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60 
 
out in entire North Caucasus in 1865, 1877, 1898 and 1906 that resulted in the 
arrival of new refugees from the North Caucasus to the Ottoman lands. 
In the central parts and in Dagestan, the Naqshbandiya, the ideological 
driving force lost its leadership cadre, which weakened it’s struggle of 
independence. Despite the appearance of a new religious order Qadiriya
140
, 
intended to revive the struggle, the Russians easily defeated it and encouraged the 
massive emigration of the Chechens and Ingush to the Ottoman Empire. From then 
until 1917, the Sufi brotherhood discarded the idea of ghazavat and open 
resistance, and developed an underground, semi-clandestine character. However, 
when the opportunity to rebel against the Russians presented itself, they took the 
lead to organize the masses.
141
 
The leaders of the Mountaineers in exile and the North Caucasians took part 
in every kind of anti-Russian movements and wars, led primarily by the Ottomans. 
In 1877-78 the Mountaineers, headed by Ghazi Muhammed Shamil, Sheikh 
Shamil’s son and Musa Kundukhov Paşa
142
, engaged in the most determined 
                                                                                                                                        
139
 Ramazan Traho, “Circassians,” 46. For an interesting account of voluntary emigration see Musa 
Kundukov, 1978. General Musa Kundukov’un Anıları, trnsl. Murat Yağan, İstanbul: Kafkas Kültür 
Derneği. 
140
 The Qadiriya was founded in Bagdad by Abd al-Qadir al-Ghilani in the second half of 12
th
 
century and brought to the North Caucasus by a Kumuk, Kunta Haji Kishiev in early 1850s. But, he 
was obliged to leave the region because of the hostility of Naqshbandiya towards his pacifist 
sermons. He returned in 1861, after the surrender of Shamil and enjoyed immediate success in 
Chechnya, Avar lands and the northern Dagestan. Then because of the unrest in Chechnya in 1863-
64, the Russian administration arrested him. He was not tried but simply declared insane and 
banished to a prison hospital, where he died in 1867. See, Alexander Bennigsen and S. Enders 
Wimbush, 1985. Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union, London: C. Hurst, 9-11. 
141
 Marie Bennigsen Broxup, 1992. “The Last Ghazawat: The 1920-1921 Uprising,” in The North 
Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World, ed. by. M. B. Broxup, 
London: C. Hurst, 112-145. 
142
 Musa Kundukhov, (1818-?), an Osetian. He was born in the aul of Sanib in the North Caucasus. 
In 1830 he was sent to the Petersburg Pavlovsky Corps to receive a military education. After 6 
years, he graduated as an officer of the cavalry. In 1837 he was the interpreter of Emperor Nicholas 
I during his visit to the Caucasus. After his participation in several wars he became a general in the 
Russian Army. And he was appointed head of the Osetian, and later Chechen military regions and 

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battles on the Caucasian front, but the Ottomans eventually lost the war and the 
Mountaineers’ dream of establishing their own state was left unfulfilled.
143
 
Moreover with the conclusion of the Berlin Treaty, the Ottomans gave up Kars, 
Ardahan and Batum, and the remaining Mountaineers lost their contact with the 
Ottoman lands and the North Caucasian emigrants. 
 
During this period of time the Russians ruled the region with a military 
governor and considered the Mountaineers to be savages or primitive peoples, who 
could not be educated. They generally left the Mountaineers alone and were 
cautious about interfering with the local traditions and customary law. As a result, 
Dagestan remained a religious centre and within the religious schools Arabic was 
taught. 
By the beginning of the 20
th
 century, initially, the Russians tried to establish 
local schools that used native languages transliterated into Cyrillic script. 
Nevertheless, in order to create a pro-Russian population, the Russian authorities 
discarded this idea and Russian language schools replaced these native language 
schools. As Broxup put it, on the eve of the Revolution, there were only 93 
government schools which has thought in Russian and “these schools were able to 
barely educate small number of natives as the clerks and minor officials.”
144
 
Beyond thıs, unlike the case among most of the other Muslim peoples of the 
                                                                                                                                        
worked with all the Russian commanders-in-chief in Caucasus in time. But, becoming disenchanted 
with the Russian rule in the region, he immigrated to Ottoman lands with his people. He was also 
promoted to the rank of Paşa in the Ottoman Army. See General Musa Kundukov’un Anıları, and 
Ramazan Traho, “Circassians”. 
143
 For the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 see W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, 1953. Caucasian 
Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921, Cambridge: 

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Russian Empire, it is difficult to talk about the existence, or the effects, of any kind 
of reformist movement in the region. Moreover, we have no concrete information 
related to the effects of the main reformist movement of Russian Muslims 
‘Cedidzm’ on the peoples of the North Caucasus.
145
 Thus, beyond the small groups 
of elites who belonged to privileged and wealthier families educated in Russian 
schools, the Mountaineers did not create a class of intelligentsia who could lead the 
society. 
 
When the February Revolution broke out, there was a handful of people 
who had a modern European education, most of them whom studied in Russian 
schools. This so-called ‘intelligentsia’ or ‘elite’ tended to have close relations with 
Russian circles and, can be classed into two distinct groupings, each having almost 
diametrically opposed world outlooks. The first group was aligned with the leftist 
Russian political parties, especially the Socialist Revolutionary party, and the other 
consisted mostly of middle-ranking officials belonging to the influential nobility 
who were faithful to the Tsar and the Russian Empire. Beyond their reputation, 
which ıs carried almost exclusively by their family name, these people had almost 
no contacts with the masses.
146
 In addition to these groups, there was a group of 
wealthier landowners and merchants who had a basis among the peoples of the 
North Caucasus. These groups carried out their political works within the Russian 
                                                                                                                                        
Cambridge University Press, 105-201 and for the Mountaineers’ part in this war see Musa 
Kundukov. 
144
 Broxup, 120-121. 
145
 For Cedidizm and its effects, primarily on Crimean Tatars see Hakan Kırımlı, 1996. National 
Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars, 1905-1916, Leiden: E.J. Brill. 

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