37
After securing its dominance in the southern parts of the Caucasus with
signing the Treaty of Gülistan with Persia in 1813, Russian claims over the North
Caucasus were officially recognised, and the “Russians turned towards the
mountains to secure their rear and communications.”
78
The duty was given to
General Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov who was appointed the Governor and Chief
Administrator of Georgia and the Caucasus, commander-in-chief of the separate
Georgian Army Corps and Ambassador Extraordinaire to the court of Fath Ali
Shah of Persia. This appointment earned him the nickname of Proconsul of the
Caucasus.
79
Thereafter, with his chief of staff General Veliaminov, he began to
implement a new policy of his own, the ‘siege policy’. He aimed to drive the
Mountaineers away from the plain area and restrict them to the mountains by
establishing lines of fortresses using the Caucasian line as the first parallel. In
compliance with this policy, he built the fortresses of the Sunja and Sulaq lines,
Groznaya (‘Menacing’) in 1818, Vnezapnaya (‘Sudden’) near Enderi in 1819 and
Burnaya (‘Stormy’) near Tarku in 1821. Through ruthless actions and genocidal
tactics directed from these new centres, Russians managed to subjugate larger parts
of Dagestan.
In this short period of time, although the rulers of Dagestan tried to form an
alliance against the Russian forces, they failed and were beaten. Then, the pro-
the Russian sovereign, and sought cultural and linguistic assimilation. See Chantal Lemercier-
Quelquejay, ‘Cooptation of the Elites’. Also see A. V. Fadeev, 1960. Rossiia i Kavkaz: Pervoi Treti
XIX v., Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR.
78
Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 7.
79
For Yermolov see Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 29-38.
38
Russian ones replaced the rulers of the Avar Khanate and Ghazi-Kumuk and those
of Mekhtuli, Kaytak, and Tabasaran were deposed and their lands were annexed.
80
During the 1828-29 Russian-Turkish war, the Russian forces captured
Anapa and in the Treaty of Edirne (Adrianople), the Turks agreed to give up all
positions and claims on the northwestern Caucasus or the Circassian lands in return
for the restoration of Kars and Batum.
8-Re-emergence of the Muridizm:
In this milieu, in the footsteps of Mansur, Islam once again emerged as the
major political force capable of crossing tribal and ethnic divides, and uniting
various peoples in a broad anti-colonial struggle. This new movement, which was
shaped by Naqshbandi orders, first emerged in the central areas of the North
Caucasus, in which there was no ruling elites and princely dynasties, and thus no
co-optation by the Russians. Then, it gradually spread into the eastern and western
areas. The first Mountaineers’ revolt, under the banner of Islam took place in 1825-
26, under the leadership of Beybulat Taymi
81
, in Chechnya, and supported by the
Naqshbandiya heartily. In spite of its importance as a reflection of a centralising
tendency that began to emerge in the North Caucasus, this revolt had limited
success.
82
80
Rasul Magomedov, 1939. B or’ba Gortsev za nezavisimost’ pod rukovodstvom Shamilia,
Makhach-Kala: Daggiz, 21-33.
81
He was born in 1779 to the family of a Chechen craftsman in the village of Bilty. His courage and
the other qualities as a statesman rose him to a prominent position of an elder. But the
Naqshbandiya, especially the most important sheikh, Muhammad al-Yaraghi, supported the revolt
that he led. Zelkina, God and Freedom, 126-7.
82
For a detailed account of this revolt see Zelkina, God and Freedom, 121-134.
39
The leader, who bridged the gap between the ‘political’ and ‘spiritual’
Naqshbandiya and merged the two into a united movement, was Ghazi
Muhammed.
83
As a Naqshbandi sheikh, he saw the sharia as the only guarantee
against the corruption of the North Caucasian society by Russian colonial rule. He
called on Muslims to replace the traditional ‘ adat’ system with a sharia-based
legislation.
This kind of development in the North Caucasus caused the beginning of
the Mountaineer-Russian struggle in the entire region and strengthened the vitality
of the establishment of unified body for a successful resistance. The Russians
began to implement a policy based on the premises that “fear and greed are the two
mainsprings of everything that takes place here” and that “those people’s only
policy is force.”
84
Under the command of Yermolov and his successors, Paskevich
and Rosen, Russian forces stormed entire Chechnya and Dagestan.
In response, the influence of the tariqats and consequently Ghazi
Muhammed grew steadily. The local authorities and the people in general inclined
to Imam and ready to struggle with ‘infidels’, i.e. Russians. At the end of 1829, he
summoned the Naqshbandi sheikhs and mullahs to a gathering at Gimrah (Gimri)
and declared a holy war, ghazavat, in early 1830. Until his death in October 1832,
he managed to establish his authority over the territory of central and eastern North
83
Ghazi Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Gimrawi was born some time in the early 1790s in the village of
Gimrah. Although nothing is known about his family, it is supposed that it was a common family of
the Avar uzden. At the age of ten he was sent to Karanay village to study Arabic and the Qur’an,
and then he visited the other Dagestani centres of learning. In 1825, he went to Ghazi-Kumuk, to
see the famous Naqsbandi sheikhs, and became one of the ardent murids of Jamal al-Din al-Ghazi
Kumuyki and Muhammad al-Yaraghi. In early 1827, following his meeting with al-Yaraghi, he
returned to his native Gimrah, where he established himself as a sheikh in his own right and started
to take up murids. See Gammer, Muslim Resistance, 49-59, Zelkina, God and Freedom, 135-159,
and Magomedov, 43-44.
84
Baddeley, 65.
Dostları ilə paylaş: |