily practices of the
Mountaineers, which contradicted with the Shari’a. To ensure the Muslim way of
life should prevail over the entire North Caucasus, Shamil prohibited all kinds of
100
Zelkina, God and Freedom, 215-6 and Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 226-7.
101
Magomedov, pp. 90-92, Gammer, Muslim Resistance, and Zelkina, God and Freedom, 215-6.
47
customs and habits. Smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages were forbidden.
Women were obliged to dress modestly. Dances and music were limited to
weddings and circumcisions. Feuds were not allowed between the peoples.
“In general, religious and administrative functionaries were instructed
repeatedly to enforce the observance of the S hari’a.”
103
Where the Shari’a could
not provide an answer in the narrowly legalistic term, as a supreme ruler, learned
Muslim scholar and Sufi sheikh, the Imam had the faculty to pass his own
judgements or qualified opinions. He never refrained from taking such decisions
and these decisions constituted a separate set of laws known as Shamil’s Nizams.
104
Shamil’s nizams were the first written sets of regulations that, embracing
the entire population of the North Caucasus, and challenged and changed the
existing rules and practices. These nizams included a vast range of domestic,
religious, political, and military matters and can be compared to the Ottoman
kânun.
105
Through these nizams Shamil irreversibly changed the life of the North
Caucasian peoples and succeeded in greatly improving the adherence of the
Mountaineers to the Islamic codes. Moreover, he introduced the concepts of union
and state by instituting the notion of a crime against state and religion, which had
never existed before.
106
102
Gammer put it as “one of the fundamentalist one”, but in fact it is better to put it as an ‘orthodox’
one rather than the fundamentalist. See Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 232.
103
Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 232.
104
“Until the late 1940s only one copy of such regulations was known, which led Russian and
Soviet historians to lay special importance on 1847 in the development of nizam. The publication,
since then, of the new documents –among them other copies of the nizam- have clearly proved the
existence of the nizam as early as 1842.” Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 233.
105
In order to compare and contrast it with the Ottoman sytem, cf. Enver Ziya Karal, 1946. Selim
II’ün Hat-tı Hümayunları –Nizam-ı Cedit, 1789-1807, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, and 1961.
Osmanlı Tarihi: Nizam-ı Cedit ve Tanzimat Devirleri, 1789-1856, Vol. V, Ankara: Türk Tarih
Kurumu.
106
Zelkina, God and Freedom, 218.
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