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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. 

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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. 

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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 Shari’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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